Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back to the Capes and Tights podcast right here on Capesandites.com. The last episode of 2023 features Ryan, Katie and Andrew, Andrea Muti from Haunt You to the End over at Top Cow slash Image Comics, available on trade paperback, January 10 at your local comic bookshop, and January 9 a day before at bookstores everywhere. This episode, we chatted Haunt to the end, andrea's work, Ryan's work, all that stuff right here on this episode to end out 2023. Thank you so much, everybody, for a great and wonderful year here on the podcast. So pumped to be able to finish the year out with these two gentlemen here on the podcast. But before you do, follow us and like us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Blue, sky, all those things. Rate review, subscribe all that stuff over on Spotify, Apple, and all your major podcasting platforms. And if you guys want the video portion of this podcast, it is available on our website. But also check out our YouTube channel over there. Capes and tights on YouTube. And this is episode, the last episode of 2023 with Ryan, Katie and Andrea Mutey talking haunt you to the end. Grab the trade, January 10 at your local comic book shop. Enjoy, everyone.
[00:01:16] Speaker B: Whip.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: Whip.
Welcome to the podcast, gentlemen. How are you guys today?
[00:01:28] Speaker C: How about you?
[00:01:29] Speaker A: Awesome. We're doing great here. We got a slip water here.
Do the official should have done that before refresh recording.
[00:01:35] Speaker B: But let's all be hydrated. I'll lubricate the pipe.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: Exactly.
Awesome. So, yeah, we're here at Talk Comics talk haunt you to the end. Mostly over at Top Cow Image Comics. The trade comes out in January, right? January 10. I'm pretty sure the day after my.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: Birthday, it comes out.
[00:01:59] Speaker C: Nice.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: I think FOC actually was yesterday, so people have to go buy it from their LCS or something like that. I believe it's right around this time, isn't it? I'm pretty sure, yeah.
[00:02:10] Speaker B: I mean, timing on those things is always so nutty to try and work out. You're always like, what's the perfect window to press for this? But honestly, FOC, however you all get it, I would just love to see it in people's hands on my special, special day.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: Exactly. And the best thing, actually, if it's January 10 at LCS, which likely means it's at bookstores on January 9, because it usually shows up a day early at bookstores just because the way the book market works. But that's what I love about talking to people about trades, too, when their issues, single issues, become trades, is the fact that it is so much easier to get for people.
The fact of the matter is you don't have to have an LCS or a comic shop or whatever in your local town. Likely your local bookstore or big box bookstore will have this on the shelf or can get it for you, which makes it a little bit easier to get in the hands of the reader for.
[00:03:01] Speaker B: You know, I always tell people to support my own local or my LCS. I always point people in those directions. I mean, every city has a good job in La. We're blessed with some really good shops. But there is still that sort of barrier to entry for certain people.
I'm sure you know this, doing interviews and all that stuff, not everybody people outside of our industry to try to explain. I have family members who still are not quite 100% sure how all this works, no matter how often.
[00:03:37] Speaker A: My LCS owner barely understands sometimes how it works. He's been doing it for a number of years. He's like, I think FOC this week. But I don't know, I guess I can order it. And so I'm just like, Whatever, man. When you can get my comics that I want, you get it. We'll get it, and I'll read it when they come in. So that's the best thing. But if you can preorder things like this and get it advanced, awesome. But if not, still getting it at the shop will allow the shop to reorder it if they sell out and so on and so forth.
But yeah, so I've actually technically, via email, via Dark Horse, I've interviewed Andrea. You did a little piece for Horror Week on the website. And so if someone wants to get a little bit about Andrea, there's a little bit of information in that on our website. But Ryan, obviously you're new to any of our followers or listeners or anything like that, so why don't you start off with giving us a little idea of how you got into the world of comics there? Ryan sure.
[00:04:32] Speaker B: Let me make a really bad first impression.
No, I always loved comics. I always wanted to be a writer, and I was always writing and I was always reading comics. And then when I was in college, I'd kind of given up on it for a while. I had been like a lot of adults in my life were like, this isn't a practical career, et cetera, et cetera. But I was still doing it. And then my friends and I all got really back into reading single issues. All of a sudden, we kind of stopped collecting singles. It was getting really expensive. We were all sort of just sharing or trading or reading here and there, visiting the shop like once a month, maybe.
And then we all got really back into it. And then they were having all these signings, and then New 52 happened, and we were having all these creators around and you could meet these people, and suddenly it sort of hit me like a lightning bolt one day, talking to these guys. I was like, this is like a real I could do this. You could script these. They get paid.
It's a real gig. And sort of just sort of like, went crazy trying to get into it after a few months applying and trying to make stuff happen. I ended up getting an internship at Top Cow Productions, and I was an intern there for a while.
I was an assistant editor for a while, an editor. And then the whole time I was just sort of cooking on my own stuff. And then 2015, 2016, I went out solo and just started doing freelance.
[00:06:00] Speaker A: Ryan how old were you when you got your first work published?
[00:06:03] Speaker B: I was really young. I was like 22.
[00:06:08] Speaker A: 23 maybe, I think. Did Andrea did you beat him? You were 19, weren't you?
