[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back to the Capes and Tights podcast right here on capesandtights.com dot. I'm your host, Justin Soderbergh. This episode is brought to you once again by Galactic Comics and
[email protected]. we welcome writer from tv, film and comic books David A. Goodman to the podcast to discuss the Masked Mocker from Dark Horse comics. David is known for his work as staff writers on series such as Family Guy, the Orville Star Trek Enterprise, Futurama, as well as the upcoming hysteria. He also wrote a movie called Honor Society, which came out a couple of years ago. He served as producer in a number of different tv shows that you probably know, but in the world of comics, he's also written the Orville comic series that paired up with the tv show, as well as the series called Space Job, which came out a couple of years ago. And what we talked about mostly on this episode, the Masked Mocker, which is available now at your local comic book shop. So check that out. This is David A. Goodman, staff writer for multiple tv shows out there in comic book, writer for books like space Job and the currently being released masked mocker right here on the Capes and Tights podcast. Thanks, everyone. Enjoy.
Welcome to the podcast, David. How are you today?
[00:01:17] Speaker B: I'm great. How are you, Justin?
[00:01:18] Speaker A: I'm doing wonderful. You know, my kids aren't sleeping, but that's what it takes. Like when I have a young kids, right?
Which means I'm not sleeping. Right, David?
[00:01:27] Speaker B: Mine aren't sleeping either, but they're in their twenties, so it's their own problem.
[00:01:33] Speaker A: Exactly. It was kind of funny. I went to a comic con this weekend, and people were always like, how's it going? We were out drinking last night, and I was like, yeah, I was home with my kids. I was probably sleeping as much as you were, but not the same reasoning. You were having more fun, probably, but no, they're like, why didn't you come back out after you put your kids to sleep? Because I was like, I went home and I sat down. That was the problem.
Yeah, exactly. But, yeah, we're here to talk some, some comics. You, you are a writer extraordinaire of multiple facets. You write tv, movies, things like that. But, like, comics is your number one thing. But before I get into comics really quickly, I wanted to say that one of the shows that my parents watched when I was a kid growing up was wings. And after I found out that you had written a couple episodes of Wings, I haven't seen it probably since the nineties, so I couldn't be like, oh, yeah, that episode. But I was like, oh my God, now I need to find a. I don't even know where you can stream it now or if it's available for streaming, but I'm like, I need to go back and watch the show again. Cause I absolutely, I could just picture.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: That's funny.
[00:02:36] Speaker A: It's the wings. The wings tv show. It was that.
[00:02:40] Speaker B: You grew up in Maine? Is that.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: Yes? Yeah, yes.
[00:02:43] Speaker B: Yeah. And that show took place on Nantucket, so I guess the close one, but.
[00:02:50] Speaker A: Yeah, but it was just kind of funny. I was like, oh my gosh. You know, people probably are like, oh, you know, you worked on Golden Girls, obviously, family guy, all that stuff. And I'm like, no, wings, man.
I gotta bring up wings. But no, let's start David, a little bit. So what got you into writing in the first place? As an overall arching topic here. But what led you to actually physically getting down pen on paper and writing something?
[00:03:15] Speaker B: It's a good question. I think that when I graduated college in the eighties, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. And I thought it's a vague idea about being a writer, probably books was what I was thinking.
And I got jobs in New York, working as an assistant in publishing companies. But then I got this job at a tv production company and I think I always thought I wanted to write for television, but I didn't even know how to do it. Like, I'm from a suburb of New York. I didn't know anybody in show business back then with no Internet, you didn't even know. Most people didn't even know that television writing was a job, and that's changed completely. But back then, and I just so happened that I got a job as an assistant to a television producer who was a writer, a woman named Gloria Banta, who had written for some great shows in the, in the seventies, Mary Tyler Moore and Rhoda and these great sitcoms. And she encouraged me and my partner, who is from Bangor, Maine, Rick Kopp, to write sample scripts. And so it was really just this kind of thing that happened. We sat down, we started, we were both big tv watchers. We both had just kind of an I instinctual idea of how to come up with a sitcom story. And we did sitcom, and we wrote these two episodes, these two sample scripts, and then we were hired on the Golden Girls. And my journey as a writer obviously began there. And obviously it's a great place to start. I learned so much and worked with some great writers. As time went on, I really started to want to do also other kinds of writings. I enjoy writing comedy, but I also, I wrote books and I was a big Star Trek fan. I ended up writing for Star Trek, and then I, my partner and I split up very amicably and I started doing some other things. I worked in animation and then was also writing Sci-Fi, that's Star Trek, and then wrote these books. And then it led to sort of where it started, which was that, which as I was a, when I was a kid reading and collecting comic books, that was probably something even I didn't think of as a job. You know, obviously knew the names of the writers, but I didn't really stop to think about how do you become a comic book writer? And so now that after a 36 year career in television, I'm writing comics is kind of funny, I think, but great.
