#157: Jesse Lundberg - Comic Book Artist

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back to another episode of the Capes and Tights podcast right here on capesandtites.com. I'm your host, Justin Soderberg. This episode we welcomed Jesse Lundberg to the podcast comic book artist and creator to talk about various things in the comic book industry. We touched a little bit on Jesse's artwork, but a lot of random stuff. So this is a cool episode, chatting as bros and just hanging out. So check out this episode. But before you do, follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, blue Sky, as well as check us out on Facebook or on Apple, Spotify and all our major podcasting platforms. This is Jesse lundberg.com, book creator and artist who has done variant covers for Mad Cave, dynamite, scout, and so many more publishers, as well as he's done sketch cards for dynamite and upper deck. So check out this episode with Jesse Lundberg, comic book creator and artist. Enjoy everyone. [00:00:50] Speaker B: One. [00:01:02] Speaker A: It gives you announcement. Yes, give it. Welcome to the podcast. [00:01:06] Speaker B: Oh wait, what does it say to push this? Okay, there we go. [00:01:09] Speaker A: Just in case, warns you because of the two, the state law or the station law or whatever that you have to approve. [00:01:18] Speaker B: That would have sucked had I not pushed that button. And it just gives a one sided. [00:01:23] Speaker A: Conversation the entire, it doesn't actually let me know that you didn't press. Ok, I'm just talking in. Yeah, afterwards I'm going in, editing it and I'm talking like you. He said this, I swear it promised. He said this response. [00:01:36] Speaker B: It's like Garfield without Garfield. It's just John going through his day. [00:01:42] Speaker A: Is that a thing? That should be a thing. I feel like a YouTube video of that would be amazing. [00:01:47] Speaker B: Oh yeah. [00:01:48] Speaker A: Way more entertaining than a one sided conversation with me, I'll tell you that. [00:01:53] Speaker B: He's going insane. He's always been insane. He's going insane. [00:02:00] Speaker A: See, people don't tune in to watch me or listen to me. They definitely tune in to listen to you guys. So if it was a half a conversation with just me, they'd be like, yeah, I'm done with this podcast. I'm done listening to this. [00:02:11] Speaker B: I mean, with a name like mine, you're going to get ones of great. [00:02:18] Speaker A: Listen if you listen to it. We're up one. Yes, galactic comics will listen to it. He usually plays it in the store, so that's good. [00:02:30] Speaker B: I know a few of my friends are like, oh cool. Let me know when it's out. [00:02:35] Speaker A: See, we got, there we go. That's cool. We'll break records. We'll break records here. But yeah, we were talking for a little bit before we started recording, and I'm waiting for a baby to come, which is cool. I'm excited about that. Well, I should be excited about that, except for my kid, who's three, won't sleep right now. And I'm like, dude, I just need two more weeks of sleeping. Just two more weeks. He slept through the night, no problem. Then he got a really bad cold and he was coughing at night and so he'd be afraid to go to bed at night because he was afraid he was going to cough. So then his sleep schedule got kind of like screwed up and he now won't go to bed or will go to bed, no problem. Then wake up at 03:00 in the morning. And so there's this whole back and forth thing. I'm like, dude, just give me two weeks of great sleep. [00:03:21] Speaker B: Really? He's just preparing you. [00:03:24] Speaker A: Well, I'm thinking of myself. I'm a gentleman, too, because when my son wakes up at 03:00 in the morning and my 37 week old or 37 week pregnant wife, I'm not going to be like, can you roll yourself out of bed so you can go help our son while I sleep? I'll just get up and do it. Yeah, can you get up, please? [00:03:42] Speaker B: Sounds like a mommy problem. [00:03:44] Speaker A: Or she'll try and you can just hear her trying to get out of bed. And I'm like, okay, enough. I'll get up. [00:03:54] Speaker B: You're telling me that you're not there? Like, hey, do you need a shove? [00:03:59] Speaker A: Hold on. We just turn here. Just kick my feet a little bit and see if it'll push you out. But no, I was wondering like, a week or two of sleep would be great. But I guess, yeah, you're right. I'll just get some practice here. Of waking up. [00:04:11] Speaker B: Yeah, you got to train for it. So he's getting you prepared. [00:04:15] Speaker A: But there is a difference. And you understand this, I think, too, there's a difference between you don't know when your son's going to wake up in the middle of the night to knowing that you have to wake up. [00:04:24] Speaker B: Every couple of schedule that you need. [00:04:27] Speaker A: Okay, I got to get 2 hours of sleep most likely. This is great. [00:04:29] Speaker B: Cool. [00:04:30] Speaker A: Awesome. But then if you're like, cool, I'm going to get 2 hours of sleep or a whole night's sleep. And then at 01:00 in the morning, he wakes up and you're like, oh, whatever. [00:04:36] Speaker B: But then you're like the most unnerving night of sleep you'll ever get. And you probably remember experiencing this is the first time the kid sleeps all the way through the night. And then you wake up and you're like, oh, my God, what happened? [00:04:51] Speaker A: You're like checking your camera, the camera on your phone. You're like, oh, yeah, okay. [00:04:55] Speaker B: There's movement. There's movement. [00:04:56] Speaker A: Oh, God. But yes, exactly. Because you're like, what happened? Why did he sleep through the night? Is he okay? [00:05:03] Speaker B: Yeah, it's the most terrifying happy because you're like, oh, my God, they're finally sleeping all the way through the night. But yeah, that first instance when you wake up, you're like, oh, crap. [00:05:16] Speaker A: That. And when your son's playing really loudly and then doesn't make a noise for like ten minutes, you're like, okay. Either he's hurt and just like immediately something really bad happening and he wasn't enough where he couldn't cry, or he's getting into shit and he's doing something he's not supposed to be doing. And most of the time he's getting into something he's not supposed to be doing. But I haven't had him the most hurt himself. [00:05:38] Speaker B: Thing you can do is be quiet while being suspicious. Some more noise while you're doing it. You're probably going to get away with it. [00:05:46] Speaker A: Bang your hand somewhere, do something, make a car noise or whatever, and then draw on the wall at the same time. Come on. [00:05:53] Speaker B: That's one of the reasons why Margaret hates the automatic noise. Toys like ones that will just do it to entice your kid to play, is that could be going off and then you could turn around and the kid's standing right next to you and it's going off in a different room. She's like, I like to know that it's being played with and that's where the kid is. We don't have that problem as much anymore. Like, Aaron, seven. [00:06:26] Speaker A: I told myself one kid. Jesse, too. Like I said, one kid. We talked about it. We were like, one. We're having one. This is all we're going to have. Yada, yada, yada and Nova. My son is just so good and was so good for the longest time that I talked myself into a second child. I feel like he has an understanding that his sister's coming and he's trying for the attention. We used to be able to wake up in the morning with him at like 05:00 in the morning and go sit on the couch with him or whatever and put on some tv or have him read a book or some sort of low key, easy thing. Now it's like 05:00 in the morning. He wakes us up. He goes in. There goes, let's play cars. Let's do a puzzle. Let's color this. Let's do this. Can you do this? Can you get on the floor? And I'm like, dude, you need to give me. [00:07:08] Speaker B: Set up the ramp or taking a bike off of it. You're three. [00:07:11] Speaker A: He's like, dude. I'm like, do we need ten minutes for me to actually wake up, get some coffee, figure this out? You can't just go write it in my bed, by my bed with a puzle. I'll be like, who put this puzzle together? Which means, dad. I put the puzzle together. He can't put together three years old. It's me putting it together. But, yeah, I feel like he understands that his sister's coming and that he's trying to get as much attention and effort into us. [00:07:32] Speaker B: It's either you're helping me with a puzzle, or I'm biting off pieces to make them fit. [00:07:39] Speaker A: No, he would just yell in my name over and over and over again. Oh, yeah. He'd be like the episode of Family Guy where Stewie just goes, mama, mama, mama. That's what he got. [00:07:48] Speaker B: Apparently, I've got Erin trained pretty well. It doesn't matter what it is. She calls for Margaret first, and I could literally be sitting next to her, and she'll be like, hey, mom, can you do something for me or come take a look at this? And she's like, can't dad do it? Yeah. [00:08:06] Speaker A: Well, and at the beginning, we're both like, a similar thing happened to me, and we're both like, take offense to it. Like, we're like, oh, my gosh. I can't believe. What the heck's wrong with, why doesn't my son want me? And then now I'm like, good. I'm going to watch tv. Ask mama what you want. She'll get you a water. She's in the other room, but she can get your water. [00:08:23] Speaker B: Going to find out what Scooby Doo and Shaggy get into this time? [00:08:27] Speaker A: No, he watched cars. So we had Covid, like, two years ago in the summer, and he watched cars one, cars two, cars three, and then repeat. Right? We watched it, I don't know, each 130 times. Right. During this time that he had Covid, and we found ourselves. Him, like, passed out, falling asleep, and we found ourselves still watching it and being like, yeah, what's going to happen next? I'm like, we know how these movies go. I could recite them to you right now. I could figure that out. And then he'll put it on randomly now and I'll do the same thing. I'm like, oh, cool, this is cars one. I'm like, what am I doing? I've seen this movie 150 times and I'm still captivated by what's going on on the screen. And I'm still getting jokes like, I didn't know about, jokes that I didn't understand or whatever. And it was just kind of funny. [00:09:12] Speaker B: Went over your head or you were half paying attention. The first time I've done that with a couple of movies where it's been like, I'm half paying attention. When did that happen? Same time every time it's played. [00:09:27] Speaker A: But there's other movies that I totally ignore. When he puts paw patrol on, I'm. [00:09:31] Speaker B: Like, okay, that's not one that gets played here. Erin's in the bluey. She's just so. She loves the, obviously she's in the creepy stuff. So she likes Scooby Doo, she likes gravity falls. She loved, I just showed her the 90s tales from the crypt keeper, the cartoon. [00:10:04] Speaker A: Yes. [00:10:05] Speaker B: Not the live action. And she's loved that. [00:10:10] Speaker A: Now she won't sleep through the night. I was kidding. [00:10:13] Speaker B: No, she sleeps perfectly. [00:10:15] Speaker A: That's why she's afraid. She's afraid to wake up. [00:10:18] Speaker B: To sleep in is the hard part. But yes, today she did. We were out late last night. Late for her. She was up till 09:00. Party animal. But she's one that if she doesn't get, like the full 12 hours of sleep, like, good luck dealing with her the next day. [00:10:34] Speaker A: Next day? [00:10:35] Speaker B: Yeah, she's a bear. But she woke up today at like 839 o'clock. She's like, wow, I slept in. I'm like, well, you also went to bed like, 2 hours later than you normally do, so you got up necessarily sleep in. You just didn't get less sleep. [00:10:56] Speaker A: Yes. And see, to me, it's always like, my wife and I talked about it. I'd rather have, if we're just home and my son won't go to bed, I'd rather have him go to bed at seven or eight and then sleep until get up early. I mean, than the opposite. Even though I would rather sleep in the morning, I know I have to get up and do stuff anyway. I get up a couple of hours early, whatever. But if I can get him to go to bed earlier and then I have a couple of hours of just like, my wife and I watching tv or reading a comic or doing some art or something like that. I'd rather have that than the opposite because I'm not going to do that in the morning. I'm just going to sleep. So to me it's like a wasted time if I don't. I like the idea of having my son go to bed early, but I'll take sleep when I get sleep, honestly, at this. [00:11:39] Speaker B: So what was it, Saturday? And a like, I don't know what it was. Erin was having a sleepover at her grandparents. We had gone out to watch a play and we had gotten home after we hung out with a cast. After the play, we went out to dinner with them and got home and I don't know why because I was pretty tired going into the play. I was like, I need coffee. I'm going to fall asleep during this. I was up until 06:00 a.m. Sunday morning, like just staring at the ceiling going, it was bad. [00:12:19] Speaker A: And then the world did not want you to sleep. [00:12:21] Speaker B: I finally fell asleep about 06:00 a.m. And I slept till about ten. Kind of woke up, fell back asleep until about eleven, but then my whole day was shot. I'm just like, so I'm still recovering. I hate it that it used to be that you could do that no problem. And I'm 38 now. And now it's like you do that you're recovering for the next three days just trying to get back that sleep cycle that you got screwed out of. [00:12:57] Speaker A: Well, I laughed because I got a new car. I went and got a Kia Celtos, which is funny because I had a lease of my other car that I got right before my son was born. And so the last time I dealt with my sales guy from Kia, they were like, weren't you just having a baby when you bought your last car? I'm like, yeah, every time I have a new child, I'm going to have a new car. And they looked at them and go, and this is the last one, so I might not ever buy a car again. So this is my car I get buried in because I'm not having another child. So I can't buy another car. No, it has this, like, they're like. [00:13:28] Speaker B: Let'S give you the extended warranty. [00:13:30] Speaker A: Then this party mode in my car. So when you play music in it, the lights on the floor, the mood lighting, changes to the music and stuff like that, which is like cool and all, but I'm like, I'm never going to use this. First of all, for that time, you. [00:13:44] Speaker B: Need a rave in your car. [00:13:46] Speaker A: I listen to a lot of podcasts and