[SPEAKER_01]: what's up everybody welcome to comic book club on Alex on Pete and we've got another bonus episode for you today with a great guest one of our favorite guys to talk to and he has a awesome new project on Kickstarter called the OZ ladies gentlemen didn't propose David hello
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you guys so much for having me.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is always a pleasure to catch up.
[SPEAKER_02]: I am so excited to talk about the return of the OZ to kickstarter for its third and final issue.
[SPEAKER_02]: This book has been a long time coming and I'm so excited for us to finally bring all three issues back for those who aren't familiar with the book.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's Mad Max meets the Wizard of Oz, the story of Dorothy Gilles grand daughter, and I rack wore a veteran who's caught up in a tornado and stranded in the war-torn land of Oz, where she learns that not only were her grandmother's tall tales all true, but that her killing of both wicked witches and her vanishing
[SPEAKER_02]: All it wasn't that I happy ending is just a power vacuum, not unlike Baghdad.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so now our new Dorothy is teeming up with her grandmother's former friends, the tin soldier, the Prince of Lyons, the Jack Pumpkin Ed, in order to bring peace to the occupied zone.
[SPEAKER_02]: Or is the locals call it the OZ?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, you got that bitch down.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now this,
[SPEAKER_01]: Popped up on Kickstarter a couple of days ago.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is not to blow it up your spot too much, but it is successful.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was funded.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's five hours.
[SPEAKER_01]: You hit the $6,000 goal.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's as I'm looking at it right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's at 14k and I'll just mention people can pledge it until July 8th if they want to check it out.
[SPEAKER_01]: So as you mentioned though, you've done two issues before this is the final issue.
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, you've had a lot go at odd, but that's covered the middle, but why, why finish the OZ now?
[SPEAKER_01]: Why was now the right time to put this up here?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it was really, we've been working on this since the last campaign and I, you know, it's one of those things I always, I always want to sort of explain the behind the scenes because
[SPEAKER_02]: It would be very easy to sort of make a narrative saying, oh, Peppo's got tapped at Marvel and then he forgot about the OZ.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I want to make everybody know that that wasn't the case.
[SPEAKER_02]: This book has been fully written since before the first Kickstarter.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so it's the artist's fault.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, what happened was, you know, it's, it's our amazing artist Rubin Rhohaus, really, it was just sort of kind of life kind of sideswifed him a little bit, and some, and some good ways in some ways that we're a little more challenging for him, in that married, he had a child.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was in Spain during the worst of COVID, so the economy was really bad during all that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I believe there was something with either one of his parents or wife's parents.
[SPEAKER_02]: but it was a lot to juggle on top of a day job and raising a child.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so he kind of had a Shawshank his way through this issue.
[SPEAKER_02]: And this issue, by the way, has double-sized, you know, 44 pages.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, so it was one of those things.
[SPEAKER_02]: I, I fought long and hard about it, you know, our, our previous Kickstarter, went a little,
[SPEAKER_02]: past what we were expecting in terms of the time frame, and that was because when Rubin and I had talked about it, he, you know, underestimated a little bit how long it was going to take from the finish.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I knew for the third Kickstarter, I wanted the book to be a hundred percent lockstock and barrel done, which it is.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so talking with him, you know, he was working on the third one as soon as he finished the second one.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I chatted with him and he was kind of like, you know, it's just going to take time.
[SPEAKER_02]: I thought a lot about it and I thought, you know, first off, I wanted this book to be consistent.
[SPEAKER_02]: from beginning to end that this is it's it felt cohesive because it had the same creative team from start to finish because I knew when you read it from she won dishy three that it would really hit like a truck if we had the same team.
[SPEAKER_02]: But also not only did I feel like I owed that to our readership or our passionate and patient readership, but I owed that to Rooton.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, he really is the heart and soul of the book.
[SPEAKER_02]: He breathes so much life into the occupied zone with this sort of
[SPEAKER_02]: post-apocalyptic fantasy designs, and so I said to him, you know, just get it done when you can.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so again, I have been in contact almost every other week since the last campaign, just sort of doing status checks, just being like, hey, what's going on?
[SPEAKER_02]: How you doing?
