[SPEAKER_04]: what is up everybody welcome to comic book club I'm Alex I'm Pete and we've got a bonus episode for you here with two great guests they are the creators behind the new paper cuts book nothing can stop dot dot dot the ape which is coming out on July 21st
[SPEAKER_04]: you can order it from your comic book shop or bookstore right now left of know you want this book which is a great all ages graphic novel by as I said to great creators that we've checked with before but very happy to have them back to talk about this book ladies and gentlemen Tom Stagoski and Jean Acheson welcome to do it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Did I do it?
[SPEAKER_04]: Did I?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes, you did.
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, all right, you're about me because I was like
[SPEAKER_04]: We got it.
[SPEAKER_04]: We did it.
[SPEAKER_04]: So to give a little bit of some information about nothing could stop the ape before we get into here, people probably know your work from a variety of different things.
[SPEAKER_04]: But this story, I would like to describe very positively as a head-y stew of a bunch of fantasy ideas of sci-fi ideas.
[SPEAKER_04]: You got a young kid exploring the jungle, releases an ancient evil, and the only way of stopping that ancient evil is with another ancient evil.
[SPEAKER_04]: That's the.
[SPEAKER_04]: Sure, this version of it.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's got art by Craig Ruiz, so we've worked with before who is great as well.
[SPEAKER_04]: So, given all that, there were a lot of different influences that I saw throughout here.
[SPEAKER_04]: You got a little bit of Johnny Quest going on, a little bit of captain plated, a little bit of like that whole area.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's very much its own thing as you've got this.
[SPEAKER_04]: being who has emerged and possesses the main character's mother and that the apu mayor may not be evil and probably as let's be honest who's the only being who could stop her so it's got its own thing going on but where did this start like what were you what were you thinking of that went from this individual stew ingredients to the stew that we all stop using the word stew yeah i mean
[SPEAKER_01]: I think everything in Tom's head is a jumbolla.
[SPEAKER_01]: There we go.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey, come on.
[SPEAKER_04]: Anyway, but... We were a scottie.
[SPEAKER_04]: So yes, we're, we're to this start.
[SPEAKER_04]: What was like the initial germ of the idea that how did it start to come together?
[SPEAKER_03]: Honestly, this was an idea that was rattle over and over on inside my head for a good 30 years.
[SPEAKER_03]: That I could not nail.
[SPEAKER_03]: There was something about it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I would get all excited about it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I would spat to work it up.
[SPEAKER_03]: I would meet with artists.
[SPEAKER_03]: I would talk about it as I get them excited.
[SPEAKER_03]: But for some bizarre reason, it never jell.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it killed me because I thought the title alone was like the greatest title ever, which might mean you all did best.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's the greatest title I've ever heard.
[SPEAKER_03]: freaky reason, I could never nail what I wanted it to be.
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, it was much more serious originally, much darker, much more horrific, and some incarnations, and then it became more like funny and horrific.
[SPEAKER_03]: It just didn't work.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then I don't even know, I think it was, when Janine got involved is when things seemed to kind of click.
[SPEAKER_03]: There was something about her involvement that caused it to kind of fall into place.
[SPEAKER_03]: and what it what it was was I think at the time I had been talking about wanting to do the Herculoids and nobody had the license and nobody wanted to get the license.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I was like, you know what, I wonder if I did this kind of like a crazy ass and about barricard tune.
[SPEAKER_03]: If that's the approach, and as soon as we started to talk about it, because she's a big family, Johnny Quest and stuff like that, as soon as we started to talk about it, all the pieces started to fall into place.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then I thought that I contacted Craig.
[SPEAKER_03]: He's a huge
[SPEAKER_03]: and everything started to fall into place even more visually cool.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then we had the we had the pitch within like weeks of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we brought it with us to San Diego Comic Con and showed it to Mark Irwin.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mark Irwin is a president of badcapes studios and he was like,
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't care what anybody says.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the what we're doing this.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're like, that was cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just like right away.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was instant.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: So take a little step back.
[SPEAKER_04]: Sorry, Jeanette.
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm curious.
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you remember was there something that you're like at idea that popped up a specific or was it just your love of Hanna Barbarra that helped shape your better?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it was probably just my love of Hannah Barber at like I remember like Tom and I were about the same age and I remember we talked about like sitting in our in our pajamas on Saturday mornings with bowl of cereal, watching cartoons and like my favorite was Johnny Quest.
[SPEAKER_01]: For some reason I had no idea why like I was a girl.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was just this fantastical kind of like
[SPEAKER_01]: random story of a little boy, but I just love Johnny Quest for some reason.
[SPEAKER_03]: It didn't look like anything else at the time.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, I think that's it.
[SPEAKER_03]: I think that's what Quest had going forward is that it was really different and it played, it wasn't played for laughs.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it's very serious, you know.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's funny that you say because I did feel like I was sitting down to watch a Saturday morning cartoon when I read this.
[SPEAKER_02]: I got sucked in.
[SPEAKER_02]: I felt like I was in such great hands.
