[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back to the Capes and Tights podcast right here on Capesandtights.com I'm your host, Justin Soderbergh. Once again, this episode is brought to you by our friends over at Galactic Comics and
[email protected] now at 499 Main Street, Hammond street in Bangor, Maine, if you're in the area. But this episode we. Welcome back to the podcast, Tate Bromball. And welcome for the first time to the podcast. We got Jacob Phillips here and Bromble is known for his work on writing House of Slaughter, Behold Behemoth, the oddly pedestrian Life of Christopher Kass, Batgirl and New Titans over at dc.
Phillips is the artist behind that Texas Blood, New Burn, the Peril of Brutal Dark, An Ezra Cain mystery over at DC Vertigo. And together they created the book Everything Dead and Dying over at Image Comics, which is what they're here to chat about today.
So before you listen, check us out on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, bluesky, threads, all those places you can rate, review, subscribe over on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you find your podcasts. The video portion of this podcast is also available over on YouTube.com and as always, you can check out capesandtights.com for so much more, including our review of Everything Dead and Dying over at Image Comics. This is Tate Bromball, writer and artist Jacob Phillips, chatting Everything Dead and Dying. Enjoy.
Welcome to the podcast. How are you doing today?
[00:01:24] Speaker B: Good. Happy to be back. Thanks for having us, Justin.
[00:01:27] Speaker A: Absolutely. Welcome. And welcome. Jacob. This is your first time, but Tate's a veteran of the podcast here at Capes and Tights. But no, it's great. It's funny too because I've had people on before who've been multiple time guests, but like a lot of times it's like them by themselves and then them with their like illustrator or their writer or whatever. Tate's. You've always been on with someone else. It's like we can't, we got to have a team here. We got to have the whole everybody who involved in the comic book. Not everybody, but multiple people involved in the comic book to join the podcast.
[00:01:56] Speaker C: It's not worth having on by himself.
[00:01:59] Speaker B: It's really not.
[00:02:00] Speaker A: He can't carry on.
But yeah, I mean, I guess one of the questions I actually had to start off with just with both you being on here, how you two got together to create a comic book together, is there a long fun story or is it just happened to be you guys wanted to work together
[00:02:21] Speaker C: for Me for.
[00:02:22] Speaker B: Well, for me it was.
[00:02:23] Speaker C: We. Well, we met in.
I went to TCAF in Toronto. Has it 20, 22 maybe?
[00:02:33] Speaker B: Yeah, three years ago now.
[00:02:35] Speaker C: Yeah, 22, 23, something like that.
And Tate basically looked after us for the weekend and took us to all the seediest places.
So we. We met then for the first time, like we knew each other, like online, but met in person for the first time and hung out for the weekend and became friends. And then Tate sort of got in touch, like, maybe like a year after that, maybe or something like that, and was like, do you want to do something together? And so had had this idea fully formed already and was, you know, been thinking about it for a long time and, you know, for me, I feel like it was like everyone else has had it, you know, getting to read it. It's the same sort of thing for me where I was like, this sounds so cool.
Like, it's such a good idea.
Like, yeah, I was thrilled to be asked. So, yeah, for me, that. Obviously we've been working on it since then, but I think for Tate it goes a bit further back than that.
[00:03:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I've had the idea.
I guess it spun out of the COVID quarantine times, which I think is very real and felt within the book itself.
And the idea came to me. I don't know why. I never thought I'd write a zombie book.
I've loved the zombie. The zombie subgenre for forever. I grew up reading, like, Walking Dead, watching the show.
I remember reading World War Z and just being like, my mind being blown of what a zombie book could be and how real it could feel.
So then.
But I never thought this happens a lot. I never thought I would have a zombie story to tell. I was like, I love enjoying this fiction, but I don't know what I could bring to the subgenre. And I basically had this vision of a man kind of sitting on his bed in, like, a very dark room. And I could tell it was the end of the world and he was grieving and he just was, like, so heavy with, like, the weight of whatever this life was. And all around him were his dead family members and his dead loved ones, who I knew they were dead and I. But I could tell that they were still living amongst him and the weight of that responsibility of taking care of them and not being able to let go of them, I could just sense it.
