Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back to the Capes and Tights podcast right here on Capesandtites.com. I'm your host, Jonathan soderbergh this week we welcome writer Dakota Brown to the podcast to discuss his comics. Death Comes for the Toy Maker as well as Grandma Tilly's, health, mech and so much more. Before you listen to this episode, though, be sure to go over to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Blue Sky and follow us as well as listen rate review all those things over on Apple, Spotify and all your major podcasting platforms. This episode is Dakota Brand, writer of Death Comes for the toy maker at Scout Comics and Grandma Tilly's. Heltech mech over at Band of Bards. Enjoy, everyone.
Welcome to the podcast. How are you, Dakota?
[00:00:51] Speaker B: Doing well. How are you in this fine Tuesday?
Hopefully that doesn't give away that this might not be live if it's okay.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: It is raining and cold. I live in Maine, and it's like borderline ready for its first snow, which is crazy because we were in shorts and a t shirt on Saturday outside with my son running around like it was no tomorrow. Beautiful. And then it dropped like 40 degrees the next day. Now it's just crap. So we're into the winter.
[00:01:25] Speaker B: I completely understand chattanooga Falls, I guess just like ubiquitous to the south in general. It's going to be forty s and thirty s in the morning, but it's in the 80s by the time you're coming home after a day of work.
Well, it's predictable in that it's not predictable. It's not easy to plan your day around.
[00:01:48] Speaker A: Well, one of my favorite seasons in Maine is the fall, and I feel like we just skipped it. It was here. We know here's know. Beautiful day. We carved pumpkins in my son and my best friend at their house with the garage door open. It was beautiful. And then I'm like, well, the pumpkins are going to survive because they're going to be frozen. You know what I mean? Your carved pumpkins are going to be able to be there until December because of the fact that they're actually not going to decay in the heat. But yeah, it's been an interesting weather weekend into today.
But no, it's nice. I'm excited to talk comics. That's one of those things. It's been a really shitty week in Maine.
[00:02:24] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm so sorry.
[00:02:27] Speaker A: And it's just know it's nice to just be able to escape the real world and talk about something that's not actually in the real world, which is I guess the comics themselves are in the real world, but the comic stories are not.
So obviously it's the first time you've been on to Capes and Tights podcast to Chat Comics. Let's talk a little bit about Get. Obviously you have a big Turtles love if anybody follows you on Instagram and things like that. You do love the ninja turtles.
Were you a comic book fan since young, or is this something you came into as a teenager. How did you get into reading comic books in the first place?
[00:03:04] Speaker B: Well, there's been kind of an ebb and flow throughout my life. Some of the earliest comics were the turtles Archie's comics, the cash register collections. They have those little digest versions every Archie does it, but they even did it with the ninja turtles line. So it was an early way to fall in love with the turtles in a different way. That wasn't the TV show and the toys, which I already loved, but that's where I met, like, the mutant animals, where you get, like, Mondo Gecko, Ray filet, the whole the b cast that you don't really see so much in the show. Even like, Casey's Jones, you don't really see in the show necessarily.
But yeah, on and off. My dad was a Marvel reader. My first comic was a reprint of Marvel team up annual number six, which I have hanging on my wall. It is Marvel tales featuring spiderman issue 247, and it went to 248, too, since it was an annual. But it's like spiderman cloak and dagger, the new mutants. It's like this quintessential early eighty s team up, which is a little bit before my time. That was 83, I think the original print was, but somehow that came into my possession, became obsessed with cloak and dagger because of that.
Fell off for a few years, but then came back in college, right around House of Vim and Civil War. Like, the big crossovers at Marvel really brought me back in. And there was from Avengers Disassembled into, I think, probably around secret invasion, there was just like the original secret invasion, obviously, there was like this long run of crossovers where it's like, hey, every few months, here's this new crossover series for you to catch up on. The marvel do that.
Trying my hardest to keep up with it. Throughout all the major world rebuildings and crossovers, both with Marvel and DC, sometimes it gets you always kind of reset to one. So I don't really miss anything if you miss too much and they're doing a lot of good work with keeping the you know, keeping the characters baseline, you know, there might be some changes along the line.
You might have, like, a secret empire where you have this Hydra version of Captain America, but, you know, a few months from now, you're going to have Steve Rogers back or in his role as Captain America or some other similar yeah, that's my comics history.
[00:05:55] Speaker A: I'm glad you talked about secret invasion and civil war in that era of comics, because I feel like obviously we have in comic book industry, there is a terminology for golden age and things like that. But to me, the quote unquote golden age of comic books, especially in the marvel side of things, was that era of civil war, secret invasion, house of m, all that stuff there. And I'm part of a book club at my local comic book shop. And we read graphic novels or trade paperbacks every month. And when we have a new member, we're always like, how did you get into comics? And it's so funny how many people either broke into comics in that day and age or fell off of comics and came back to them in that it was like, at that period of time, I felt like Marvel could write the playbook on how to do a crossover. I feel like more recently, they've figured out a way to not do it so well. Not badly, but just not as good as that was. Some of it had to do with creators and the writers they had on their roster at the time. But, yeah, it was just kind of funny how many people are like, oh, my God, that's what I fell in love with. Marvel was the crossovers. And then they try to get them into it now, like, nope, I'm all set. I'm going to go the indie route. And I'm like, yeah, I can understand where you're coming from. That because that was, to me, like the epitome in my lifetime at 37 years old of Marvel comics that day and age.
[00:07:12] Speaker B: I think so, too, and I think they're trying to chase that rabbit still, obviously, with Civil War II. And then they had a new secret invasion, the new secret wars. They're taking the branding and trying to bring it back. And sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't. I'm not a huge fan of having, like, if I want to say, hey, you should read secret wars usually. I mean, the original 70 series, yes, but there's Secret Wars. There's secret wars and then there's secret War in the middle that Brian Michael Bendis painted. I think it's Gabriel doto yeah, I think so. Yeah. And Brian Michael Bendis, that's just gorgeous and kind of has the exact same plot as Civil war, too, honestly, with preventative measures and whatnot.