audiobooks. They don't work. And I looked at them, I go, and I don't remember the last time I was out past 07:00 because I have a three year. That, too. It's like the lights are not going to be on. [00:14:01] Speaker B: I find that funny. I used to always listen to music while driving, and now I always listen to podcasts and stuff. And I'm one of those guys that listens to NPR. I was like, I need to consume the NPR is to get some unbiased news or as close to unbiased as you can get. [00:14:27] Speaker A: Answer news that doesn't have to do with a comic book character, because that's the problem I had for the longest time. It was like, I know a lot of news and like, oh, really? Say it. Okay. Yeah, Jason Aaron's going to start writing turtles. And they're like, no, I meant they're. [00:14:43] Speaker B: On the next run. [00:14:44] Speaker A: Comic book. Have you read it? No. You need legit. I'm like, okay, that's the problem. [00:14:52] Speaker B: Who are we mad with now? [00:14:55] Speaker A: What did Donald Trump do this. [00:14:57] Speaker B: Oh, God, don't even get me started. Oh, my. [00:15:04] Speaker A: Yeah, it's NPR or podcasts or audiobooks. To me, that's the thing. It's like my Spotify rap next year is going to be like, you listen to 1 hour of music and it's all going to be like Disney soundtracks. Like, oh, that was when my son wanted to cut music in the. [00:15:19] Speaker B: So because we're in New Hampshire, we had all the political stuff for the last year, and anytime we drive by a sign, you just hear Aaron in the back of the car. Donald Trump or Nikki Haley, like, she is so done with it. I'm like, get ready. It's about to get worse. [00:15:42] Speaker A: Oh, it's going to get worse. And I mean, yeah, maybe she'll be in the debate clubs and stuff like that in school and stuff like that because of it. Maybe she'll be. [00:15:49] Speaker B: Yeah. I don't know how well the debate of. And what do you have to say in response? [00:15:54] Speaker A: That's her slogan. She's going to run for office. You want to know why you should vote for me? [00:15:58] Speaker B: Well put. [00:15:59] Speaker A: Why you should vote for me? It's all the other candidates are, you know why you should vote for me? [00:16:07] Speaker B: You know what? I feel like a third party person could run this year. And just their slogan be, and everyone be like, I get it. [00:16:18] Speaker A: I'm not one of those two, so vote for me. Yes, exactly. [00:16:21] Speaker B: Yeah, but that's the thing. You can either join the cult of MAGA or you can. I feel like the other side isn't as cultish, but I don't like him either. [00:16:41] Speaker A: No one does. But that's what we've dealt with for the past. Not to get super political on here, but that's what we've dealt with since I've been able to vote. I'm 37, so I've been able to vote right around the same amount of time you've been able to vote. And we've dealt with that since the beginning. It was like, let's just vote for. [00:16:55] Speaker B: The person that's not the worst person. [00:16:58] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:16:59] Speaker B: The last thing I'll say on the matter is I would finally like to be able to vote for someone that's not the lesser of two evils, which. [00:17:06] Speaker A: Is going to be super hard, because that's just like, we're so ingrained into everything over the years that it just ends up turning out the same. The fact of the matter is that the red party is still backing this person who's in trouble. That's the point where we're in the society that we're in, that we're like, okay, let's not pick a different candidate. There's tons of candidates out there, but let's still back this person and talk about this person who literally started an insurrection. Let's just figure this out. This person, yes, but that's my point. We're in this society of that and the other guy. I mean, like we just mentioned the other guys, we might have not be alive by the end of the terms of the second. The fate of our world or our country is in the hands of someone who's an awful human being and then someone who's older than my grandparents. [00:18:04] Speaker B: Not necessarily great, but better than the opposition. [00:18:08] Speaker A: Yes, it is, but still, I'm saying. But they're not the glowing bill of health that you'd want. Could you be, what, 35 to run for office? Is that what it is? 35? [00:18:17] Speaker B: Yes. [00:18:18] Speaker A: There's no 36 year olds running. We're going to run this country who's like, jogging every day. It's all going to be 50, 60, 70, 80 year old. [00:18:26] Speaker B: There's one guy that I'm keeping an eye on. Was it Jeffords out of South Carolina? I think it is. I think he'll probably be making news in the next decade or so. [00:18:42] Speaker A: That's good. I just read the dead zone from Stephen King. I don't know if you've ever read that. [00:18:48] Speaker B: I have. It. I have, like, every Stephen King book, and I've read about three of them. [00:18:52] Speaker A: I just finished it last night. And it's definitely the idea that he can touch people and kind of know their past, present, future. There's a Christopher Walken movie. Christopher Walken movie as well. [00:19:08] Speaker B: Yeah. Was it Anthony Michael hall was in? [00:19:14] Speaker A: Like, if you knew if you touched a candidate and he's going to start a war, it's like, what would you do? And I'm like, dude, that's such a screwed up thought process. Because, no, I wouldn't want to go to jail for killing someone. But also, in the same sense, could you stop him from killing a bunch of other people because he did a senseless war and all this other stuff and be a bad political candidate? And I'm like, such a hard thing because, no, I wanted to be here for my kids and my family. But in the same sense, if you knew, you could stop it, but no one would believe you. No one would believe you that that's what would like, unless someone could see pictures of what you just. It's a crazy book. I liked it a lot. I think it's one of Stephen King's better books. Honestly, being from Maine, I am the tell all, be all know, being the best Stephen King fans know. Forget you people or Vermont people, because you're from Vermont, right? [00:20:11] Speaker B: I'm from Vermont originally. Yeah. [00:20:13] Speaker A: Okay, but you live in New Hampshire now. [00:20:16] Speaker B: Yes. That's what his name. I screwed up his name all of a sudden. I said Jefferson. I'm like, I don't think that's his name. It's Jeff Jackson. [00:20:26] Speaker A: Jeff Jackson. That's also awesome. That's like throwback to old school presidential names, too. That's a name right there. Jeff Jackson or basketball player. [00:20:39] Speaker B: Look him up. I think you might agree with some of his stuff. [00:20:44] Speaker A: Yes. We've covered topics here. For everybody who's going to listen to this, we've covered what it's like to be a parent, which is great. [00:20:52] Speaker B: Yes. [00:20:53] Speaker A: We talked about a little bit of political things. Two things that if someone doesn't give a crap about politics or doesn't have kids, I've already turned off this episode of the podcast, which is. [00:21:02] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I mean, I'm zoned out already. [00:21:05] Speaker A: But if anybody's kept on going on this thing, maybe sprinkle some comic book. [00:21:11] Speaker B: Stuff like when editing, you're just like. [00:21:14] Speaker A: Way out of order. [00:21:16] Speaker B: Thor or Captain America. [00:21:18] Speaker A: That's what we're actually talking about, guys. We weren't talking about legitimate politics. We're talking about when Steve Rogers is running for president. Let's put some nerd things in. No, you live in New Hampshire, so we're New Englanders. We live in New England. New England's awesome. New England has a good number of good creators out there right now. A lot of artists, which is great. [00:21:44] Speaker B: It's surprising for such a small geographical area or population wise? [00:21:51] Speaker A: Wise, yes. Percentage of people per capita, great, talented compo creators to the number of people in this area. It's high, in my opinion. And that may be just because we're both entrenched in it and we're right here in this area. But when we go to a comic convention or show or things like that, we end up seeing a lot of the people that are like, it's actually nice because I'm friends with the people from MCTC main comic Atoicon, Bangor comic Atoicon, and things like that. A lot of times they end up bringing a lot of local creators in there, but they're like, in our backyard, and it's like, we don't have to fly them in. So what do you expect us to. I'm like, okay, yeah, well, I jokingly. [00:22:28] Speaker B: Have said with some other people, it's like, and with special guests, I'm like, why don't you just call them guest in residence? Like they're here all every year. Trust me, I'm friends with all of the guys that are the guests in residence, but I would be more shocked if they weren't there. [00:22:48] Speaker A: Well, I actually worked for a company in Massachusetts, used to advertise in the paper all the time. Like, they had an ad in the paper every single day. It was there. And then one day they're just looking at the budgets and they're like, yeah, should we still do this ad in the paper? And I'm like, well, now you've done it long enough that if you don't have it in there, the older people who read the newspaper every day are going to be like, wait, did they close? Because you don't have the ad in there anymore. So now I feel like you're stuck. [00:23:12] Speaker B: You need to have some type of a presence. [00:23:16] Speaker A: For those old people looking through the obituaries, trying to find out which they need to see that ad. Same thing. I felt like with some of these conventions, I feel like the people that need to be there, what they need to end up doing is because no one's going to really fault them for this, is you need to do the Ben Bishop thing and just say you're going to be there. Have them announce you're going to be there and then can't make it. Yeah, I threw Ben under the bus there. I'm just joking because he couldn't come over again. Back to the kids related thing is he couldn't come over and hang out with us and main company at Toycon last year because he just had a baby. But we were joking, to be honest. This wasn't a serious diss at Ben. I don't want to be like, no, I feel didn't take the tone in. [00:23:59] Speaker B: That, to be honest. I was surprised that he like, even up to the day of was like, yeah, I can be there. I'm like, no. Having had a kid, I'm like, no, you're not. It's like I have an excuse. [00:24:13] Speaker A: It would have been like, I need to leave the house for an hour. Just come over. Yeah. Table with someone. Yeah, done that. [00:24:21] Speaker B: But it was no surprise. [00:24:22] Speaker A: I know, I'm giving him shit, obviously. [00:24:25] Speaker B: Yeah, no, and I'm just saying it's like, I was more surprised that it still said that he was coming than just him being like, guys. Not one person there wouldn't have not understood. We've got friends who are expecting twins here this spring and they already have a young child and the dad's trying to still figure out what his schedule is going to be this year. And I'm like changing diapers. [00:24:59] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:25:00] Speaker B: And he realizes that there's already ones that he's like, I'm not going to do that. I can't do that and stuff like that, obviously. But he's like, you still want to have that presence in the arena, but then it's the logistical of everything. [00:25:19] Speaker A: But does that boil down to also the fact that you guys like going to conventions, right? It's a fun thing to do, too. This is not just clocking into work, everybody and just going to work, but this is like for someone like yourself who does a lot of variant covers and stuff like that and is not like a regular interior artist of a book or a regular artist on a series. [00:25:39] Speaker B: I'm actually under contract. I'm working on an old ages book. [00:25:43] Speaker A: There you go. But I guess my point of it is that going to these conventions is somewhat how you supplement or some people make their income. Like how you either supplement it or how you make your entire income. [00:25:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:25:55] Speaker A: And so selling things at conventions is a necessary thing. And part of that, the reason I'm saying that is it goes down to, maybe we should pay our artists a little bit more so they don't have to go to all these. [00:26:06] Speaker B: Well, like, like, larry Hama just put up a thing where people are, like, mailing in stuff to his house, being like, hey, could you draw me a picture? And he's like, my page rate hasn't gone up in 30 years. If you want something drawn, come see me at a convention. I get paid to do it. And to be honest, he doesn't charge that much. Like, if you wanted a picture, I think the last time it was like $40 for a pencil drawing. [00:26:34] Speaker A: That's my story about going to see some of these big creators is they don't charge that often for a sketch like that. Obviously, my original artwork, it's a different story, but a sketch in front of you sometimes is a little bit different worth of. It's not that expensive. [00:26:48] Speaker B: Yeah. The last time I saw him, it was like $40 for a pencil sketch. But he's like, could people stop mailing stuff to my home address, asking for free stuff? [00:27:03] Speaker A: So I took it off the wall because it makes it easier for you to see Jesse. But this right here was at Northeast Comic, comic convention. $40. It was $40. It was $40. And then he signed whatever comics I wanted signed. So I had a couple of comics. I had a first appearance of Captain Britain in us comics. It's hard to see. I had infinity gauntlet number one signed. So he signed whatever comics I wanted to sign. So I had, like, five comics have him signed. He took a photo with me and drew a Sharpie sketch of thanos for me right in front of me. For $40? [00:27:45] Speaker B: Yes. [00:27:46] Speaker A: For a guy who's basically living, that's what he was doing for an income as a senior citizen, because the fact that his retirement, he doesn't have, like, a good retirement from Marvel and all the DC and all that. [00:27:58] Speaker B: Right. I mean, he was also, because I saw it happening, he did get paid for an appearance fee on top of that, but still $40 for a. And, yeah, I think it was like five items. And then you could get in line again if you wanted to. It was like your time. But George Perez also did the greatest thing I've ever seen, and I use it as an example as to what other creators should do. Like