So it kind of all came from that vision. And I think the title even came with it. I was like, what is this? Who is this? Man's story.
And it all spun out of there, basically delving into who this man was, why he would continue to live alongside his dad, and.
And how that could function as a story and what it could say about the world today.
So I had that idea. I kicked it around for years, but I knew I needed somebody I could trust.
So when I reached out to that person, they said no. So then I had to reach out to Jake no. So then I knew it needed the right artist who could sell it.
And I had been friends with Jake. We knew each other online. I'm good friends with Chris Condon,
[00:05:55] Speaker A: and
[00:05:56] Speaker B: I always just assumed Chris had Jake locked up in some basement. So the idea of working with Jake was always like, of course I would want to.
But for some reason, I didn't connect him to this project until another friend of mine was like, Jacob Phillips would be the perfect artist for the story.
[00:06:15] Speaker C: And I was like, what? Like.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: And as soon as. As soon as she said that, I was like, you're right. So I reached out to Jake. He did. He was immediately on board for some reason, which I'm very thankful for. And he drew a really cool, like, promo piece for, like, a pitch, and I started bringing it to publishers. So that's kind of like, where it all came from.
[00:06:37] Speaker A: Did you feel, Tate at all? Like, I know zombies are not as a. Is a subject. The subgenre is used quite often. Like, did you feel any apprehension at the beginning to be like, okay, I have a. But I need to make it my own. I need to make it different than everybody else's so that. That stands out. But also, you know, is it. Is it. Is it a water you kind of, like, tiptoed into when you started writing it? Because obviously it took a couple of years to get it, like, going, going. But, like, I just feel like if it was me, I'd have this. Like, oh, what do I have to contribute? Not saying you don't, but I'm just saying I would have that apprehensions. Did you have those apprehensions?
[00:07:09] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:07:10] Speaker A: No.
[00:07:10] Speaker B: That was totally my mentality of, like, I don't want to do this unless I have something to contribute or something new to say or worth saying. With the subgenre and with zombies specifically, I mean, the publishers that I. I think I brought it to three or four publishers, and each one rejected it for different reasons, but kind of similar. Some of them were straight up, like, we have the Walking Dead, so, like, why tell more zombie stories? Some of them. So I was like, great, thanks. And then others were Just like, yeah, zombies have been done before.
We're sticking away from zombies and vampires. And that fits fantastical stuff. Meanwhile, like a year later, everyone wanted more fantasy and more vampires and monster books. So it was just like, you can't really.
No one really knows what they want until they're like, given great stories and they're like, we want more of this. So, like, luckily I just was like, this is a story that means a lot to me and I want to tell. And I think it is a zombie story I've never seen before.
So I knew it was one that I wanted to exist even if the market wasn't going to be in my favor. I was like, obviously I want to sell this comic as many copies as we can.
But I also just trusted that if we tell a good story, people will show up. And luckily we got an image with Tiny Onion in partnership with Hanyanyin, and we just trusted that the book would do well. And then zombie books start. Zombie stories started kind of coming back into the cultural zeitgeist around the same time.
So it worked out. And we are. I'm just glad we kind of held onto it and got it made with image where we could control it and sell it.
[00:08:52] Speaker C: How we wanted to sell
[00:08:56] Speaker A: is, like, I mentioned, the zombie stories are out there and so on. But, like, I felt like the biggest thing I saw about this book was the fact that it's like, so zoomed in that I feel like a lot of other. I mean, one of the best zombie stories of all time, the Night of the Living Dead, is like, zoomed in on that farmhouse. And, like, that's where you see they're not really. The town's nearby, but it's not really worried about what's going on elsewhere. It's like they're focused a lot in what's going on right there in this house.