But, yeah, I'm a sucker for a good crossover.
If it's like resetting the universe, that's always kind of fun, too, because it feels like you're back at the beginning.
[00:08:11] Speaker A: In a lot of ways.
[00:08:15] Speaker B: I feel like maybe they might be doing that too much. They being just the industry in general. Not one publisher, so many issue ones. But I get it. I completely understand why.
[00:08:27] Speaker A: And it was a lot of titles in those things.
Civil War all had these titles. There's, like, so many different massive amounts of comics, but I felt like they all made sense, whereas I feel like nowadays with some of the big two, they're like, oh, this book, we want this book to be good. Well, so let's put it into the story of the main story arc crossover that's going on, even if it had nothing to do with what's going on. It's like they're just forcing some character into a story to make it so that their book connects to it. So hopefully it sells copies of the book. That's where I feel like back into the early not to say early 2000s, but 2008, 2009, right around there, it was like, no, all the stories made sense. They went together and they created some things. Like, Frontlines is one of my favorite comic books because it got a different perspective of things now days. It's like, I don't know, there was like, Thor comic books in Absolute Carnage, and I was like, what? That doesn't make any sense to me.
[00:09:16] Speaker B: Why are you doing yeah, and kind of the inverse, too. You'll see characters pop up in the major crossovers to have this moment.
I'm reading Secret Empire again, and Mosaic shows up as a big moment that saves the rebels, essentially, and gets us planned forward, but kind of had this limited run of comics. And I don't know if he's really been used since, at least not in that big a way. But I love it, though, because it kind of dates it in a way. It really tells you who this character was at this time, what they were pushing and what might have worked might not have worked. Even like Infinity Gauntlet.
There's a lot of quasar.
There's not a lot of Quasar anymore.
But yeah, it's wonderful just to see what they're trying and see again, what might work, what might not. But that's I think that's the fun of no.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:10:19] Speaker B: It never feels too guess.
It's just I just feel like some.
[00:10:24] Speaker A: Of those creators also with some of these characters you mentioned, like Quasar for an know, the creators behind the products are like, we really like this character, so we want to use this character. Is that cool? Marvel. It's like if our friends over at off panel, if David Harper was in charge of things, he'd be like, putting Stiltman in something even if it didn't fit, because Stiltman's like his favorite character of all time. And it's like, I feel like if you had the ability, if someone handed you the reins, okay, you're going to write Captain America now, Dakota. And your favorite character or some random character, you probably would try to find a way to put that character in your books. You're like, I don't know how many different stories from Captain America I'm going to be able to tell or Marvel books in general. So if I'm going to have this opportunity, let me toss as many of the characters that I want to write about in this book and see if it flies. And then sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
[00:11:07] Speaker B: Yeah. At least one issue would be Captain America featuring the amazing slapstick. Definitely.
[00:11:13] Speaker A: Well, that was I think we had Pat and Oswald on with Jordan Bloom, and they were talking about their Modoc head games, modoc series.
And they wanted to put a bunch of different characters in there. And they're like, well, you can't use these you can't use these. And it was like, starting to put in their mind, like, why can't I use these characters? You have plans for these random ass characters in the future. Some of it's just because of rates and all that stuff, obviously. But they wanted to do a series, their minor threat series. They wanted to do it originally at DC, and they wanted to use a bunch of side character DC characters, but actually they called it C list characters. They were all going to be characters that started with C, which was really also kind of funny. They're like, oh, yeah, C list, but also C list.
But they realized that all DC is probably ever going to do is like, okay, when can we put the Joker in it? When can we put Batman in it? And they're like, no, that's not what we want to do. We want to do something with all the side characters and not have any big characters in it. And they ended up creating minor threats over at Dark Horse instead and using made up characters or their own made up characters.
[00:12:15] Speaker B: Interesting. I didn't know that.
[00:12:16] Speaker A: Yeah, so which is pretty cool because I like that a little bit more. Because again, I do think that's what would happen. You'd see, like, maybe a five issue story arc, and then the 6th issue was like, Captain America's here. And it's like, wait, yeah, you don't need Captain America in this book. It was doing well on its yeah.
[00:12:31] Speaker B: And I get it. I get that narrative synergy where, yes, comics is an industry where the businesses you're selling the COVID you're not selling the panels. Nine times out of ten, these books are going to be wrapped on the shelves. And if you don't know the character or the story, you've got to have some kind of COVID that really pulls in somebody.
I'm a huge Sandman fan, and they did a great marketing job with it in the DC Comics at the time. And Dave McKean's covers are so beautiful, but it doesn't really tell you what is inside these comics. So I always think about, like, what if late 80s DC Comics didn't advertise Sandman as it was? If you just saw these covers on the shelves, and I don't know if they would have done so well, honestly, or without the name, know Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean on them, obviously.
[00:13:30] Speaker A: Well, sometimes it does a better job. You could literally write the most random comic book at all. Neil Gaiman wrote this. I'll pick it up, then I'll see what it's like.
[00:13:37] Speaker B: Oh, I've done it. Yeah, I'll do it every time, too.
[00:13:41] Speaker A: It's like Stephen King novels. Now, to a big novels, for any novel, it's like the name of the book is like this fine print at the bottom, but the name Stephen King is like this massive thing. It's going to be the next phase and be like, Neil Gaiman and it's going to say or like, whoever it may be, but it might be massive name. And then it's like, okay, it's a Superman book, or whatever.
It would probably work. It'd probably work very well.
