Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back to the Capes and Tights podcast right here on Capes and Tights Dot com. I'm your host, Justin Soderbergh. This episode is once again brought to you by our friends over at Galactic Comics and Collectibles at galactic comics and collectibles dot com. Check them out at 547 Hammond street in Bangor, Maine. If you live in the Bangor, Maine area. This episode is Alex Segura, who is a best selling and award winning author of books like Secret Identity and the upcoming Alter Ego as well as Dark Space with Rob Hart. And he's also got a book on pre order called Daredevil, Enemy of My Enemy coming out in July of 2025, as well as his legendary links graphic novel that ties into Secret Identity and Alter Ego is also on Dick Tracy, Spider Society, upcoming green hoarder and Ms. Fury, and so much more. This episode is Alex Segura, comic book writer and bestselling author right here on Capes and Tights. Enjoy everyone.
Welcome to the podcast. Alex, how are you today?
[00:01:00] Speaker B: I'm good. Thanks for having me.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Absolutely. I mean, I guess I said before we started recording, you're a really busy person. So I'm glad you took the time out to chat with us here on the podcast.
[00:01:08] Speaker B: I appreciate it. Yeah, I know. I'm a fan. You guys have been big supporters of my stuff, so.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: Well, when you're a good writer, it's pretty easy to do, right? I mean, you know, I've always said that when I, when I talk to people on the podcast, I've always said the nice thing about doing your own thing is that I get to talk to people. I actually enjoy their stuff. It's not like I'm working for a bigger conglomerate where they're like, you've got to talk to Alex. You know, he's got a comic book coming out, you know, and so like, it's actually nice that if I, you know, luckily over the years I've actually been able to only decline to been like, yeah, I'm too busy to talk to you because of the quality of the work. Wasn't that great. But usually that's the blessing.
[00:01:46] Speaker B: You get to decide. Yeah, you get to pick, pick who you talk to. And it means a lot. It's appreciated for sure.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And so we're on episode 198. And the way that it works, weirdly, is I mentioned Liana was on earlier today. Leona is actually episode 200. And so we did like a little talk.
[00:02:03] Speaker B: They deserve that spotlight.
[00:02:05] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, they Go back and forth and all that stuff. And I'm always like, I always, sometimes I feel like David Letterman, you know, talking about the. Trying to promote the book for five minutes. And sometimes I actually feel like it's just a conversation. But you know what, Every episode's different and we're here to talk about your stuff.
[00:02:19] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:02:20] Speaker A: So before we get into too far, I mean, like, so you're author, you're a comic writer. You have been writing geek and nerd and pop culture stuff for a little while now. And how did you get into a comic books and be writing either about them or with them?
[00:02:38] Speaker B: How did I get into comic books? I mean, my earliest memory of comics was getting an Archie Digest as a kid. I mean, I knew of comics like I had seen them, but I wasn't a reader when I started reading. My first comic was a Betty and Veronica double digest that my mom got me at the grocery store. And that was an introduction to the medium, but also an introduction to like Dan DiCarlo, Harry Lucy, Sam Schwartz and all those great artists that I didn't like connect with name wise yet. But DeCarlo was the first artist that I was like, oh, he's, you know, in the same way that Carl Barks was the good duck artist, DiCarlo to me was like the good Archie artist.
And then after that, as I got older, you know, I was really into Archie. But then I got into more superhero stuff. My first superhero comic was a reprint of Spectacular Spider man magazine number two, which was the black and white magazine that they did around, I think around the time that Lee and Romita were on the main Spider man book.
And it was a reprint of this terrifying Green Goblin story drawn by Romita that was like super trippy, psychedelic. And I think the connective tissue there is. DiCarlo and Romita have this knack for making everyone beautiful. You know, Romita made everyone beautiful and also made Norman Osborn chilling. And so that seemed like an easy kind of connect. And then in terms of like current stuff, at the time I was picking up Amazing Spider Man, Uncanny X Men, which was like the tail end of the Claremont run. And I was reading Uncanny X Men and then also Classic X Men. So kind of piecing, you know, we didn't have the Wikipedia or, you know, fandom.com or whatever you use to kind of figure things out. We had the Marvel cards and the DC cards and whatever back issues you could scrounge up. So that was my initial crash course into comics. And that just opened the door to Like a lifelong fandom. So I, you know, I go to my comic shop whenever I had a couple dollars to rub together and buy back issues of things. And I was really into, you know, Batman and Spider man and Daredevil. I really love the Lee Weeks DG Chichester run, Last Rites, which I'm rereading now. It's top of mind because I'm writing that Daredevil novel. But, you know, Justice League International, JM DeMattis on Spectacular Spider Man. So I was a pretty voracious reader. And, you know, the image revolution was happening at the same time. So I was big Wildcats, young blood reader in terms of how it became a profession. In college I was an English major, but I also, I worked on the school papers. So I thought journalism was going to be my track professionally. And it was for a little while.