Walking Dead's great. I love Walking Dead, one of my favorite comic books I've read. But, like, they still deal with, like, a larger picture of things. Like, this is, like a slice of life death in this one small area.
And that's what grabbed me the most, that it was, like, so personable in that sense that there wasn't really worrisome about what's going on.
Never really worry about what's going on outside of this house. He was just like, I'm taking care of my house in the not living. It's in my house. And that's the way it is. I don't care what's happening in New York or wherever else is going on or how it started or how it's going to turnout or whatever it was like I'm worried about right now and take care of the people I want. And again, there's a redemption part of this story to seeking redemption and so on. But yeah, that's what it got to me. And then also there's a.
If you accept people could continue caring about comparing zombie stories always to the Walking Dead. Now because of the success of the comic, the success of the show. You've read a zombie comic book, people are going to compare it to that nowadays.
But the artwork, Jacob, like that also set it so far apart from what else I've seen on zombie stories right now.
Was there an approach to, to making this stand out as its own thing or did you just take your.
[00:10:30] Speaker C: What you.
[00:10:30] Speaker A: What you have for skills and just say, hey, I'm gonna put it down on paper and hope people like it.
[00:10:36] Speaker C: Well, just to go back a little bit to what you said then about, you know, about it being so sort of zoomed in on one particular thing. And I think like since the. We finished the story and, and the final issue came out and we've had a lot of people sort of saying, oh, we want more this like. And it's like if, if we, if we were to carry on, it loses that entirely and it becomes the Walking Dead or something else. I think that's what makes it so special. Is, is that. No, just like a. It's a self contained thing.
What happens afterwards is up to you. If he makes it to where he's going or not. And I think, I think it would just to. To continue would dilute what we've already done and turn it into something which is much more so common now since the Walking Dead.
But yes, the actual question.
Well, again with my approach to it, it all came from that. So the stuff that I like drawing is the sort of emotional, character driven acting side of things. The fact that there's zombies there is kind of irrelevant to me.
You know, obviously I want to try and capture the sort of degrading house surrounding like everything's sort of decomposing, everything's gritty, everything's like falling apart.
So I want to capture that in sort of the way that I make the marks and like stuff like that. And I think I put a lot more black on the pages than I have in previous stuff.
But that's.
But I've also been doing that in parallel of the Brutal dark, which is coming out now. And I was working on them both at the same time, and that was just a thing that I wanted to do in general is, oh, I think I need more black on my pages to make a sort of more balanced looking page.
It just so happens that this story really lends itself to that approach as well.
So I wasn't really conscious of trying to make a distinctive looking thing. It was just sort of like, how can I.
How can I draw this? And also, this is the first time I think that I've gone into a project with a bit of time beforehand to actually build a world out a little bit. Like, you know, Tated sort of described the farm and the town and the house in a. And the. And some of the characters in a sort of document. And I got to take that and actually plan out. I made like a little map of the town and made.
I made a floor plan of the house and I gave that to a guy who builds like 3D digital models. So he made like sketchup models of each of the rooms. Some of them we never see. Like, I've spent all this money this thing made, and we never, like, we never go in the bathroom, but I've got a bathroom.
And like the little sort of sunroom thing on the edge that they go through, I think in like maybe the second. Second issue. And then they go through it to go outside.
I think it's right at the end. So maybe like the fifth or fourth issue, they go through it, but you don't actually see any of it there. But, you know, but for me, it helped to have this all built and it felt like a real place. And because so much of the time I end up, like, just sort of making up on the fly. And it's not the best version of it because of that, you know, now I'm. I'm working on more Texas wood at the moment. And so much I've got. And again, I've got like a little bit more time, but I've also got like the. I can look back and think, oh, okay, this didn't work. This didn't work. Like, I don't like that I've done this.
Like, why do they not. Why do they not design this house at the start? Why am I doing it now?
So I'm going back and like, completely changing, like, Joe Bob's house.
No one will probably care. And, you know, they do it in, like, sitcoms and stuff all the time. Like, they'll change, like, season, season.