[00:06:15] Speaker C: 18 or 19 something?
[00:06:17] Speaker A: Yeah, he beat you.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: I knew that was going to come.
You will beat me at anything you want to bring up right now. You're going to win every single statistic. It's not fair.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: I will say that I learned about your work, Ryan, through some stuff at Top Gal with this Destiny Gate. Those books are how I really stumbled upon there's just one of the things that people always surprises me when I talk to people about having people on the podcast and talk to them, like, oh, you must have liked them for a long period of time. There are so many creators and comic books out there that it's very easy to miss. People of talented have talented backgrounds and.
[00:06:53] Speaker B: Talented and people like me, too, people who are untalented.
[00:06:57] Speaker A: But it's so easy to miss these people. But once you get into them, like, how did I miss X, Y, and Z that they put out? How did I not realize that you had done things at Big Two or things like that and so on and so forth. But I have been a fan of Andrea's work for a while now. I am a humongous fan of the artwork from Andrea. That legacy of violence recently has been amazing and so on. So, yes, in my opinion no offense, Ryan, but he's going to win out on you on this podcast. You know, we'll put that out there up front.
[00:07:29] Speaker B: None taken. I mean, as a writer, I always think the artist should win, and I think every artist watching that should hear me say that and want to work with me because I'm just not going to step on your the man's a genius. I feel very blessed to work with him.
[00:07:46] Speaker C: Oh, I am blessed.
[00:07:48] Speaker A: But that's funny. I have a discussion with people about that. A lot of times I'll have either the writer or the artist on, and a lot of times we can gush about the other person with the other person being present. But now it's like, if we're going to gush about the artwork of these books, it's kind of hard because you're sitting there, right there staring at us.
But it was actually kind of funny because I've had published not published, I hate to say word published because I've never been actually published, but I've had two poll quotes on the back of trade paperbacks in the past couple of years from a review I've done of a comic book. And that has been a Legacy of Violence, volume Two, which is kind of funny and haunt you to the end. The trade paperback has a pull quote on the back of it from us. I don't know if it has to do with I guess it's Andrea. The artwork is what's pulling me into these two. There's a common denominator there. I think you just really know how.
[00:08:45] Speaker B: To make Andrea's art sound really good.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: No, thank you for the but yeah, it was just kind of funny. I'm like, oh, that's start. People are going to start thinking I have an in somehow with Andrea's artwork. And they're just going to think that they're just going to pull the capes of tight spot pull quote off of there. But no, obviously Andrea has been doing artwork for a long period of time. Great stuff. And I hate to do the whole check out another thing. So, Andrea, give us a little bit of how you got into comics in general.
[00:09:13] Speaker C: Oh, I started to start comics. I was at the end of college, but I was involved about the independent publisher, Italy, like the magazines, strips and whatever. So my super first approach and I'm talking about paid, I was 1616 with the strips, like, less funny things for a local newspaper.
[00:09:39] Speaker A: It was fun.
[00:09:41] Speaker C: I'm pretty old. Super cool guy, super young. I hate you for that.
[00:09:48] Speaker A: Kind of the best of both worlds, right? Super cool, super young.
[00:09:51] Speaker C: Yeah, super cool guy.
[00:09:52] Speaker A: And obviously, before getting into Haunted to the End, you guys connected on your book before this one, Infinite Dark.
That was where you guys did you want to work together in the first place, or was this put together from Topgow? How did that end up, that connection between the two of you? Get.
[00:10:15] Speaker B: You know, I had been wanting to do this book at Topcow for a while. I had been talking with them. We were sort of in the mix, and we were just looking at artists that would work. Artists that had the right style were ready to go, and Topcat was comfortable with and knew their system. And Andrea just sort of, like, blew me away from the beginning. I mean, we'd been talking a little bit. I feel like I think I might have hit him up, like a few months before or six months before I really had the pitch fully together. And I was like, hey, talking tough cow about these books. You want to do some stuff? And I don't know, man. Just from the beginning, I remember one of the first things, I was like, we were talking about Infinite Dark.
Should I do? Infinite Dark is a book that takes place after the end of the universe. It's a space horror story set on this ship in between physics. There's nothing, no time, no space, nonexistence. And the last people are waiting for a new universe to be born, basically. And then there is some sort of entity out there. And one of the first things Andrea did was turn in this design for the vessel, the Orpheus. And there was something so it's hard to explain in that it's just like he literally just turned into ship design, but something about the way that he positioned the ship design in the file. So it was sort of like floating at a slight distance in the corner of the page and looking very stark and lonely. And I'm like, fuck yeah, man, this is it.
[00:11:47] Speaker A: This guy's got it.
[00:11:52] Speaker B: For ship.
[00:11:53] Speaker C: For ship.
[00:11:55] Speaker A: But did that lead to this haunting to the end? Like working together in that book make it want to do this book together.
[00:12:02] Speaker B: At least for my end? Definitely. I feel like we wrapped that up. We did eight issues and from the beginning we're like, okay, well, as soon as this is done, we'll end up working on something else together soon. And we've just both been really busy since and getting our stuff done. And we'd check in every few months and be like, hey, when are we going to work together next? What's going to be the next thing? And man, he turned in some of those pages from not Parasomnia.