And at the same time I thought, well, maybe I can blend my passion for comics with this trade, this craft of journalism. So I reached out to Newsrama, to Mike Duran and Matt Brady, neither of whom are there still, but Newsroom continues.
And they let this young kid like, interview creators. And so right out of the gate I was interviewing people like Ed Brubaker, Peter David, you know, Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray. I remember those were my first. My first handful of interviews was Ed Brubaker for his Wildstorm series Point Blank, which, you know, kind of just set the tone. And he continues to write stories in that, like, very dark noir space. And Jimmy Palmiotti for 21 down, I think, and Peter David, like about the tail end of Young justice just before it was like taken over by the New Titans relaunch at the time.
And so that's really was my side gig for a long time, for a few years. And then I got a job in house at Wizard. So I moved to New York to work at wizard for a couple years. And that was my first full time, like industry job where I was going to conventions, meeting creators face to face, taking meetings, editing, writing. And you know, a lot of the friends I made there are still really close friends of mine today. So that was really like formative period for me.
I don't mean to give you my whole cv, but then I worked. Yeah, I worked. I worked at DC doing publicity. And that was another really big moment just in terms of also really like learning how to promote a comic book, learning how to be a publicist, but also watching to see how these creators behave themselves, you know, in terms of doing the work how you, how you act professionally and what you can do. Like, what the successful writers do, what the writers I like to do. Like, I got to, you know, work with people like Greg Brucker, Gail Simone, Jeff Johns, Brian Azarello. I mean, you name it. G. Willow Wilson. I met her there. She was starting out at Verb Vertigo, Brian K. Vaughan.
And it was just a nice, like, bird's eye view to see how these talented people worked and what they did and what it was like to be in the industry. Like, in the back of my mind, I always knew I wanted to write, and so I did my job as best I could. But I was also kind of researching. And at the same time, because I was working in comics, I couldn't really, like, pitch my comics around. Like, it was. It wasn't really. It was a little fr. It was frowned upon if you worked in house to, like, go to the editorial row and be like, can I write this or that? So I started writing novels. That's when I started writing my crime novels, the Pete Fernandez books, which launched originally in 2013.
And then at the same time, I went to Archie, and that's when I first started writing comics. I did a short thing for D.C. before I left, and then I went to Archie and wrote stuff like Archie meets Kiss, Occupy Riverdale, Archie meets Ramones. I wrote the Archies for a while, and so that was happening at Archie, and I was also writing these novels simultaneously. And eventually it just got to the point after I left Archie and went to ONI to oversee their sales and marketing, where the writing stuff was doing well enough that I felt like, you know, let's just go out on a limb and just try it and do that. And at that point, I'd already gotten a few small things from Marvel and dc, which was really fun. And, you know, it's just continued from there, which has been a blessing.
[00:08:30] Speaker A: It's such a fun thing to hear you talk about fun. Two things I realized when you were talking was that I never. I'm approaching 200 episodes, and the fact that I've just now thinking that there's not many careers, like professional sports, things like that, where, like, a passion from your childhood becomes your career. It comes, you know, like, there's not very. Lawyers that are like, yeah, when I was, like, six, I was litigating in my bedroom, you know, like, it just happens to be. At one point, like, my wife's an engineer, structural engineer. I mean, when she was younger, she wasn't, like, building things. She came into that as she got older and was like, yeah, I guess that could be A career and so on and so forth. But it's like, no, it's a blessing. It's fun to see that. And you went from reading Archie to writing Archie, which is, you know, there are comic creators who obviously read things and then they grow up. There's very not say few. But it's not always that case that you're going to read something and then write it later on. Read Amazing Spider man, then write it later on. Like, there's people who read Amazing Spider man that now work for Star wars or for independent comics.
[00:09:26] Speaker B: No, it's definitely not lost on me, the, you know, the gratitude that comes with doing this stuff. Like, I mean, I grew up a Spider man kid. Spidey 2099 was one of my favorites. And so getting to write him in comics and in prose and for different age groups like YA and middle grade and, you know, comics, it's cool. It's definitely. There's no, no other way to say it.