the big name creators. He had the ticketing system. [00:28:30] Speaker A: Yes. [00:28:31] Speaker B: Where if you got in line, he or an assistant handed you a ticket and he said, go and enjoy the con. You come back and you have the lowest number. I sign your stuff right then. Or if you realize that you're, like, just a couple numbers away. He didn't want people standing in line. He wanted you to go and look at the other creators and enjoy the con. And I'm like, then on the flip side, I saw a couple of years ago with Kevin Eastman, people standing in line for six to 8 hours, and I was on the back end of that. I had my own table on the other side of the room, but I noticed that people, once they were done with Eastman, they kind of went down the turtle line and then left because they're like, I've been standing in this same room for 6 hours. I'm tired of being in this. [00:29:24] Speaker A: And that would also go down to the fact that we're putting on a convention here in maine. That's a single day convention. So with some of these three day conventions, I can see, okay, you get there on a Saturday morning thing, you wait in line for four or 5 hours, okay, it still sucks, but at least you have all the rest of the day Saturday. You can come back Sunday if you need to do all that stuff. But on a single day, some of these single day places for a little while. Was the northeast one a single day at one point, or is it always. It was always two days, I think. [00:29:51] Speaker B: It was always when I did it, it was always two days because it. [00:29:54] Speaker A: Was 2015 the last time I went. [00:29:56] Speaker B: Was 2015 the last time I went. It was at the year that Adam west was there. [00:30:04] Speaker A: Yes, it was the George Perez year. That was that year. [00:30:07] Speaker B: Was it still? [00:30:08] Speaker A: I think it was because it was next to Adam west. [00:30:13] Speaker B: Yes, but no, he did another appearance a couple years later when they moved it to the mall. It was like one of the last appearances before he passed. [00:30:23] Speaker A: Okay. [00:30:23] Speaker B: Because they brought him and Burt Ward. [00:30:29] Speaker A: Okay. [00:30:30] Speaker B: I had to think of what Robin. I was like, they brought Robin. What the hell is his real name? [00:30:36] Speaker A: Also, I will go back to one of the things that got me into local conventions. I always talk about this to Willard and Jay, the guys who own the Bangor comic Toycon. Main comic Toycon. Is that northeast, the old school northeast, back in the day, northeast collectibles shows with who they brought in and things like that. Like, I met Arthur as a soydam who did marvel zombie stuff, stranco at that one. I met Braz, things like that. They had the 30th anniversary of the jaws there too, where what's the stage? Who drew the poster of it, and then they had a bunch of the equipment that was there. It was really cool. So like a lot of those old school shows, that's what got me into. [00:31:17] Speaker B: The lady that was the first kill. [00:31:19] Speaker A: Yes. Those shows are the ones that maybe go small. I always, in my mind, growing up, being on the fringe of comics, was like, san Diego and New York and Boston and all these other ones. But it's like, no, these local or shows that have these small things have some badass guests and the lines aren't as bad. [00:31:36] Speaker B: Right. [00:31:36] Speaker A: That's a lot of things, like Arthur. [00:31:38] Speaker B: Sodom, and generally they charge less. [00:31:41] Speaker A: Yes. But Arthur was like, buy a poster or buy something off my table, I'll sign whatever you want. So I bought a $20 poster from him, and then by the end of it, I actually ended up buying all four of the walking dead posters that he had. He had, like, the four. He had Rick and Michonne, and no one I have left. I've given the other ones away. I have. Rick left. It was the zombie girl. The first zombie girl. No, it wasn't. It was what's her face. It was the daughter, Sophie. Sophia. Sophia. Sophia. Whatever. That was a four print of that, and it was awesome. And so he signed all of those, and then he signed whatever I want. So I have the walking dead number one wizard variant. And so he signed that and a bunch of other stuff. Same thing with Sterenko. Buy something from his table, I'll sign whatever you want, and so on and so forth. And talk about Stan Lee. That was a fun thing. And we actually tried to get him to come to Maine. Talk about an appearance fee. I won't get into the details on this podcast, but not cheap. No. And there's somewhat of a rider that goes along with it. It was a very. And here's the deal. He's an 85 year old man doing this, right? I have no qualms with it. If you can afford to bring him to your convention. But my other part was just like, it's just not feasible to do. I mean, the number of tickets you'd have to sell because he's coming and so on. And so those small conventions, even small enough or they're bigger now, but like Bangor comic and Maine comic and toy cons, you get to meet some cool people and the lines aren't as big and so on and so forth. If you're a fringe comic book convention person, don't always think about the big conventions unless you live in New York or Boston, obviously. You could walk to the place. [00:33:26] Speaker B: I'm doing chicago. I'm doing c two. E two for the. But a buddy is covering the table. I have to get myself there, which is a fee in itself. I've already paid for the tickets, and they're like, $35 a check bag. And I'm like, that's 140 round trip for our clothes. I texted them. I'm like, I'm mailing you my luggage. It'll cost me like $50. [00:33:57] Speaker A: Do you ever equate, do you ever think in your mind how many comics you have to sell to pay for that? Okay, at $35, I have to sell two variant covers of $20. [00:34:06] Speaker B: I do do that a lot. [00:34:09] Speaker A: That would be funny to have that as a checklist on your table, like a menu. We did that for our wedding, for our honeymoon. Part of our. You could buy gifts on our registry was like, you could buy us a tank of gas on our honeymoon and so on. You could actually go to this website and they had it all broken down like that. That would be kind of a funny thing. It's not per cover. There's just a menu of like $20 paid for this. And you get. For free. You get a, yeah, buy me lunch. [00:34:36] Speaker B: And it gets you this sketch just. [00:34:39] Speaker A: To show you how expensive it was to get there. People are like, holy shit. That's how much it costs you to get here. [00:34:44] Speaker B: I think my budy said with fees, the table for c two, e two was $500 for a six foot table. I mean, granted, it's three days. [00:34:54] Speaker A: It's Friday, Saturday, and part of that is to get. I personally think that some of it's to weed out. I say weed out. That sounds so bad. So you're getting the people that are invested in going, if that makes any sense. If you got your table for super cheap or free, you wouldn't be as invested. I feel like you're going to still get the quality. More people who are willing to be. [00:35:15] Speaker B: There, who are going to sell there, is that. I understand that part of my fee is going towards the fee to bring in the celebrity or the name artist or something like that. I'm not oblivious to what's happening. The table rental is what, $30? The space, if you broke it down, might be $100. And then the rest of that money is going to bring in people that are supposed to help drive traffic by my table. Sometimes that works. [00:35:58] Speaker A: As a person who's trying to run a convention here, I 100% feel that I would be truthful with people. I'm just going to use random numbers. These are not actual numbers. Say it costs $100 to rent a facility, to put a convention on, and you want to have 100 vendors there. Most likely what we're doing is we're charging each vendor one dollars a vendor, if that makes any sense. This is obviously not real numbers, but that equivalent equates that if we get the 100 vendors there, the venue doesn't cost us anything. The vendors paid for the venue. And then if it's going to cost us $50 to bring in Jesse, then I'm going to hopefully sell ten $5 tickets. That equates for me to be able to bring Jesse where you put your budget, but wherever you put your budget. But yes, the truth of the matter is if you're a vendor or artist at a table, it's helping. Yes, helping bring in the other people that cost more. And then hopefully if you bring in someone like a Serenco or George Perez, obviously that would be very difficult now. But the idea of bringing those people in that are going to cost you way more than a ticket sale for that person being there is going to be there. You need to offset that with saying instead of a dollar for every table, we're going to charge $2 for every table. Because that extra dollar needs to go towards paying for George to be there in the hope that George is going to bring in people that are going to walk by Jesse's table and say, oh, I like this. Know, in that sense, it's a hard thing. But when you bring in the celebrities part of it, and this always bothers me in this whole thing, is the celebrities part of it is knowing the back behind the scenes thing, is that if a celebrity makes their guarantee, it costs a convention nothing. A plane ticket, basically, that's all it is to get them physically there and maybe a hotel room. But if James Franco, that's a weird name to throw out there. But say James Franco is coming to you. He read the audiobook for Dead Zone that I hybrid read. And so that's why he's on my mind. [00:37:48] Speaker B: It's fresh. [00:37:49] Speaker A: Yeah, but James Franco coming in, it's going to cost $10,000 to bring him in. But he sells a $11,000 worth of stuff at his table. The convention plays zero. And then all they have to do is pay for him to get there, which obviously that's all they have to do is a lot of times it's $1,500 or whatever, but $1,500 for someone that is hopefully bringing in a bunch of ticket sales and so on and so forth. Conventions, think less of you guys, if that makes any sense. And this is not shitting on one specific convention or anything like that, but. [00:38:15] Speaker B: It'S always it's kind of the way conventions have gone lately, and they shouldn't. [00:38:21] Speaker A: Be called comic book conventions, in my opinion. That's the thing, is it's a pop culture convention, pop con, something like that. But when you use the word comic con on things, it's a little hard to say that it's Kane Hodder and anime guests and all anime, to me, are kind of like borderline because it does have something to do with manga in that sense. So they are in the realm of it. But it'd be like saying, I don't know. Robert Downey Jr. Is a comic book guest because he was in a comic book related movie, and that's not, to me, is not the same. He's the one making a lot more money off of Iron man than anybody's making off of Iron man ever made off of Iron man. [00:38:58] Speaker B: That wrote his one appearance as Iron man, like Iron man one paid more than what the person that's been drawing Iron man for 30 years ever made. [00:39:08] Speaker A: But that's my point, is that those people are the ones getting all the attention. And they're technically, supposedly, according behind the scenes, are what drawing the people to come to these conventions are happening. And the people that are physically currently drawing someone who literally could be drawing Iron man right now for Marvel is going to get less attention at a comic book convention right now than Robert Downey Jr. Is. [00:39:31] Speaker B: Has spent more time in Iron man. [00:39:33] Speaker A: Yes. [00:39:34] Speaker B: Than Downey Jr. Ever was. [00:39:37] Speaker A: And let's get this clear. I'm not shitting on Robert Downey Jr. I think he was excellent as Iron man, really, and all that stuff. It's just the way it happens right now. And I think that's one of the things we're trying to achieve with Galacticon is to bring it back to that. That's what old school little giants is trying to do, is to try to bring it back to the creators and the physical celebrities. Are the creators Jim Starlin, celebrities, no. [00:40:02] Speaker B: Legos, no root beer. [00:40:04] Speaker A: Last little giants that Paul and I went to down in New Hampshire, Jim Starlin was the celebrity guest. To us. And that is, to a lot of comic book fans, Jim Starlin being there was massive to a lot of mean. Is Steranko going to be there this year? Yes. Sterenco. To a lot of people, that's massive. And that's the people that we want to us. [00:40:28] Speaker B: They're bringing in Mark Bagley. That's one like, I've never met Mark Bagley, so I don't know how it's going to work because my April has become very. [00:40:43] Speaker A: From galactic. He put in for a table and never heard back. And so he's just going to go. [00:40:51] Speaker B: That's kind of the thing that I've. Because I messaged them a while ago, and it was like, yeah, you're on the list of potential. It was funny. I was at the first ever one, and then the second year, I had already made a commitment to another friend's show that was, like, for charity. And I have never gotten back on the list. [00:41:16] Speaker A: It's a grudge thing that I feel like a lot of conventions, one of those things that if you say no or you say yes and you back out because something happened. [00:41:24] Speaker B: Well, they gave me the date before you released your date. Unfortunately, it's the same day and it's for charity. [00:41:33] Speaker A: Yes. Even if it wasn't, here's the deal. You've already made a commitment to another person. Yeah, it's one of those weird things. I don't know. I don't understand. There should be no grudge. Hell. Okay, cool. We'll try to get you on for next year. [00:41:45] Speaker B: I mean, they messaged me last year, but it was like the day before the con being like, hey, if you want a table, it's this amount of money. And I'm like, which at that point. [00:41:55] Speaker A: Is them trying to save their own asses. [00:42:03] Speaker B: Maybe if you'd messaged me a week before, but obviously what it was is someone dipped out last second and empty table. You don't want an empty table. [00:42:12] Speaker A: No. But even at these conventions, and this is not anything slight against you, Jesse, or any of your creators out there, even this convention, like little giants, Paul and I walked around and realized that people still like to look through long boxes. There were more people standing in line to be the next person to look through a long box at someone's comic book table than there was at the Jim Starlin line. That, to me was a massive thing to me. People still want to search for comics. And when you go to a comic book convention nowadays and