Maybe it was from Legacy of Violence one, but he turned in some of those. He just sent me a batch of his watercolors. He's like, hey, I've been working on a new style. And I was just like, I was struck by lightning. And I knew that we needed to do like I remember the words that came like, weather horror. I was like, we need to do weather horror. And I was like, I don't know what that is, but I'm going to figure something out. And I think a week later maybe, I think I DM'd him on Twitter. Like this rough idea of these people on this island and ghosts of the end of the world and stuff. And from there we were just off to the races, man.
[00:13:12] Speaker A: That's what's actually kind of cool. When you look back and someone reads Infinite Dark and then reads this behind you to the end and you see obviously there's connections. Your lines, Andrea, are similar, obviously, but the coloring is what's different mostly. And Ryan, you have your style of how you write and stuff like that. It is kind of cool because there is connections in the sense that if you like either your artwork, Andrea, or your writing, right, you're going to like both of these. But there's also differences, which is really cool. Sometimes you see artists and writer. Candoms that just make the same thing in a different story? If that makes any this is has that difference. And one of my favorite comic books of recent times is A Legacy of Violence, a huge, huge Colin bunn fan, obviously a huge fan of your artwork. And then I went to obviously this. And then you have charred remains coming out too, with Anthony Cleveland, which also has that not weather, but the fire aspect of it. That's just unbelievable. So this style is great. And this book caught me from the beginning as well.
The the text treatment for the logo on don't. Who did that tell you?
[00:14:17] Speaker B: The end?
[00:14:18] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:19] Speaker B: Oh, that's Phil Smith. He's a graphic designer. He's a genius.
[00:14:25] Speaker A: It was so perfect.
[00:14:27] Speaker C: Amazing. It's amazing. I have to say one of the.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: Best.
[00:14:31] Speaker B: Engaging he for years. He did graphic design and product design for a lot of Skybound products. So he went to, like, a con and bought something from Skybound from five years ago, and it looked like, really good. You're like, I wonder, why does this label look so nice?
[00:14:49] Speaker A: He's a really I'm a graphic designer by trade, by day, so a lot of those things stick out to me. Usually they stick out to me in the opposite way, where I'm like, who let this logo go through for the title of a comic book? But the other side of that is I get the ones that stand out to me. And I think the simplicity and the cleanliness of the logo with the artwork behind it just works together sometimes. That's a little bit too jarring. But that's something about it caught me from a distance when I was looking at the previous catalog before I had my local comic book shop. Like, you need to get this book. I mean, they typically order things that are top cow image anyway, but I'm like, make sure you get this book and get it the day it came out. But there's just something about that. The book's designed well.
[00:15:32] Speaker C: Beautiful.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: Well, it's excellently lettered as well. We can talk about that as well. The book is beautiful, but the story, I mean, it's a horror ghost.
Ryan, do you want to give a little synopsis?
Give a little synopsis about the book?
[00:15:44] Speaker C: Seriously, that is something of everything. So this is why I love Presidency, these books. This is everything.
Places, characters. Wow. It's complete.
[00:15:57] Speaker A: It's one book that suffices everybody's needs.
[00:16:00] Speaker C: Yeah, I hope so.
[00:16:02] Speaker A: Is that your elevator pitch, Ryan? That's your elevator pitch right there.
[00:16:07] Speaker B: Everybody's better elevator pitches than me, man. I was doing a signing for the first issue, and I went into my long Rambly elevator pitch, and the retailer know, I've just been telling people, like, aliens, but with goats instead of aliens. And I'm like, well, yeah, man, that's a way better fucking pitch than what I would say.
[00:16:28] Speaker A: Well, it's like your elevator pitch is.
[00:16:29] Speaker B: Like, what are you, somebody what am.
[00:16:31] Speaker A: I on an elevator for the tallest building in the world? This elevator pitch is a little long. Seriously.
[00:16:36] Speaker B: I'm like, okay, so you know how ghosts are scary, right? And it's like five minutes.
[00:16:41] Speaker A: Yeah, explaining what ghosts are. So ghosts are apparitions that are after you die.
[00:16:45] Speaker B: Webster's dictionary defines phantom.
[00:16:51] Speaker A: But ghost. But what would be a simplistic description for you other than, yeah, alien?
[00:16:56] Speaker B: Sorry, James Cameron wouldn't want us to be simple.
It's about a group of ghost hunters going to the most haunted island on Earth during the climate apocalypse.
So nothing relevant to current events or current fears that we have at all. Totally not inspired by what we're going through. But no, it's your sort of archetypal haunted house ghost expedition transposed to this hostile environment. And they have like three days to three left, really, to find some ghosts before the island gets wiped out in a megastorm. And they will not have a good time. No, that's my description of the plot. They will not have a good time.
[00:17:49] Speaker A: Have a good time. Well, honestly, let's be honest. First of all, a horror that's based in somewhat true life is scary as hell and climate change is scary as hell. So there's that aspect of it, but also going to a remote island.
