[SPEAKER_01]: What is up everybody, welcome to Comic Book Club, I'm Alex and we've got another special episode for you here with a great guest, one of my absolute favorite writers, very excited to have him on the show, Ram V Ram, welcome to the podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for having me back.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's good to be talking comics again.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, for sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we are talking about a big site of one that's coming up in August.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is a DC Vertigo book called Black Tower.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Raven conspiracy coming out August 26th.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll mention final order cutoff.
[SPEAKER_01]: is on August 3rd, so listen to the interview then march on over to your comic book shop and order the book.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is re-teaming you with Mike Perkins, and just so folks now and correct him how long.
[SPEAKER_01]: The schedule for this one is a little more in line with Perl of the Brutal Dark, where it's potentially assuming everything goes well going to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: a series of six issue mini series.
[SPEAKER_01]: So basically you're telling a story over the course of this that'll finish up and that it'll continue down the road with another six issue mini.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the that's the business out of the way, but just to talk a little bit more business, I'm curious about how this came to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is going back years, I think at this point, I've talked to a bunch of the folks on Vertigo and this was percolating in the background for a while, but
[SPEAKER_01]: Was this an idea you had separately?
[SPEAKER_01]: Was this something that you were like?
[SPEAKER_01]: They said, hey, we're rebooting DC Vertigo, and you said, okay, here's my Vertigo book.
[SPEAKER_01]: What was your approach to it?
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, actually, like this idea, unlike most of mine that have been sort of percolating in my head, at least for close to decades, this one was a product of watching slow horses,
[SPEAKER_00]: the two great sort of British traditions are people going to wizarding schools and spy stories and if I combine the two I might have something cool in my hands and so I knew I wanted to do this at some point but obviously it was one of those ideas I filed away for a few years
[SPEAKER_00]: And then Vertigo came along and they were like, hey, you know, we were restarting the line.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, you said, I got into comics because of Vertigo.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I had always gone to Chris Conroy who's heading to line and said, anytime you feel like bringing Vertigo up again, I will want to do a book.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so yeah, Chris came over and he was like, do you have a pitch and I called up Mike?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I said, Mike, I've got an idea for a thing that is British,
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, has spies and wizards, and he was like sold, um, and turns out he'd actually been trying to make a book with these elements for years before I actually met him, because he'd been so impressed with Greg Ruckus, Queen and country, um, and so yeah, so so it all just fell into place really quickly, uh, from there on.
[SPEAKER_01]: What in your opinion makes something a vertigo book?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because we're in a very different place now with the new vertigo versus where they were previously, you know, in the interim image comics is popped up.
[SPEAKER_01]: A million different publishers have popped up that certainly seem to be built at least in part on the vertigo model.
[SPEAKER_01]: So is there anything that makes this inherently vertigo?
[SPEAKER_01]: Would you say?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I don't know that any story can be inherently inherently a label, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: But I feel like the thing, I knew I was getting, whenever I picked up a vertical comic, certainly of the era, a vertical comic that I was reading, was I knew I was going to get something that was complex, intelligent, well-written, well-drawn,
[SPEAKER_00]: leaning towards sort of artistic inclinations, but also, you know, a survey, acidic, so political commenting on who we were, where we are at what time we were, like, all of that stuff, whether that was, you know, the doom patrol, or held laser, or, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: human society and and they were all part of their time.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, those characters have later been taken and turned into more superhero things, but I think the origins of those characters are very much, you know, talking about, you know, that cherry in England with constant time.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what Vertigo meant to me, and hopefully that's what comes through in this book as well, is very much a product of its time.
[SPEAKER_00]: It seems odd to say doing a book about magic in 2026, but I think, yeah, I think there's stuff to say there as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why has magic sort of fallen out of style almost a little bit?
[SPEAKER_00]: And how has being spies changed and how do those opposite,
[SPEAKER_00]: of the narrative world we live in had sort of combined in interesting ways with this book.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then what does it say about modern society certainly modern, British society and its own conflicts and conundrums, if you will.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like I'd owe the answer to this one in advance, but I'll ask anyway, given, so you brought up helblaser and constant time, which it's hard not to think magic and vertigo without thinking about that, and then you mentioned some horses as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: So given those two elements, how do you take a look at them, and then put them to the side so you can create your own story?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think the joy is in combining the things, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like,
[SPEAKER_00]: Hellblazer had some things to say about British society, but also it had things to say about how magic fit into that idea of society.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the same way, school horses has things to say about British society.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the absence of magic has some today has something to say about the society and the place world we find ourselves in.