[00:09:47] Speaker A: And that's why sometimes I've always, like, not argue with people, don't like, have a disagreement with people when they're like, ah, it's not that Spider man wasn't that great, you know, maybe, you know, whatever. And it's like, dude, this person's an actual Spider man fan most of the time, and they're writing a story that means something to them or so it's not like this random person. They're just like, oh, Alex, write this random character you know nothing about and have no passion for. Yes, there is that. But most of the time it's like, they're not going to tap you to write something unless you actually have some sort of emotional attachment, some sort of attachment to it so that you can actually do the best job. This is not like you're going to come into it knowing nothing.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: And it's also, I think creatively for me, I don't take stuff that I don't have that kind of passion or obsession because I've learned the lesson, like the few times I've taken a gig where I'm like, I guess I can kind of find my way into it either. It works and great. You've tapped into a new fandom. But most of the time, like, if you don't have that passion already, you're just, it's going to show in the work. So you try to like, you try to take gigs that are cool to you, that get you excited because that's the way you'll get motivated to do the work.
[00:10:48] Speaker A: Absolutely. And that's like, I Said same thing here. I'm motivated to talk to you because I've read your stuff and I enjoy your stuff and so forth, and it's great. And you are. I mean, I've talked to people in the past who have. Who have jumped between prose writing a novel and writing comics and things like that. But a lot of times it's like they're an author who has written a couple of comics or a comic book writer who has written a novel. And so there's like this. Like, their main job is one or the other. I'm like, when you look into your current work and stuff like that, it's like, yes, you have a lot of different comics that are out. I mean, I. When you put in stuff, I would have put stuff together on here. I was like, there's like, not equal amount, but like, if the number of words it might be equal, you would consider you an author and a comic writer. It's like you're splitting it down the middle almost in. And is this something where you write a novel and you take a break, not like in timing, but like, when you're writing, say you're writing a couple chapters and then write a comic book issue or something like that, or is there something like you dedicate specific time to? How do you separate the two between the two novels and their comic book writing?
[00:11:46] Speaker B: I wish it was as structured as you made it sound. That's really. I should do that. But it's really like comics run on their own schedule, their own timeline. Like, as. You know, like, it's like, write the script, you know, send the pitch, write the script, write through the lettering, pass, do the final proofing stage. So it's all happening kind of in its own level. And novels are much more like running a marathon. Like, you have four to six months to write a draft, and that's. That's on you to find the discipline to write a couple thousand words a day. So it'll add up to like 60 or 70,000 words or whatever your word count is. So both things are happening for me at once. Like, I tend to do a lot of my comic stuff during the day because that's maybe my brain is more into doing the puzzle piece of like, scripting and formatting.
And a lot of my novel writing tends to happen at night. But then there's always, like, stuff that comes up. Like, you know, I have two kids, I have. You know, there's always family responsibilities, there's events, there's things to do. So you try to just really just handle Whatever's most on fire first, that makes sense.
[00:12:44] Speaker A: And your story. You have some independent work over the years. You have a lot of big two stuff that is at least forefront. I have Marvel Zombies here. I have a spider burger. So I have Special Society and stuff like that mindset that goes, this is going to be a novel and this is going to be a comic book. Like. Or is there just whatever is really given to you? Like, obviously at this point, it's not like you're out there picking and saying, I want to write Marvel Zombies Black, White and Red. It's like they're approaching you. But like something like Alter Ego or Dark Space or Secret Identity, those are guessing it makes the most sense to write those as novels. And that's why they were novels, right?
[00:13:24] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, the idea for Secret Identity and Alter Ego was to tell these two stories that were set in comics but also had comics in them. Were novels with comics in them for my creator own. So I think what you're. What you're asking is like, when I get an idea that's mine, like, where do I put it? And I think it really depends on how much I want to play with somebody else. You know, like, if it's something that I envision as a novel and I want to have, like, a lot of oversight and control because I have this very clear vision, or if it's something that I have an idea for, but it would be really cool to jam with so and so on it. And then I'll reach out to them and say, I have this thing. Do you want to work together? And if it works, it works. And then. Then you kind of start the whole pitching wheel, which is its own, like, journey. But, yeah, it really depends. I mean, comics are so collaborative. Like, yeah, I use this metaphor all the time, but it is like playing music with someone I've played in bands before. And it's really that kind of same synergy where you're jamming with somebody else and you hope that the end result is better than what you could have done by yourself. Whereas novels are solitary. You're isolated and you're. There's a point two thirds in where you're like, I really want this to end. Like, there's. This is terrible. I want this to end. Please put me out of my misery. But then you get to the end and then you go back and read it and you're, like, fixing it and tweaking it, and you realize that you're not a total waste.