But I also thought about it also. It seems like Jurassic Park with ghosts in a sense too, that's scary as hell as well. But the ghost story part of it, it reminded me of not to cheesy make your book seem cheesy, but it honestly reminded like the Halloween specials that Sci-fi used to do with the ghost hunting teams where they'd go to these scary places, but way worse.
[00:18:32] Speaker B: I love ghost hunting. Ghost hunting expeditions like that are so especially as a kid when it was harder for me to be, ah, that's phony. That's what this guy's doing, blah, blah. I was just like all I was glued to the screen.
I went to New Orleans once on like a family trip, and we did one of those cheesy ghost tours. And I definitely had a video camera out the entire time because someone on one of those ghost hunting shows had been like, if you have the camera, you can catch orb footage and you'll see stuff when you go through it later. So I was like, I'll literally always have it running. And then when I get back from the trip, I'll go through frame by frame and find ghostly images.
And not only did I not do that, I just annoyed a bunch of adults who were probably trying to hit daydrunk and wander around New Orleans.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: But see, you turned out fine. It's not so great for these people that go on this trip. However, I did like in one of the first pages, I think for the first issue when they're trying to recruit this team to go on this expedition. And the quotes of like, it's not word for word, but like, ghosts aren't real. So what's the worst that could happen? I was like, that is like the perfect what's the worst could happen? It means that shit's going to hit the fan. When someone puts those words into a comic book or anything, it's like, okay, this is not going to be good because you just said, what's the worst that could happen?
[00:19:52] Speaker B: It's a phrase you should really never, ever say. Like, if you have any sense of irony, you're like, I can't say this. The worst will happen.
[00:20:01] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. There's nothing good is going to happen.
I love watching the ghost story shows. I read horror books all the time. You could never get me on this trip.
There are some things that I don't want to spoil it for anybody, honestly, but there's some things about some financial gains for people that go on this trip and things like that. That yeah, it might twist me in the right direction to go on this do this thing if you're like, okay, you're not going to have any more debt or anything like that. But still, it would be hard. It would be a week, two week long thought process on whether or not I would actually go on this trip to this island.
[00:20:39] Speaker C: For sure.
[00:20:40] Speaker B: Are you afraid of the ghost?
[00:20:41] Speaker A: Are you afraid of I'm not afraid of the ghost.
I don't know. Am I afraid of ghosts? Probably. I don't know. I've never thought about it that way. I'd never been like, I live in a house that was built in 2016, 1718. So it's not like there's ghosts. I mean, I could be on an Indian burial ground.
[00:21:00] Speaker B: I was going to say I'm like, they moved the stones but not the bodies.
[00:21:03] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. I know.
But I also live in Stephen King's backyard, so I should be scared of everything. Honestly, the house that inspired pet cemetery is like three blocks from.
[00:21:19] Speaker B: Soaking it up.
[00:21:20] Speaker A: Yeah, it's right here. And then Stephen King's. I drive to my comic book stores. On the way, I passed Stephen King's house and there's always someone parked out front taking photos of Stephen King's house. Taking pictures of him in front of think he see him? I'm like, he's in Florida, guys.
[00:21:33] Speaker B: Don't he he's not here.
[00:21:35] Speaker A: Andrea is more after you see him than I am.
[00:21:38] Speaker C: He was on the beach yesterday.
[00:21:40] Speaker A: He was tanning.
Have you seen the pictures of Stephen King at a Red Sox game reading a book?
[00:21:46] Speaker C: No.
[00:21:47] Speaker A: Like in between innings, he's got like an art copy of something or something like that. Or like on his iPad reading a book. I'm like, that's perfect. That's awesome for Stephen King. But speaking of Stephen King, that's also something being from Maine, living in Maine, Stephen King country. The Kubrick to Stephen King quote at the very beginning of issue is it issue one? Is that the quote you use? Because you use a quote in every single issue. I'm guessing those are going to be included in the trade as well. It's like the chapter breaks in those too. But the Kubrick one to Stephen King, I didn't write the quote down. I forget what the quote was. Do you remember what the quote?
[00:22:21] Speaker B: It's well, I think ghost stories are inherently optimistic, don't you? If ghosts are real and the afterlife is real, which is sort of like, had been my whole thing, like, ghosts don't scare me at all. I'm like Callum Shaw in this fucking dumb book. I would be the idiot who goes to the island. Because ghosts aren't scary. Ghosts approve of the afterlife. The least scary thing in the world.
And that's what King and Kubrick were talking I think it was on the phone while Kubrick was filming The Shining. I don't think, like, went to the set or anything, but Kubrick, he said that, and Stephen King was apparently, like, paused for a second, was like, no, what are you talking about? No. And he got all mad, and he was like, what about Hell? Hell's scary.
Which he's totally right. I just think it's so funny that I've got an interesting thought on this whole deal. And I'm like me too, man. And Steve's like, no, they're scary idiots.
[00:23:18] Speaker A: Be afraid of ghosts. Be afraid of ghosts.
[00:23:22] Speaker B: You should be afraid.