[00:14:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
I don't do any art myself, but even as a writer, most of these anything I pitch isn't pitchable in my mind, and even pitchable to an artist until there's like a cover idea in mind or if there's something like a title that would sell it.
I think that's just the state of the business. For better or worse.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: It is.
I'm an artist. I'm a graphic designer by trade. And one of those things that my main job is designing beer can labels for a brewery. And so as much as I love the liquid of the beer that's in the cans, I will say, and I always tell, I tease my head brewer and one of the owners, that the people likely pick this can off the shelf at the store because of what my artwork was, because obviously they can't taste it yet. And it sucks that we always got taught as growing up, don't judge a book by its cover. But that's literally what we do in the comic book industry and the beer industry. In most industries, you literally look at something and go, that's probably cool, and then I'll pick it up and read it and so on.
[00:15:11] Speaker B: Oh, sorry. Go on.
[00:15:13] Speaker A: I was in the bookstore last weekend with my wife, and I was like, looking at the covers before I even looked at the description of the book. I'm like, no, I don't want to read that one. The book could be absolutely unbelievable. But the COVID wasn't selling me on it. I was like, Next one. And so that's the difference. You can't really at most places, you're not going to flip the book open and there's not going to be a synopsis or a solicitation of what the comic is in a comic book shop.
You have to kind of interpret what the story is going to be about.
[00:15:36] Speaker B: By the COVID Yeah, I know. Vault does that. Band of Bars does that where you can flip to the back and see a synopsis.
Fingers crossed that it's bagged and not boards. You can actually see that. Unfortunately, with Band of Arts, they also have a Slip cover on it that retailers don't always remove. It's a protective cover for shipping. It's not like a sketch cover or anything like that. It's just a protective white sleeve. So a lot of times, you'll know what a Band of Bards book is on a shelf because there's just a white sleeve on it and you can't tell what it is inside. And that's been a fun battle, finding that at retailers and saying, hey, can we remove this?
Yeah, there's even instructions on it to remove. But yeah, those synopsis, it's kind of a new thing in comics, honestly, because the back was usually reserved for some kind of advertisement, whether internally or externally.
But having those available kind of turns like the physical stores into what you kind of feel online too, because online previews world, or if you're going to your favorite online retailer or direct from the publisher, which is the new direct market, honestly, you get those synopsis and you see exactly what's going on in that issue.
But I'm starting to see that more and more, like I said, with Vault and Vandeborn and hopefully they kind of follow suit because that's kind of beneficial. Especially with all these variant covers, especially with Marvel is notorious for it, for having a variant cover that features a character that has nothing to do with the show.
[00:17:22] Speaker A: The whole Spider Man series. I've had this argument in my LCS multiple times that they're doing, like it's a Mickey Mouse Disney variant of Spiderman, but they put Amazing Spiderman as the like, you could put it in the invincible Iron Man font if you wanted to and just write Amazing Spiderman, and people would still like, okay with that. But it literally says invincible. Iron Man It's got a picture of, like, Mickey Mouse dressed as Iron Man, but it's on Amazing Spiderman number 35. And I'm like, how is that even helpful to anybody?
[00:17:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know. And I don't know who the audience is for that necessarily. Like, if it was like Mickey as Spiderman, I completely get it. But even, like, Iron Man fan, too.
[00:18:04] Speaker A: It's an Iron Man fan only, I guess. I don't know. But if I was an Iron Man fan, I'd probably still be interested in the fact that I'm a big Scotty Young fan and a big Walking Dead fan. And he just released the Walking Dead 20th anniversary variant of I Hate Fairyland, which has got michonne on it. But really it's not michonne. It's like his own take on it. Yeah, but that to me, it said I hate Fairyland. It. Didn't say Walking dead on it. So as a Walking Dead fan, I probably still would buy this because it was an homage to a Walking Dead comic book. It doesn't have to say walking dead. That's the thing. I don't know where that could disconnect. Someone was like, no, we need to do this with Invincible Iron Man on the front of it was weird, but it helps a lot.
[00:18:46] Speaker B: It does, yeah. And I wonder often if there's just a backlog of covers that have to legally be used and here's a slot for it. We'll answer here. That's a bit cynical on my part, but it's odd. But yeah, synopsis are fantastic.
[00:19:05] Speaker A: Some people don't like them, though, honestly. Some people don't like the fact that they know a little bit more too much about the book itself. They'd rather just pick it up. But I'm also like, then just don't read it. Do you know what I mean? It's like one of those things that no one's forcing you to read the synopsis of the book that's being there. So just read it and go into it blind. That's awesome. I'm more apt to the idea of going to previews world or like you said, a publisher or your local comic book shop's website and reading it. So I have an idea when I open the first page of what I'm going to expect of some sorts, it's like twist, twists and turns don't always land the same way if you don't know what the book was pitched to you as a certain way. So if you didn't know Spiderman was going to do this, that and the other thing, and he ends up doing something else, it's like, well, I wasn't expecting that anyway because I didn't know what the book was about. So there is that. I can also see that people not wanting to read it in a Spiderman book because you kind of have an idea already who Spiderman is and all that stuff. But like some of these independent books, I need to know what's going on in this book in general. And again, a lot of covers. I could think that with Death Comes From the Toy Maker, you'd kind of understand what the heck is going to go on. At least you show the two main characters on the COVID So there's that aspect of it, so you know what you're going to expect on the inside of it. But before we get into that really quickly, what made you want to write comic books? We kind of dropped off and started talking about other things before we finished up your whole origin story. But what made you decide to actually put pen to paper and want to write comics?
[00:20:25] Speaker B: It well, I come from a theater background, both training as an actor and as a writer, had some plays published and produced and had a lot of fun with it. And it's still something I'm very passionate about.
It's a bit of a soul wrenching business theater because if you're not writing the next big musical, the next thing that you know is going to go on tour.