[00:14:41] Speaker A: I mean, is it, you know, like, I Hear this, that I'm a introvert, extrovert. Like, it's a weird thing. Like, I like my own space. I like my own thing to do my own thing. But I also, when the, when the time arises or I'm supposed to be in a group of setting, I thrive in that setting as well. But if I really had to choose, I'd really just rather be by myself. And so, like, it must be that same way. We're like, oh, this is nice to be sitting here writing a prose novel. This is like, great. And then there's times where you're like, I just want to talk to people. I just want to be around people and in the office.
[00:15:09] Speaker B: I mean, my, my background is publicity and marketing and, you know, as a journalist, I'd have to go up to strangers and say, what do you think about this thing that just happened? And get their feedback. So I do get that introverted extrovert idea. You know, I can. I can do parties and stuff, but then I. Part of me wants to just go back home and like recharge and look at a wall for a couple hours. So it's. It's kind of just knowing your own. Knowing where you're at, I guess.
[00:15:33] Speaker A: So you. We talked a little bit on Secret Identity and Alter Ego. Alter Ego comes out in first week of December. December 3rd.
And so when I stumbled upon. So I stumbled upon Alter Ego for. Not first, but the publicity for Alter Ego, like I saw, you know, pre orders and all that stuff and I was like, oh, shit, I got to read, you know, Secret Identity first. And when I jumped into it, I was like, it was the perfect novel for people who love. Like, you don't expect to get a novel like that in the comic book industry. Meaning that like, okay, there's not many of that meta part of it. Like, how many more novels out there are like. I love the comic book industry so much. Someone tell me a fictional story about the comic book industry. It's like, it's not very common. You might hear a fictional story about basketball or football or whatever else is out there. But like comics, it's like either a book that's, you know, Spiderman, your Spider Man 2099 book, or your Daredevil book coming up or a book about. Or comics. There's no, like, there's not very many that are like, at the crossover. And when I read it, I was like, oh, my God, I want more of this. I want your full career just to be writing books like this. No, it was so great. And then Seeing Alter Ego being a same but different style of book. And then was there always a plan to release Legendary Links, or is this just something that happened?
[00:16:48] Speaker B: I mean, it's a little bit of both. I mean, Sandy Jarrell, who did the pages for Secret Identity and Alter Ego, when I was pitching the book to Flatiron, I reached out to him and I said, hey, this might happen and it might require like 10 to 14 pages of art. This is what it is. I sent him the novel or the part I'd written in the outline.
He read it, was said, I'm in. And I said, okay, but we need proof of concept. And so he drew a page and colored it. So when I pitched it to Flatiron, it had that sample chapters and the outline, but then also this page. And I was like, this is what is going to happen. You're going to read this chapter and then immediately you're going to be in a comic book.
Because I felt I really had to sell it. You know, I had to really show like, this is how it works anyway. Then they thankfully buy the book and a sequel. Not a sequel then, but you get the two book deal. And Sandy and I are working on the comic pages. And as we're working on it, we keep either he says it or I say it. And it's along the lines of this should be a comic book. Because we were talking about like the lynx's world, who her villains are, the supporting cast. And there's only so much you really see in those 14 pages in secret Identity. So by the end of Secret Identity, we knew we wanted to take those 14 or so pages and expand them into a graphic novel.
The road to getting there was kind of circuitous because we, we launched it on Zestworld, which was a. A digital platform that was kind of competing with Substack. And they ran the first two and a half issues or so and then they closed up shop. And so we had. The book was done. And that's when we reached out to madcave and they were up for putting it out there as a book. And that's. And that's when we, we thought, wouldn't it be cool if we treat this like a very real thing? Like we say, this is a reprint of the lost comic that has been out of print forever. And obviously people know it's us. Like, yeah, but then there's people that don't. Like, there's people that James DeMattis wrote the intro and I love. You know, I've already plugged him, but he's one of my favorite comic book writers. And. And he likes Secret Identity, which is super flattering. And I was so humbled by that. And I said, would you want to write the intro to this graphic novel, but do it completely, like, in world? Like, you read the links while you were writing your stuff.