[SPEAKER_00]: The way to tell your own stories
[SPEAKER_00]: not make your stories lean on concept and instead lean on the strength of its characters and it's underlying a aesthetic, if you will, underlying preoccupations, if you will.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think you could tell a hellblazer story would quite that impact if you were still talking about England in 2026.
[SPEAKER_00]: It has to be something different.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, yeah, I think all stories necessarily are part of their time, and if I haven't made that clear with Black Tower, then I have failed and that I've only created pale versions of slow horses or help laser.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, yeah, hopefully it's in the characters and it's in their struggles and their concerns and the stuff they have to deal with.
[SPEAKER_01]: That said, per sello horses, you do have a main character that farts a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: I assume, same sort of thing as Jackson Lamb.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, yeah, see, see, the desperate things are different.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have no farting in good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, great.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, but the beauty of Jackson Lamb is for large parts of the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: You have no idea what he actually does.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, why is he here outside of sleeping at his desk?
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that about a character because clearly the man has enough swagger to manipulate others into doing his bidding.
[SPEAKER_00]: But throughout the show he never really acts on anything until that very pivotal moment where he's required to.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I do have a protagonist called Alistair Romio who is very much akin to a Jackson Lamb in that
[SPEAKER_00]: no one is quite sure why they should be afraid of him, but they're all very afraid of him.
[SPEAKER_01]: I imagine given the name, there's a little bit of an Alistair Crowley connection, or no.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like I shouldn't be revealing this, but they're all sort of disambiguations and slight change-ups in names of authors that I enjoy.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, if you jumble up Romeo, it says more, so it's our more there, and then I've got other characters called Daniel Burrows.
[SPEAKER_00]: After William Burrows, I've got another character called William B. elsewhere after William Blake.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, and they all have interesting connections that way, but you know, it's an easter egg that nerdy people like to enjoy.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, is that the sort of thing, I guess it's not, but is that the sort of thing then that ties into the story or is just you kind of named one character that and you're like, oh, cascade effect, now they all have these names.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, it will.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like if you, I mean, you do realize like all of the authors I mentioned and a couple of others that are in there were believers in the idea that there was some measure of magic involved in their writing.
[SPEAKER_00]: William Blake, believe this, borrowers believe this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want more certainly believe this.
[SPEAKER_00]: So again, there is that connection
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing a thing but I'm also doing magic while I do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: not that in your past work you've avoided complicated topics and big mythology and big world building but you haven't explicitly done magic I think of the past or at least not necessarily at the scale so maybe it'll become apparent we read the book I absolutely will but how do you approach the rules of the world when you're building it out is that important
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, this one, I have my job is easy, right, because there's already a history, a real world history of people doing the Cold War or doing World War II trying to use magic as a part of warfare and espionage and intelligence.
[SPEAKER_00]: Matahari famously was a spy, but also supposed to be a witch and a dancer and a temperus.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's not that much of a leap of logic for the mind to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, let's assume those were all very true things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Crowley was as much of her systems to the crown as he was a charlatan, as he was an
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there's always been certainly, with the UK, there's always been this link between magic and magical societies and the sort of hoarders of power in both military intelligence and politics, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: As is apparent, if you read any of the earlier texts, but John D and whatnot.
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like the American approach to it has certainly been one of kind of denial or almost like, no, this is not magic, this is just regular warfare.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I find that conflict and contrast to be interesting as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like any good spy story, if it involves the UK, it also involves the US.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so there's an interesting reason as to why the American intelligence
[SPEAKER_00]: doesn't like the idea of acknowledging magic in this book.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we'll get to that maybe in season two or three or something, but it's there, it's underlying.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I have to say, there are multiple protagonists, so my second protagonist is actually an American rookie called Daniel Barras, who
[SPEAKER_00]: shows magical abilities and so is immediately packed off and sent to the UK for his training and we'll discover why that happens and why that's the reaction.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've worked with Mike Perkins quite a bit before on the swamp thing and maybe some other things that I'm forgetting, but on this collaboration, knowing that he's odd board, what does that allow you to do as an author, given you know what he's capable of and what he's capable of working with you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, Mike's really, really great with sort of these brooding characters.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hard-boiled, not quite as hard-cut as a lot of the other artists.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's got a little bit of, I don't know, poetry to his noir in his work and I find that he's great for when you have these kinds of characters that operate in the dark and have their own sort of dark histories behind them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he displayed that with something certainly, and this is also a story that Mike has wanted to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that to me is always an indicator of like the book's going to be great because the artist has already swamped thing was again one of these things.