It's difficult to maintain that lifestyle financially, even with a secondary job because the hours of being involved in the rehearsal process, if it's a local production or just workshopping it with actors, can be pretty grueling. But again, still something I'm still very passionate about. But it's a process I wanted to kind of take a break for from a while. And my wife discovered that Frederator Studios, the animation studios that did like Chalkstone, Fairly OD parents, and recently Castlevania and Adventure Time, just a litany of fantastic cartoons that they had an open pitch policy.
And I always wanted to write for animation. So I got some things together and started pitching to them, and over the years ended up at Nickelodeon, Disney, Cartoon Network and a few other places pitching animated series through various writer strikes and shifts of executives. Which is you think it's crazy in the comic industry with executive shifts, but having to update my Rolodex, my proverbial Rolodex is just my email for animation executives.
It's always interesting, always have to introduce yourself again and again. But because of that, I ended up having this catalog of IPS ready to pitch, most of which were like for ages seven to eleven, which kind of isn't a thing in comics, but after a few years of pitching, to animation seeing so much turnaround and so much lack of pulling in new creators. Right now, especially with networks. It's an existing catalog grindhouse. Kind of we have rugrats. Let's do a new rugrats. We have these legacy characters, let's do something new with them, which completely understandable. And that's honestly where a lot of audience will come from, will just come from the past.
So I started looking into comics because issue by issue, comics for ages seven to eleven really isn't that prevalent at the moment. Really. Just graphic novels. Like Scholastic Graphic. Your Dog Man's and Your Mayor Good Boy and the like.
I wanted to get into the monthly issue by issue. So the first thing I looked at was like, hey, how do we at least create a cover that somebody would want to buy? First, as a publisher, because I'm not great at the Indiegogos and the kickstarter situation, and second, that an audience would want to see on readers would want to buy off the shelves. So I was thumbing through just public domain characters and started developing this Santa Claus versus death pitch that ended up spiraling into something that was more akin to American gods with all these multiple religions and deities. But eventually I brought it down and condensed it so that the only exploration of deities was going to be this Babylonian pantheon. Because it felt, one, that's where I wanted the creation myth that's involved in the story to come from, and two, there's kind of a lack of representation in these really fascinating pantheon of gods.
So it was a learning process throughout. And it started as this again, there's this Santa Claus versus Death, but ended up being a retelling and direct sequel of The Epic of Gilgamesh because of that that has this it was just a very unexpected narrative. At the end of the day, that was going to be like this two or three issue series, but I couldn't get it. Less than six issues. So here we are with the six issue series.
Issue one is out and the full trade paperback is coming out in March because we're skipping issues two through six.
[00:25:31] Speaker A: That was the question I had at some point what we were talking about. But it's a cool thing because the funny thing is, I think that this actual model itself, if you full on plan to do this for everything, would actually somewhat work because it almost gives issue one as a pseudo ashcan or preview the series. Also, those people who are addicted to number ones, the idea of collecting. So many people go out there and buy the number one issue and then don't even think about buying number two. They just want that number one of an independent comic book that in the hopes that it's picked up or optioned or whatever you might want to think of.
But then a lot of people are like, wait, okay, I like the series. I'm going to wait till the trade comes out. And then you're not wasting the time, the energy and money by putting in single issues out through two through six. You're just like, fine, buy issue one. If you like it, you can see the trade coming out, coming out in March 2024.
I'm a single issue guy.
We talked online, I think, about the idea of where is the rest of this book, when's it coming out, and you mentioned that it's coming in a trade and that I would like to have issues two through six on my shelf. However, I also have a more extensive now trade paperback shelves, so I can add it to my collection still. But I do like that model in the sense that it gave it kind of an ashcan preview. I know my LCS owner will be buying the trade for stock on his shelf because you had this issue come out and he liked.
[00:26:56] Speaker B: Kind of the I'm sure there's a litany of reasons. Obviously, one, financially it's a better investment for the publisher, for Scout.
And at first I was a little concerned because in my mind you hear like, issues two through six aren't going to shelves. That means there's less profit in my hands. Why did I make these? But at the end of the day, you never know how those are going to go. I have a habit of buying issues one, issues two and three maybe, and then falling off. Either I didn't go to the comic book store or it just slipped my mind, or issues one two are on my read pile for too long and it slipped my mind.
But this kind of guarantees that if issue one was enough to pull you in, hey, here's the whole series and it's ready to go in trade format. I'm curious to see how it's going to be collected because we didn't have covers for because we found out it was going to be done as a trade immediately after issue one. We don't have covers necessarily for issues two through six, even though there are some, but they aren't official.
But it's going to be all 124 pages. I think that's the count collected at once.
It's interesting to have this almost this barren desert feel of the rest of the issues, and then suddenly here's this oasis of water that is the full series coming out. That's how it feels like to me as waiting and waiting, but. Honestly, it's not been a long wait by any means because the program is called Nonstop here's issue one in July, and I think there's been some just the state of the industry with paper costs and the whatnot it was a little bit longer than the typical Nonstop release schedule. But yeah, we'll be able to solicit in January, maybe even late December, to get kind of a holiday feel to it.
And I'm excited to get the whole thing in people's hands because issue one reads like its own thing, I think. But the rest of the series is kind of it really does feel like a graphic novel.
Like most comics, it's designed to have a last page that makes you go, OOH, I got to read the next issue immediately. As long as the pages keep turning. That's the goal.
[00:29:27] Speaker A: I mentioned the Ashcan part of it or the idea that it's like you get a preview towards it. It's one of the things that the toss ups people have that I've talked to about single issues versus trade or graphic novel, and one of them was the longevity of marketing on a single issue is longer. So it builds up to that trade.