So his intro is basically, like, the links influenced my work, including stuff like Craven's Last Hunt and whatever. Whatever else. You know, all the other stuff he's done. Not whatever, but what have you.
And it was just such a cool, like, meta moment. And my favorite emails are the ones that I get from fans who are like, I read Secret Identity. I loved it. I cannot find a copy of the links anywhere. Like, I've been looking at every comic shop, like, what is it? How badly out of print is this book? But now it is in print. So, like, we basically manifested this character into actual comic history, which is. I love it. Like, the geek in me loves stuff like that. Like, the world building and so alter ego is the end of that sentence, basically. Yeah.
[00:19:40] Speaker A: I love the theory. All I can picture my head is like, Marty McFly going back in time and putting this comic book somewhere so that you wrote the novels later on in life. But now he's put it back into where it was supposed to be, and we're all just stumbling upon it now. Now it's been part of the world, you know, Meadow. You know, it's just. I meant to do this, and I don't know why I didn't do it. Is the chapter breaks actually in the. Like, are they drawn into the Legendary Links graphic novel, like those chapter breaks.
[00:20:07] Speaker B: Panels, Those pages in Secret Identity are in the Legendary Links.
[00:20:12] Speaker A: I meant to look it up. I'm like, it would make sense that they would be. But I didn't know I was like that. That this was. Now it actually looks like those pages were just cut out of the graphic.
[00:20:20] Speaker B: Yeah. It makes Secret Identity look like it. Excerpted from the Legendary links. I will tell you, there's always room for mistakes. So it's probably not a thousand percent. Yeah. But for the most part, those are pages. All the pages. And most of the pages in Secret Identity are in the trade, plus other stuff. And it's colored and lettered and reformatted and remastered and.
[00:20:40] Speaker A: I don't know. I mean, was this the first time that someone has done something like this? I feel like it's at least one of the few times I know that Chip Zdarsky is doing that now with the Domain.
[00:20:49] Speaker B: Yeah. What Chip is doing, like, we've talked about it. It's very much in conversation. They're very much in conversation with each other. I mean, not directly. Like, we have joked about, like, maybe doing, like, a links and domain, like, crossover image, which would be cool, but it's just funny that we were both in that same headspace. But I think the. Also, Michael Chabin got close because you have Cavalier and Clay the novel, and then he did the comics with Dark Horse. But I think this is the first time that there was comic pages in the novel that then got expanded into a comic. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. But as far as I can tell, I think it is the first.
And I definitely pulled a lot of inspiration from Cavalier and Clay, like, reading that book. My first takeaway was like, A, I love this book. It's one of my favorite books. But also B, when I read it in college was I wanted to see the comics. I wanted to read those escapist comics. And this was before the Dark Horse books came out.
So that was a big motivator to have, like, a comic book element. And maybe down the line, we can put them all together and just have one big, like, secret identity omnibus with both novels and the links. That would be pretty cool.
[00:21:50] Speaker A: It's just a cool thing. And I think a lot of us who are fan. When you become fans of something, you want the next thing. And it's not like. I mean, you obviously, like we mentioned before, you're very busy and so on and so forth. And it doesn't sound like Alter Ego, like, adding another chapter or another story to that book series might be trying to pull too much, trying to do too much. And so adding the legendary links in there and having this graphic novel give. Lets us live in that world per se again and more. And then also, if anybody goes back and does a reread, it's like, okay, you can read this comic, read the comic book, then read the books or whatever way you want to do it, which is pretty badass. And I think that's a.
[00:22:24] Speaker B: And there's stuff. There's stuff in the comic book that feeds into Alter Ego. Like, there's a character that messages Annie anonymously through, like, a signal app, and it's. They call themselves Apparition. And that's one of the characters you meet in the book, in the comic that is not in the excerpts from Secret Identity. You meet who, like, the Lynx's mentor is like, basically, what stick is to Daredevil. This character is to the Lynx, like, a mentor who has begrudgingly trained her in being a vigilante slash superhero. Um, so yeah, it's all connected. You can read them all together and probably pull a lot more out of it, but you can also read each of those things individually. Like, that's.
That was the big challenge, I think, with the links, is that we had these, like little clusters of pages that were created separately as interstitial moments in the novel. And then I was like, well, how am I going to weave all this together to be a four issue arc? And we. I basically had to put them all like on a, you know, like a break, like a manifest. You know, like when you do a newspaper or a magazine, you have the spaces for each page. And so I'm like, okay, this is page one and two of issue one. This is page 20 of issue three. Like, how do we get from here to here?