[SPEAKER_02]: Where we at?
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like a time-friendly poor riven one of the throttledy.
[SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, he finished his
[SPEAKER_02]: and then we had Whitney Cougar, our amazing colorist.
[SPEAKER_02]: She was working on everything piecemeal because when we, when we weren't sure what Ruben's time frame was going to be, obviously, you know, the rest of the creative team had other work band work ground.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, Whitney got her colors done around the end of the year.
[SPEAKER_02]: and then I did a lettering pass, which for those who aren't familiar with a lettering passes, you know, it's basically you write your script, you give it to an artist, the artist draws it, and then now you look back on that script and knowing that it's going to be put in the art and you figure out like, what a way to need to trim, does this line store, does it match what's on the page?
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was a really amazing, kind of, body experience for me because this is something that I've written in 2020.
[SPEAKER_02]: out being able to revisit that, you know, I wrote it as a writer who was younger and scrappier and had no idea what his future held.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wasn't working at Marvel when I wrote this book.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so being able to revisit it with a sort of more seasoned experience to hand, it was kind of fun being like, oh, that was kind of bold.
[SPEAKER_02]: What would I did back then?
[SPEAKER_02]: But then finding ways to kind of like trim that and figure out the ways to punch up certain lines, while still making it read consistent from the two issues that came before.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so T.C.
[SPEAKER_02]: Hopkins then worked in the lettering and finished that recently.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that sort of was why now is because I wanted to do this.
[SPEAKER_02]: First off, when I was 100% done, and also when I had a clean runway that there wasn't going to be any announcements from many other publishers, which those are out of my control when they decide to announce it.
[SPEAKER_02]: that might cannibalize the spotlight for this book.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is something, this book is so important to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a book that is really special to me both professionally and personally.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I love the Kickstarter community because when we took that leap of faith, they caught us.
[SPEAKER_02]: They were the ones that really empowered me as a creator to say I can assemble a team, I can build a story, and the readership will come.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, like, you know, this book helped get, you noticed a marvel, this book won us one here, Ringo award in the twenty nine one issue.
[SPEAKER_02]: One our whole team, which I think was it was very fitting because this is a team effort.
[SPEAKER_02]: I say even personally, you know, my wife is eight months pregnant right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Congratulations, congratulations.
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you think is going to happen first, the baby or the Kickstarter at?
[SPEAKER_02]: Boy, you know, I'm telling you, it's, it's, it's, it's really TDD at this moment.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, I, I, right now, uh, the baby will come like 48 hours after the Kickstarter wraps.
[SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, you know what, uh, I'm going to throw this out there for your wife.
[SPEAKER_01]: Make a bunch of stretch goals, jokes, she'll love that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but I say this because we did IVF and I wouldn't have been able to do IVF.
[SPEAKER_02]: We hadn't done these kick starters.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the OZ made like a material difference, not just in my career, but in my family's lives.
[SPEAKER_02]: So this is something that has been near and dear to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've had people ask me every convention when's the OZ coming back and I'm like as soon as this thing is done,
[SPEAKER_02]: we're off to the races.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's been a long time coming.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I will say, you know, seeing those final pages was a very different experience from every other time I finished a book.
[SPEAKER_02]: Usually when I finish a book, it's just exhaustion, you know?
[SPEAKER_02]: I've crossed the finish line and I can collapse.
[SPEAKER_02]: This it was like opening up a time capsule, you know, and seeing, you know, that the creator I was when I started in the creator I am today, and I got to kind of look back and be like, you know, kid you did good, you know, and now I can take it from here, there's really just this look of this feeling of gratitude and compassion.
[SPEAKER_02]: The writer I was back then, the one who had no idea what future lay ahead of him.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so this is a book that I will say, you know, I've had a whole last career since the last Kickstarter came out.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I just started, I just been taped at Marvel for Savage Avengers as I was running that campaign, but nobody knew that yet.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, and so I really am excited to do, you know, we have print and digital catch-up options on this.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you can get all three issues.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can mix and match the various variant covers in our, you know, as add-ons.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, I'm really excited for people who didn't know who I was in 2021 to discover this campaign and get to see some of my very best work and get to read the whole thing in one shot.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you're touching on this a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, obviously, you've got to do the lettering pass, which you can do like little tweaks here and there.