But it would have been really nice if I'd done that at the start.
So this time I Actually did do that at the start. You know, the. The maps that I made of the town.
I didn't stick to it religiously.
It. You can't always do that.
[00:14:57] Speaker B: You have to sort of, you know,
[00:14:59] Speaker C: whatever the story calls for has to. It has to be sort of molded towards that. But, yeah, it meant that I actually had time to think about it beforehand and actually sit in the world a little bit. I'm hoping it's a more believable world because of that, not just sort of what is around me, especially because I live in the uk, so. And everything that I've drawn as I have been. No, this is sort of, you know, rural Canada and not like Texas or it's New York or whatever.
Nothing looks like how it looks here. So I'm just sort of, like, making it up and hoping. And then, you know, I go to these places, I'm like, why did I.
Why did I not think of that?
But hopefully no one really cares. You know, you get a little bit of leeway, but, yeah, so it was nice to actually, like, build a proper world. And hopefully the visuals on the page sort of reflect that a little bit.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: I'm glad you said that, Jake, because there's. I remember talking in the past to Adam Caesar and David Stoll when they did Dead Mall over at Dark Horse, and David Stoll did that. He went through and, like, designed the mall floor plan so that when they wrote the story or drew it, they knew where they were going, especially how there was, like, escalators that led to random places and, like, things like that. So you needed to make sure you reset them himself. But then because of that, I believe Scotty Young and Jorge Corona has hired David to do the house for the me you love in the dark to do the same thing for that same reason. Because you're, like, going from room to room. They want to make sure that they were. They could look down at a floor plan and be like, okay, I know what room we're going into at this point. And that's just really cool to hear that because I love that, like, forethought again, like you mentioned, you don't always have the time for that either, though. Like, it's. Sometimes you just got to get these things going.
[00:16:43] Speaker C: Yeah, Well, I spoke. I spoke to Michael Lark, and he was talking about.
Because he used it for Gotham Central, he built the, you know, the. Whatever you call it, where they are. I don't know what you call that.
So he had a guy build that. So I emailed him and said, who did you use? And he just gave me the email I got address of his guy and I think Duncan Fagredo used him as well on something else.
So yeah, this guy's getting loads of, loads of work on building stuff that are in probably like so many comics, like so many people will be doing that kind of thing. I know some people do build that stuff themselves and I've started doing it a bit more with sort of more basic stuff. Like I've built Joe Bob's living room in this new architects blood.
But it's never as convincing or as like.
I think the issue as well is like a lot of the time you don't know what other people have in their house.
I've got, I can draw my house but it's like I've got you know, 100 times more books than the average person would have. Or like I've got like, you know there's a iron, iron Giant toy there
[00:17:57] Speaker A: that might be in my house.
[00:17:58] Speaker C: So you're right, people don't have that stuff. So it's like how do you fill other people's stuff and like think about like what kind, what are they into and like what they have and you know that's, it's a whole level of sort of world building that I'm not very good at. So I'm trying to get better at it.
So having someone else fill it is also really helpful because it takes you away. It detaches me from it a little bit.
And it's not just me, it's someone else as well. So yeah, it's been, it's interesting to, to work that way.
And yeah, I'm hoping to bring it, bring that into other things. I do know and that's what I try and do with everything is like what did I like on that book? Okay, what can I bring forward to this one and what can I leave behind? And it's like, you know, if it's like with, with everything then dying I drew it like massive, like twice the size that I normally would.
Which I think meant that I could get a lot more sort of detail. And I think the inks were a bit sort of not slicker but a bit more precise than I would normally do.