[SPEAKER_00]: He'd always wanted to do a swamping book.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so yeah, from the pages I've seen so far, I mean, it's very much the case.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can you can tell Mike already knows what this needs to look like.
[SPEAKER_00]: also, you know, having him be from the UK and have a sort of first-hand knowledge of all the locations and places we're talking about is super useful.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I can get a sense of this based on the slow horses talk.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've got six issues, six episodes of slow horses perceived.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's also the classic sort of
[SPEAKER_00]: You think it's about one thing and then three quarters of the way and you realize it's about something else entirely.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's got all the classic spy twists.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a huge fan of the spy genre.
[SPEAKER_00]: Actually, most of my reading when I was like in my teenage years was reading these like classic spy novels written mostly by by British authors as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think that very much
[SPEAKER_00]: into my writing here?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I guess what I was even more curious about is knowing that the plan is to have multiple of these, quote unquote novels or volumes where you want to call them, you're a planner.
[SPEAKER_01]: How far ahead does your brain get when you're tackling black tower the raven conspiracy?
[SPEAKER_01]: Are you already thinking ahead to two, three, or are you really trying to keep
[SPEAKER_00]: No, I don't think I think in terms of seasons, but I definitely know, so I learned this off of a book called Writing Comics The DC Way and it had a chapter called The Paul Leave It's Paradigm where he would talk about eight plots, B plots, and C plots, and you have an A plot that's your main plot for your book, but you see the B plot that
[SPEAKER_00]: seems to be a side preoccupation and a C plot that seems to be entirely unconnected.
[SPEAKER_00]: And by the time you resolve the A plot, the B plot should become relevant and pertinent and the C plot should take the place of what the B plot was.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in this way, you can keep going for seasons as long as you're seating enough plot.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when I think of an idea, I already know what my B and C plots are.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I already know how to turn the B plot into the A plot for season two.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's all I need.
[SPEAKER_00]: The moment season two becomes a real conversation to be had, then I will think of, okay, what's my season three B plot?
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can start seeding it from here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that whole thing I talked about why the American intelligence organizations don't
[SPEAKER_00]: will probably turn into the primary A plot, you know, a couple of seasons down the line.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll get back to it in a second, but I wanted to quickly ask you about a couple of other projects you're working on.
[SPEAKER_01]: I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Deia Sidium is that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like homicide, but dayside, but dayside, but dayside.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, dayside.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're doing that with Evan Kagle in an on to RK, who you've worked with, right, a bit before the big news about that is, it's a six figure book deal with Morgan, which is a French publisher.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to be published here in the U.S. by image comics.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, just in general, what's it like having that sort of,
[SPEAKER_01]: faith in the work.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, comics is a little bit, it's month to month, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't know, maybe Swamp Thing will get canceled at some point.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is six figures for a book deal.
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously anything could happen, but what's it like going into a project like that?
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm happy to take the six figures and tell my story.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so far, I've got a pretty good track record of making sure the books are to a quality and that they come out and they find their readerships.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I suppose this is the thing, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I was listening to an interview about the Odyssey, the Chris Nolan movie.
[SPEAKER_00]: And someone said like, Chris Nolan's the only guy who can demand these figures in Hollywood right now
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I was thinking about it and going like, yeah, the guy has never made a book, a movie that didn't return its investment, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I'd like to think on some level the fate that is shown in me by publishers like Morgan, like image from time is because hopefully I've not let them down yet by making a book that bombs or making a book that doesn't come up.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would say the same is true of my collaborators.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the thing that really makes both Evan and Anan special is they're incredible artists, but there are a lot of incredible artists that don't really thrive in comics because
[SPEAKER_00]: Aside from being an incredible artist, it also requires a certain amount of endurance and organization and being able to say, okay, I'm going to deliver these pages.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I don't need them to do it on a 24 page issue monthly cycle anymore, but there's still very much focused and professional enough to be to understand that, you know, there's a timeline and I have to deliver these pages.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, once you once you have people like that, it becomes easy to pitch
[SPEAKER_00]: and have it be ambitious and say, listen, this is what we're asking for, but this is what we're going to deliver to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: And honestly, you know, I've worked on a 30 issue detective comics run on a monthly basis and that's come out, have worked on 16 issues of swam thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now those are significant sizes in this, in this day and age.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, so it's not an entirely blind risk to be taking.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: In terms of the contents of the book, the title certainly implies, killing gods, deaths of gods, which is right in your wheelhouse.