[SPEAKER_01]: But what about thematically, what do you look back on it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because a lot of the changes of the world as well, and I assume, well, we're evolving look at war, you know, it's just like literally like the Wizard of Oz, maybe that's changing past couple of years as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: you know it's interesting because I think in certain ways the the world maybe hasn't so much changed since those first issues came out as much as it's doubled down one certain you know I mean the themes of of the OZ it really comes down to well maybe I should go first rewind a little bit of how this book came to be because then I can explain how I sort of stumbled into those themes
[SPEAKER_02]: which is, it happened on accident, you know, I wrote, I started writing this book on the heels of Spencer and Locke, which was, what if Calvin and Hobbes grew up in St. City, it was my first book.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I always say, that's a book I had no idea how I was going to land.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I knew that there was going to be some people who loved it for the odd deacity and to see, like, Kim, this idiot, make the, that voter cycle, not job work.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then there were going to be pierists who were just like,
[SPEAKER_02]: Bill Watterson is a pioneer and a trailblazer and how dare you even, you know, do anything to this.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thankfully, you know, the dust settled and overwhelmingly people like that book, we were nominated for five ringo awards for it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was like, okay, maybe I, maybe I'm not going to be run out of town, maybe I can do this.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I started coming up with other ideas of different genres.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so going into the chapel was one of those first ideas.
[SPEAKER_02]: and OZ was the third, and it came from, I knew fantasy was a genre that I really liked.
[SPEAKER_02]: I liked how you can bend metaphor and theme into the, you know, you can make the subtext and so I was writing down fantasy books, you know, just iconic things that I could maybe draw inspiration from.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wrote ten, Lord of the Rings.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wrote ten, Harry Potter before we all found out that JK Rowling was like a virulent transphob.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wrote down the Wizard of Oz and my computer froze, you know, the weird bits of serendipity.
[SPEAKER_02]: My computer froze and the cursor was right in the middle of the word, Oz.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's what I thought, oh, maybe this could be, that could be maybe an acronym.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I thought, as I was putting pieces together, oh, occupied zone.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's what I was like, oh, this is a war story.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because like I said in the pitch, just looking at the text, Dorothy kills two wicked witches and she pulls the mask off on the Wizard of Oz who runs before he gets too hot.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's three out of the four major power pillars, gone, weak, and then she leaves
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, I thought, oh, this is definitely like the forever words that we we're in currently and so it also kind of
[SPEAKER_02]: It was an opportunity for me to revisit some stories that I had been told.
[SPEAKER_02]: I used to be a newspaper reporter.
[SPEAKER_02]: I was my first job at a college.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I had interned in the newsrooms all around the country before that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was a general assignment reporter.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I got weird sort of niches.
[SPEAKER_02]: I did like the crime beat at night.
[SPEAKER_02]: I did state politics.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wound up on the local veterans beat.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I remember doing a big feature on sort of what were the resources and virtual county Massachusetts and also talking with veterans about sort of the challenges and struggles they faced reintegrating back into civilian life.
[SPEAKER_02]: And those stories really struck me in that.
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, we grow up in the society, you know, and so did they, and then they go overseas and they're in this much more regimented military environment, sometimes they've seen combat, sometimes they are coming back with PTSD or traumatic brain injury or just having seen people, whether it's the people that they've served with their civilians or die right in front of them, or they've feared for their own lives, and then they come back here.
[SPEAKER_02]: and it is so alien to them, you know, that our pacing is so much different and chaotic.
[SPEAKER_02]: Our priorities are very different.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nothing's organized, everything's every man from himself, and that's on top of if you're struggling with PTSD or traumatic brain injury or what have you.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that kind of became the theme of for our character of Dorothy, or first line is they say there's no place like home, but for me, home is a place that doesn't exist anymore.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I feel like that's something that I think we're all kind of feeling in the year of our Lord 2026, and some capacity because I think we all grow up with this idea of what our country is and what its ideals are.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think we're all disillusioned at some point, whether you're reading a history book or reading the headlines.