[SPEAKER_02]: Jeannie and I'll be interested.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like if somebody comes up to you and says, like, I kind of got an idea.
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't get it to work.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like how do you guys then kind of sit down and work on like building it or making it kind of work, as you say.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's, it's usually me who says, I don't know how to make this work.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I know what I want, it's sometimes I know the beginning and I know the ending, but I can't always like get there and a lot of times and I've done this many times.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll say to Tom.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know the beginning, I know the end, but I don't know how to get there and he'll go, well, you could not go, no, no, so I'm just struggle with this for a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, how am I going to learn if you just keep coming to my rest?
[SPEAKER_01]: But a lot of times I like to struggle with things, just to see if I can figure it out most of the time, I can't be helps me anyway, so it's all good.
[SPEAKER_04]: When you aren't dealing with pastiche of a bunch of different things that do sort of like skimmer off the surface, how do you make sure that you're doing something original versus just, oh, this is Johnny Quest.
[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, this is Captain Platte, et cetera.
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: I know, I know, this is gonna sound really stupid, but I feel it in my gut.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's one of those things where I don't feel, when it doesn't just feel like you're doing the same thing over again.
[SPEAKER_03]: I feel it.
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like, oh, this is exciting.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is this is cool.
[SPEAKER_03]: This, yeah, this I get this and it's usually that momentum of feeling excited about the idea and knowing that you're not just doing something that somebody else has already done.
[SPEAKER_03]: too much like 25 other things that either I've done or so many else is done.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, and it usually the energy usually kind of.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's such an important part because, you know, when I started reading this, you know, I felt so well taken care of, and there were fun twists and turns, like you think, okay, one thing is good, the other one's evil, you know, we're going to have this big show down, but I liked all the kind of like different takes on things.
[SPEAKER_02]: It felt fresh, but also felt familiar, which is
[SPEAKER_02]: Hearing you talk about it, I really do feel like you guys nailed that really well.
[SPEAKER_03]: There was that nostalgia factor, big time.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, especially since I was so, I was so excited I wanted to do a herkiller's book, which I eventually did end up building.
[SPEAKER_03]: But at that time, I didn't have.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I hadn't heard nothing about it, so.
[SPEAKER_03]: So, all that energy, that initial excitement about doing a Hercules book, I just kind of converted it and put it into the ate.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you'll bear with me for a tortured metaphor, I think people talk a lot about throwing things at a blender.
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think that's kind of what you do here.
[SPEAKER_04]: The thing that gets ignored a little bit when you use that is, yes, you do have those individual pieces, whether like fruit.
[SPEAKER_04]: and Peter butter and chocolate or whatever, and they exist, but the thing that it ultimately blended is a new thing.
[SPEAKER_04]: It does feel new because you do get to a critical mass in terms of those elements where you're coming at them in different ways, seeing them together when they're not normally together, that changes it as well.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, definitely.
[SPEAKER_04]: I always, my metaphor is the cauldron.
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, throw everything into, to make a great, big soup.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, or a jumbo life.
[SPEAKER_04]: If you are just more of a thing, yeah, it's a little stupid.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, let's talk about the a specific character's then.
[SPEAKER_04]: So we got our main character, who's this young kid who gets embroiled in the middle of everything.
[SPEAKER_04]: What was, what was important about him?
[SPEAKER_04]: Because obviously you are writing a all-ages graphic novel here, so at least a part of the concert has to be, oh, I'm thinking about the reader and how much they can see themselves on the page.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, I feel like having taught, it was a teacher for about 15 years.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like Max is every seventh trader that came through my classroom.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like he just, he feels, he feels real to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like my kids are grown and gone, but I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was just like the quintessential 12-year-olds, 13-12, who's 12-year-old, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he's just every sweet little kid that ever came through my classroom.
[SPEAKER_01]: about all the kids that I remember.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I don't know, like he feels real to me, like he has his own personality.
[SPEAKER_01]: We, I don't know, he just he felt real.
[SPEAKER_01]: He felt like we were just telling a story about a real person.
[SPEAKER_04]: Uh, the other, I mean, there's a lot of different characters, but I feel like even more than Max, maybe the most important character here is the ape because he is a title.
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, he ultimately ends up being like he's a little gorilla, grad kind of, he's a little king Kong, there's some of that in there.
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, what was important in how many iterations did you go through with Craig in order to really get it right?
[SPEAKER_04]: Not just for the writing perspective, but also visually.
[SPEAKER_03]: From the writing, I just wanted him to be a bad ass.
[SPEAKER_03]: I wanted him to be a bad guy, because he is a bad guy.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, what it comes down to, he take over the world that I had beat if you let him.
[SPEAKER_03]: But he has to kind of play the game.
[SPEAKER_03]: So that was always very important.
[SPEAKER_03]: And I was so glad that a couple of publishers that I'd worked with on a couple of other projects.
[SPEAKER_03]: I remember I had another project called
[SPEAKER_03]: and the French Bulldog character in there was a complete jerk, and he was nasty, and he wanted to take over the world because he felt he could run it better than anybody else.