[00:06:10] Speaker A: It's funny how you say that, you know, that there's a writer. It's like, you know, there's jobs for these things. Same thing with tv, but it's like, it almost feels like it's, you know, royalty. Like, I know there's a king of England, but, like, I can never be that. Like, it's just not something I can do. And until you actually get the chance, and obviously that is something that I can do. However, writing and being in these titles and these, in these positions that people have, it's just kind of funny. It seems like such a far off thing that you can't actually accomplish.
[00:06:38] Speaker B: I used to, I mean, as a kid, I went to a lot of comic conventions and I'd listen to writers like Jim Shooter and Marv Wolfman and all these from my, the guys who were writing comics in the sixties and seventies who were my, the guys who stuffed Jerry Conway, all these guys who were writing the stuff that I was reading, and yet I never sort of put together that you would sit down and write a comic book. It was an interesting, I agree with you that you would look, look at these people. It's like there's some kind of magic there.
[00:07:13] Speaker A: Yeah. You have to become friends with Jim Shooter at some point in your career to actually become a writer, because you have to know someone, knows someone, knows someone. And nowadays, I mean, the number of you mentioned the Internet, the number of people who have gotten jobs based off just Twitter, DM's or, or an email or whatever, just, just being like, hey, I have a new comic coming out. I'm looking for an artist and you just DM someone, and all of a sudden, I know where you have an artist and you have a relationship, and then they're working together for ten years. It's just, it's such a different world, I'm guessing, into creating comics. Like, how harder would have been for you to create comics 35 years ago when you started out compared to right now? Right now?
[00:07:45] Speaker B: Well, I had the advantage of that. I was working on a big tv show, the Oroville, and I I said to Seth MacFarlane, who created the Orville, I said, let's do an Orville comic. And I did it specifically for my own.
I wanted to write comics. And Seth said, great, seth, go, you know, go forth. And the studio made a deal with Dark Horse to do a tie in comic that I would write, and I'd never written comics. I was very excited to get to write these comics.
I knew a lot of comic writers, Jeff Johns and a few others and Jerry Duggan, and they helped me understand the format.
But I had this sort of advantage of the show, and not really anybody really realizing I was driving that so that I would get a chance to write comics.
That's a very lucky position I was in.
[00:09:00] Speaker A: I've talked to people on here who are authors, prose novelists, and then dabbled in comics or switched over to comics or do both and so on and so forth. They find that stories are made for specific mediums sometimes. And so, like, your comics, like space job over at Dark Horse and your latest comic, is it masked Mocker? Is. Am I saying that right?
[00:09:23] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:09:25] Speaker A: Mocker is fine Macher, do you find that, you know, first of all, like, is there a similarity in writing for tv versus comics? And also, is these two stories where, like, did it mean, did it make sense to sell these in comics? I mean, space job has a similarity to the Orville, in a sense, where there comedy in space and things like that. But, like, do these comics just need to be, or these stories just need to be in comic format to you, or is it just an avenue to tell these stories?
[00:09:50] Speaker B: Well, certainly the most recent one, the Mass mocker, ended up feeling like this could only be done in a comic.
There is there.
When I was doing the tie in comic for the Orville, my goal with that was that a fan of the Orville reading, it would feel like, oh, this could be an episode. So there are no thought balloons, there are no stage directions. It's all visuals and dialogue telling the story. And because as a reader of comics as a kid, I always was disappointed by Star Trek comics because they didn't feel like episodes to me. And so that was my goal with that space job. Actually started out as a pilot for a tv show. I'd written a pilot, but what I did with the comic was the comic is true to that pilot script, but it expands it.