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think the last 10 years had been a particularly dark time for us that there are people who revel in this, that there's fascism, really kind of trying to creep through every corner.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so the idea of a character who is fighting that, who is also those struggling with sort of the unintended consequences of their good intentions.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think, you know, the idea of homes that place that doesn't exist anymore, that's the past.
[SPEAKER_02]: Those are sort of our rose-colored glasses, our memories of what has come before our image of the wizard of Oz, the tech-to-color Warner Bros. film.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then we see, oh, but if that is true, it would not look like this anymore.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so we're sort of in the stage of mourning right now, I think, of sort of this past we can't revisit.
[SPEAKER_02]: And how do we sort of overcome the traumas of today?
[SPEAKER_02]: And maybe build a better future that seems perpetually out of reach.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that's why I think the OZ, in ways I could have never anticipated when I wrote it, it still feels resonant.
[SPEAKER_02]: It is a story that no pun intended, feels evergreen.
[SPEAKER_02]: and I can tell you like I was just a fan expo Denver a couple of weeks ago and knowing that the Kickstarter was about to launch I brought some copies of the OZ and it was amazing to see people who hadn't heard of the book
[SPEAKER_02]: That thing flew off the table.
[SPEAKER_02]: People, I think, seem to really want to see somebody who, you know, we're all feeling it right now.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we all have a past that hurts us in some way.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think those are the characters I love to explore is we start them in a dark place, but they have that redemptive climb out.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's, I think, something that brings hope to people.
[SPEAKER_02]: Certainly brings hope to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe I can do it too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nice.
[SPEAKER_01]: Love it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do want to ask you about one of your other projects for a second.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you've been working on Space Ghost for a while and something that is Teased is that there's going to be a Space Ghost Herkuloid's crossover coming, which sounds wild and weird.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know we're a little off from that, but what can you tell us about that?
[SPEAKER_02]: My childhood just got excited by this idea.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, sure.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm very excited for what's coming up in Space Coast.
[SPEAKER_02]: We just had issue 12 come out yesterday as we're talking.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was sort of the big capstone of our temp as the time master, three-parter.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's sort of the villain who's been kind of lurking in the shadows all across season two.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we had some kind of secrets for him, something that I'd been hiding in the back pocket for quite some time.
[SPEAKER_02]: But diehard Space Coast fans are going to be like, oh, he went there.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you don't know that, what I'm talking about, you can read the issue and you can Wikipedia it.
[SPEAKER_02]: But we've got our space-coast annuals that's coming in July, and that's kind of like the bow on top of season two.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was originally not part of the outline.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's why you see in the solicit copy for issue 12, oh, this is the final issue of the run, because when the solicit copy was written, it was the last issue of the run.
[SPEAKER_02]: But my editor, Joe Reibent, season two is the space-coast.
[SPEAKER_02]: Unlike season one, which we had a firm run way of 13 issues, season two was just the little engine that could, that kept getting expanded over and over and over again.
[SPEAKER_02]: We started at five issues, but I countered nest for eight and then I got 10 and then we recruited 12 and then as I was about to write 12, my editor Joe Rybant said, season one was 13 issues.
[SPEAKER_02]: We needed an annual.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I, you know, I did scream into a pillow and pull my hair for a little bit.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I realized, oh no, like, instead, this is great, this is extra runway, and so rather than speed running through the emotional fallout of the end of issue 12, we can't devote a whole issue to that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Without spoiling too much, Space Ghost has been walking the tightrope our whole series of, that being a superhero and being a surrogate father if you're a Jean and James.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you've read issue 12, something happened that it did not, he didn't beat tempos without a cost.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so he's having kind of this long dark night of the soul.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's
[SPEAKER_02]: This annual is our answer to the first issue of season two, which was a conversation.
[SPEAKER_02]: It was Janet Jay's talking with their grandfather, Dr. Henry Contra, about why does the universe need a space ghost?
[SPEAKER_02]: And more importantly, why is the man buying the mask so important to them?
[SPEAKER_02]: All while keeping their secret identities intact.
[SPEAKER_02]: And we saw a space ghost being well-finding toy maker, the Tempest's first lieutenant.
[SPEAKER_02]: This annual sort of our answer to that, and that space ghost now is asking, does the universe still need a space ghost?