When you have six issues that you could have six months per se of marketing a book, and then a couple of months later you had the trade come out, you have an entire but I still think this could work the same way. Whereas we're talking about it now. I know other people have talked about it. It's getting to that Christmas season. And my budy Paul, who owns Galactic Comics in Bangor, Maine, had mentioned about what are we going to read as we read a holiday book or trying to read a holiday book around the season to like this, we're reading Naughty List over there at um. And then James Tinian has his book coming out called A Deviant around holiday season. But my personal thought was, oh, this is perfect. It comes out in March, means we can plan reading Death Comes to the Toy Maker for next November in our thing because it's coming out plenty in advance. We can get copies in, we can get them in our hands, we can read them, so on and so forth. Sometimes it's like for the holiday season and like December 1, the books, like the first issue comes in. I'm like, well, that doesn't give you much. It gives you the ability to read eight issue of a book. That's a holiday book, but it doesn't give you much to actually get into the actual season. You're reading the entire bulk thing in March, which is okay because I like Christmas and I like holidays, so that's not a problem with me. But this is a pseudo. It's a Christmas story, but a holiday story, but not really in the sense that it's more of an underlying story to it in that sense. So it's like, it doesn't have to be read during that was.
[00:31:13] Speaker B: It was an unintentional perk, I guess, of it.
It ends up being, like I said, the sequel to The Epic of Gilgamesh, where, yeah, there's this backdrop of this holiday which in this universe is called IA's Day, after the god IA who saved humanity from the great flood.
And it takes place essentially over the course of one year from one IA's day to the next.
But in that same sense, that is diehard a Christmas movie. Is that not a I mean, it very much, I guess is an E is Day book because the title character is the toy maker. He's the Santa Claus of that universe. So it very much mean, I I guarantee you, between issues two and five, it's probably kind of a forgotten thing because it's know, big mythic quest with beasts of hell and chimeras and gods that have been forgotten by most modern standards, unfortunately, leading to this incredible battle that just happens to be around this holiday.
So, yeah, hopefully it feels like it can be read year round in that sense. But at the same time, it's nice to think of somebody saying, let's cozy up to the fire with some hot cocoa and some death comes for the toy maker.
[00:32:44] Speaker A: Exactly.
That works.
I've bought into Christmas presents for people to our holiday presents for people in April and just held onto. So, however, when you purchase this book, it's beneficial to Dakota and the team to purchase it. So if you get it in March and you give it to someone for Christmas next year, it's a long way to wait, but just purchase it when it comes.
Is Ryan Cody doing all the artwork for a whole so before we get into that, actually, I want to say is Joe Picardo is one of my favorite horror and comic book artists that are out there right now. Joe finished the recount for our budy Jonathan. Hedrick the past couple, like the last issue or two was like, he did the last pages and then he also did Nightwalkers more recently with Colin Bunn over at Sourcepoint. And Joe is an unbelievable artist. So having Joe as the COVID of Number One was absolutely outstanding as well. But Ryan doing the interiors. Ryan Cody is that is he doing the rest of them?
[00:33:41] Speaker B: So from pitch to seeing it in Previews World, all art was done by Ryan cover and every single panel, beginning to end, both line and inks and colors.
And the day that it dropped in Previews World, I had trouble finding the comic. And then suddenly I see this cover from Joe Picado that I had seen, but I didn't know it was going to be the A cover. Some things got shifted around at Scout and I wasn't made aware, but not in a bad way. It was just a surprise. I see this cover from Joe and then the B cover from marco Fontanilly, which is also just gorgeous.
And I'm sure they've been selling copies. Ryan's got a cover as well. That the Scout headquarters exclusive, so you can buy it in stores in Florida, but it's also online, which was part of the original pitch package.
But, yeah, Scout had some big dreams. The variant covers, we've got Heather Anthos, who's an editor at IDW, she's on our web store exclusive cover that's just this really cool close up on Death with a little bitty toy maker in the eye and then a few secret Whatnot exclusive covers that I think I can announce because I've seen them on ebay. At least one is a variant of Heather's cover and the other is a very heavy metal cover by Hugo Petrus, which again, it's not been officially announced, but there is a copy on ebay, so somebody has won it in a Whatnot auction. So it's live and it's out.
[00:35:42] Speaker A: But if you Google whatnot what comes to the toy maker, the first thing comes up is the Hugo Petrus cover.
It is searchable.
[00:35:52] Speaker B: Okay, good. So I don't think I'm wrong for announcing it, but yeah, the covers have been fantastic. Everybody has their favorites. I have a hard time choosing because they're all my sweet babies.
[00:36:10] Speaker A: I don't know if I like the Heather Antus one better, that's black and white or the one.
[00:36:17] Speaker B: The original one is probably my favorite because I try to look at it as it pops.
[00:36:23] Speaker A: Off a shelf that yes, it does.
[00:36:25] Speaker B: Vibrant yellow. It makes you look at it. But of course, the Whatnot cover isn't going to be in stores, it's going to be just on Whatnot. There's a metal version of that one and a metal version of Hugo's that there are 15 copies of each floating around. I have one of each and I think some people have won them in the Whatnot auctions, which I've tried to get in on and be involved, but man, they go fast. Yeah, I can imagine it's something that I'm not very familiar with the whole live auction situation, but Scout has a huge fan base for that.
[00:37:02] Speaker A: Yeah, some people just like, that's what they do. It's like their whatnot is just what. They just make their don't. To me, it's like I don't have the mental capacity to even like my budy Joseph Schmulky was at the local comic convention the 13th or the 15 October, and he was doing a live whatnot at the convention during a lull, and I was like, oh, I'm going to go screw them. I'm going to get on my phone, my son and Whatnot. I have the app in there. I'm like, now what do I do?
How do I find him? I'm like, wow, I'm 37. And I felt like I was 106 there, trying to figure out how to use my phone for the first time, but I ended up giving up. I was like, no, I'm done. I'm moving on.