[00:23:23] Speaker A: Don't tell people not to be scared of a thing. I make my money off of my living.
Don't be scared of my books. Don't buy my books. Don't do any of that stuff. No. But yeah, that caught my attention. Again, there's certain small things, I think that people don't really talk about as much when you create something like this. And I think those quotes and those sayings at the beginning of each book was really the cool thing. And that's where part of me goes into I love single issues. I don't know how you two intake your content on that sense, or I hate to say the word content, but your comics. But I love single issues because of the covers, sometimes the synopsis of what happened in the previous issue, sometimes those quotes, and a lot of times those kind of things end up getting pushed to the back of a trade. You know what I mean? Like, the last page of the trade has all the quotes that you decided to put in the beginning of the book or whatever. And sometimes the connection between the two falls away. And that's me. After I read the first issue, I was like, oh, I'm excited. And then I realized the second issue had one. I was like, I'm excited to see what those quotes are in issue three, four, and five and so on and so forth. So those are the small things I love that going to the whole complete product of a comic book.
[00:24:29] Speaker B: Thank you.
I feel the same way.
Oh, jeez, my desk is a mess. I was, like, looking around, like, what single issues do I have? Or, like, the sickness.
I don't know. There's something, like, really cool in Ephemeral, like you said. Like, having the little quotes, having the COVID having this thing that won't be reprinted. Really? With few exceptions, right? The trade is awesome and efficient and in many ways sometimes a better way to read the story or whatever. But there is something sort of like weird and magic about this once a month thing that has different special stuff in it that is sort of in some cases frantically assembled so it hasn't been overthought, like the trade. And so it might have interesting cool shit or like looks, I don't know.
[00:25:17] Speaker C: Yeah, even though waiting for something amazing. Well, luckily the time passing by. So come on, no rush.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: But Andrew's point is I think there's that we're going back to that even on like for a little while, their TV was weekly. We like, oh, what's going to happen in the next episode? And then we went to the Netflix culture, which was like, can we watch it all at once? And then you realize when you're having conversation with your friend, they're like, I'm only on episode three yet, please don't talk about episode six, and so on and so forth. And then we're kind of like shifting back to that week. Know, every episode comes out every week. So the week between you can go to work or talk to your friends about what's going to happen on the show. And that's something we benefit from, I think when you go to the local comic book shop and someone sees issue one or issue two of comic book on the shelf, like, was that any good? And I could talk to them about how awesome that book was and pick up there's that aspect of it. And also, Andreas, that's how I make a living is covers. And it's part of my job, so please don't take those away from me by making a single trade. There's only one cover that comes on the front of like those variant covers. And those other covers are cool. And as an artist myself, it's just seeing those. So every once in a while, I hate the fact that they put them in the back of the issue, you know what I mean? Sometimes I like to have them. You turn a page and it's like even if it's just the version variant or something like that of a cover, I can see both ways that it kind of breaks up the story in a bad way for some people because they're like, I want to read the next thing. But sometimes I feel like those covers are pushed all the way to the back. And it's like afterthoughts. But that's why you buy the single issues. You get them. So you can have the single issues to collect at home as well, or display or whatever as well. But yeah, there's benefits to both. But the benefit to this is that you can get yours in January all at once. You can get them all at once and read it all at. Once was this planned to be a five issue miniseries.
It was five issues. Like what it was. It was not six and five. It's five issues with the beginning plan.
[00:27:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
With Infinite Dark, they told us four issues and if the four issues did well, we get to do another arc. And so that's what we ended up doing. And as awesome as that was, and as much as I would have loved to do, like, another four issues of Infinite Dark, I sort of didn't want to fall into that trap this time. I wanted us to be able to do, like, a set story and just be know. I still would have taken another few issues because I could play with Andrea in the sandbox.
This is a set story that has to end the way it has to end. But while we were doing it, I was like, I don't know, what if we spin off somebody? What if we do like a 24 issue about this guy? I just want to play with him in this world some more. So it was like a set story, but I know that I speak for myself, but I assume Andrea a little bit too, kind of fell in love with the world and just designing weird little details and wanting to explore it more and.
[00:28:20] Speaker A: Love, that's so much fun. Just hearing people who have great wanting to work with the other person is awesome too.
[00:28:27] Speaker B: I would happily do a Sci-Fi horror miniseries per year with Andrea. We'd be like, this is like an absurdly, unacceptable comparison to make for us. But we'd be like the Phillips Brewbaker of phillips. Yeah, like Pulitzer prize quality. True crime. We are like, what if there was a vampire on a spaceship and it's like five issues? What's going to happen.
[00:29:08] Speaker C: Every year with the monthly book? Absolutely.
[00:29:15] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.
[00:29:16] Speaker A: There you go. Right there. But no, yeah, absolutely.
Let's do it right here. We found out vampire.
I mean, I don't even care about that. We did a variant cover for a comic book before with my LCS. We'll just do a variant for it. We'll do a special one off variant for store variant. There you go. Vampire. I think you should just call it Vampires in Space.
I don't know how well that comic book would sell, man. No unique cool ending or name. Just vampires in space.