[SPEAKER_03]: And so many publishers said, we love this.
[SPEAKER_03]: This is so funny.
[SPEAKER_03]: We think it's fantastic.
[SPEAKER_03]: Could you make him nicer?
[SPEAKER_03]: And I'm always like, no, because it's a story about a villain.
[SPEAKER_03]: He is the villain of the piece.
[SPEAKER_03]: He just happens to be the focus of the story.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I had that a lot, and I was so happy when that came.
[SPEAKER_03]: didn't say, oh, yeah, could you make the ape a little nicer, could you make them a little sweeter?
[SPEAKER_03]: And maybe maybe you show us like the grinch, maybe make us hard grow at the end.
[SPEAKER_03]: No, absolutely not.
[SPEAKER_03]: Absolutely not.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we lost actually with French.
[SPEAKER_03]: We actually lost like two or three publishers because we wouldn't do that originally.
[SPEAKER_03]: So I was very happy with the eight.
[SPEAKER_03]: And then there was credit, Craig was just so excited because it was going to be something that
[SPEAKER_03]: was reminiscent of the Hanabab era stuff and everything.
[SPEAKER_03]: So he just added drawing.
[SPEAKER_03]: He nailed it right away.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I definitely think the the ape has a little bit of a herky Lloyds feel to it in such a good way.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, he he like I think the very first drawing is we got from Craig or like that's it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you nailed it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, and just to throw out there to give you a big, absolute bit, reading the book, I appreciate the fact that he is a bad guy.
[SPEAKER_04]: The ape all the way through, you know, I, I'm not a kid, but I think as a kid, I would think that was so much cooler to read than like, wow, this ape got a heart and now they're friends.
[SPEAKER_04]: No, he's evil, and that's more fun.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, way more fun, yes.
[SPEAKER_04]: What were the other elements that were important to capture here again?
[SPEAKER_04]: You have a lot of characters, but were there any that were particularly hard to crack as you were going through it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was really difficult.
[SPEAKER_01]: We had a lot of fun with the element the element.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were fun and they were fun to write.
[SPEAKER_01]: I like to kind of digging into those characters as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were fun, I think.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, the caveman guy was my favorite.
[SPEAKER_02]: He did a lot by just looking like really emotional face stuff, which was very interesting.
[SPEAKER_03]: Those characters developed as we were writing them.
[SPEAKER_03]: Because we just kind of said, all right, wouldn't be cool to have like a super team from like the dawn of time.
[SPEAKER_03]: how interesting that would be.
[SPEAKER_03]: So we were like, yeah, yeah, I think Craig said a drawing.
[SPEAKER_03]: And combination of the drawings bringing the personality and then us kind of writing to Craig's drawings and finding like rock, big silent.
[SPEAKER_03]: His word balloons are, if I were to break into this stuff.
[SPEAKER_03]: That's just going to change that I know we were like, how funny are that thing?
[SPEAKER_03]: So yeah, yeah, those things, they were really cool.
[SPEAKER_03]: They really developed as we were writing the voice.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's fun to hear about the collaboration, you know, because we just get to kind of see the final product, but it's fun, like the discoveries like that really jump out to the reader, those like kind of differences that you discover through going back and forth with the artist.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, how much fun is it to see the kind of like something that lived in your head to now kind of being on page?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's the beauty of comics.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that's why I keep,
[SPEAKER_03]: 40 something novels, and of course, a couple of years, but I keep coming back that the industry pulls me back because it's so damn fun.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it always is.
[SPEAKER_03]: And it is that coming up with a concept, coming up with an idea, and then having somebody bring your idea to life.
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that's amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of times, too, like, will think of something and will go, oh, like, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: What if this happens?
[SPEAKER_01]: That'll look really cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the artist does it and you're like, Oh, I don't think it was looking to look that good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Craig's amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's just he's amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he's great.
[SPEAKER_04]: It's great.
[SPEAKER_04]: Lucky book and I know, like you were saying, this has been a really long journey to get it here, but without spoiling too much, it definitely leaves an open for more.
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you have plans at this point for nothing can still stop the ape?
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, all we need is the sales, and I'm sure Matt Taylor, a paper cuss would be all over it, but yeah, they've talked about doing more, but
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to spoil, but you better do more of that point.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, someone has got to help that dog.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you know what the dog's just as bad as the E. I did pick up on that.
[SPEAKER_04]: This book is great.
[SPEAKER_04]: I had a blast reading it and look for anybody listening out there who wants to read it It's coming out again from paper cuts on July 21st, but it's open for pre-orders right now comic book store or bookstores or check it out Tom Janine, thank you so much for coming on a pleasure chatting with you Looking forward to sharing jumbolya at some point in the future Really love this book that congratulations.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're like super great.
[SPEAKER_03]: Please, please green to buy it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's just turn back to number one Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah I want the feet that no don't mind We'll take time, make sense Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah
[SPEAKER_00]: They sit on crappy gadgets and they let us see what we can And he's just a monkey, they're like fast, they're so messy So grab your ring, hammer, don't relate, or it goes fair