The world can get a little bigger, a lot bigger. In a comic, you're not as limited by budget in a certain way. But also part of the premise of that comic was working in space is going to just be as shitty as working in an office.
And so there was also a way in which that was part of the comic, was the limitations of it. But also, I also got to expand it a little bit. I tell the story, the sort of the future history of this world, which I didn't in the pilot. Like, I could really do a little world building in the comic that I couldn't do. And then Mass Mocker was actually originally an idea, a pitch for a, an animated show that I was developing with one of the wrestling companies, and then they decided they didn't want to do scripted television anymore. And so I have had all this work, but then as I was writing it, and as I'm sort of filling in the world, and then the great art that Alex Andres did really changed it, really made it deeper. I felt, like, more noirish that. And so there's a way, and then there's a twist at the end of the first issue, which would have worked in an animated show, but that's not how I would have done it in an animated show.
The way I'm telling this story is very much of the medium of comics. So I feel like from that first Orville comic now into this, I've fully grown into this comic can only really be a comic.
[00:12:41] Speaker A: And I would, I mean, I would watch it as a show. Like, it's one of those things that I probably would have, would have caught my attention, but in the same sense, like, yeah, I'm not sure if after reading this issue would have been like, yeah, wouldn't have stuck the same. I also feel like comics sometimes can feel like, episodes of tv, like, individual issues. And I feel like this would have had to been one episode, but I feel like it wouldn't have been one episode. It would have been, like, multiple episodes, and that wouldn't have worked in that sense either. But, yeah, for those who don't know who are going to listen to this podcast, what is the mass mocker to people? What is this comic?
[00:13:15] Speaker B: So the idea of the mass mocker is that it's 1930s. It's Hollywood. And its main character, Tony Hollywood, is this actor who thinks he's going to be this big star, gets a flat tire in front of a wrestling arena. And the owner of the wrestling arena, little jewish old lady named Mickey, gives him a mask, tells him to put it on. I'll give you $5 if you get in the ring. And he suddenly finds himself in this world of professional wrestling in the 1930s in Hollywood, which I've completely made up.
But the idea is a comment. It's a comment on show business. It's comment on being a star. It's the fun of doing a wrestling comic and the idea that all the wrestling moves we know today were created in this little wrestling arena by one of the characters in the book. And there's also comments on race and sex in that he is kind of, he is this mediocre white guy who, who is sort of being held up by all these other people around him of varying race and sex.
And so that's the basic idea, but it's at heart a comedy, and the comic is being narrated by someone. It's a big twist at the end of the issue when you find out who, that really throws you into this comic world in a way that this fake comic world that I've made up of 1930s Hollywood.
I don't know if I. You've read the comic?
[00:15:07] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think it's great without actually giving away too much. That's one of those things that's hard to do when you talk about something that has, like, we could sit here and talk wings or the Orville. And I feel safe to do that because I love those shows and I can, I don't care about spoiling them because they've been on tv for long enough. You guys could figure it out. But something, that comic book just came out September 18. I think we're, we're in this point position. We're like, no, we still want you to buy it and read it. So. Yeah, but it's true. And I think that, so what? Comedy and comics is such a difficult thing, in my opinion. I feel like it's so polarizing to some people. And I don't feel like, I feel like horror fits all horror fans for the, for the, for the most part, whereas comedy, it's like it not all avenues of comedy hits the same way for people. And I find it very hard. And I feel like in space job and your funny thing about this is when we talked via email and through messenger about coming on, it was funny. Because you were on my mind when space job came out in 2023 about getting you on the podcast. And then things just spiraled and rolled and didn't, you know, things moved along and so on and so forth. And I was like, oh. And then when we reached out, I was like, oh, this is great, because I love Space drop. And I wanted to talk about Space Drive.
Yeah. Because comedy is so, like I said, so different in comic books, in my opinion, which is funny to think about, because a lot of people think that comic books are just comedy, those on the outside.
[00:16:26] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:16:27] Speaker A: But do you feel like it's hard to tell jokes and be funny in comics nowadays, or is it, is it just part of your life nowadays?