[00:29:46] Speaker C: Red space.
[00:29:47] Speaker A: Yeah, red space. Look at this.
Give that away, man. That's really good.
[00:29:54] Speaker C: It's nice. Red space.
[00:29:58] Speaker A: Ryan, you've done things like Punisher, Venom, you've done some titles that were not your thing to mess around with. I'm guessing you have more fun doing things like this. Not that they're not fun doing big two stuff or properties that are not your own. There must be some sort of maybe a little bit more freedom, it feels like.
[00:30:18] Speaker B: I know most creators I know feel that way.
I'm kind of the opposite. These are real and stressful and hard work. For me, they're like an intense artistic endeavor, whereas I'm a big fucking nerd who grew up doing stupid, idiot nerd shit. And so to get paid to create fan fiction is like and also the apex of that is like the gifted student syndrome. So, like, I'm like, you're telling me that the editor of Batman has a special assignment in mind and that if I do it right, I can get an A plus on the assignment. And also that means I get to tell Batman stories. So there's a lot of that that comes really naturally to but like, as you say. And this is the reason, I think, obviously why most creators prefer your own things, obviously, because it's your original idea. But every once in a while you'll get that one element, you're like, I really want this to happen. The other is like, well, that can't happen because three issues from now, green Lantern is going to have to fight so and So, and you can't have him here. And it's like, well, now the whole story is ruined.
[00:31:26] Speaker A: I'm going to take my ball and go home. No.
[00:31:29] Speaker B: Which is not all the case, obviously. But those pitfalls don't come up in Creator Own. You're just like doing your megalomaniacal thing.
[00:31:37] Speaker A: It makes sense. But it's like both best of both worlds. I've heard people talk the idea that you finally got to do what you want to do, what you've always wanted to do. Yes, but also there is restrictions. So having your own thing plus some people like the guidance, too. Some people are like, oh, okay, tell me kind of how I'm going to do this. And then I'll just write around that that's cool. I've seen that in the creator Own side of it, too, where someone else is the story builder, but someone else writes the actual dialogue and the actual story. And so they like, that idea. Someone put that together for me. But then I get to go and play in my own, and I could just be like, talk to So and so and be like I mean, Kate Rommel talked about that with Christopher chaos you actually had on your.
[00:32:17] Speaker B: Work on that book.
[00:32:18] Speaker A: I could do things I want to do on it, but I got to run some of it by Know and James Tinney. If anybody doesn't know who I'm talking about with James, I feel like James is on a first name basis in the world, right?
[00:32:29] Speaker B: We could first name.
[00:32:31] Speaker A: He could he could run things by him. But he really has a freedom to do Know. And the original story was actually created originally by James Tyion IV. That's cool, too. I can see all kinds of things that you get to do with things. So yeah, I could see both sides of it for sure. I've fallen more into creator own independent stuff over the past two or three years. Most of my love started with Marvel in the secret wars, secret Acer, secret invasion. Time kind of fell away a little bit, came back with Secret Wars, with Marvel, things like that. But there's been this Marvel thing for me, but recently I've been more in the independent side of things, wanting to read that stuff a little bit more because you can kind of guess in one sense what Marvel and DC where they're going to go, whereas you're haunting you to the end. I had no idea where it was going to go by the time we hit the end, which is pretty happy.
[00:33:21] Speaker B: I'm happy that it wasn't predictable. And that's true. That's really the good point, is that that's what we want to hear also, please, is that people are buying our independent creator owned stuff. So thank you for supporting Andrea.
[00:33:35] Speaker A: Do you like this style that you've been doing with this watercolor stuff more now than some of your older know?
[00:33:41] Speaker C: In this way, I can express myself. Everything a little bit better. I am always in evolution. I try to do something different. Stuff like gray tones, like black and white pencils, watercolors. I think this watercolors approach is maybe something different in this market. That many titles are pretty much similar, graphically speaking.
Most of them maybe are digital. So digital stuff is very nice, very cool, but in some ways pretty cold.
And maybe this ancient approach could be the future. Why not something really out of the shelves. But the way it very seems attractive and engaging and unique because you know what a color I can do. And okay, I cannot repeat and replicate the same exactly colored, same page. But I can do something, what I can say very, for me, very experimentation, experimental. Oh, look at this. Look at that. So even haunted the end, for example, super acid greens, super blue lights, something I think pop up on the pages. I really enjoy this kind of storytelling. We are storyteller. Yes. I'm not an artist, and it's very important to me. I'm not showing you how cool I am to draw something. But to tell you something, for me, it's the point.
[00:35:06] Speaker A: I've fallen in love with that too. And I'm glad you started doing that style. Not that your other stuff wasn't good. This is definitely where I see if I was to picture your work, this is where I want your work to look like now. And I also think that there's this thing that there's some gruesome scenes, in a sense, in haunt you to the end. Recently. Like I said, I've read A Legacy of Violence. There's some scenes in there that if they were more clean and not watercolor, they might be a little bit too graphic, if that makes any taught. We read nail biter for my book club at my local comic book shop. And I talked to Mike Henderson about it, and I was like, there was someone in there who didn't like the cartoony ness of nail biter. They wanted it more realistic. And I was like, can you imagine seeing this fine detailed artwork of someone eating their fingernails? How gross that would be that I said it sometimes needs this different style of artwork to make it so that it's still graphic and still gets the point across, but doesn't have this stomach churning. This is too graphic.