And thankfully, Sandy is super versatile. So smart. Like one of my favorite collaborators ever. And we worked Marvel style, so a lot of it was like, okay, we're going to have this fight sequence. I'd throw in some reference. But I really left it up to him to figure out the pacing. Not the pacing, but figure out the layout of the pages and how best to tell those beats. And it ended up being like this weird, trippy, like 70s story. Like more of a, like a Jim Starlin type story with cosmic undertones. Very Dr. Strangey and almost Steve Englehardy too.
Then at first blush I thought, okay, this is going to be like a street level, you know, Doug Mensch, Frank Miller type joint where it's really just grounded and very gritty and realistic and there are elements of that. But there's a supernatural kind of twisty part to it that neither of us were really expecting, but I think makes it more fun.
[00:24:22] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a lot of fun. And it's also beautiful looking. So, like, yesandy's artwork, but also the color by Alison Gray is just phenomenal as well. So there's that the pages being like the yellow to make it look like it was this older book. It's like you live in it. It's this cool thing. And I do love how you mentioned the separate thing. It's like Secret Identity by itself is a standalone. If you never did anything else in that world ever again, I don't think that anybody would really be upset about it because I think it concluded it was. It was a well written story. And then you could read the Legendary Links by itself because it's just a comic book. Like, it's nice to have it connected. But it's a story that if you've never even heard of your books, you could read. And I would think that Alter Ego in a sense could be read by itself too. I mean, if you didn't read Secret Identity, it's not like you'd be completely lost. But it helps with it. But it doesn't. Like, the story itself is like, it's a future story. And you do touch on the stuff that you kind of need to know from Secret Identity, which is awesome. But like I said for fans like myself, and I'm sure there's many more like me who just loved delivering that world for a little bit, adding legendary links and seeing that was. Was so cool. And actually seeing the COVID and seeing the, you know, the characters and seeing all that stuff in the, in the play on solicitation where at the bottom station it's like, no, but really it's by Alex. It was just like, just want to make sure people.
[00:25:34] Speaker B: That was Matt. Matt Cave very smartly was like, look, at some point we have to say like, you wrote it because we're going to try. We have to try and sell this thing. Like, otherwise it just seems like this very random reprint.
But I think the challenge for that was the big challenge for Alter Ego because I think stories should end when they reach their end. And it's okay for things to end and for sentences to have a period like in the media landscape now, I feel like everything is about IP in many ways and about continuing the IP and keeping the brands alive. And at the end of Secret Identity, I was like, well, this is it. Like this is, you know, maybe we'll do the comic and that'll be that. But when I wrote that epilogue without spoiling anything, where you kind of see Carmen in the present day and you meet that reporter that is interviewing her, that's when I got the ideas going about doing this modern day story. But I also wanted it to feel essential, not feel like, oh, this is Carmen through the years investigating comic book crimes. That could be fun. But it was not the kind of story I wanted to write.
And so Alter Ego, you have a new protagonist, you have a new mystery, and you have the backdrop of Secret Identity that if you want to, like you said, if you want to go and read it and you'll get a much fuller picture. But Alter Ego hopefully exists on its own and feels different. The pacing is different. It's much more of a thriller than a like, kind of moody noir. So, yeah, that was a challenge.
[00:26:53] Speaker A: What we're hoping for in the future, Alex, is that people debate on what's the best order to read them in. Like, is it a prequel? You know, it's like Star wars, right? They have the Star wars lower on. Like, is it wash them in order? Do you read the. The Legendary Links first? Do you read, you know, so on and so forth? Yeah, yeah.
[00:27:05] Speaker B: I don't know how you would do it. I would guess my. My reading order is by publication. Like you read Secret Identity, then the links, then you read Alter Ego. But you could make a case for reading the links first and then you.
[00:27:18] Speaker A: Could read, you know, Alter Ego or.
[00:27:20] Speaker B: You could read Alter Ego first. Yeah, you could read Alter Ego first and then say, oh, well, let me go back and kind of flesh out this mystery.
[00:27:26] Speaker A: So we're trying to say to everybody out there too, is that just buy them all and then you do whatever you want with them.
[00:27:30] Speaker B: Yeah, read them however you want and then buy some for your friends.