[00:16:35] Speaker B: I mean, for me, like, the, the way it works, the way it worked in both space job and mass mocker, and to some extent, the orville comic is, it's the character.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:44] Speaker B: That the characters are, you know, larger than life, and they're saying, you know, I think that, you know, you're also in both comics, there's both, in both spaced out and mass market, there's a sense of people who are sort of trapped with a bad boss. And that, to me, is a great, very relatable source of comedy, that you've got this idiot who you're working for, and you can't get this idiot to see that they're being an idiot because they're essentially in charge or you have to follow them or you need them. And so that's kind of where I find the comedy. To me, that, and that, to me also part of I think why I love how these comics came out is in both cases, I played it straight. I have the artists. They're not, they don't, nobody looks silly. The type of art that's in both of these books is realistic in the sense of they're not, because that, I think when you see something played straight, uh, something, it's, it's going to be funnier if the people look real, if they look like cartoon, cartoonish characters, that, that can actually undermine your jokes. And, and then the premise is so, uh, I think that Tony Hollywood, the main character of space job, is so, um, it's sad, and you sort of connect to him in a sad way in the comic.
That, that also helps you, like, your emotional connection to the people in the comic helps you laugh at the absurdity of these situations. But in both cases, I, my style of comedy and comics is a world that you can believe, and that then it's the characters in the world that are funny.
[00:18:55] Speaker A: Mm hmm. Yeah. And I honestly think from the very beginning, you know, you're getting into, you know, a comedic comic book from the COVID because you actually wrote a little joke basically with the title of the book by explaining, by explaining the, explaining the joke before the joke was even, you know, after the joke was told, it was actually kind of funny. I'm like, okay, this seems like, you know, my kind of, my kind of humor.
[00:19:15] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:15] Speaker A: But I think that's also what Seth MacFarlane and your writing team over at Orville did well, too. I think, with the design of the characters on the Orville, some of them were a little extreme, but most of them, if someone just sat down, you had it on mute, and someone was just in the room with you, they thought they think you were just watching another version of Star Trek or something like that. Like, from a distance, it just looked like a regular space show. And then the jokes and the humor and all that stuff come later. And I think that's the same thing with, like, space job and even this one where it's like, it just, if someone from a distance saw me reading the mass mocker at a table, they wouldn't immediately go, oh, that's a funny comic book.
[00:19:49] Speaker B: Right.
[00:19:50] Speaker A: That helps with your humor in that sense, too, that you're saying it doesn't have go over the top.
[00:19:55] Speaker B: Right.
[00:19:55] Speaker A: But I've talked to other authors or writers of comedy in comics, and they've actually veered away from it like I have in Kyle Starks. I've met a couple guests on here, a couple times guests on here. And he used to write strolly, basically comedy, and now he's veered over into more the horror, and he's done some superhero stuff and stuff like that now. But he was just saying it was just so hard to sell comics to people that were funny because people didn't want it. And I was like, yeah, but I feel like there's this niche for it, I think is the right, the right voice behind it. And I feel like after reading a couple of yours, I'm like, I think your voice is right for that comedy genre.
[00:20:31] Speaker B: Well, I hope so. I think that to me, in both cases, in all cases, it was really important to me that there be a serious story.
And in both space job and mass mocker, there's a story going on there that is serious. Like, there's a, like, so in spaceship is a love story going on. And I take that seriously. I take that this sort of star cross, so to speak, star cross lovers in space job who can't quite get together.
You know, it's the Jim and Pam of my office in space.
[00:21:17] Speaker A: I was really thinking that I'm like, I don't know, it's just thinking like, oh, how serious Jim and Pan's relationship on the office was.
[00:21:22] Speaker B: But, yeah, and that's, you know, if you watch the office when they do serious stuff, they're not doing jokes during the serious stuff. It's a writer.
I think it was a writer.
Brent Forrester, I think his name is. I think it was Brent. I mean, I know Brent, but I'm saying, I think it was Brent who said that. It was relaying that on the office. It was the DLT was an old McDonald's hamburger and you would have the hot side and the cool side. You kept them separate till you put them together. And so if you're doing drama on the office, it's dramatic. They don't do jokes. And then the comedy is the comedy. And I sort of do that in both. I try to do that in these comics. And Mas Maher has a, you'll sort of see as it's big and funny, but there's a sort of a sad moment in the first issue where he, where Tony Hollywood makes a big decision and then as the story goes on, it gets kind of dark.