But whatnot is cool in that sense, some people have that ability to just cash in and the exclusives and stuff like that is really cool too. I think that's a cool market that we didn't see coming when whatnot was actually first started.
[00:37:53] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a big focus on it. I think the last time I joined one, I was doing it through Mobile and they said, oh, and the creator, Dakota Brown is here. Let's say hi, Dakota. And I couldn't figure out how to say hi. I think I could type it, but I doubt there was a way for me to go they couldn't see we were going.
[00:38:13] Speaker A: Hi.
[00:38:14] Speaker B: Hi.
[00:38:15] Speaker A: Hello. Can you not hear me? Hi. Activate speech, siri. Tell what not hi.
It's kind of funny that I mentioned how much I like Joe's cover and stuff like that. The detecting really wasn't the ideal or the original pitch for the COVID for issue, first issue. But like I said, it's cool to me and it's one of those things that if I didn't see so I saw that. I'm pretty good at reading my previews catalog and talking to my LCS because I'm usually the one of the ones that sometimes orders not the obscure things. It's some of the just outside of what his normal customers might order. A lot of times I get a comic. It's like literally they go through the orders that week and I'm like, who ordered this? And it's usually just because I order it. Can you get me a copy of that book? But both of us got the advanced email from Scout, I believe, because I get the emails for some reason, if I wanted to do a variant cover, I get like the variant program. They have email and then there's a little click. A small button towards the bottom says, read the entire story ahead of time so you can decide whether or not you want to do a variant. And so did he. So we read the book and we're like, oh my gosh, we're really excited about this book coming out and so on and so forth. And then I saw the Joe Piccardo thing. So to me, it still probably would have sold me on the fact that I love Joe's artwork so much that I would have been like, okay, I could pick this book up. I haven't seen or experienced much of Ryan's work, so it may have not done the same thing. So at least one customer potentially would have bought your book or did buy your book based on the fact that that cover was number.
[00:39:46] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah. And I was thrilled to see it. It was just a bit of a surprise. I probably missed an email somewhere along the way. And it does sell the book with this really driving action, which a lot of people have told me looks like almost it's like a dance fight. They're fighting, but it almost looks like this choreographed dance almost, which kind of goes well with the history of the characters once you really get into the story because they've been fighting for a while, but before that they were much dearer friends in a previous version of themselves.
[00:40:23] Speaker A: I like the battle of people who obviously friends and had this disagreement and so on and so forth. But I also love the take on the fact that if you do see this as a holiday book or a holiday story that it's not like people see holiday stories as happiness and joyful and families coming together and all this sort of stuff, but this is more not completely over the top dark, like a rare exports style or those kind of movies or krampus or anything like that. But it's like in the middle. So there's like, obviously someone's trying to be happy, but in the same sense there's this darkness and death that's involved in it. The character death, obviously, but I mean, like physical, actual death that puts it in that middle, puts it in that like, oh, this is kind of a cool story that doesn't really sit with any other story that I've seen on the market right now, which is kind of cool.
[00:41:16] Speaker B: Oh, that's good to hear. Yeah, I'm a huge fan of just Pathos in general and I think it's probably just from a theater background.
But going through the history of these characters and as they existed in Babylonian times and to who they are now, the clear through line was yes, one character is being forced to do something he doesn't want to do. He has to steal souls for death every e is day and it's grading and destroying his own soul.
But at the crux of this, it's a story about friendship. It's a story about lost opportunities and simple choices that force those lost opportunities honestly. It's a story about friendship and things unsaid and the simplicity of some of these problems we have internally with our peers that probably could just be solved with some dialogue. Conversation that do end up leading to giant wars with hell beasts and the like. So, yeah, there's a lot of the soft, tender moments but also these big epic battles that hopefully are a good juxtaposition to one another throughout the series.
And like I said, we see a retelling of the epic of Gilgamesh and some other Babylonian stories starting with issue two and going forward.
But it's this big back and forth. It's like the COVID a dance between Death and Gil the toy maker and seeing where it leads them in their relationship and how it led them there.
Hopefully it feels balanced. I think it does, but it's a lot of heavy feelings for a goofy comic about a Santa Claus analog character.
[00:43:31] Speaker A: Well, I do like the fact that I wrote in my notes here too that the fact that you used public domain esque type characters like santa Claus and Death and things like that. But that using them specifically as who know? It's not like you pulled Snow White and used Snow White as Snow White. You use a different variation of the same story in a sense, because I think also it might have probably sold issue ones for you in the sense that someone just sees this cover and sees it's a toy maker and they automatically think Santa Claus and they see the death of the character, and you automatically think death. And this idea of Grimm probably sold really well with the fact that there was a reaper on the front of it in that book. People are like, oh, I know that character. I want to deal with that character. But you didn't use Claus. Like, the person's name is not Santa Claus, which is really kind of got I'm reading a Maeve Fly right now by CJ. Lee. The novel, it's a horror novel that just came out this year. But the characters she writes in the book that this woman works at the happiest place in the world. And then obviously you started working this in your mind that she works at Disney World or and but she can't use the character she plays at in the park is Elsa, but she can't say Elsa because Elsa isn't in the public domain. But she says characters that are in the public domain that Disney uses as characters so that you can kind of mix the two together and understand. Now you go, okay, this is Disney, so they say Snow White and they say Cinderella, but they're not actually because they can say those ones, but they couldn't say Elsa. So they're like, oh, this white blonde with a snowman as a friend, or something like that. So you kind of could get the whole thing. And I was like, I appreciate that. Maybe you wanted to continue reading because it's like, now you're putting me in a position where I know what you're talking about, but then you're taking me out of that and putting it in a different story. Same thing with this. You're giving me the idea that I know who Santa Claus, he's a toy maker as a character and so on and so forth, and death as a character, but that's not specifically them, which helps me now fall into your lore, not the lore of Santa Claus.