[SPEAKER_01]: What can you say about that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm going to give you the elevator pitch now in a world in a world that is sort of dominated by this kind of unholy marriage between organized religion and corporations.
[SPEAKER_00]: What happens when everyday people start turning into gods?
[SPEAKER_00]: That was my that was my OG pitch and it stays true to this day.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm fascinated by the idea that we live in a society where
[SPEAKER_00]: these things have different meanings, you know, the idea of a religion being a prophet making organization or, um, and I discovered this when I was doing research for the book, do you know that there are priests who are specifically trained to offer prayers at corporate institutions?
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't know this existed, but they're called, yeah, they're called intercessors or something.
[SPEAKER_00]: The idea, and I think the original idea of God was born out of the idea that God came from within us, you know, people had jaguar gods and volcano gods and they worship the sun and they worship the ground because they interacted with these things on a day-to-day basis.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like if the sun didn't show up for a certain once in a year, then you lost your crops.
[SPEAKER_00]: If the jaguar decided
[SPEAKER_00]: And I like the idea that the gods originated within us, but somehow we turned that into gods or better than us and we must all try to elevate ourselves to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so I wanted to play with that inherent conflict.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, it just makes for a really cool scenario to have God show up and then human beings try to kill them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's also part of my sort of shown-in manga.
[SPEAKER_00]: what would wouldn't it be cool with mortals elevated themselves to godly powers and and duked it out with gods.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, it combines a lot of things that I'm very excited by.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is just I think this is out there, but it's multiple graphic novel volumes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that correct?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's going to be 100 page volumes that come out every six to seven months or so.
[SPEAKER_00]: There might be little
[SPEAKER_00]: Back and forth in the schedule that way because it's a book market release and we're trying to make it at global release So it's gonna release in France in the US in Spain it le Poland Germany maybe all at the same time or at least at similar times and so it's not a matter of putting it on one publishing schedule and going cool It comes out at this point.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have to make sure it's okay with everyone who publish it
[SPEAKER_00]: at that point in time.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, thankfully, you know, we've got good people coordinating all of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm excited by that idea to, you know, people from the gods pop up all over the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so having readers recognize these gods from their own cultures or histories all over the world is
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's coming out September 23rd or you're going to do a the Odyssey style global tour with red carpets and everything traveling everywhere I don't I don't know how many red carpets are involved, but we certainly try to do a tour and I have to talk to the image out to figure out because I think
[SPEAKER_00]: I may be wrong, but I think it releases the bookmarket releases in October, but I know I don't that the direct market is supposed to get it earlier, but I'm not sure how that works.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I still need to confirm that with the damage, but at the very least, it will be available everywhere in October for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have the world's stupidest question to ask you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Very excited about this.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you worked with Skybound before recently on Free Comic Book Day.
[SPEAKER_01]: They not Free Comic Book Day.
[SPEAKER_01]: They had a big surprise for fans when Masked Number 1, which was released, which revealed that Rome is joining the universe.
[SPEAKER_01]: Rome's Space Night.
[SPEAKER_01]: Are we going to see Rome V, writing, Rome for Skybound?
[SPEAKER_00]: This has been a question that has
[SPEAKER_00]: been around a lot longer than you think, okay, all right, I feel slightly better or worse.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the two.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, no.
[SPEAKER_00]: Unfortunately, I was going to do something with Tybound, but I don't think this schedule is aligned just because I've already got a city on the plate and I'm doing a couple of other things.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, wrong by wrong will have to wait.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, fair enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: to get back to Black Tower, the Raven conspiracy, and start to wrap up here, though, very excited about this book for anybody who is looking forward to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I know we talked about a bunch of details already, but anything you want to tease about the book, so people will get out before that final order cut-out date on August 3rd and pick it up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, I
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think there are a lot of good spy comics around, and if you've been, yeah, if you've been hankering for some proper espionage, this is the, this is the place to find it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, my favorite thing about any of these team books is to have really weird broken characters in a lot of ways.
[SPEAKER_00]: You could tell with visual, you could tell with my work on Justice League Dark as well, so
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm getting to, I'm getting to flex that muscle here as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, do you like weird characters with really strange background stories having to come together in strange ways to save the world?
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the book for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I'm definitely into that, Ron.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for coming on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for chatting.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm really looking forward to everything that you're doing this for them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, pleasure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I'll let's just turn back to number one There is even I get that I want to be That no gold mine will be there, I'll make it say it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's
[SPEAKER_02]: They sit on crap, they doubted, and they left the secret loop And he's just nothing, they'll let fast, let your destiny To grab your ring, handler, don't be late, or it'll fail, fail, fail