The story gets kind of dark, but the comedy is still there. And I think that's, what, I think that's the key in comics, is that a comic reader wants, wants a, wants a story that the writer takes seriously. And I think, I'm not, I don't, I'm not commenting on what that other writer you're referencing because I don't, I'm not familiar with his work. But I do think that I hope that readers come to this because the story has something to offer.
[00:23:02] Speaker A: Yes. Yes. And I think that's, I don't think anybody, I mean, not anybody, I think there's, there's a space for just stupid jokes to make you laugh because I think that there is, there is those movies out there, movies of all time is grandma's boy. And I feel like that entire movie is just making you laugh. It's not, there's no, there's no point to everything that's actually going on.
[00:23:20] Speaker B: I've never seen that movie. What is that movie?
[00:23:22] Speaker A: Grandma's boy? It's happy Madison. So it's, you know, it's those guys, you know, Rob Schneider's in it and stuff like that. It's a, it's a movie that was one of those ones that was, like, under the radar early. Two thousands, probably. And it's just one of those. It's just a comedy that there's just joke after joke after joke. And again at the end, it's what most horror slasher grossed out movies are to just make you go, ugh. In the comedies, it's just there to make you laugh. It's there to make you whatever. However, most of us, I think most of us want some sort of story when we're reading. I don't if I'm going to invest into reading a comic book with all of the comics that are on the market right now and all the options I have have, I want to invest in something that actually has a story to it, too. I mean, you know, you could, if you want to just tell jokes for Joke's sake, write a comic strip, because that gives me three or four panels and I'm done. But, like, investing time, energy, effort, money into a comic book, I still want it to mean something. Yeah, I do think. And one of my, I mean, my favorite show, probably my favorite show of all time is the office. And I think there's episodes throughout that series that I actually cried at David. Like, I physically was emotionally brought to the proposal of Jim and Pam in the, in the gas station. I actually physically cried in those episodes. But then there's also ones where I'm, like, hurting that I can't stop laughing.
[00:24:39] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:24:39] Speaker A: And so there's that, that, you know, position to balance both of them. And I think that there is a space for that. And going into it, knowing that it's a. There's a story to it. Like you just mentioned, there's actually, like, heart to it. There's. There's emotion, there's. There's jokes for jokes, but, like, and there's thinking of your own personal life. I mean, he makes decisions in this book that I think a lot of us. Not that specific decision. There's not like, I'm a 1930s wrestler or actor, but makes decisions that we have all done. I mean, I did it my day job as a creative director at a brewery. And before I started working for this brewery, there was the position there where it was, do I take this job at this brewery because I want to work for this specific brewery or that I might make a lot less money at the. Or do I continue working at the job that I did not like, but I made pretty good money. And I literally, when I woke up and it was like, if they offered me the job, I will cancel everything I will have nothing. I'll live in a box in the corner to get this job. And I think there's decisions that we make that are life decisions, and he does, in this comic, make a decision that could have screwed up a lot for him in a long time.
[00:25:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:25:46] Speaker A: And it was a tough decision, but it's also a funny comic. I mean, like, it's, I don't know. There's a lot in this first issue that I was not expecting to be in the first issue too. You crammed a lot in this issue. Well, it paced well, but it's just, there's a lot in there going on in the first issue, which is awesome.
[00:26:02] Speaker B: Oh, that's cool.
[00:26:03] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Is it? I mean, I know you did the Orville at Dark Horse, and that's obviously a relationship that, I'm guessing that the tv studio and stuff like that and production studio made a deal, but are you with space job and then this at Dark Horse because of your previous relationship with the publisher?
[00:26:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. I met my editor, Dave Marshall, at Dark Horse. He was the editor of the Orville comics. And then I, after the Orville comics did pretty well. They, for them, they, and they did a library edition. I've seen that. It's, I'm very beautiful. It's, I'm holding it up now. It's gorgeous.
[00:26:41] Speaker A: I love their stuff that they do. Dark Horse is one of the best in those, like, library printed things.
[00:26:46] Speaker B: This is actually a homage to a Justice League 100 page, super spectacular cover. Do you familiar with it? That was my, that was my golden fleece comic as a kid. I saw it as a kid.