[00:45:37] Speaker B: That's good to hear. Yeah.
Granted, it's a very similar holiday situation, but throughout the series, we find out how he got his special bag that ties into the story of Humbaba in the cedar forest.
We see that he doesn't have the traditional nine reindeer and a sleigh. He has instead a chimera.
So hopefully there's enough there to really scratch that Christmas itch, but enough to make you realize very different, at least in sense of the universe it exists in.
[00:46:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I've read issue one, so I've obviously have only one 6th of the story. So it's nice to know that there's more to it, and I'm excited for that because like I said, I'm a big fan of issue one. I'm fit out of the artwork. Your writing ability is really great for someone who obviously haven't read anything from you before. So that's really cool to have this and talk about this on the podcast. But you also have another series before I finish. We want to move on to the other series really quickly before we wrap up here. But number one, hit in July for this. You know, hopefully your LCS doesn't have it because that means they sold out of all of them. But if they don't, or if they do, grab it on the shelf because it's possible that they got moved to some sort of back issue thing because it's been long enough. Or check with Scout directors. Scout usually has some web store exclusive things like that as well. And I'm going to say check with Scout in your LCS first and then go to Ebay and things like that because a lot of times you can get what they're selling on ebay for three or four times the price on someone's direct website. So just like I always want to give that forewarning to people. I've talked to Charles Soul and Ryan Brown, about 8 billion genies, and someone was like, buying $100 copies of signed copies of them that you could buy on Ryan Brown's website for $20. I'm like, you just go to the artist. Like the artist has his own copies and he's going to make that money off, but not some guy on ebay. Nothing against ebay, but I'm just saying it's kind of funny on that. So check your LCS because it's a possibility they have a B cover or some random issues. It's possible you can still get it, too. I don't know if they can still order it or not.
[00:47:56] Speaker B: I think to an extent, I know you can through Scout, and I think Scout can ship directly to if there's enough of an order, but maybe not. They might just do it on their own, too.
[00:48:07] Speaker A: Yeah, do it or I don't think Dakota would be pissed you if you just waited for the trade to come out. Because as long as you buy the trade, then you're happy to because buy the trade hits. The trade comes out in March, so you should check that out. But you have Grandma Tilly's heltech Mech, is that what it's called? Yeah, over at Banda Bards. I've heard really good things about Band of Bards. I'll tell you, that thing right there. So I'm glad it landed up there because that's a pretty good people over there right now. But give a little synopsis on what that little elevator pitch on what Grandma Tilly's is all about.
[00:48:39] Speaker B: Yeah. So Grandma Tilly's Heltech Mech is a three issue series out from Band of Bards. The first issue came out in September.
Issue two is November 1 and issue three is December 20. But it is about a gaming granny who breaks her controller in a fit of rage calls a ride chair, which is called Scooper, and her world being Earth, just a different version of Earth.
But before her ride gets there, this giant metal mech like thing comes down and lands at her yard. She thinks it's her ride, she crawls in and it ends up being this giant fleshy mech from a Hell dimension that just shoots her into this adventure into space.
She thinks it's a fun video game because she can plug her controller right in and pilot it as if it was some kind of weird interactive video game. But she's actually doing some horrible things and she doesn't realize it.
[00:49:42] Speaker A: That's amazing. It's funny that you mentioned not knowing what you're doing. It almost sounds like a small part of War Games, where they're playing the game online. They don't realize they're actually starting. They're actually arming nuclear weapons and they don't know that. But yeah, that's pretty funny. Was this a pitch, one of those ones that you had that was like in the Hopper and you just pitched it as a comic book instead of animated show?
[00:50:02] Speaker B: Yeah, it was for a while. It was like a five minute short that doesn't have the Hell dimension aspect to it. It had more of just a space fare to it was called The Five Star Scooper Bot because Scooper was the Uber of that world.
But then when I started building my spec package portfolio, it became a Donald Duck short called The Last Ride Sharer as a reference to The Last Starfighter because it has that last starfighter vibe. But then I got with Lane Lloyd, who's the artist on this and also the co creator.
And while this script did exist for a long time before I got with Lane, I got with Lane and they sent it in a direction I couldn't have done on my own with this weird fleshy hell goop that's throughout the entire series, lane has this style unlike anyone else's in comics right now. It's just like stretch and squish style, almost like you can see it animated on the page, almost. You can see it like stretch and squish. And it has that know, fleischer animation or early Disney too.
But it's the only thing like it in comics right now. And I was so lucky to get with him before this big exclusive contract comes away because it's coming. I guarantee you there's going to be some weird stuff either at Image DC or Marvel from Lane. And I am so excited about it. But yeah, we work together to create this new version of the universe that involves this Hell dimension, this interdimensional task force that's made up of scientists and government officials.
It doesn't have the pathos of death comes for the toy maker in the best of ways. In that. It's just a fun, weird, Sci-Fi horror romp. We're kind of billing it as return of the Living Dead meets Last starfighter. Honestly, it's got that weird horror humor and maturity with its grotesqueness, but it's also just got a lot of hopefully fast paced, forward moving fun that drives you through all three issues.
Hopefully enough to see some more Grandma Tilly in the future, too. Who knows?
[00:52:25] Speaker A: Exactly, right?
[00:52:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:52:26] Speaker A: So the first issue debuted on September 27 and the second issue comes out soon. Is that my right about that? Is that coming out?
[00:52:32] Speaker B: Yeah. It's this Wednesday, November 1. Okay. November 1.
[00:52:36] Speaker A: And then issue three comes in December, I'm guessing.
[00:52:40] Speaker B: Yeah, december 20. Yeah. And if your local comic store is like one of mine locally, it's going to be on the shelves with a white cover.