[SPEAKER_02]: Can I continue on this path and still serve these children?
[SPEAKER_02]: Do I need to make a decision here?
[SPEAKER_02]: Can I still be in these children's lives?
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, you know, and so he's having a conversation with a very unexpected source.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's sort of a love letter to one of my favorite comics.
[SPEAKER_02]: But meanwhile, we see Spacecows from the Twins.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're having a fun adventure.
[SPEAKER_02]: Again, some of my favorite Spacecows villains are so obscure.
[SPEAKER_02]: Magnus in the Alien, if you're a Spaceman or Span.
[SPEAKER_02]: Basically, Magnus is like the Stiltman of Spacecows.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's got armor with telescoping arms and legs.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then the alien is, there's this mysterious reality warping being who speaks in his own weird language.
[SPEAKER_02]: I wrote dialogue for him and then I asked Taylor, Esposito, I was like, make this to the legible, please.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so they're an odd couple, but they're a fun pair.
[SPEAKER_02]: They've been stealing from salvage worlds in the wake of tempuses rampage.
[SPEAKER_02]: and they've still in a piece of tech that's particularly volatile.
[SPEAKER_02]: That could blow up half the city if it's not contained quickly.
[SPEAKER_02]: So Spaccus and the twins are playing this game of Hobbitato.
[SPEAKER_02]: Unfortunately, there's more to the size of the beast the eye.
[SPEAKER_02]: And once Spaccus realizes what Magnus' real end game is here, it's going to take this crisis of faith that's been growing and sort of build it to a head.
[SPEAKER_02]: However, on top of all this just kind of on emotional, you know, bow on top of season two, we are also teeing up our big space ghost event that's kicking off in September.
[SPEAKER_02]: And like you said, we're bringing in Alex Toetz other iconic sci-fi adventures, the Hercules into our run.
[SPEAKER_02]: For those who don't know what the Hercules are, imagine if Conan the Barbarian lived in space.
[SPEAKER_02]: and married Shannon the she-devil.
[SPEAKER_02]: Their son was like the tween version of Disney's Tarzan, and they hung out with five interstellar kaiju to stop pirates and industrialists from pillaging their egos of them.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're a fun group, you know, Zandor, the space bar variant, who basically grew up in the pits.
[SPEAKER_02]: He was a gladiator of Kyanite.
[SPEAKER_02]: and until it served, he fought the pit side by side with his battle beast Tundro, the living tank.
[SPEAKER_02]: Until the emperor got threatened and sict his enslaved protoplasm, gloop to kill them all.
[SPEAKER_02]: uh... and it would have been curtains for zandor and tundro and and poor blue who the you know he was he was being enslaved is you know he didn't want to do this anymore than anybody else and then they are all rescued by the daughter of the village elder tarah who's been moonlighting sort of as a freedom fighter uh... writing of the star dragon sock and flanked by her boil rock ape ego
[SPEAKER_02]: and her philosophy is Amazon is a free world and everyone on it deserves to be free.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's the mission statement of the Hercules is that unlike Space Ghost, who he's a superhero, he defends the defenseless.
[SPEAKER_02]: And while he operates outside of the structures of the law, I think he so respects the spirit of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: He is the defender of the Galactic Federation.
[SPEAKER_02]: He is ultimately at his core a defender of the status quo.
[SPEAKER_02]: The Hercules on the other hand, their mission is to free people and protect people from enslavement and exploitation.
[SPEAKER_02]: They are not going to kill first, but if they do, they're not going to lose any sleep over it.
[SPEAKER_02]: They are firmly anti-established, because what is the establishment ever tried to do besides enslave them and steal their stuff?
[SPEAKER_02]: And so this is going to sort of these these two differing philosophies are going to kind of come to a head about a mineral called quasarite and this is sort of my way of extrapolating on the energy rocks from the original cartoon that they put their slingshots and they would explore.
[SPEAKER_02]: But there was an episode called the purple menace that really, I kind of built the whole mythology around in that these energy rocks also can spur hyper mutation, you know, sort of this this this this mutant flora and fauna that makes ams on as beautiful and alien as it is dangerous and deadly.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so Quaserhite, when you were exposed to it, if you ingest it, it can increase your speed and strength and durability.