A friend had it and showed it to me, and he was, and it was my first introduction to multiple earths. And because Robin from Earth Two was in just a society, was on it, too. And that was the comic that was always in my head. I have a copy of it now, but I told our very talented writer, Dave Cabeza, to do this for the library edition.
But anyway, Dave Marshall was my editor, and then I just pitched him spaced out. I actually sent him the pilot script and said, I think this would be good comic. And so they're there too. And then I did the same thing with Mass Macher and their creator owned comics. So, but up to this point, for me, it's been a very fruitful relationship that was started because I had done the Orville comics, and I think you know that Dave, to his credit, let me write the comic.
And I was little.
I had a lot to learn. He sent me samples of other people's work to read and gave me some pointers about how to lay out the script pages. And now I know what to do. But then I really was still learning a very different format, uh, than I was used to.
[00:28:40] Speaker A: But, yeah, dark horse is such a great, uh, publisher, in my opinion. I, they're just, they're, they love their creators. They love the people that are helping promote their comics. They work with me a lot, really well, and so on. So it's a great place, but, you know, and I feel like they feel like, you know, like it's weird how you, you work in tv. So it's like sometimes you feel like, you know, certain tv shows that end up on a certain network, or like it feels like that network show, like, it just, it just feels like it's at home in that network. It makes sense, right?
And this is the same thing. I feel like that space job in this, you know, they have a various variety of comics that they sell at dark horse, but just feels at home. I feel like when they said even, you know, if you just guess, they don't even look at the publisher and you're typing it up, and I'm like, and space drop brought to you by dark horse, you know, like, that was like what it was. And so I do feel like it's at home at this publisher, and I feel like these library editions are great. Those kind of stuff, the future of the publishing of it, you know, your trades, all that stuff is just great at dark core. So I am happy that it's at dark horse for you.
[00:29:42] Speaker B: Thank you. No, I mean, it's been a great company. They've been very supportive.
[00:29:47] Speaker A: Yeah, it's awesome, though, actually. Other note I forgot I mentioned, I kind of skipped ahead on was that you mentioned the first issue. Like I mentioned, there's a lot going on in the mass mocker in the first issue. There's some, some decisions being made. There's some comedy. Like I said, there's some big surprises at the end. But I also feel like it's not just that one cliffhanger ending or whatever you would call it. It feels like it's a lot of threads that you don't know where are going. Like, I feel like that does make that different than any other. Not any other, but most of the comedy comics is that there's actually parts where I'm intrigued to find out where it goes, not just the jokes that go along with it. So there is more to it than just comedy. And I thought that when I was like, because I wrote a note down when we did our review of the comic was that, yeah. Has so much future to it. And there's only four issues. Right. So it can't go that far. They can't go that many threads under there.
[00:30:35] Speaker B: But like, I wrap up the major things in the, in the first four, but, yes, but the other piece is that I do leave, I do believe plenty of places to go. And the idea to me about it is I think that, you know, it was, I was also writing a, I'm writing a bunch of things. It's a comedy, it's a wrestling show comic. It's, it's comment on Hollywood. It's also noir. There's a noir, a couple of noir elements that really start to come out in issue two, but they're, but they're hinted at here a little bit. And the drawings, the way it's drawn, it looks like it's noir. I mean, that was what I, again, I told Alex and Gonzalo, the artists, to make it feel like a film noir kind of thing.
So there's a bunch of threads. And I wanted each character to have their own sort of stories.
And then also because you have this narrator, you do sort of find out pretty quickly that the narrator isn't quite trustworthy.
You don't know whether, when you find out who the narrator is. And as the story goes on, is the narrator making stuff up. It's all an interesting comment on that, too, the idea of a narrated story. So there's a bunch of threads, and I, I just decided to sort of go with them all. And I wrap up, I wrap up some important ones, but I definitely leave some things unresolved at the end of issue four.
[00:32:30] Speaker A: That's good. I mean, that's good too, because think about it, in most people's stories in general, in life, things are all wrapped up with a bow. There's some things you don't end up learning about people. So that ends up, but you mentioned, and this is a comic book and it feels like a comic book, but the future of the world we live in right now is that things do get adapted into tv shows, movies, things like that. And you working in the tv industry and stuff. Can I make a casting? I know he doesn't do tv, but Nicolas Cage would be a great mass fucker.