Just look where Grandma would be in the Alphabetical listing and that's it.
[00:52:56] Speaker A: I swear, it's almost like it's like a naughty magazine or a nudie magazine where it's like, got the COVID on it. Don't look at him here. Don't look at this comic.
[00:53:06] Speaker B: And honestly, I didn't realize it was a mature comic when I was writing it. I thought it was so fun and quirky that we could get away with a PG 13, but apparently there are some contents that Ben Devard spelt, it deemed a mature rating. But the covers aren't mature. They're fine.
[00:53:24] Speaker A: Well, I was talking to Mike Henderson about nail biter and he's like, the nail biter number one cover has the nail biter eating his fingers and blood was spurting everywhere and they're like, I don't know if we can use this comic cover. I think we're going to have to go a different route. And he was working on a different cover and they finally said, yeah, I'll do it. But nowadays I'm like, you don't see covers like that nowadays. It's one of those things that very LCS oriented in the sense that they ought to make sure it looks good. It looks good on the shelf, but also that kids can see it. And that's one of those things that was the whole I hate fairyland I hate this place battle back and forth where it was supposed to be f this place with Kyle Starks and they eh it's probably not going to go very well and people won't be able to order it because of the fact that they don't want the swearing on the COVID I can understand. Maybe it's a mercher content on the inside, but on the outside it might should probably be a little bit easier.
[00:54:16] Speaker B: For you to yeah, I would say it's between PG 13 and R. And I would say issue two probably skews closer to R but there's still this fine line between it if it was drawn in a very realistic fashion. Oh, by all means. It would be mature. But I think maybe it's just in my mind because Lane's work lends so much to this fun quirkiness that feels almost childlike in nature in the best of ways.
Maybe I was just blinded by that.
[00:54:54] Speaker A: Maybe it's because it started out like as a kid's cartoon and you're like.
[00:54:57] Speaker B: Probably I've seen it from child to adult, I guess, very literally.
[00:55:05] Speaker A: Well, that was like I said, I mentioned off the top, I was like, I'm a big Scotty Young fan. That was like his volume two of I Eat Fairyland has like, naked, nude, post teenager years of gert in Gertrude. And she has pubic hair and arm hair. And I'm just like, wait, hold on a second.
This is not the Gertrude I remember reading. And I hate fairyland number one, where she's like a small child being sucked into fairyland. Now she's like this adult lingua and she was trying to sleep with people. And I'm like, oh my God, what the heck just happened?
[00:55:38] Speaker B: Oh, I've read the first issue and maybe the second one. I don't know if I've gotten that far.
[00:55:43] Speaker A: Like, it's like a big plot point, but I just say this is one of those weird things. I have a Gertrude tatoo and I'm like, hey, this is the baby. This is the innocent. And not really innocent because obviously she kills people.
I was just thinking to myself, I did not expect to open up a page and be like, holy crap, what the heck did Scotty do?
But hey, you know what? Kids grow up. That's what happens.
But yeah, that's awesome. That's two different books that kind of have two different groups but also could be a crossover in this, which is pretty cool. And you're at two different publishers, which is also very good because I have a big proponent of loving to spread that love to different independent publishers because A, they can promote your books at the same time and not feel like they're over promoting Dakota Brown, which is pretty cool, too. And like I said, I've heard good things. Travis Gibb over there says that Band of Bards is great too. So I'm glad you ended up over at Band of Bards too. That's amazing as well.
But yeah, that's pretty cool. Now you're in the world, man. Now you're in the comic book industry. You're fully in it now. Are you working on other stuff, too? I'm guessing obviously you can't talk about.
[00:56:47] Speaker B: Yeah, there's some pitches that are out there.
One that's like a young adult fantasy pitch that kind of takes the DND cartoon from the kind of flips it on its head. But it's a bit of a hard sell because, again, when publishers are looking for young adult, typically if they are looking, they want a completed graphic novel.
And it's just kind of difficult to do that independently before a contract assigned. But there are some other things in the works that are more in line with the vibe of Toy Maker, but hoping to get back eventually to. The vibe of Grandma Tilly's where it's just kind of fun.
In theory, I would like to just go back and forth between those two vibes because one's pretty heavy and one might be a bit too much fun. So having that balance and that diverse catalog out there I think would be a lot of fun, at least.
[00:57:50] Speaker A: That's awesome. Well, I think you're doing great work. I'm excited to see more from you and you got our polest for any books that you got coming out in the future. So I'm excited for that. And I'm obviously going to excited for you to come back on and pitch anything else to talk anything else you want on the podcast in the future. And I appreciate you taking time out of your day to do this one and talk to us about Death Comes from the Toy Maker and Grandma Tilly's health. Mech again, I really appreciate you coming on.
[00:58:16] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. It was fun.
[00:58:18] Speaker A: Absolutely. And follow Dakota, you're on social media so you can look up. It's pretty easy to find you writer Dakota Brown on Instagram and Dakota on the X on the Twitter.
[00:58:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
The former Twitter is D-U-H-C-O-A-T-U-H writes because I wanted to make it so easy on everybody. Yes, I'm sure if you search Dakota Brown, you'll find me. I'm sure.
[00:58:44] Speaker A: That's why I'm always like, am I talented? Like, oh, picture social media. I'm like literally just Google or just search for the people. Just search the person's name and it's going to come up, I promise you. And if it doesn't come up, which means they don't have it, that's fine. Move on, whatever.
Pretty sure that you could find it or go to Scout and look at the picture of Death comes with this Way maker. Usually they tag you in it, things like that, so you can find them online out there too. But again, I really appreciate you taking the time out of the day to talk to us. Everybody grab the books when they're available. Check with your LCS so they can get them preordered if they need to get them preordered and so on. But yeah, I appreciate it, man.
[00:59:17] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks so much.