[00:27:33] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. It's the best option there. And MadCave is such a fun company to work with too. They put out some really cool stuff. And for them to actually take this and have it be on a place like Madcave and not have to be like an image book where you're doing it all yourself kind of thing, having mad cave selling, it's pretty cool in that sense too. And they have a great marketing team and all that stuff. So I think that people are. What's really cool for me, for someone like yourself, is that those people who don't know that Secret Identity or Alter Ego exist, that are living the comic book world and don't read very many novels, might actually now go, oh, I'm gonna now I know about this book. And it also might I go, my LCS owner, Paul Eaton at Galactic Comics has discussed about carrying Secret Identity and Alternative in the shop. Yeah, that would be awesome because of that. And I think that's, you know, like I said that the books aren't like a Star wars book, but they're still comic book related. And I think those people are really into the world of comics would enjoy this.
[00:28:27] Speaker B: I mean, that's the cool thing when you see the mediums kind of crossing. But yeah, madcap's great. I think also they were originally a Miami based company which is a nice connection to Carmen and Annie and me. I mean, being from Miami as well, they've been really supportive with Dick Tracy with the links and just kind of putting it out there. They do have a really great editorial and marketing side.
[00:28:49] Speaker A: It is great. And yeah, you do have Dick Tracy there was kind of funny because we originally had talked about coming on with you and Michael a while back that the schedule's got, got, got full and we weren't able to do it to see that the Dick Tracy of it all. But then it's so funny. I'm like, you move along and you're so busy with so many different things. It's like the longer you. The different dates about trying to get this recorded, it's like, okay, I got this to talk about. So. So, you know, I read. I also read Dark Space, which was phenomenal. Thank you. With. Was it you and Rob Hart? Which is great. It's a great novel. Sci fi novel, if anybody wants to read that. You got Dick Tracy. That's now the trades coming out here pretty soon or.
[00:29:26] Speaker B: Yeah, next month.
[00:29:27] Speaker A: Yeah. And then you got. Obviously you got your Spider man books over at Marvel with Spiderverse.
[00:29:33] Speaker B: Spider Society just ended.
[00:29:35] Speaker A: You did Marvel Zombies, all that stuff. But you also got. And I was in discuss discussion with Dynamite about reading it ahead of time, but we lost conversation here. You got green hoarder and Ms. Fury coming out too, right?
[00:29:47] Speaker B: Yeah, that's coming out early next year. I think they switched up the release date, which is good. I think it gets a little more breathing room early next year. But that's me, Henry Barajas, co writing and Federico Ceresa, who is a new artist. I've never seen him anywhere else but he's just got this very great hyper detailed style. And that's been fun. Just because it's two pulp heroes. It's Green Hornet and Miss Fury. And I don't think they've interacted before but it was nice to create an element that combines their origins a bit. So you kind of get a little bit of this lost history between the characters. So that's been interesting. And I can't wait for people to see the interiors because I think it's going to blow some people away.
[00:30:26] Speaker A: It's really cool. And I think Dynamite is one of those ones that they've been around for a while and they've got a lot of different things and now they just. All these like pop culture icon characters are coming out from them. You know, I know Ed doing Silver Hawks and there's all kinds of stuff that are coming out from Dynamite right now. But green hornet and Ms. Fury is a pretty cool thing. But again, you got Dick Tracy, you got Spider man, you got Star wars, you're doing a Star wars run over there at Marvel as well. You Doing a Galactus thing in early next year, too, is that.
[00:30:53] Speaker B: That I'm doing one of those, what if Galactus deputized character acts as their herald. And I'm doing the Moon Knight one, which has been really neat. It's Scott Eaton's drawing, and I've loved Scott's stuff for a long time, ever since I was just a fan. And so it's a little bit of a love letter to the Mensch Sienkiewicz Moon Knight stuff. And also a nod to, like, the crazy 90s cosmic Marvel things that I liked as a kid, like, you know, all the heralds of Galactus, you know, and the issue opens with a big Khonshu galactus battle. So it's a big throwdown, but there's some character development there. And it was just really fun to write Moon Knight, who's one of my favorite Marvel characters.
[00:31:31] Speaker A: That's awesome. But the big thing to me, as we finish up here, we talk about for about half an hour now, and I'd like to wrap things up, is you are doing the Daredevil book. And so I loved Lisa Jules.
Jessica Jones book was phenomenal. It was good.