there's like, rock candy and a guy selling, we use the term Star wars dildos, it's not what you're expecting to see. And people want to look through long boxes. They still want to do this stuff. They want to look for that. [00:42:53] Speaker B: But looking for the long box, you can't feel the force. [00:42:55] Speaker A: Yes, exactly right. You feel the force. No. We make this joke in the comic book store all the time about the idea that it's turned into a yard sale or craft fair at a convention and it's two different sides of this, and one of it is the person running the convention is scared to lose money, which is fine. I understand that I am a person who lives well, but not still live paycheck to paycheck. It's still point where I could pay my bills, but I understand if some sort of big expense comes, it's going to rock my world a little bit. So I understand running a convention and knowing it'd be your money, you will. [00:43:31] Speaker B: Become a lot less interesting. [00:43:33] Speaker A: Well, I always laugh about my wife being like, it's okay, we'll just sell that stuff. I'm like, oh. What she doesn't realize is that a lot of that's not worth. She thinks it's worth thousands of thousands of thousands of dollars. That one that says to Justin on it isn't going to get you a lot of money. [00:43:48] Speaker B: That's one reason why I just never liked personalization anyways, because as I tell the person, I'm like, it's nothing against you. It means something to me. It's not going to mean anything to my daughter, possibly. [00:44:00] Speaker A: Well, this whole wall back here is previous guests of the podcast. And so a lot of times they'll Michael, Mike Henderson was on, so he wrote, don't bite your nails, Justin. And so some of those are personalized because they're specifically because there were guests in the podcast. People still want to do that, and it's paying your bills is important to the comic convention person. They're the ones putting their ass in the line. So I do understand that. But in the same sense, don't just take the first hundred vendors to come in and apply for a position. Maybe say, cool, you're on the list of the food people, you're on the. [00:44:38] Speaker B: List of the juried. So that's kind of like my budy runs monster expo. It's not a comic convention per se. It's like a horror con type of thing. And that's what he does is basically he tries to jury it. He's like, I'm going to have three people that do jewelry, I'm going to have four people that do food based items, I'm going to do the people that do specimens. That way you're not having ten specimen person people right next to each other, and that helps them out, because now they're not. Well, this person has a fetal pig over here for $45 and you're charging 70. I don't know why I went with fetal Pig, but you know what? [00:45:31] Speaker A: It's the same reason I went with James Franco. Maybe you have fetal pig on your mind. I don't know. [00:45:35] Speaker B: Pickle pig sounds pretty yummy. Gross. I have never had pickle pig. I will never eat pickle pig feet or anything like that. [00:45:44] Speaker A: Your next convention you're going to go to, they're going to have like a pickle pig pigs footage. [00:45:48] Speaker B: Just people are going to bring me it. [00:45:50] Speaker A: Can you sign this? [00:45:53] Speaker B: But yeah, no, it needs some type of jurying. I'm not going to say the con, but there was one last year that all of a sudden it was like 80% yard sale stuff. And then artist Alley was down to one back and forth row. It's like you had twelve artists. I think there was more celebrities there than there were artists. And the rest of it was stuff that you could have gone and got. Not hot topic that morning or the. [00:46:33] Speaker A: One that I have, and I say conventions or vendors, I will never throw anybody under the bus specifically. I talk broadly. We can talk off the air if you wanted to. But is the fact that I know of someone who is creating things by basically printing pictures off the Internet and creating something geared, they're geared towards whatever celebrity guests are there. Hey, come get this. Get it signed and so on and so forth. And I'm thinking myself, I'm like, you're about so say, we'll use terrifyer as an example, because at a convention I went to recently, both Damien and David Howard Thornton from Terrifyer were there and you're going to bring this. Both of them are freaking awesome people. I absolutely love. Again, I would like conventions like little giants or hopefully galacticon that are just comic book related people. But if I'm going to go to other ones and I can meet people from great movies and things like that, that's awesome. I don't want it to be the focus. I'd rather have it be the focus on the comic book people. But like, meeting David Howard Thornton, who looks like he's the manager and are render car and Damien Leone from terrify was great, but all I could picture was someone buying this at this table of this person who printed out the movie poster and put it on something and then brought it over to the guy who created the movie, the guy who put his career on the line to create a movie and be like, can you sign this thing that that person over there stole from you on the Internet and have you sign it? And so on. I just felt like that was such weird thing to do. And so those are the kind of things where I always felt like taking someone out, it would be like me setting up a booth and just printing out people's artwork and put it up on a thing and just selling it. It doesn't have to sell. That's my own thing. It's just a weird thing. But if it's $100 for a table, that $100 is guaranteed $100. So I do see in the mind of so many people who are creating these conventions that I can pay for the venue now because I have sold my tables. Cool. But in the same sense, it's going to hurt you in the long run. That's where I think that short sighted is, the we need this now. But if you continuously put out your conventions and this is all over the country, people, this is like Texas and California, this is not regional, this is not just to New England. Where we're from is that you're not going to get the residual people of the creators or the guest to come back in the future and you're going to be a hard time trying to find. You're going to be going for. We need to get this celebrity guest now because that's going to bring in a whole new group of people we haven't had yet because of the fact that the people we had before aren't coming anymore because we don't have quality potentially things or things like that. And up here in New England, there's a lot of craft fairs. So the person who went to a convention, sold their craft fair items are likely going to be at the freaking mall the next weekend doing a craft fair, selling the exact same item that you can go into for free. And so those are the kind of things that also just bothered me about conventions and having you creators be the people that are celebrities at these things. [00:49:22] Speaker B: That's the other thing. And it's nothing against the patrons and stuff like that. It's like you paid $30 to get into the door to buy something that's marked up from hot Topic. You could have just. [00:49:34] Speaker A: Or you could buy on their Etsy shop or whatever. [00:49:38] Speaker B: Because I think that there's talking specifically for the people that are literally like, I bought this fun code yesterday and I'm selling it for $10 and I'm selling it for $20 today. [00:49:52] Speaker A: And then that's the other part I love is just to be like a shitting session here for a second is that you go to like an anime person. They charge more to have you sign a pop vinyl than they do a picture. [00:50:03] Speaker B: Oh, a lot of people do that now. They have their premium pricing because the thing is, people will pay, yes, premium for it. $200 for a signed funko. [00:50:20] Speaker A: Well, here's my question. [00:50:22] Speaker B: For a signed photo, you did charred. [00:50:25] Speaker A: Remains variant cover, right? So if I had, there was the charred remains. Now I'm trying to ring the flaming. I don't want to give too much away from the comic book, but I'm just going to say a main character from the comic book is a funko pop. And I walked up to your table and said, can you sign it to Justin? How can you legitimately charge me more for that autograph knowing that I'm going to keep it because it says my name on my other. I can understand you coming up with six pops and being like, can you sign these six pops? And then someone's obviously going to go, okay, I know you're going to turn around and try to sell this on eBay. Or coming up with one pop and being like, can you send us one pop so I can understand? I would say should be like, for the first pop, it's the same as everything else. But any more pops after that, it's $20 or $30. I just think that there's one of these weird things that just seems, as a person, helps with graphics. It's so hard to also put this graphic out there because it's like, what's the cost to get an autograph? I'm like, well, if you have this specific pop or this specific magazine or. [00:51:25] Speaker B: This specific cover, like Clayton Crane with all of his signature variants, it's like, do you want just my c? Then it's $10. Do you want my full name? It's $20. Do you want it in three different colors? Well, that's 70. [00:51:38] Speaker A: Do you want a mushroom stamp on it? [00:51:40] Speaker B: And they're like, I can't imagine being his handler at a con because you would have to be like, okay, well, he got it drippy on this one, but not on that one. He got two colors, this one, four colors. That one. [00:51:55] Speaker A: $300. A lot of us collector or collectors or people who are in this world are not on a disposable income. That's the other part about it, like, going to these conventions and paying $30 to get in and then having to pay $50 to get your autograph done and only basically get a picture with an autograph on it or a photo with this person. It's just hard. It's more difficult things. But I can go to your table, Jesse, and buy a $20 variant from you that I get the actual comic you sign it. You have a conversation with me, you take time to actually talk to me. It's just so much more of a wholesome and wonderful experience, in my opinion, than I've ever met any celebrity ever in my life. And that, to me, is partially biased to the fact that I really like comic books, and that's part of it. And there are people who go to these conventions that only want to meet celebrities because they just like to meet celebrities, which is cool. But in the same sense, I'm like this person. Most of these pop culture conventions nowadays have Joe Schmo, who starred in one episode of a tv show in 1985 and are still riding the coattails of this one thing. [00:52:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:53:02] Speaker A: Or I can go over to your table and get an actual real piece of artwork for 50 or $60 and have it be like something that you actually created with your own hands. And I just think that's more meaningful to me. And I think that's why I enjoy giants or those old school comic shows. [00:53:16] Speaker B: And I don't want to get into it with prints. And yes, I get it with the variant covers. They are limited per se, but then you get the people are like, this one's limited to 1000. I'm like, in today's comic world, you know how many thousand is? Yes, that's a lot of comic books. That's a lot. Especially. So I did one for vampirella rage from dynamite, and the minimum order was 500, I think something like that. But I've still got like 120 of them. And this was spread out between myself and the two vendors that were doing the exclusive. And I'm like, the minimum order is 500. And I think maybe collectively we've sold 100 of them. [00:54:13] Speaker A: Well, it doesn't also help. A dynamite has 20 covers per. [00:54:17] Speaker B: That doesn't help either. And it was like the number four issue. I was like, why are we doing a number four? I would have waited and held off until we could have gotten like a number one. At least that way people would be like, it wasn't my. [00:54:39] Speaker A: Variant covers on this. So on that subject, we did a variant for seven years in darkness. [00:54:44] Speaker B: Number one. [00:54:44] Speaker A: When. When Smokey self published the first issue for galactic comics and the Capes and Tights podcast, we did one, and ours was 175 regulars and 25 metal covers. Yeah, that was it. And I was like, we honestly, in the small shop in Maine without a real big web present, took us a long time, honestly, to sell the 100 copies because it's a finite number of customers who are going to buy these things and so on. And so forth. But then we realized we actually might have the smallest variant number out of all of the ones that he did for those things. And so that was kind of cool in that sense. But you were probably on the lines of you, like, variant covers, I'm guessing. But as an artist who does variant, you're a fan of it. [00:55:27] Speaker B: I enjoy it. But when you're talking about, would I rather spend $50 on a variant cover or get someone to draw something by hand? I would take the original artwork every day over. That's where my line of thought was going. It's like you're sitting there and someone's spending, like, $30 on a print, and you're like, I would have done a sketch for $30 or something like that. That's what's playing in my brain. I get it. That is a much more finished, polished image, but it lacks any type of in my mind value because they can just go and hit print on it again unless it's a numbered thing. And then you got to worry about them being sleazy and printing more than what the number says. [00:56:27] Speaker A: When I went to that, yes, they do. Exactly. Ken Griffith Jr. Rookie card sports collector I've seen with. [00:56:37] Speaker B: Like, because I collect sports memorabilia, too. Like, here's a one of one, and here's the same card as another one of one. [00:56:47] Speaker A: Black text on it. [00:56:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:56:52] Speaker A: Or not even in 2015, when I went to the local comic shows when I was living in Massachusetts, it was like when I first started going to these things. And so I was trying to weigh out the idea of do. I didn't display comic books. I didn't really know how to display comic books as much. And I'm like, well, if I'm going to pay money, it's like when I got tattoos, the first time I got a tattoo, I got on a place that I wear a t shirt all the time. I'm going to have people see this, not because I'm showing it off, but I'm like, if I'm putting $500 into a thing on my arm, I want people to see it. So if I'm buying a $50 comic book cover, I want to want