But then when it's coming out I'm thinking oh, some of these line weights are a bit thin and I'm losing a bit of the, the sort of, I don't know, like the sort of chunkier lines. So now I'm going, I've gone small again and I'm trying to Focus on that and also try and bring in some of the things that I learned from that, like the more black stuff and some of the texture stuff and that kind of thing. So it's like trying to bring things forward and hopefully improve each time.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: It's a beautiful book. And that's one of the things that drew me into it again, is the covers in the styling statistics of the title, as well as the title itself. Tate I think there's something we look back to towards something stealing the Children, for example. It's like one of those things that even if the comic wasn't good, I feel like people would still buy it because of the title. Do you know what I mean? We're all happy that the comic is good. We're all loving that. But the idea that the title draws you into it and there's some. If I was ever to create a comic book on my own, I'm always like, I focus so much on the title because I just want that awesome title that people are like, I gotta buy that.
I was just mentioning to my LCS owner about the Florida hippopotamus cocaine massacre by Fred Kennedy. I was like, that alone just makes you go, well, we gotta buy that comic. We got to figure out what the hell's going on.
[00:20:26] Speaker C: That.
[00:20:26] Speaker A: But everything didn't die. It's kind of similar to that in a sense that. That, like I said, you saw the COVID obviously both you have names of. On comics that are pretty popular. People like, so the title of and the creators helped bring that book in. But I mean, did you expect it to be. I mean, this first comic book, I think number one was selling for 20, $30 on eBay. Now, like, did you expect that when you first released this comic?
[00:20:52] Speaker B: Not at all. Mainly because the market. Well, the market is. It's rebounding now a bit. Comic shops I'm like, happy to see are doing have had like a much better year. But when we started working on this, it was like we were at a low point in the. In like a pretty low point in the industry.
So going into like a new number one for a miniseries was like daunting because a lot of just the benchmark of what you could sell at a number one had fallen quite a lot even for well established creators were just like, we're hoping to sell this much. And it was like. And thinking back to 2021, when number ones were. The numbers were so high, things were selling like bananas.
So we went in with low expectations. We were just focused on making the best book possible.
Like you said, like, the. We knew we had, like, a good title.
[00:21:51] Speaker C: We had.
[00:21:52] Speaker B: The covers are gorgeous. Like, you see those. That cover one, which was based on our original promo image, which was just this idea. I was like, he's a farmer. We need to get it across that he's, like, still kind of working the land even though it's dead and dying.
So I was like, let's. Let's have an image of, like, this human farmer milking an undead cow. Because I'm like, that's just like. I knew if we nailed that, that's just, like, an iconic image like I'd never seen before.
So.
Yeah, and, like, the title, like, having a good title is huge because it's your first hook. It's your first pitch to, like, the.
[00:22:28] Speaker C: To the.
[00:22:28] Speaker B: To the. To the buyer, if they have nothing else and they just have a title, it's like it needs to do so much of the work and grab the person.
So we knew we had things in our favor. We had in terms of that. And we just were so passionate about the story and cared a lot about it, and we put so much of ourselves into it and so much work. And working with Tiny Onion was huge because they.
They know what they're doing.
James Tynan and his team know how to make good comics and sell good comics and get comic shops excited about their comics. So that was huge for us as well. And again, just happy it was at Image where we could.
It was my first book at Image, which was. I'm so excited it was this one and just having everything more on our terms. We didn't really have to sacrifice anything in terms of getting this book out to market.
So it was.
We knew it was daunting. And then to see it received so well was, like, just amazing. It was. It, like, blew away all our expectations. So we're really happy.
[00:23:40] Speaker A: It was funny chatting with my local comic book shop, Galactic Comics in Bangor, Maine. They were mentioning how they used to just be, like, automatic. When Image Comics would put a book out, it would be an automatic. Oh image. They just, you know, cover A and just, like, select it all and order it and be cool. And then it was a little while there. There was like a. I don't know if I want to take a risk on this, depending on, you know, depending on what it was. It really was like, a choice on that side. But then when he saw the title again and then saw the creators behind it, he's like, I'm going to be able to move this. And he bought a couple copies where he's a small store, he actually just doubled in size, but he was an 800 square foot store, and so it was very small. So he has, like, select number of customers and so on and so forth. And he sold out of one and then got issue two in, and people were like, oh, my gosh, what's this? And they were all like, wait a second, can I get issue one? And they were like, oh, man, it's that expensive for issue one? I don't know. And so that was the fun thing. But I also thought about this cover.