[SPEAKER_02]: And Zandor and his Herkiloids and Tara and Dorno, by their own unique physiology, they've metabolized Quaserhite and from ecosystem, their entire lives.
[SPEAKER_02]: So they can go toe to toe with somebody like Space Ghost.
[SPEAKER_02]: But also Quaserhite can power ships and cities and bombs and weapons.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that means somebody's going to make a run for it.
[SPEAKER_02]: somebody is going to make a grab for the quasarite and it's going to cause a domino effect that's going to put Xandora in his circulates in the war path.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's going to put them on a collision course with space ghost.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's really fun.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I love the space ghost is one of my favorite books because I'm able to inject all these different types of genre DNA into space ghost as a character is so versatile that so many different types of stories rest organically on his shoulders.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so the Hercules, you get to inject science fantasy into the sci-fi superhero, overall.
[SPEAKER_02]: But also, I love playing the tropes as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I love, I love, you know, as a lifelong comics fan, I love the superhero misunderstanding and then team up.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so this is gonna be her last week.
[SPEAKER_02]: Lockbuster, it's a five part event.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's our first experiment with real long form storytelling.
[SPEAKER_02]: Jonathan Lough is making these characters his own in a way that looks really incredible.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is the most action-packed story we've told in Spaccus to date and that is saying something because I've written a lot of action in this book.
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, but, you know, I knew, when we were introducing the herkulids into our world, we were not going to have two years of runaway to build these characters like we did with space ghost.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I wanted to make sure that when they showed up, it was like an atom bomb that that to prove that Xandor and his crew.
[SPEAKER_02]: they can hang with space.
[SPEAKER_02]: They are just as tough.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I love that because space goes to use to I think he takes a perverse sense of pride.
[SPEAKER_02]: Anyone who's read my book knows he's my growl, she's a little boy, you know, he's he's whoops all this.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you know, he's I think he takes a perverse sense of pride and knowing that he's the toughest guy in any room.
[SPEAKER_02]: Except Sandor was not from around here, and he's not buying what that creep in a mask is selling.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so there's some friction, you know, these two do not really like each other very much when they meet.
[SPEAKER_02]: And their core though, they've got this common threat, which is that they are both fathers who would love their children, who will do anything to protect them.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so once they kind of figure that out, it's gonna suddenly they're gonna be able to kind of put their differences aside.
[SPEAKER_02]: But we're able to mix and match between the two worlds in some really fun ways.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you'll see the Hercules in a combat situation in an urban environment, which is like really fun to see them that seeing the different ways they can traverse that.
[SPEAKER_02]: You can see Spacecoast and his team dealing with the dangers and the jungles of Amazon.
[SPEAKER_02]: which there are some secrets in there that are going to really kind of bite our heroes in the ass.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've also got, we're mixing and matching the villains from both sides of the street.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you've got the evil collector who's one of my favorite space ghost villains.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's kind of like the Brainiac of space visibility.
[SPEAKER_02]: He likes to shrink people and feed them to his mutant cat.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've sort of re-contextualized him as the chief warden of the Galactic Federation that he's tasked with keeping the worst of the worst under wraps.
[SPEAKER_02]: So he wears that title, the evil collector, as kind of a perverse badge of honor.
[SPEAKER_02]: Of course, he is the evil collector, so he does have a tear of your motives.
[SPEAKER_02]: And then meanwhile, from the Herculoid side of the street, we have Makano, the Machine Man, who is sort of the evil collectors enslaved Android Lieutenant.
[SPEAKER_02]: And he's dangerous.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's one of those guys.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's I wrote him.
[SPEAKER_02]: I took a lot of inspiration from robot from invincible, but like a kind of a more ominous menacing version that he's like he's very polite because he has to be.
[SPEAKER_02]: But you know that if his master sicked him on you, that he's the last thing you see before you die.
[SPEAKER_02]: He's very strong.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm actually writing a sequence with him right now, and he's ruthless.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so having these two characters together, and a few other threats that I'm keeping in the back pocket,
[SPEAKER_02]: This is going to lead us into space goes to your three, which is going to be kind of our brave and the bold era for our space.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're going to kind of expand.