[00:32:59] Speaker B: That's.
He would be great. He would be great. I also, I'm doing a show right now with Bruce Campbell. He would also be a great.
The character is kind of similar to one that I wrote with my partner in a tv movie in the nineties called the Adventures of Captain Zoom in Outer Space, which you can find on YouTube. I think an actor named Dan Reardon was in that.
A lot of guys could play this role.
[00:33:31] Speaker A: I was thinking about it. We just had this long conversation over the weekend at the comic convention I was at about Nicolas Cage, and I just was like, all the different various things that Nicolas can play. I was just like, it's just so funny. My wife and I have a love for national treasure, so it was one of the movies we bonded over when we 1st, 1st met. So we're always Nicolas Cage fan, but.
[00:33:50] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I mean, I just saw him in long legs, and he's just unbelievable.
[00:33:56] Speaker A: That pig peg was phenomenal. Yeah, he's a, he can do start a movie about himself. It's just, you know, whatever, but no. So you're in comics now. You've written space job, you've written this. You've written the Orville comic. Comic books.
You're a comic book writer. I mean, obviously you're a comic book. Anybody's a comic book writer when they write their first issue of comics, that's when it's published. You're now considered a comic book writer. But now with multiple comics out, you can actually, like, you know, justifyingly put it on your resume as a comic writer. Is it a future? Is this something that you continuously want to do? You have more pitches that you have that you want to make into comics that are solely made for comics?
[00:34:35] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I hope. I hope so. I hope I get to do more. I, you know, I think probably has to do with how well these things sell. But, but I also would, I mean, you know, it's so interesting. I don't even know how it works, but I'd love to write some DC comics or Marvel comics. Like, again, I don't know.
But I definitely have more creator own ideas of things that I would like to try.
I just finished, we just finished and writing mass mocker number four, and it's been drawn, and so I suppose I should talk to Dark Horse and start pitching again.
But yeah, no, I love it.
I love the fact that I get to do this. And I think Dark Horse again found these artists, all three comics, three completely different styles, and I loved working with all of them. They were all great partners.
[00:35:47] Speaker A: They all unique. They all have their own unique identity to them, which is great, because I do have, there are comic book creators who partner with another creator or with a, with an artist, a writer with an artist, that their comics all tend to look the same, which is fine. It works, and, you know, whatever.
[00:35:59] Speaker B: Right?
[00:36:00] Speaker A: But I do love the, the writers who touch different artists. They all have, you know, great looking artwork, but it's like, you can tell it's, it's a, it's. It's David, it's your comic. You can tell it's your comic, but it's, it's different in the sense that there's a different artist per project is pretty cool in that sense. And I could see you writing for DC or Marvel one of these days. It's. It's a, it's a, uh, it's a. Now you just get from friends with people. That's all it is. You just get silent against some people.
[00:36:25] Speaker B: Right.
[00:36:25] Speaker A: And, uh, you know, you'll get there. But you, I mean, touching on that mass mocker. The first issue drops September 18. Issue two comes October 23. Uh, they'll obviously be a collection to trade, too. If for some reason you can't find the first issue, I believe you can also buy it on dark versus website. So you should be able to find it somewhere and maybe digitally on Amazon or whatever. But you check it out, it's phenomenal. The trade is out for space job, which is also phenomenal, in my opinion. If you want a nice.
[00:36:55] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:36:56] Speaker A: I do think if you're a fan of the Orville, you'll appreciate space job, in my opinion. You want to laugh, you want to have a good time, but also getting started with heart and stored with meaning. But you also have a tv show coming out, so I wanted to just quickly touch on that. October 18 on Peacock. Hysteria drops. What's hysteria all about?
[00:37:16] Speaker B: Hysteria is about a. It's a, it's. It's. Takes place small town in Michigan, and when a high school quarterback goes missing, sort of leads. Leads into a mystery of what happened to him. And it's in conjunction with a story of a high school bandaid who decide to pretend they're Satanists just at the wrong time. This takes place in the eighties. It's a period show, and it's high school. It's horror. It's a little bit of comedy and a great cast. Julie Bowen, Bruce Campbell, Anna Camp, a great group of teenagers playing the kids. And it's a lot of great heavy metal music. A lot of great music all across the show. Not just metal, but they're a heavy metal band. And they're. They're terrific in the show. And it's eight episodes. It's a, it's a it's, it's a really cool show. I didn't create it. It was created by Matthew Scott Kane. I was brought in to help him do his show, and I'm really proud to be a part of it.