to put it on the wall. But at that time, I didn't know what I was going to do. And I was also living with my ex wife, and she wasn't really big into those things. I'm like, so the only thing I could almost trade off was buying things, like, over here on my walls. That's a steranko print, but it's signed in red marker by Sterenko. I'm like, okay, if I'm going to get signed, I'm going to be able to put it in a wall, on the wall, hang it up. People are going to see it. This is great. Nowadays, I'm more along the lines of getting a comic book done. And that's mainly because at that point, too, I like the idea of, I'm a big person of like, I'd rather get this one comic book signed by the entire creative team. So your writer, your artist, your colorist, your letterer, I want the whole, if I meet these people or see these people, I want this have six signatures on it. And I want everybody who, I mean, give me the editor, give me the publisher, I don't care. [00:58:06] Speaker B: Just have them sign this book. I'm not like, poo pooing on getting variant covers and stuff like that. Obviously I do it. I've got prints on my wall. I've got prints in a book. There's sometimes when it's just the more feasible route, too. There's some artists out here. It's like, that's going to be $1,000 for a head sketch or $20 for a print. And I'm like, I will take that print, sir. [00:58:32] Speaker A: $5 extra. I get a sign, though. [00:58:36] Speaker B: That's one thing. It's so funny when people come up to my, and they're like, oh, I want to buy this book. Okay, cool. And they're like, will you sign it? Yeah. How much is that? I'm like, nothing. I don't know who you think I am, but thank you. [00:58:54] Speaker A: It's the idea of knowing your customer, too. Like I mentioned about the whole having five pops versus one pop or whatever, but if you did a cover of, you're doing a varying cover of the Walking Dead, number one, back in the day, and you know this book is valuable, and someone walks up to you with five of them, them in your mind, you're like, okay, why do you have five? Unless you can explain to me that you have five kids and you're holding on these for your five kids, and this is likely because you're going to keep one and you're going to sell for, and at that point you're kind of like, well, I'm going to do it, but this is kind of annoying. Or you're going to say, I'll sign the first one for free, and it's $5 extra for each one after that, or something. [00:59:29] Speaker B: I get that thing. See, that's definitely one thing that I've talked with some friends about, and it's like, that's tough. I've had friends that are like, yeah, this person came up to me with a short box wanting to meet a sign, and it's like, there's ten number ones in there. And it's like, I normally don't charge, but I know what this person's doing. [00:59:57] Speaker A: Yes. [00:59:58] Speaker B: And I get that aspect of it. I mean, you could just hard cut off and say one of each title or one of each run or something like that, if you wanted to run. Or I'll sign them for free, but I have to write your name on them. That would kibosh it pretty quickly, unless you wanted to set up a private signing. And I get charged. I charge $100 an hour or something like that. [01:00:24] Speaker A: The flip side of that people talk about is the idea someone's buying the comic books. In the other side of it is that whether someone physically bought your comic book, the more comics you sell from a certain publisher. Wow. We sold 7000 of that variant by Jesse. We should probably get some more. We should hire him again. It could turn into future business. [01:00:48] Speaker B: Yeah. There's so many aspects of it, and. [01:00:51] Speaker A: I'm just like, I like variant covers. Two things variant covers to me are, I don't think I would have ever met someone like you, for example, like you and Ben in the early days, and schmalkey. I don't know if I would have read your original stuff or any of the stuff that you did differently than that if it wasn't for variant covers. The bob Takix of the world, those people I've learned about from conventions, but also because of the fact that they did a variant cover for something that I'm interested in. And so giving people who are lesser known artists or artists that are on the uptick of their careers or things like that, and giving them the ability to do a variant cover on a key book, your crossover, your last ronan number ones, those ones that had hundreds of variant covers, I was at least able to see some of these artwork from these people and be like, oh, that's pretty badass. I kind of want to follow the. That's what's cool about them. [01:01:41] Speaker B: So it's like I told you, I collect hack slash. It's just something I've glommed onto over the years, and I try to collect all the variants. I think the only one I don't have all of them was. Was a dynamite one. And you know the reason for that? There's a million of them. And they try to charge ratio prices. Nobody is ever going to pay $50 for this book, ever. [01:02:08] Speaker A: Just wait. It will come now. [01:02:11] Speaker B: That's the way I feel about a lot of things, like anything with these con exclusives and stuff, because I stream on whatnot. I do live drawing on there, and I peruse other sites, and it's like, the people that go to Megacon and I bought 30 of this book, they're super rare. And I'm like, yeah, but there's ten other people streaming right now, each with 30 of that book. And then you get the people that they need to make the profit, and you understand that it was $20 at the thing. They're trying to charge you $25 for it, whereas someone else, it just doesn't matter. It's about the numbers that they're like, oh, I bought it for 20. I'm running it for $15 here. And I'm like, so you're losing money, but you're gaining viewers, which would then something that you didn't charge, you actually are upcharging. [01:03:09] Speaker A: And the Amazon thing in the world. [01:03:13] Speaker B: Then you get the celebrity sellers, which I'm like, this seller is making more money, me, off of selling this cover than the artist made drawing the COVID I can guarantee that. [01:03:30] Speaker A: I feel like it's different. I have people who buy and sell older comics, your silver age comics, and it's like, okay, when the comic book was a dollar something, and now it's worth 50 or $60 or $100, and you found one at a long box in a shop that no one was, or a yard sale, whatever, and you saw. But when a comic book comes out, and then that week, I mean, ultimate Spiderman number one from Marvel, came out recently, a new one, and immediately was on eBay for $15. My local comic book shop had them for sale, still on the shelf, and you can buy them on eBay for $15. And I just don't understand that market at all. [01:04:05] Speaker B: But it's FOMO. [01:04:07] Speaker A: It is. But that's the part. Patience. I think it's one of the things I've learned the most in comic book collecting. This is like, if I could give any two pieces of information to people. Collecting comics is somewhat of its patience because some of its patience waiting for the market to drop again, because it inevitably will be. For every single issue out there, there's some sort of market drop. And one of the things I had was House of Slaughter. I'm a big Michael Del Mundo fan. Michael del Mundo is one of my favorite artists of all time. I think his ability to make artwork innovative, and just when you look at, you're like, how the hell did he think about making it this way? Fascinates the hell out of me. And I love pretty much anything Michael del Mundo does. And he had a cover for House of Slaughter, right? House of slaughter number one. It was a green cover with blood and guts and intestines and all that stuff all over the COVID And it spelled out House of slaughter on it. It's an awesome cover. [01:04:53] Speaker B: Family friendly. [01:04:54] Speaker A: Yes. One in 500 variant. Okay, so no small shops in the entire country got this book. You're talking your midtown comics. Those big stores got the one in 500 or the comic book company or the ones that they got like three. A variant at 500. Yes. It was like, selling for like $350 on eBay when House of slaughter number one came out. I can go on eBay right now and buy one for $49. Okay. So the price dropped so much because people were like, wait, no one really cares as much about this as we thought they would. And people made money on it, obviously made money of it. But to me, I was like, if I'm just patient, I'll be able to add it to my collection at some point. And I'm hoping at one point it drops down. I see. That's $20 cover price. [01:05:40] Speaker B: The way I feel is, I'm like, right now it's just everyone panic buying. It's the hot thing right now. So like I said, I collect sports memorabilia. I'm a Bills fan, which. The price has gone crazy on their stuff lately, which is annoying. [01:05:58] Speaker A: You're from Vermont. That makes sense, right? [01:06:01] Speaker B: Yeah. I love the. Grew up in the 90s when the bills went to the Super bowl four years in a row. But that also shows my dedication and loyalty that I went through the crap years for 17 years. [01:06:14] Speaker A: Hey, I'm still a Patriots fan, so I've got 17 more years of this, too, probably right. [01:06:19] Speaker B: I can only hope for you. [01:06:23] Speaker A: I'm a Red Sox fan. I dealt with that for a long time. Okay, come on. [01:06:26] Speaker B: Okay. See, there you go. Football is really the only thing I follow. But I don't buy stuff during the season. Like sports stuff. Don't buy it during the season. You buy it during the. As soon as the Super bowl hits, nobody gives a shit about no football stuff. They're on to the next finishing basketball. They're getting ready for spring training stuff. Yeah, during the season. If I wanted a mini helmet signed by Stefan Diggs, it's like $150. There's one online that I've been following. It went two cycles through eBay at $70, and nobody bid on it. The guy dropped to $50. I'm like, a mini helmet alone costs you 30. [01:07:18] Speaker A: And sometimes it does backfire in that sense because it can hurt you. When I was in Massachusetts, before I got really into comics, I was a sports writer down there, and I covered the Bruins, but I also covered the Lowell Spinners in Lowell, Massachusetts, the minor league team for the Red Sox. And I was there every game and so on and so forth. And I met, became slightly close to Mookie Betts, who played for the Red Sox and got traded to the Dodgers and so on and so forth, or signed with the Dodgers, whatever you want to call it. And at the end of the season, he gave me a game, used mookie bats, personalized bat. So it says bat made for Mookie bats on it. And he signed. [01:07:56] Speaker B: That's cool. [01:07:57] Speaker A: It was a black bat, silver sharpie, pine tar, everything on it. This was back in 2000 and whatever, 14, right around that for five or six years, or for the first two or three years, I had it just in the closet. I was just like, put it away. This guy is a second baseman who got caught stealing more than you stole. He had a 200 batting average. He was not the player that he is now. And so my mind is, this is cool. When I have a place that, like a man cave of sorts, I'll put it up, whatever. Finally, he started becoming good, right? So he started becoming this player that we saw nowadays. And so I ended up buying brackets for the wall, put it on the wall, hung it up there. Not because I'm a Red Sox fan and he no longer played for the Red Sox anymore. But then I thought to myself, what if this is his peak? And so in my mind, I was like, if I take this bat and put it on eBay and try to sell it the second he signed with the Dodgers, like, when he went to the Dodgers, there's a high of people who are like, oh, my God, we have Mookie Betts. And they just want to buy shit from Mookie Betts. So I was like, let me put this up there. Also. We live in a world that someone can get caught for using steroids tomorrow, and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, they're not worth as much anymore. So I'm just like, let me just try to sell this to get something out of it. And I end up selling it for $500, okay? Which is probably low for what it's probably going to be worth when he ended up becoming a hall of famer and all this other stuff. But at the time, I was like, I want to try to peak market price, capitalize, see what happens, capitalize on it. And to this day, I'm still kicking myself because I'm like, that $500 was nice. It was awesome. It wasn't life changing. It wasn't like, I probably bought shit with it and didn't actually invest it or do anything with it. And in my mind, I'm thinking, like, it would be cool. [01:09:35] Speaker B: I want to invest it in Bill Cosby stuff. [01:09:37] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. But no, I thought to myself, I could have done that. And that's why some of these things, like, honestly, could I sell this Perez sketch easily right now? Instantly? You'd have to pry it from me. I think this is one of those things that something seriously would have to go wrong in my lifetime right now for me to need the money from that sketch. There's multiple things. I can't get it again. I could somehow meet Mookie Betts again and figure this out. I am never going to get a sketch that he sketched for me in front of me. [01:10:12] Speaker B: And there's definitely that stuff. You've got to put sentimentality on things. [01:10:19] Speaker A: But I had that for that bat. But for some reason, I was like, I don't want it anymore. Plus, a bat on the walls. I mean, my wife was always like, if someone breaks in the house, I'm like, yeah, sure, I guess you can use this $500 bat to hit someone with it, or you can just hit them. [01:10:31] Speaker B: I've got the perfect bat for that. I'll have to show you off camera. A guy made me. Well, it's obviously a replica because it doesn't exist in real life, but made me a Cassie hack bat with all the nails in it. [01:10:47] Speaker A: It's real. [01:10:49] Speaker B: Oh, it's real now. [01:10:50] Speaker A: It based off a real story. [01:10:53] Speaker B: Don't worry. Excuse my language. It's real dangerous. [01:10:56] Speaker A: Tim Steeley is going to tell us later on that it's actually based off of a real person. Don't worry. [01:10:59] Speaker B: Yeah, my daughter, when I got it, she's like, ooh, can I put it in my room? I'm like, no thing's got, like, ten pounds of nails in it. [01:11:07] Speaker A: No, like, getting a legit again. Legit. I guess it's more of a chance to have a legit Lucille from the Walking Dead than it is for hack slash because of the fact that you could get one from the movie, from. [01:11:20] Speaker B: The tv show, unless they actually finally