Those people who are into that, like, that. That kind of novel, but, like, it was like a. And it could be any character, but Jessica Jones, like, was the character, if that makes any sense. Like, it could be any mystery novel, but then it lives in the world of Marvel comics, and I love that aspect of it. So, like, this Daredevil book coming out to be on the next book in this crime series that they're doing over there. Yeah. Are you done with it? Are you still writing it? Like, how does that. How does that. Is. It is.
[00:32:11] Speaker B: I'm finishing it up. I'm hopefully going to turn it in in about a month or so.
It's cool. I mean, I love Daredevil. Daredevil is one of my favorite Marvel characters. I know I just said that about Moon Knight, but Daredevil was one of my.
You know, I was a Spider man guy, but I would always check in on Daredevil and keep tabs on him. Like, you know, the Senti run, the Chi Tester run. And then he's just been so blessed in terms of creators like Bendis, Brubaker, Diggle, Zdarsky, Soul Wade. Like, just run after run after run. And beautifully illustrated, like Alex Malie, Michael Lark, Paolo Rivera, Chris, Sammy. I'm gonna forget somebody, but Ron Gardney, Phil Noto, Marco Chechetto, and now you have Saladin and Aaron. So it's really been just unstoppable in terms of creativity. And so I'm trying to find, like, what's my voice in this space?
What story is there to tell? And so I really, I tried to just boil it down to the kind of stories I like to read, which are very ground grounded, street level noir, but also about Matt, Matt Murdoch and how messy he is and how, you know, his constant struggle is between his vision of justice, like the legal kind, but also street justice. And how do you consolidate the two? Like, how do you come to terms with being a defense attorney who protects the innocent and sometimes the guilty to someone who is judged during an executioner in their own way? Like, he basically determines I'm going to punch this guy and then drag him to prison and that'll be that. And how do you. How do you balance those things out? And, you know, his personal life is always a mess. He's always, like, struggling to find romance and friendship and all these things that we all. I feel like it's very relatable.
And so it's called Enemy of My Enemy. And basically it starts out with the death of one of his biggest villains. And you find out that the prime suspect is Frank Castle. And so Matt has to figure out, do I defend Frank Castle, like, or do I just, like, let him go to prison because he killed this guy that I hate anyway, you know, like, let it resolve itself. And so that's a big struggle for him. But then also, as he starts to get into it deeper and deeper into the mystery, he realizes there's more to this than just the Punisher killing a villain.
[00:34:23] Speaker A: Yeah, that's awesome. I'm so looking forward to it because I, like I said I love the Jessica Jones one because it was like I said, the more grounded part of it. The idea that the Marvel, Marvel universe is this massive, bombastic thing, but it also is like there's street level things that are happening as well.
And you get to relate with the characters. You get to get them on an emotional and more grounded level, which is really cool. So I'm excited for. I knew there was like a footnote when Lisa Jewell's book was coming out, that you were writing one. And so now that you actually have a cover out and there's actually bigger announcements and stuff like that out for it.
[00:34:53] Speaker B: Yeah, the first chapter is going to be in the paperback. So people get the paperback edition of the Lisa Jewell book, they'll read the first chapter of the Daredevil book.
[00:35:01] Speaker A: That's phenomenal.
[00:35:01] Speaker B: Or an early chapter Things may move around.
[00:35:03] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. An early peak at the book itself.
So Secret Identity is available now at your bookstores. Check that out. It's also available on audiobook alter ego hits December 3rd. The legendary Lakes graphic novel hit last week as of recording this. So that's out now. You can get that, you know, LCs and stuff like that, all your different titles. You know, if you're a big fan of Alex's, just talk to your LCS and they'll be able to tell you which books that Alex all the videos.
[00:35:31] Speaker B: Yeah, you can go to my website, alexsegura.com, i also have a substack alexsegura.substack.com where I update everybody. And I'm on Instagram as well, so.
[00:35:41] Speaker A: Check all those out. But yeah, my big thing is grab Secret Identity and grab alter ego on December 3rd because I think they're phenomenal and I think it's really cool. And you can pre order soon either. You can pre order right now, I think on most websites for Enemy of My Enemy as well. I believe you can.
[00:35:55] Speaker B: Yeah. It's up for pre order.
[00:35:57] Speaker A: Yeah. So check that out. But thank you so much, Alex, for taking some time out to chat your books and so much more. And good luck in the future.
[00:36:03] Speaker B: Oh, you too, my friend. Thanks for having me.
[00:36:05] Speaker A: Thank you.