[00:38:28] Speaker A: Yeah. So, so you're, you're still, still actively working tv. You're actively working comics. You're just, you keep them busy.
[00:38:35] Speaker B: It's a, it's always important to do everything you can.
I did a movie I'm very proud of that came out a couple years ago now honor society, which is also how I got this job.
Matt had read the script for that and thought I could write high school kids.
But it's, yeah, no, it's very important to continue to try doing everything you can to keep your career going.
[00:39:06] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. It was funny. This weekend I was talking to some of my, this is a comic creators that are friends of mine here in Maine, and I was telling them that I was talking to you today on the podcast to ask about upcoming episodes and things like that. And I was like, oh, yeah, and David wrote a movie a couple years ago called Honor Society. It has the woman from Spider man in it because I was trying to figure out people's names. I was trying to figure out like, oh, okay. Yeah, I don't understand what you're talking.
[00:39:34] Speaker B: And gallery rice.
[00:39:36] Speaker A: Yes, yes, exactly. At the time, I was like, oh, gosh, I don't know. And then you're just like, referencing a different movie, a movie that they would understand and they would know. Right, because it's a comic book convention. Yes. It was kind of funny on that side. But I, yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited for to watch it. It looks, it looks phenomenal. Outside of talking to you, it just looked like a cool tv show. So that's pretty cool.
[00:39:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:39:57] Speaker A: October 18 on Peacock will be dropping. That's awesome. And then, like I said, mass mocker is on shelves. You know, you tell your local comic book store anyway, because even if you didn't get it or missed it or whatever, there's a possibility that diamond still has some in stock. So they can send out to your local comic book shop. And they usually come in with a couple of days. So make sure you tell your lcs that you want it because you still potentially could get it. If not, there's always digital, there's always waiting for the trade. But I highly recommend reading it if you want a new story to read that's different. And that's, the other thing is there's so much out there that's very similar. And we had a long discussion, again, at this comic book convention about Marvel and DC and that there's a lot of just repetitive things over and over again, which is what they have to do. Kind of. It's just they're.
But the unique comics are the ones that are standing out a bit more, in my opinion. I think that you can't help but say the mass mocker is not a unique comic.
[00:40:53] Speaker B: Very unique. Yeah.
[00:40:55] Speaker A: I mean, it hits a bunch of things. It hits the noir thing. Like, you mentioned the comedy. But, I mean, wrestling fans should love it. I think there's no reason why wrestling fans shouldn't be picking this up. I mean, I think put it on the shelf next to Daniel Warren. Jonathan's. Do a powerbomb. And there you go. You got these independent wrestling, you know, comp.
[00:41:09] Speaker B: No, I wanted to. Yeah, I wanted. I really wanted it to feel like people who were fans of wrestling would get. Would get things that there's a lot in there for them, I think.
[00:41:22] Speaker A: Absolutely. I'm gonna watch weddings again. I gotta find out where I can watch wings again. You know, I don't know if you can say anything, but are we getting more Orville, or is this, you know, I don't.
[00:41:32] Speaker B: I.
I don't know. I. Last I talked to Seth, he was trying to get it going. And the thing is, I would never count Seth out. I mean, he got family guy back. It's hard to remember that was always canceled. Came back. He got Orville picked up, and he wants to do more when he's done with Ted. He's doing the second season of Ted right now, so I think there's a very good chance. But I haven't heard anything definitive.
[00:42:01] Speaker A: I'd be excited when it comes back. I mean, it was one of those few shows that I could get my wife to watch with me. Like, usually we are, like, on separate. And that was one of the ones where, like, binge the whole thing during the pandemic, which was, which is phenomenal. But, yeah, but, yeah. So, yeah, grab those comics, continue writing. I appreciate everything that you do, and I appreciate you taking time to talk.
[00:42:21] Speaker B: Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.
[00:42:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm looking forward, and we'll have you back on at some point talking about different projects in the future. You know, whether it's tv, movies, or comics, we'll chat. Sound good?
[00:42:31] Speaker B: Yeah, anytime.