put out a movie that it was optioned for, because Cassie was optioned for a series or a movie. It's something. [01:11:30] Speaker A: Well, everything is. That's not news anymore, honestly, when you hear some. Because my favorite Kim Steeley book is revival, and that's supposedly at some point going to be made into something. And I'm like, I don't know. We'll see. [01:11:44] Speaker B: Well, just think the book that you haven't drawn yet is already optioned. Uh, I'm friends. Uh, it's Jorge Santiago Jr. But he's like, just call me. Like, I have original pages from Spencer and Locke that they did with action lab, and that was optioned. It had the director from Hitman attached, and nothing came of, like, or at least nothing has come of it, which is kind of interesting because David Peppos is, like, on everything now. [01:12:26] Speaker A: All of a sudden, he's been on the podcast, so obviously he's made it. [01:12:29] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, obviously. No, he's, what, doing Punisher right now? [01:12:34] Speaker A: He's doing punisher right now. Yeah. [01:12:35] Speaker B: And we just heard that he's doing space ghost for. I I messaged him when Spencer and Locke came out because he had some of the variants that I wanted. Like, I have all the variants. I finally have all of the variants for number one now, oddly enough, the one that took the longest to get. I have the original cover for, and it took me longer to get a copy of the book than it did for me to get the original artwork because George gifted me the artwork for his New York City Comic Con exclusive. And then trying, like, I reached out to David. He's like, I don't have any. George was like, they never gave me any copies of. Like, I probably have a copy of that cover, and he doesn't, which is hilarious. [01:13:34] Speaker A: That's awesome. They could hold it hostage if you ever need to. [01:13:38] Speaker B: I mean, I've got a few things like that where the artists, like, you know, the cherry poppin'daddies. Yeah, the band. So we went and saw them, and I brought them a copy of their first album on vinyl, and I brought it up to the bass player, and he's like, holy crap. I don't even have one of these. I'm like, really? He's like, yeah, I think I gave it to my daughter's boyfriend one year. [01:14:03] Speaker A: You can't have this either. Sorry. [01:14:05] Speaker B: He's like, we only pressed, like, 500 copies of this thing. Then I brought it up to the singer to sign, and he was like, yo, he sent one of the new guys in the band. He's like, go get this guy. He needs to come and see this. And he comes and he's like, I'm sorry, I had to call the white. Oh, my God. Where did you find. It was hilarious. [01:14:27] Speaker A: Well, I think it's funny. I talked to people on the podcast about things they don't have right here. You can't see it. David Peppos, Alex Cormac, devil wears my face poster that comes from Mad Cave. They send out these tubes to people like myself and stuff like that. And it's got postcard or bookmarks in it and stickers and sometimes the cool, different random things. I recently got this cool 10th anniversary thing they sent me from Mad Cave, but that's obviously not corrected to a comic book. But I've gotten things where people were like, I don't even have one of those things. Like, the creator of the book was like, they didn't send me one of those. You can't have mine. I'm sorry, this is mine. You cannot have it. You see these chard remains, matchbook. [01:15:14] Speaker B: That's pretty sweet. [01:15:15] Speaker A: Yeah. I was like, I'm never going to some of these things. Well, who was it? Who was it? [01:15:21] Speaker B: That's smart marketing right there. [01:15:24] Speaker A: There's so many good things that have gotten like that before. I think for Deer editor, they sent me a notepad for a news anchor, like an old school news reporter notepad. I've gotten candy, cigaretes for who's. [01:15:44] Speaker B: That was mad cave. [01:15:45] Speaker A: Yeah. So all those candy cigarettes, I got a bunch of cool stuff that they've sent me that people are like, I've just never seen those, and I'm never going to get one. I'm like, well, I'm not going to mail it to you, but never say never. [01:15:55] Speaker B: But, yeah, not for me, you're not. [01:15:59] Speaker A: You did charred remains. Thinking about that. We've been talking for a while here. We should probably wrap it up a little bit. But you've done our cover for charred remains, right? More recently, you did devil, where's my face? [01:16:10] Speaker B: Charred remains was more recent, but then. [01:16:13] Speaker A: Sorry, right before that was the face you wore that you did one for that, right. [01:16:17] Speaker B: So within the last year for scout, I did granite state punk. Yes, I've done charred remains. The devil that wears my face. I did a roundabout exclusive for. [01:16:39] Speaker A: It. [01:16:40] Speaker B: That was its own weird thing. It's an official comic, but it's a weird gorilla cover because I went through Ben Goldsmith, who is the creator of seance room, but the publisher won't get back to us about doing a cover. So he kind of like forced the issue so it doesn't have their logo on the. It's weird, but it's also probably one of the most rare. And it's also probably the one that I've sold the most. Oddly enough, I did the cult of that Wilkin boy for Archie. That's the one I always forget. And it's the one that gives me the most trouble when trying to remark, I don't know what they printed that thing on, but it rejects ink like nobody's business. So if you find one that's remarked, grab it, because I'm not remarking those. [01:17:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:17:47] Speaker B: The vampirella Dracula Rage number four. [01:17:50] Speaker A: Yep. [01:17:55] Speaker B: And I've got one coming out at c two. E, two for Dick Tracy. [01:18:01] Speaker A: Okay. [01:18:02] Speaker B: Me and about 9 million other variant cover artists. [01:18:05] Speaker A: The book's fun, guys. I read it recently and I do think that it's cool. It's a classic Dick Tracy, but it's also modernized and brought into a little bit more current. So you don't have to be like a huge Dick Tracy fan from back in the day. Obviously not from 1930. But if you saw the movie, I. [01:18:23] Speaker B: Mean, I guess you could. [01:18:25] Speaker A: You could be. But the idea. Pushing it. Yeah. Saranko. There you go. Jim Saranko, 85, was a big dick Tracy fan back. [01:18:33] Speaker B: I remember when the. But no, he would have like a 30 minutes conversation about the first time he read the comic strip. [01:18:42] Speaker A: And you're like, nothing against the guy. [01:18:44] Speaker B: He's a very nice guy, very personable. [01:18:47] Speaker A: I want to open the email. I want to open the email. I'm not going to say anything about the financial part of it because I don't want to put that out there for him. But I want to read the section where he said, where is it? Booking? Where's Saranko? It says that he needs a handler or someone to take the money, which obviously I understand that he needs someone. [01:19:05] Speaker B: To rein him in on his conversation. [01:19:06] Speaker A: No, the word was I devote all of my time, energy to fans and friends in line, but never handle any sales or money. Yeah, I know. I've been to one of your conventions that you've been at. I understand why you could. Because if you took the money and did all that stuff, we would never get anywhere with you. [01:19:26] Speaker B: To be honest. He's one of those people that if you are very shy, I guess would be the thing and you just want a signature and to move on or something like that. You're just like one of those guys that's like, I don't really want to talk like, I'm a fan, but good luck, because he will wrangle you in for a half hour conversation that you were not expecting, which is cool. Like, you get to talk to a. [01:19:58] Speaker A: Yes. [01:19:59] Speaker B: But if you're one of those people that are made uneasy by just someone talking at you for, like, a half hour. [01:20:07] Speaker A: Jim's not. [01:20:11] Speaker B: It's just like when, you know, going on the celebrity thing, like meeting Doug Jones. I don't know if you've ever met Doug Jones. Lovely human being. If you have a personal bubble, don't meet Doug Jones, because it does not exist. And I don't want that to sound like he acts as if you're a long lost friend that you've just met. [01:20:39] Speaker A: You'll leave him at the table. You're like, wait, do I know him from somewhere else? Oh, my God. [01:20:43] Speaker B: Yeah, but he'll come up. He'll give you a hug. He's very personable, and he very much wants you to know that he is very happy to meet you and is ecstatic that you're a fan. But if you're one of those people that are like, do not touch me. He's very hands on. I love you as a fan. It's the best way to put it. I'm like, there's just some people that. Like I said, it's never creepy, never anything like that. But it's just like, if you have a personal bubble or if you don't like the attention of being talked to, there's some people that you just shouldn't meet. [01:21:35] Speaker A: Well, I wonder if you should just lie. Go to stranger, be like, lie that you are the friend. Just walk up to Steranco and be like, can you sign this for a friend? I got to get going and see what happens and see if they'll just sign it and let you go, because I have no idea who you are. I don't want to know who you are. I just need to go because my friend, you're waiting for me. Okay. Yeah, I'll be right there. [01:21:56] Speaker B: No, because then it'd be a 40 minutes conversation explaining who he was, too. [01:22:00] Speaker A: Yes. And then to call your friend over and have him come over here and talk to you, and then you're like, oh, shit. There is no friend because we're comic book nerds now. [01:22:08] Speaker B: We're into an hour long conversation. Son of a bitch. [01:22:11] Speaker A: Dick Tracy, though. Great book. Cool. It's a great book, and I will recommend it. Anyway, I'm so pumped that someone like mad Cave, I've been a supporter of mad Cave for a couple of years now, and they're on their 10th anniversary. They baffled me that ten years since they first started, but to get someone like Deck Tracy under their umbrella is pretty badass. [01:22:31] Speaker B: And to see that originally when they announced the title, I wasn't sure, because they've also done reprints of older things. I wasn't sure if it was going to be a reprint of the dailies or if it was going to be its own thing, which, its own thing is cool. [01:22:47] Speaker A: I talked to Mark London. It's got to be over a year now, ago about that. This is also like, he didn't mention Dick Tracy, but he said, there's licensed properties coming to Madcave. That's when he talked to me. He kind of like off air. He was like, yeah, there's some cool new stuff coming. And he's like, I can't talk to you about it yet. So on and so forth. But mad Cave and that this is not it is what I'm understanding. Dick Tracy and a couple of the other things they've already announced and dealt with is not the end of it either. That mad cave is going to become a powerhouse in the sense of having some licensed properties, kind of in the sense that mixing the two, which is pretty cool, what they've been able to do with Mad Cave, with having some creator own stuff and then having licensed properties, kind of like what Skybound is kind of doing over at image nowadays, too, which is like, they're going to continue busting out. Yeah, but I mean, the things they hadn't done in the past, they've been all creator owned now. They're getting into the point where like, okay, creator owned, now we're going to do some licensed properties, too, because it kind of balances the two out. The problem with someone like IDW, for a while, they went so heavy into licensing. I think that's the problem. So I think if you balance out, and I think IDW has got some great and fantastic creator own stuff that's come out over the past year or so, two years or so, and have stuff coming out in the future that I'm super pumped to see where they're going. But it's one of those things that dark horse has been able to balance pretty. So, like, I think balancing a little bit of both out. So if someone pulls their license, you're not like caught with a tail between your legs, like trying to figure out what to do. But also having both in there to bring in the readers is really cool. It's really cool. Yeah, no, I'm excited to see where that goes with Mad Cave because you've done a number of comic covers for Mad Cave and stuff like that. To see that stuff happening is pretty cool. Dynamite. Dynamite is basically a licensed property place, right? I mean, they don't really do much. I don't think they do because they even license stuff on Marvel and Disney. I should say Disney, not Marvel, but they do. They just did darkwing duck. They just did gargoyles. Those are all Disney properties that you could see easily. Do you know what's coming from Marvel that they didn't do at Dynamite is they're doing Scrooge McDuck. Marvel's doing that, though. It's a Marvel Scrooge comic book. I was like, you licensed gargoyles and you licensed darkwing duck to Dynamite, but you're going to do scrooge. [01:25:11] Speaker B: And I think they've got a bunch of other cartoon network stuff coming. Maybe that was part of the thing is, I don't know, they got space Ghost. There's some other titles that I don't know if they've made public, but yeah, there's some other ones that are coming that we're trying to get one because it'd be nice to do a comic cover that my daughter can read. [01:25:43] Speaker A: Yes, I think that's cool about some of these mean, like the idea that it's also paying homage or giving us a little nostalgic feel. Seeing gargoyles in comics, to me, was really cool to see Darkwing duck being someone of our age that watched it as a kid, I would have loved. [01:26:01] Speaker B: To have done a dark wing duck cover. I'm not going to lie. I would have paid to have done a dark wing duck cover. That was my. [01:26:11] Speaker A: Yeah, dark wing duck back in the day. Seeing that is cool. And seeing like, X Men 97 coming back out on Disney plus, like all that stuff, it's nostalgic feel. It's pretty cool. But it's also one of those things that kind of cool to be able to give to my kid because when he's old enough to read things like Darkwing Duck and so on and so forth, I have those comics that are new that are not going be to hard to find or things like that, which is pretty cool to see that. [01:26:34] Speaker B: One of the things that I regret the most is I was in upstate New York at a comic shop, and they had the omnibus of dark wing duck. And I think it was like $30 or something like