[SPEAKER_02]: His universe, so you'll see more of the Hercules.
[SPEAKER_02]: You'll see some other characters that I've been.
[SPEAKER_02]: burning to tell stories with you know we've got a hopefully a long run planned we're still working out with dynamite exactly how long season three is going to go right now I believe we are committed to 44 issues oh wow I would like to get us to 50 I have already written the last arc
[SPEAKER_02]: or I've outlined it, I should say.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we know how this series is ending.
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's just a matter of what the runway is getting there.
[SPEAKER_02]: But this series, I continue to be so amazed and grateful for the way that it is caught on.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, similar to the OZ, that was sort of me, is I had had full of theories and let's see if any of them work.
[SPEAKER_02]: this was sort of how I approach Space Coast, you know, the idea of, let's try it with don't-and-one's and don't-to's because I don't have that sort of established fanbase, I banked on endings being the thing that got people invested emotionally and that paid off.
[SPEAKER_02]: and the idea of, well, maybe we do a modern reboot, you know, we take all the mythology that came before, but we sort of put our new modern twist on it, and people have really resonated with that.
[SPEAKER_02]: And also just kind of, you know, trusting the gut of just like, I love jumping between genres, maybe somebody, our readers will like that too.
[SPEAKER_02]: And of course, you know, the moment I saw Jonathan
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, it has to be John, it can't be anybody else, but him.
[SPEAKER_02]: I remember telling that specifically to Joe right there.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, we rolled the dice and it paid off, and I'm so grateful for all the readers who've stuck with us, sort of on this kind of long running storyline.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I will say to add a little extra plugity plug to the mix, I know it's very hard to get the first trade of Space Ghost.
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a bunch of those.
[SPEAKER_02]: and they are all add-ons on the OZ Kickstarter.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you're interested in Space Ghost, we're offering the first years worth of trades as add-ons or in the cartoon bundle, which is of both volumes of Space Ghost, the first two volumes of speed racer and Captain Planet, all of a sudden a discount price.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm gonna fund the cartoon bundle, I love it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that also jumps ahead to my next question.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was gonna ask you about Eddie Fudbottis's on the Kickstarter.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, you read your mind.
[SPEAKER_02]: You read my mind.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, this Kickstarter, I tried to build it in such a way that it was streamed.
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe because like I said, we've made our readers wait long enough.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so my goal was I don't wanna make our readers wait one second longer than they have to.
[SPEAKER_02]: When this Kickstarter wraps, we not only are working with comic compressions again, our printer for the previous two, so they know how the things supposed to look.
[SPEAKER_02]: We're also working with the fulfillment team at Laguna Studios, so a guy who's writing for books and has a baby do next month is not packing and shipping yourself.
[SPEAKER_02]: You don't have to worry about me being a bottle like they're going to they've they've they've uh fulfilled over over 50 Kickstarter's already their very experience But so when when when when when you get your survey all I need is your name and your shipping address We're really trying to make this no most no fuss
[SPEAKER_02]: However, as a result, because I'm not doing backer kit, this Kickstarter, we've added it in a bunch of different add-ons, so you can get every single trade I've ever worked on as an add-on either individually, get it as a bundled set.
[SPEAKER_02]: But let's also talk about the book a little bit, because I want to make sure that everybody gets bang for their buck, because Kickstarter, I love the community, they're so adventurous and
[SPEAKER_02]: It's an artisanal product, they're willing to pay an artisanal price point for it.
[SPEAKER_02]: I still want to make sure you're getting your money to work.
[SPEAKER_02]: So first off, the OZ is double-sized.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's 44 pages.
[SPEAKER_02]: Every single issue.
[SPEAKER_02]: On top of that, every single issue you buy, you get the digital behind the scenes material.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you're going to get the scraps, you're going to get the inks, you're going to get the colors.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you'll be able to sort of see how this thing progress from start to finish.
[SPEAKER_02]: Also, you're going to get every backer gets a PDF of Spencer and walk number one at the book that started my career.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're also going to get a PDF of going to the chapel number one.
[SPEAKER_02]: My tie heart at a wedding action rom-com.