You mentioned the COVID and the farmer milking the undead cow. I laughed because I was like, I feel like if you remove the title on it, like, the design of the logo on it and just had it as a painting on the wall and just like, put it in your bathroom, whether or not it would take people, like, a few minutes of being like, wait a second, what is this painting? Because it's just so beautiful, but also creepy.
[00:24:52] Speaker B: Yeah. For each cover, we wanted that, that, like, that beautiful, like, landscape, like, and then also just in this beautiful nostalgic, like, Norman Rothwell kind of aesthetic that's just, like, beautiful at first, then there's something a little off that's like, wait, this is because we wanted it to capture, like, this man is continuing to live his life. Like, it's like, it's the way it was.
And then it's kind of like dreamy, nostalgic version of, like, how he wants to see his world versus the reality of, like, wait, no, everyone is undead.
[00:25:21] Speaker C: And.
[00:25:23] Speaker B: And it just captured that balance so well. So, like, it's. And it's all. It's all Jake. I don't know. I don't know how he does it, but each cover is just, like, incredible. I love cover two. Well, all of them. Cover two with it, with. With Luke Lane and the flowers is so beautiful. 3 With Daisy eating her, like, oh, is she eating spaghetti? No, that's blood all over her face.
[00:25:43] Speaker C: And then.
[00:25:44] Speaker B: And then four with the priest, which I think I was doing groceries, and we were trying to be like, what do we do for the COVID 4?
And then I was doing groceries. And for some reason, like, I knew we had this priest character who I kept trying to find ways to get into the book more. And he kind of really only shows up the most in issue four. So I was like, zombie Priest. I just, like, sent him, like, capital letters, like, zombie Priest. And then I swear, like, the next day he sent back, like, the sketch of, like, the zombie priest at the Pulpit and I was like, this is perfect.
[00:26:15] Speaker A: So yeah, yeah, they are beautiful. So I would guess Jacob, I mean, I would. How would you describe having to balance beauty with. With brutal. Brutalness of this? Like, was it. Is it easy for you? I mean, obviously it's not easy for you, but like, did you get it? Did it click or was it something that you had to work at?
[00:26:32] Speaker C: Well, I think with my Texas Blood covers as well, I don't really do like action packed covers. So, like, quiet moments are kind of like what I like to do. Like who knows if it. If it sells comics, but it's. That's what I like to draw. So it's like doing that and then, yeah, trying to find that balance.
I think I like all the covers, but I think some of them got that balance better than others maybe. But yeah, I think like, yeah, the sort of double take and. But they all came from, you know, from Tate's original idea of. Of the zombie cow for the promo thing and built from that.
But then we did the B covers which were like the chance to do like more sort of sort of traditional like zombie action pack stuff, a bit more violent and point.
And that was fun because we got to then explore the sort of cast of, of the. Of the Hunters rather than the sort of family side of things. So that was. So it was good. Yeah, it was really great being able to do both of those things. But yeah, it was.
I really enjoyed doing the. The A covers. I think like those sort of quiet moments. I think it sums up the book so well.
I would have been right to just do like this. What we did for the B covers for the A cover, I think would have been. It would have. Wouldn't have fit with the book, I don't think. I think people would have maybe disappointed when they all not disappointed, but maybe like thrown off by. No.
And sort of gone into it expecting something that wasn't.
So I think, yeah, I think we did well to sort of get that balance of things, hopefully. Anyway, it.
[00:28:21] Speaker A: It kind of reminds me honestly, like of a couple of different creators who've done like the explicit variant, like the second one, like Scotty Lungs, I Hate Fairyland and then the fuck Fairyland variants. It's the same idea. Like you have this beautiful, nice cover that people can have on the front that has this grotesqueness to it, but then you have the second cover where you're like, okay, we want to see someone get shot in the head. That's. We had the second cover for that one.