that. I didn't pick it up for some reason. And then I found out it was out of print, and I called them up, and I'm like, do you still have that? They're like, we just sold it, like, last week. I'm like, yeah, you look it up on eBay and stuff, and they're trying to get like 200, $300 for the omnibus. And I'm like, I could have had it for 30 or 35 or whatever it was. [01:27:13] Speaker A: On the way back from the convention, the little giants one last April, Paul from Galactic comics and I were driving back and we stopped by stairway to heaven comics. Oh, yeah, in New Hampshire, and they had a book that his customer was looking for. It was a one in ten variant for dungeons and dragons that came out recently that the guy in his shop was like, he's like, I only ordered five copies because I'm a small independent shop in Maine that doesn't have a big following for dungeons and dragons, for comics. And so he ordered five copies, so he didn't get the one in ten variant. And the guy sitting there like, oh, that's okay, whatever. So he's looking on eBay, and finally he ended up buying one on eBay from the United Kingdom for like $25. He's like, I really want it on, and so forth. And he's like, cool, whatever. We were down driving back, and steroid had it there for like 999 or something like that on the shelf. And he's like, oh, that sucks that he already bought it. We got back and he's like, I'm a comic book shop. Why didn't I buy that and try to get $25 where he goes, what was I thinking? I could have sold to that guy. He probably could have canceled the eBay order and made some money on it and bought it. And every once in a while, because. [01:28:21] Speaker B: Who knows how it's going to ship. [01:28:23] Speaker A: From UK, I've sent my Paul from Galactic Link when Midtown has extreme deals on trades and things like that. I bought a trade recently, I think I bought a bunch of trades from them for like $5 a trade. Like $20 trades for $5 each. And I was like, I sent him the link. I'm like, dude, you should just order them from them because it's less than. [01:28:45] Speaker B: You pay, it's cheaper than what you're paying from your distributor. [01:28:48] Speaker A: And as long as you pay over $85, they'll ship it to you for free. And so just buy $85 of the trades at $5 a trade and then sell them all for face value, and you would have made. Or if you sold them for sale. Yeah. You still make more money on it. I was just laughing. [01:29:03] Speaker B: $10. [01:29:04] Speaker A: Yeah. I was like, I'm going to send you start sending these links that you could just buy into. Or maybe I should just buy them and then sell it to him for $7. Make $2 apiece. That seems like way more work than I need in my life right now, especially with a second child coming. But whoo. [01:29:21] Speaker B: I made $2 a book. [01:29:24] Speaker A: We just shot the shit for like an hour and a half ish on random shit in the comic book industry and didn't really dive too much into what Jesse does. But I really, Jesse, you're a variant cover or, sorry, that puts you in a box. You're an artist that has a number of variant covers out there as well that you could pick up. And you're selling most of them. Most of them at shows, right? Most of them are at comic like. [01:29:52] Speaker B: I go on whatnot. My name is Lundberg graphics on there. And you can get commissions through that as well. I do sketch cards. I've done sketch cards for Dynamite entertainment. Upper deck. The upper deck ones, I don't know if I can release what titles they are, but they're cool. I'm currently working on another one from Dynamite, which I think I can say I'm doing. Puppet master, 35th anniversary. The other one, I don't know if I can. I saw another artist announce it that they were doing that one. So if I get in trouble, I'll be like, they did it first. The other one is for a, I'll tell you off air, but it's for an brand through dynamite. It's going to be more than meets the eye, but I'm doing those. I just signed on for those. [01:30:58] Speaker A: Nice. [01:30:58] Speaker B: I'm under contract for upper deck for another set this coming year. I was surprised I got that one so quickly. That's awesome. And I'm doing an old ages book right now. I'm drawing interiors for. It's going to be gravity falls, Scooby Doo meets back to the future quantum leap type of stuff. [01:31:21] Speaker A: You just did. Like a bunch of stuff that makes me really want all of those things, even if you just use most of the time. I read that being like, well, I can understand where they're coming from with this. I'm not a huge fan of this, that the other, but okay, that makes sense. All of those things I'm willing to watch or read and put them all together. [01:31:39] Speaker B: It's a mystery time traveling group of kids. [01:31:44] Speaker A: I just want to watch Quantum leap. Now that you said that, though, that's all I want to do. [01:31:48] Speaker B: Now. [01:31:48] Speaker A: I don't even care about the book anymore. [01:31:49] Speaker B: The gist of it is a group of kids are sent back in time and the only way they can get back to modern day is by solving a problem that happened way back in the year 1996. [01:32:05] Speaker A: So far. Long ago, man. So long ago. I was ten. [01:32:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:32:14] Speaker A: No, that's awesome. I'm excited for that. [01:32:16] Speaker B: I was eleven. [01:32:18] Speaker A: Was a lot of focus on covers for people. We actually had this quick conversation. I don't want to go too far into it, but the idea that a lot of people treat your covers like trading cards, so they don't actually look at the interiors of it. So to be able to see something come out in the near future that I can actually see your wonderful artwork on the interiors is going to be pretty cool, too. [01:32:36] Speaker B: Yeah, it kind of also shows, like, because the interiors are being drawn in a cartoon way. It's very much in the style of gravity falls. Or was it Nick park with Wallace and Gromit? Like, the big eyes, expressive mouth type of know. That's one thing that was. Do I do tend. I tend to draw more in the style of, like, old Warner Brothers or Barbera. Like, that's my favorite era of cartoon. That's what I watch as Hannah Barbera and Warner brothers. I was never a big Disney kid. Other than, you know, I like it. Don't, don't get me wrong, but I definitely gravitate more towards the Looney Tunes slapstick type of. I do more. I can do more realistic portraiture stuff. So it kind of runs the gambit. One day I'm drawing Looney Tunes esque characters, next it's like, could you draw grandma? I'm like, sure. I've done memorial pieces recently. I've done pet portraits. If people want pet portraits, please get them done while the animal is alive. Like, it's depressing. Almost every single pet portrait I've done, it's like, he passed away last year. And I'm like, I'm glad that I'm helping you cope with this, but it's so sad because I'm looking at this youthful looking dog sometimes, and I'm like, it's no longer here. I can't go play with the dog. That's always what it is. It's like, oh, man, I could be playing with this dog. But, yeah, most of my covers have, like, metal versions. Do I have over here? Let me see if I can reach this one's. Super rare because I don't know if you can see that. It's neon orange glow in the dark. [01:35:01] Speaker A: Oh, that's pretty cool. [01:35:03] Speaker B: Yeah. But the printer kept having errors, so we have them, but most of them were damaged. Something with the way it's a newer product. So I think they just got to work out a couple of things. Yeah, but for that one, we had paper copies, we had metals. We now have virgin metals, virgin eon glow in the dark ones, and uv black light ones. [01:35:38] Speaker A: The options you have nowadays is crazy. [01:35:41] Speaker B: Yeah. And what we were doing when they first came out is we were donating a portion of the proceeds. I think we still are. I just haven't sold one in a minute or two. I haven't been pushing them as much because I'm not at a convention either. But it was going to the National Fallen Firefighters foundation, and so we were happy to team up with that and raise some money for them because I do have a background in firefighting. [01:36:18] Speaker A: Pretty badass volunteer firefighter, firefighter to do that. It's a fun thing to see what, to see people, you know, draw and have new covers come out. So I'm always excited to see what's coming out for you, especially when you tend to do covers for comic books that are also pretty freaking stellar. The devil wears my face. Amazing. I love charred remains. That was one of my favorite books recently. Your interior artist on that is also one of my favorite artists as so obviously Alex killed it on the interiors of. [01:36:55] Speaker B: It was so funny when we got the devil that wears my face because at first I was just told the title and I was like, oh, that's kind of cool. And then he sent me the guts of the. [01:37:07] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:37:08] Speaker B: And I'm like, oh, Alex. I know Alex. And it was like David Peppos. And I'm like, oh, I don't know him personally, but I've talked with him. [01:37:16] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. [01:37:17] Speaker B: It was just kind of like, we got it and then I'm like, I know the people. One of them I know personally. We've been friends for, I don't know, quite a while. And then the other one I've talked to through instant messenger or whatever, like a messenger or something like that. [01:37:38] Speaker A: Instant messenger. You're showing your age there, by the way. [01:37:40] Speaker B: Yeah, I know. [01:37:42] Speaker A: Can you im me, please? [01:37:44] Speaker B: I meant to say Facebook messenger. That's actually how I contacted him. [01:37:50] Speaker A: I'm going to have a way message on my Insta messenger here. Sorry. [01:37:54] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, I went and got on to my Myspace. Check that out. Put him in my top eight, my dialogue. [01:38:05] Speaker A: God, we're aging ourselves here. No? Yeah, it's a great book. I mean, my buddy Paul, who owns the comic shop, he put it in his top comics of the year. Last year. We did our top ten comics of the year. He put the devil that wears my face on there. It's an excellent book from Mad Cave. And so to be able to do a cover for that is pretty badass. Extremely loved. I love charred remains. We talked about the fact that I got a little matchbook here to go with it, which is pretty awesome. Pretty sweet, beautiful book there. And then. Yeah. So those are two books just off the top. The more recent books to have, you have a cover for. It's pretty badass. And people can, if you're in the area. Paul does have some of those at galactic comics and collectibles in Bangor, Maine. So if anybody is in the area, cult of the wicked, I believe he also has there some of those books that he has of yours there, if you want. [01:38:58] Speaker B: Yeah, he's got some that I think I tossed him some of my older stuff. There's a cover from. I think there might be mighty mascots there that I did for my buddy Keith, and it came out on the Wednesday. I don't know. It was a while ago when I hooked him up. [01:39:22] Speaker A: Yeah, he has a couple left, so it's pretty cool to have those there if you are in the area and want to buy it and you want to support a local comic book shop, but also get some artwork from Jesse without having to see him at a show or something. And you have some stuff on your website, right? I didn't. There's not a ton, but there's some. [01:39:37] Speaker B: There's some stuff. Yeah, there's some stuff on my website. I need to be better about that. Again, I sell on whatnot. All of them are whatnot available there. And then I am in an anthology called Fairy Tales from Mars. I did some interior stuff that was done very quickly because we were like a stretch goal. And then it was like, okay, well, we need this done. Okay, cool. And I was actually teamed up with a guy in Ukraine for that. The writer was from Ukraine. And I'm like, how many hours difference is that? We spoke twice via Zoom. And I'm like, what time is it there? When I first found out he was in Ukraine, it was just as the war had broken out there. I was like, oh, that's cool. And then, oh, no. Are you safe? [01:40:35] Speaker A: Is everything okay? I talked to Vladimir Popov last week when we recorded this last week, and he's from Serbia. And I was like, wait, what time is it there? He's like, oh, it's only 09:00 because we ended up doing it, like, I don't know, 03:00, 04:00 in the afternoon or something like that. And I was like, oh, okay, good. But I have done an episode with four different me and three other people, and we were all on different countries, in different countries. When we did it with Antarctica from Image Comics and Top Cow, it was Willie Roberts and Lyndon White and Simon Burks. And everybody was like, Simon was, like, in England, and for someone was in South America and someone was in somewhere. [01:41:18] Speaker B: That's. It's so crazy that now, because of technology, there's days where I'm just like, I hate technology. But then there's days when you're like, look at all these creative teams that would have never worked together ever. [01:41:36] Speaker A: And that's one of the downfalls to Twitter. The fact that Twitter's, like, imploding on itself is that the number of people that I've talked to with the artist and writer came on the podcast together. And I was like, how did you two meet? They're like, well, I just sent them a DM on Twitter. And it's something like, Twitter collapses in on itself completely. It's like, what future collaborations of comics would we have? Not like, that's the kind of, like, space time travel movie we need right now. We need to figure out what would the world have been like if we didn't have Twitter, which comics, and that would. A finite number of people like myself would watch that movie or tv show. But I'm saying we need what would have happened if Twitter didn't work. Because, yes, we're no Twitter is around, but no, be less shitty people out there. I'll tell you that. Much or less people telling you how shitty you are. How about that? [01:42:23] Speaker B: Everyone's happy. [01:42:25] Speaker A: Wow. It's like gold. There's no wars. It's like roses everywhere and rainbows and. Yeah, I know. It'd be actually pretty funny. [01:42:32] Speaker B: But you're hopefully utopian society now. [01:42:36] Speaker A: Exactly. Jesse is. We're going to announce you're coming to Galacticon this summer. It'll be fun to do that. So we'll see you there. But you're also going to other conventions this summer, I'm guessing, too. You already have a lineup of conventions. [01:42:48] Speaker B: To go to, so I've got Maine comic. When I was saying my April is becoming crazy, I think I'll probably just go as a fan to little giant. I don't know. We'll see. If all of a sudden the last minute he's like, hey, here's a table. We'll see about that. But yeah, I've got then which is a three day con, right? Yeah. Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Then literally the next week I fly out to Chicago for a three day for c two. E two, which is like the biggest con I've ever done. And it's one I've been wanting to do for a while because I always see, honestly, of the big cons that are going on right now. I've wanted to do c two e two and heroes con because it seems like they are the most comic driven. Yes, cons of the big cons. Like, obviously you're going to have your celebrities there and stuff, but it seems like they are more. Well, heroes con, not so much because I don't think they bring any celebrities in. [01:44:02] Speaker A: I don't think so. No. [01:44:05] Speaker B: Don't want to misspeak. But, yeah, no, those are the two big ones that I would love to do. And I get to do c two, e two for the first time. And then the next weekend I'll be at Merrimack Comics for free. Comic book day. [01:44:21] Speaker A: Yes, that's coming right up. [01:44:22] Speaker B: And then my schedule I don't know very well yet, and I don't know when they fall in line. That's something my wife helps me out with. I am not a calendar person. Yeah, we're going to be doing Haveril library convention. It's a little fundraiser for the public library, which is fun. And I'll be doing wicked con in the fall down in Boston, which is. [01:44:50] Speaker A: Also a great not newer show because it's a bringing back of a. It's a convoluted history. It's newer, but it's comic book centric. And that's what's cool about. [01:45:02] Speaker B: There's no celebrity. [01:45:03] Speaker A: Celebrity. [01:45:04] Speaker B: Like, they're celebrity artists. [01:45:05] Speaker A: Yeah, but not celebrity. [01:45:07] Speaker B: It's all comic. [01:45:09] Speaker A: We've always said that. I say no celebrities are going to come to Galacticon, but Paul and I have made a caveat to that whole thing. It's like, as long as they've participated in creating a comic book. So on our short list are know, Patton Oswald can definitely come if he wants to come. And David Dustmalchin can come. Actually, you know who just come up? They just announced that dark horse is Josh Gad, who played Olaf on Frozen. He's writing a comic book right now. So like, all those people are welcome. Yes, all those people are more than welcome to come because they've created a comic book. That's the only caveat that we have. You cannot have someone who, Robert Downey Jr. The second Robert Downey Jr. Writes a comic book or draws one, he can come to the convention, too. But that's their only thing. You have to be celebrity that writes a comic book or draws a comic book. [01:45:54] Speaker B: That's my invited till then, until you're willing to come for something that has less than one comma in the price tag. [01:46:03] Speaker A: I was just laughing about that. Yeah, well, technically, those people are allowed to come. We don't have the budget to bring any of those people, but I'm just saying they're allowed to come if they wanted to come. [01:46:12] Speaker B: If they were like, they're like, hey. [01:46:15] Speaker A: I'm going to happen to be on vacation. I'm going to be there already. [01:46:20] Speaker B: I bet you if you reached out to some of them and just be like, hey, we'll put you up. We'll fly you out. We can't afford an appearance fee. How many people would do it? Just because it's one of our guests. [01:46:32] Speaker A: That'S coming up that we're going to announce here one of our guests who's a writer artist from Joplin, Missouri. I don't know if you'll be able to guess who this person is, but I just know where they're from is coming because they're bringing their kid and wife along with them and they're going to vacation the week prior to Galacticon. And so they're like, hey, come on out. So normally we would book the flight and pay for the flight and do all that stuff, but instead we're just going to send them a quote unquote appearance fee instead of trying to do all that stuff so that they could book a flights and hotels and all that stuff together with their family. [01:47:04] Speaker B: Right. [01:47:04] Speaker A: So in exchange, we'll just do the value of what normally we would pay and just send that over to them. And they're going to do their whole thing themselves, but they're coming because of the fact that Maine is a place that people want to come vacation at. [01:47:15] Speaker B: So it's like, that's helpful because there's some people like, you watch a movie and you're like, why would they lower themselves to do this movie? And it's like, oh, because it filled in Hawaii. So they're like, yeah, I'll do it for $8,000 in a sandwich, but I get to go to Hawai for a month. [01:47:33] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. So that's what happens. It does happen, so don't say it won't. [01:47:40] Speaker B: Friends. [01:47:40] Speaker A: Is that how I'm going to sell tickets, Jesse? I'll be like, hey, by the way, it's possible, guys, that we might have Patton, Oswald, David, just smaller, Josh, Gadd. They might all be there at this convention, maybe possible, not probable. No refunds if you buy tickets. [01:47:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I love the shows that are like 30 people on the list. And then the week before the show, all of them drop off and it's like, well, something they had to film. And it's like, did they or did they never know about that they were showing up to this and use their. [01:48:14] Speaker A: Name to help promote? Yeah, exactly. But hey, we're not here to solve conventions problems, okay? No, we'd be here for a lot longer than we have already been here to solve the problems from conventions. [01:48:26] Speaker B: It would be a nightmare. [01:48:29] Speaker A: And someone would be like, it's a waste of time. Can you solve like, world hunger or like war, peace? [01:48:34] Speaker B: Way above my pay grade to be able to figure these things out. [01:48:39] Speaker A: We should probably wrap this up, though, because people have already signed off. Anybody who's going to listen to this is already gone and they don't care, which is okay, whatever. The five people we have are now down to three or two people probably listening by the time this. [01:48:52] Speaker B: Hi, mom. [01:48:52] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. No, my mom would be like, I'm out of here already. She listens on a regular basis, too. She'd also have already signed off. You have a website. What's your website? [01:49:02] Speaker B: Lundbergraphics.com. [01:49:04] Speaker A: That's what it is. And you're on social media, so check that out as well. [01:49:07] Speaker B: Yeah. It's the same name over everything to try to make life as easily as possible. Except for Twitter. It's Lundberg graphic because the s wouldn't fit. [01:49:20] Speaker A: Yes, it's very. [01:49:23] Speaker B: And to be honest, I don't really post on, so not very often. If you're going there for news, there's so many more options that you have available that I actually update. [01:49:34] Speaker A: Yes. And then you're on whatnot like you mentioned. So check out whatnot as well. [01:49:38] Speaker B: Yes. [01:49:39] Speaker A: And then if you get a chance to see Jesse at the places like main comic at Toycon, which is the 19 April 19th, I don't know. Maincombicatoycon.com, I believe is the name of the website. You should go to that. [01:49:49] Speaker B: Check that out. All I remember is it's the weekend. [01:49:53] Speaker A: Before CTE, so I think it is. It's the 19th through the 21st. I believe. And then CTV two is like, the 25th or 20. It's the next weekend. If you're in that area, check those out. And then we have. [01:50:03] Speaker B: Being self employed, like, I work in vague numbers. It's like, yeah, it's that month. [01:50:08] Speaker A: It's in April here and there. Something like, well, you work in the comic book industry. It's vague numbers anyway. Like, yeah, it will come out at some point. Foc is three weeks. [01:50:18] Speaker B: Maybe it's four weeks. Maybe it's six weeks. That's how the Dick Tracy became a c two e two. We're doing as a c two e two exclusive was because it was supposed to come out, like, a week or two prior, and then now it's the 24 happened to where they pushed it back to the Wednesday before. C two e two. [01:50:37] Speaker A: I think it's April. [01:50:38] Speaker B: And we're, like, worth. Yeah, we're like, cool. [01:50:42] Speaker A: Works for me. It's also good. It sucks when you have it come out the week after too. It ended up coming out, like, may 1, and you're like, we could have had it at this convention. And it always sucks. I've had that comic book day, but. [01:50:53] Speaker B: Nobody goes to free comic book day looking to spend money. [01:50:56] Speaker A: Correct. That's always nice to have that for that. I mean, it's going to suck for the people who were going to me, comic at Toycon, can't get your dick Tracy cover yet because it's not coming out to the following weekend, but. [01:51:05] Speaker B: Right. [01:51:06] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:51:07] Speaker B: I'll be like, oh, you could preorder it, I guess. I know that we're doing a limited amount of them. I don't know how limited. [01:51:17] Speaker A: Limited arbitrary number nowadays could be 100. [01:51:22] Speaker B: But no, the guy that I have that does them, actually, these are some that I need to send to him, but he hard numbers them. [01:51:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:51:39] Speaker B: That one was numbered to ten. [01:51:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I was just saying, like, someone's like, well, I have number nine of ten. How does that work? Yeah, they all just say nine of ten on it. They don't actually. [01:51:50] Speaker B: No, these are actual. I can guarantee this much that those are actually the number that it says is the number that there are. [01:52:03] Speaker A: That's pretty funny, though. But, yeah, I can guarantee that much. Yeah, that one's legit. It's satanic collectibles. They're cool people. I like those. We'll. We'll catch up again soon. We'll just shoot the shit again and maybe have a little bit more. We'll talk a subject of some. [01:52:22] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, at this point, this was just friends hanging out and having. [01:52:25] Speaker A: That'S what we want. [01:52:26] Speaker B: Having people to learn about you. [01:52:28] Speaker A: I want people to, people who don't know about Jesse Lundberg. I think you need to know about Jesse Lundberg because it's got some great artwork. I think it's great. I'm excited. [01:52:36] Speaker B: Bring me cocky. I'll give you a sketch. [01:52:39] Speaker A: I'll just, I'll just come visit you in New Hampshire. We're not that far with me. We'll bring Paul with me. We'll go do something. [01:52:48] Speaker B: Yeah, do that. [01:52:49] Speaker A: Well, maybe next time we'll have Paul on with us and we'll just do a whole comp book creator and a comic book retailer and myself just sitting here, and we'll do a whole discussion that way. That's cool with me. [01:53:00] Speaker B: Yeah, that'd be fun. And then you get it from, like, I like to think that I'm up and coming. It's one of those, like, I'm a creator, but I definitely know my place in the world. I'm not a household name, but I have people that honestly think that I am, which is hilarious to me. I have friends. I have people that they're like, oh, no, you're big to us. And I'm like, thanks. I don't know exactly how to feel about it. [01:53:37] Speaker A: Still a story that's only going to make sense to people who, and they can figure it out. I'm not going to say any names, but you can figure out who this person is by listening to the 140 episodes prior to this is there was one creator on here who, again, I won't name by name. It was kind of funny because they're like, the only reason people like working with me is because my comics sell so well and kept on going on and on and on about how great of a writer they are or creator they are and so on and so forth. And I was just laughing because I'm like, wow, you do not think a lot of yourself at all, do you? [01:54:09] Speaker B: Yeah, very humble. [01:54:12] Speaker A: But I was like, okay, cool. Again, if you're a very longtime listener of this podcast, I will guarantee you right now that creator doesn't listen to the podcast. So I'm not worried about. But no, it was an episode. I said it could have been episode one. It could be episode 139. [01:54:28] Speaker B: Well, there's a guy that I can almost guarantee that you probably haven't had on your show. He has a problem with drawing feet. [01:54:35] Speaker A: Yes. I have not had that person on my show. But anytime that person wants to come on the show, I will gladly take. [01:54:42] Speaker B: But if you ever happen to watch one of his streams, he has never drawn a bad drawing. And every drawing that he does is the next best thing he has ever done. [01:54:56] Speaker A: This said person has retired from comics at Marvel. Haven't. [01:54:59] Speaker B: Yes, but I watch things, and it's like, oh, this is the greatest thing I've ever. And then he sells it, and then he picks up the next one. He's like, this is the greatest thing I've ever drawn, blah, blah, blah, and sells it for, like, $400. And I'm like, humble. [01:55:19] Speaker A: Yes. [01:55:20] Speaker B: Humble and hungry is what that guy is. [01:55:22] Speaker A: Well, I'm going to say right now, Jesse, be humble, okay? All you need to do is be humble. [01:55:27] Speaker B: If anything, I'm like, you really want to buy this from me? Cool. [01:55:31] Speaker A: Wait, you're willing to pay $20 for that? Cool. I'll give you a discount if you want. You didn't ask for a discount. I'll still give you a discount. Oh, you were going to pay full price. Whatever. It doesn't matter. [01:55:44] Speaker B: Sounds like a place I used to work for. We weren't asking for a discount, but I gave you one anyways. [01:55:51] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. [01:55:52] Speaker B: But then I'm going to bitch about not making enough money. [01:55:57] Speaker A: The life we live. Jesse, I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day and shooting your shit with talking about random stuff with us, and we guess we'll definitely have you back on. [01:56:07] Speaker B: I think we covered the gambit. [01:56:08] Speaker A: I think we did. [01:56:09] Speaker B: Speaking of Gambit, thank you so much. Have a good. It's.