[00:36:10] Speaker C: You know what I think? Even for the read, for the audience, it's good to have differences.
[00:36:15] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:36:16] Speaker C: Or you're like the same route and okay, think different. Why not? Maybe it's your duty.
[00:36:25] Speaker A: Personally, I like and I said the name haunt you to the end, too. Brought me in big time as well on this book, too.
Did you have this story for a while, Ryan, or was this like a wild while or is this something that was more recent? I know you mentioned a little bit about it, but was this more recent?
[00:36:45] Speaker B: It was pretty recent.
Thank you for the comment on the title. I love a Matt Rosenberg title. It's sort of what I'm always going for is to try and capture the glory of, like, we Can Never Go Home, or like, I don't know, man, that guy's a title genius. I love a big, long, silly title.
[00:37:01] Speaker A: This isn't as long as some of Matt's, though. So let's be honest.
[00:37:04] Speaker B: One day I'll beat him. I'll have like a three sentence title with a colon and an.
No, no, actually, I'm obsessed with death. I think about it all the time. It's a real problem.
But so I knew that I wanted to do something with that. And we talked about the weather horror thing, but this really sort of came up from andrea sent me that batch of pages and I was just like, I need to do a weather horror thing. Do a stat. And I'd always wanted to do haunted house stuff. And so I was just like, what's something? How can I do weather and ghosts? And I just sort of worked it. It wasn't one of those stories that comes to you and just unravels. I just sort of was like went on a lot of walks and sat in the shower and was like, I bet this should happen.
[00:37:52] Speaker A: You're like me. You think about comics in the shower.
Try not to read them in the shower, though. I don't think it's any form possible that you could read a comic book in a shower because iPads would ruin if you read it digitally. Maybe laminate each page. I don't know.
[00:38:09] Speaker B: We are doomed forever.
Think about comics but not read them in the shower. Sorry, what are you going to say?
[00:38:15] Speaker A: I read a book club. We read Wind, and one of our guys that was in the book club liked it so much that he was reading it at the table. He was doing all kinds of stuff with it, and he spilt water on it on the trade at the table. But at book club, when we met for book club, we kept on joking that he was reading it in the bathtub, and they kept on dropping it in the bathtub, and that's why the page is all wet. And he's like, Gosh, I wasn't taking it, was all defensive about it. I'm like, hey, why not sit down, have a nice bubble bath, read. But so just don't drop it in the tub. That's all you do. That's one thing. Water and comics don't mix together. That's just the way it works.
You have five issues have been released by the time this episode comes out, right? Fifth issue is already out. I appreciate the fifth issue. I get some of them ahead of time, so I don't know. Sometimes the dates are all fluid because I've gotten comics like three months in advance. I've gotten them won't we? So they're all out now. But this is now with the trade coming out in January, this is the opportunity where you can have conversations with people who have read it, that have read the entire thing, that weren't waiting week to week. Is this an exciting moment for you, this last push for the last month or so, to get this trade on the shelves?
[00:39:22] Speaker B: Absolutely. And exactly for the reason you just said is that part of that thing about comics, of building all this up and releasing it, is that if you're doing it right and you're not behind on your schedule, you've made most of this before you're showing it to anybody, and so you don't have feedback. You're not really sure. There's always an element. Hopefully, it's like one five minute moment.
In the worst case scenarios, it's several months. It wasn't that for this, but the feeling of like, is this going to connect with anybody? We're making this by ourselves over email chains, just sort of like working in the dark on it. Will this land.
And this process has been really magical and painless. And I love working with Andrea on anything, and I feel really proud of the book, and I love everything he's done with it. So I'm really more excited to be able to shove it in people's hands and talk to people and be like, did you see what he drew on page, like, 48? Isn't that nuts? Look at that.
[00:40:26] Speaker A: Well, I was just going to say that thing about Andrea. This must be cool, too, because when you work so hard on artwork like this and you're excited, there's a splash page or some sort of page on page ten and issue five that you're done with, and you're like, I really want people to see this now I have to wait for it to come out. And so now that everybody see, hopefully those fans who bought it on the shelf have seen all these things. But now that the trade is coming out, it's kind of a cool piece that someone could put on their shelf. Or I don't let people borrow single issues that often because I don't feel like anybody has to borrow it. But if someone is interested in the book and they're like, oh, can I give it a shot? And I have a copy, I'll let them borrow a trade. And so that's also kind of cool. You have this ability to let people borrow or share this book even more.
Pretty exciting. Yeah, it's pretty exciting. And so I've always talked to us, we record these episodes like, a couple of weeks in advance, usually, or a week or so in advance, and I always get a great conversation with people, and I'm always like, I want people to listen to this episode. I can't imagine writing something and waiting this like, waiting that long for someone to actually read the book.