[00:28:42] Speaker C: It's the Fourth or the fifth issue, and we've got, like, the sort of choir boy getting about to be shot in the head.
We're doing that one. Like, is this.
Is this too much?
[00:28:54] Speaker A: Too much?
[00:28:54] Speaker B: No, that's exactly, exactly what we needed.
[00:28:58] Speaker A: Well, it's a. Give people the opposite. Like, opposite. Like, if you are a comic book store who doesn't want to carry that as their cover that's displayed on the shelf, then you have the other options for things. But there is this. But also the comic. It's just like the Walking Dead. When I try to explain it to people, the Walking Dead, they're like, oh, I don't like zombies. Like, well, it's more than just a zombie comic book. There's so much going on. Like, this is like, zombie comic book, but it's about grief. It's about, you know, survival. It's about how people evolve over time and things like that. So there's more to it. Is that was that important to this, Tate, to. To get that across and not just be like, I'm going to tell a zombie story?
[00:29:32] Speaker B: Yeah, no, that was.
That's basically like, the crux of it. I.
I knew this was a story about grief and about not being able to let go of your loved ones or life the way it was, or a life you fought so hard for and then it was ripped away from you.
So I knew that was the core of the book. And every time I questioned, like, is this zombie action enough?
I kind of was like, no, that's not the point of this story. This is a story about a man who. Who can't let go of his dad. And that's. That's kind of the metaphor for what we're doing here with the zombies subgenre. So, like, I know, like, zombies, that's what I love about horror and monsters in general, where it's like, even, like a classic monster, like a zombie, the metaphor can be malleable to suit what your character needs, what your story needs.
So when I landed on what the zombies were and meant and represented in this story, that was. That was like, the full intention of this book was just like, I want to talk about grief through zombies and through horror and what it. What it can drive a man to do, how desperate it can make him. And it all unwinds throughout into issue five, where it's just a mess.
And I loved kind of the gray morality of where the story exists, because grief kind of, if we're not careful, does make monsters of us.
So it's just like, yeah, these Zombie hunters can be seen as monstrous, but also they're just humans trying to survive. And also, Jack can also be seen as monstrous because of how he's living and what he's doing to himself and what he then goes on to do to these human survivors who are actually alive and need to survive.
And then it was funny seeing a lot of fan reactions and readers being like, why can't they just leave Jack alone? Like, he was happy, he was fine. He was comfortable. And me just being like, no, like, that is not okay to live and continue to exist in, like, that same cycle. He was not happy. He was. He was just going through the motions because he couldn't let go of them. Like, he needed to let them go, so. And because everything that happens throughout that book, yeah, the human survivors instigate it, but Jack is the one instigating it right back. Like, he will not.
[00:32:23] Speaker A: He.
[00:32:24] Speaker B: He's kind of.
He's the one pushing it to, like, this point of no return.
So, like, all of it.
I just love how messy it is because, like, for me, that's, like, how, like, grief is not this clean, perfect, linear path. It is, like, it is one of the most difficult things, like, for the human condition. Like, and that's the reason why people keep telling stories about it and how to get through it and how to kind of get out the other side of it. So, like, this was me and Jake and the whole team kind of adding our own perspective to that path.
[00:33:01] Speaker A: It's the zombie hunters and Jack. They both don't see the other person's point of view. It's like they both think they're both wrong on this thing, and it just creates even more things. And that's why a lot of times you're like, oh, I know what you're going through. The truth of the matter is a lot of us don't know what the other person's going through, so it's hard to have this discussion. But it was funny because you drop us into this.
This world, and it seems like it goes from zero to 60 fast. But obviously this didn't happen overnight either, so. So Jack's been living in this house for a little while now with these people. I've lived with some smelly roommates, by the way, and I don't really understand how the. How that's got a stink in that house.
[00:33:40] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:33:40] Speaker A: I'll tell you right now, the undead is probably pretty stinky.