[SPEAKER_02]: You're also going to get a PDF of Roxy rewind.
[SPEAKER_02]: My superhero one shot with George Santiago Jr., it's like classic Spider-Man meets back to the future or life is strange.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's really fun.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you're already getting 108 pages worth of stuff just
[SPEAKER_02]: Nothing else?
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, David.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's more of my friends because we've got some stretch goals planned and our first stretch goal which I'm very excited to talk about is adding 16 more pages to the book.
[SPEAKER_02]: So that's eight more story pages and eight more pins and that is not going to slow down the campaign.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've already got everything worked out so that's the first stretch goal so you will
[SPEAKER_02]: just on the base campaign.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've also got some other exciting stretch goals coming.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've got a bookmark from Rubin Mocho.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've got a digital EP of songs recorded by my good friend George Marston, the OZ tapes, including Heart of Ten, which was their theme for
[SPEAKER_02]: issue one, but we've also got a special closing credit song that George is recording presently.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've also got, this is my favorite.
[SPEAKER_02]: So we are not doing a print this year, but that's because we are doing a fully illustrated map of the occupied zone.
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, so you're going to be able to see kind of all the different things of the OZ illustrated by Kenneth Wagnon who did a variant cover version one.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I said, we're trying to make things flexible for people really at every price point and every interest level.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you can get if you like any of the variant covers from the previous issues, you can mix and match for all of that.
[SPEAKER_02]: you can get any trades of mine, whether you want to read Spencer and Locke, which is out of print, or Skatsonor, which I believe is locked in the Diamond Warehouse right now, or Spaceco's following one, which is also locked in the Diamond Warehouse.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, you can anything I have written, so, though, you can get that Tentantite and Terrier available as an add-on as well.
[SPEAKER_02]: And those are sort of just, it's kind of the tip of the iceberg, we've got some other fun stretch goals that we're adding to the mix, but I'm trying to make this thing not only a value for our readers, but I'm also trying to make it accessible.
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you missed the previous two issues, you didn't know who I was, that's okay.
[SPEAKER_02]: We've got grant and digital catch-up tiers at a discount, so you can get issues one through three in one shot.
[SPEAKER_02]: Or like I said, if you were there for the first campaign and missed the second, or somehow vice versa, you can catch up on any issues you've missed.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're all available as all card options.
[SPEAKER_01]: Awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: David, this is all so awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wish you luck on this project, but clearly at this point, you don't necessarily need it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I will.
[SPEAKER_02]: All the luck I can get.
[SPEAKER_01]: I will definitely wish you luck on the new kid.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good luck with that.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's amazing.
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, that's what, you know, back the Kickstarter, you know, tinyurl.com slash the OZ comic.
[SPEAKER_02]: That's my last pitch is because diapers don't come cheap.
[SPEAKER_02]: But see, in all seriousness, thank you so much for having me.
[SPEAKER_02]: This book is so important to me.
[SPEAKER_02]: I think it is some of the best work I've ever been fortunate enough to work on.
[SPEAKER_02]: Ruben Rojas, I can tell you the artwork was worth the weight he did such an amazing job sticking landing on this.
[SPEAKER_02]: Winnie Cogar and him could be on any big two book tomorrow and they would crush it and I hope they'll have me write it if they do.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, D.C. Hopkins just are amazingly talented in patient letter, who has made all my dialogue saying and not look overwritten.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, this is a top shelf team working on a story that I believe in with every ounce of my 10 man's heart.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think this is, this is, if you're curious about any of my work, I would say this is the book to read.
[SPEAKER_02]: So, um,
[SPEAKER_02]: Back early back often tell your friends we would love to have you join us as a ill brick road warrior, so please join us at the OZ today.
[SPEAKER_01]: Awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: David, thank you so much again.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hopefully we'll talk very soon.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, we'll do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now let's just turn back to number one There is a night and a night and a night On the feet, there's no gold mine We stay coming to see ourselves And it's turn now already And it's all over the city It's all over the city
[SPEAKER_00]: They sit on crappy couches and they let us see the moon And he's just nothing, they're like a special destiny To wrap your brain paleo, don't be late for it, don't be fair