I just can't. It's too long. I could never write a novel because people do that years in advance, and then it comes out, they market it for a year, and finally people get to read it. It's just not for me. I like the whole couple of weeks before someone reads my stuff.
[00:41:43] Speaker B: You need that instant I need instant.
[00:41:45] Speaker A: Gratification or instant failure, because it could be a failure, and then you waited a year for that failure to happen. It not sounds like fun, in my opinion.
[00:41:53] Speaker B: It's the waiting that gets you. Yeah.
[00:41:56] Speaker A: Ryan haunt you to the end, hits shells the second week of January, december or January 9 10th, right around the 10th at local comic book shops. I believe it's January 9 everywhere at bookstores, everywhere.
And I don't know how that works in the sense that you can tell your local comic book shop for FOC, but I don't know how that works for Trip Bookstores.
How late can they order it and get it in for that day? I don't know.
I'm looking something up. I was trying to look up where the where is it? Paperback January 9 birthday to me. Yes, exactly. They did that on purpose over at Top Guy.
[00:42:36] Speaker B: You know that they did ask. They're like, is January 10 okay? And they had other dates in mind. And I was like, no, we got to do that day. Like, perfect.
[00:42:47] Speaker A: That's awesome. Happy birthday.
[00:42:49] Speaker B: Very excited.
[00:42:51] Speaker A: Your comps better become wrapped. That's all I'm saying. They better be in wrapping paper.
[00:42:55] Speaker B: I want a little bow on the box or I will riot.
[00:42:59] Speaker A: This is someone in the shipping department just drawing a little bow on there to make sure you had your bow on there. But no, that's awesome. I'm excited for everybody to read it because I thought it was absolutely wonderful.
You should buy it for sure. Tell your local comic book shop or your bookstore. I've always said, like we mentioned before, off the top, try to buy it locally, but if you can't just buy it, that's the big thing in the end, do not choose not to buy this because you don't want to buy it on Amazon. If the only place you can get it, easiest place for you to get is Amazon, then buy it on Amazon. Just buy it and read it. That's my biggest thing. Try shopping local, but if you can't, then go get it. Anywhere else you can get andrea, you've got obviously Legacy of Violence is finishing up here in early 2024. Haunt you to the end, obviously. Charred remains is coming in December. Excited for that.
Anything else that you're working on right.
[00:43:53] Speaker C: Now that you can talk about the Qui Gon Jean Star Wars graphic novel?
[00:43:58] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:44:03] Speaker C: That'D be good. It's pretty long.
[00:44:06] Speaker A: Yeah, that's awesome. And then obviously, you got Destiny Skate and Auntie to the end. Ryan, what else are you working on?
[00:44:12] Speaker B: Right, I'm just I don't know if it'll be over by the time this airs, but I'm doing a Kickstarter for Wolf Spain. It's a web tune that Morgan Beam and I put together. It's one of the best things I've ever written. I'm really proud of it. So the Kickstarter ends on the 31st, so I don't know if there's enough time to back. You all better back?
[00:44:33] Speaker A: I don't know.
No, I think this is the 27th.
We're in advance here because I wanted to beat the holidays on this, but I believe this actually drops on yes, December 27. So you have a few days. Grab that kickstarter, right? You said the 31 December.
[00:44:50] Speaker B: November 31.
[00:44:51] Speaker A: Oh, never mind, never mind, never mind.
[00:44:54] Speaker B: I hope you did I hope you did back my Kickstarter. No, genuinely, that's a book I'm really proud of and I can't wait to see it put in print in people's hands. And then in February, I think I have a story in the first issue of Marvel's Aliens. Black, white and blood.
[00:45:09] Speaker A: Oh, nice. Yeah, I mean, I love the black and white and blood stuff. Yeah.
[00:45:15] Speaker B: Dream gig. I'm really, really excited, but I loved.
[00:45:20] Speaker A: What you're doing over at Topgal a lot, too, and so I'm excited for more from you there, too. And obviously anything that has Andrea's name on it is going to be in my collection, I'll tell you that much, for sure.
[00:45:32] Speaker B: As you said, you'd be on the lookout for vampire in space.
[00:45:36] Speaker A: Yeah, vampire blood.
There you go. From the Top cow is going to be like, what are you doing here? Pitching stuff on podcasts that you haven't come to us with yet. Then you're going to see like, some person who ripped us off now is going to do it over at somewhere.
Yeah. Robert Kirkman. Listens a lot. So Skybound is actually going to print this here pretty soon. So don't sorry, you guys, that guy.
[00:45:58] Speaker B: Moves way too quick.
[00:46:01] Speaker A: But yeah. So thank you so much for taking time out of your days to come on here and chat. Haunt you to the end and so much more. Make sure people grab it. January 10. Com bookshop, but yeah. Thank you so much, gentlemen.
[00:46:13] Speaker B: No, thank you.
[00:46:15] Speaker C: Thank you so much. You're more than welcome.
[00:46:17] Speaker A: Keep up the great work. And yeah, we'll chat again in the future, for sure. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, no, likewise.
[00:46:23] Speaker C: Thank you.