[00:33:44] Speaker B: Yeah, it's like. It's like any basketball. I'm sure he got used to it. And then convinced himself he was like, this is just life now. It's fine.
[00:33:53] Speaker A: No, but like it's. You don't. Like I said, I felt for him. At the same time, I understood the people trying to help. It's just one of those things. And like they just don't know. And again, that added so much more to it. And that's why I love horror. Like you mentioned, Tate, like horror, I feel like, has this ability to be so many more different things than other genres in my opinion. Like, you know, there's like a romance genre could only really be so much in that sense. A horror can be a romance. But I feel like romance horror just becomes a horror. It's like a weird way that it works. Like a square is a rectangle, but rectangles, not a square kind of thing. And how it fits in that category. And I feel like there's a beauty in this while it's also terrifying and horrifying all at the same time. And you guys mentioned, I think Jacob, you mentioned the length of it. The five issues is like a perfect.
I think there's some stories nowadays where I'm like, oh my God, I want more. But then there's other ones where I'm like, that's it, that's good. If there does come more, awesome. I'm going to be there the first in line on Wednesday, picking that up. But it doesn't need that. Like you completed that story. It felt tied up, it felt open, it felt the poet. It felt like the worst of the. I don't know. At the end of it, I was so happy because I read issue one on New Comic Book Day and I read it. It was phenomenal. But then obviously I was buying it and putting it, put it on the stack of books that I need to read that's this high.
And then Margot Image sent me a link saying you should read X, Y and Z trades that are coming out here pretty soon. And that was on one of them, I was like, oh, this is a reason now to read the whole thing. And I got to read it in a trade format. So I love single issue comics.
They're one of my favorite things that are out there. I could buy what cover I want to buy or multiple covers or whatever, whatever. As you guys can see, I collect a lot of them behind me. But there's something. And this story is told well in single issues, but also told well in some sort of collected edition. Like it's coming out here pretty soon. So are you looking forward to this coming out in one long stretch so people can just dive in, right into it and get the whole thing all in one sitting.
I'm guessing you are. I'm guessing that's the answer. But what do you guys think about this coming out in trade?
[00:35:57] Speaker C: Yeah, I think the story lends itself so well to it, and that's how I read most of my followers as well. I read. I mostly read and trade.
So, like, it's great for me. I can stick it on my shelf with the rest of my books and. Yeah. And even when. When it comes to, like, something like film versus tv, so that I'm much more of a. Of a film guy than I am a TV guy, because I like having that sort of.
I read it and it's done. You know, I was saying with novels, I don't really read like, ongoing series. I just read, like, individual, single, not. And I like that.
So, like, this kind of story for me is, like, perfect. I love this. And it works so well in that. And I think hopefully, yeah, sit down and read it and. And you get everything that you need out of it without having to go like, okay, now I need to go get the rest. It's like, it's done and it does the job by itself. So, yeah, I'm hoping. And also it's exciting because it's a whole different audience of people as well. Like, there's the book audience, like the, you know, traditional bookshop audience, which I think will.
Hopefully it'll do well in that market because I think, again, it's that the. The story that it tells will lend itself well to that kind of market as well. So hopefully we can opens it up to a whole new audience of readers that never would have found it otherwise, which is always exciting.
[00:37:24] Speaker A: I also love that this issue 5 was the end of January, is in local comic book shops. And this is coming out in local comic shops in April and then in bookshops in May, which is fantastic because there's. Sometimes I feel like there's like you read the last issue of the series and then like a year later you're getting the trades, like the short distance between.
I think I honestly read the trade. Trade like the middle of January, which is like the fifth issue hadn't even come out. Come out yet to stands yet. And I'm reading it in trade format. But there's that also that aspect of, like, you get to feed off of the back end of that marketing too, that you still had people on their shelves. There's a possibility someone goes and grabs this at A trade at a. At a comic shop. And issue five is, you know, in the back issues where people can grab the actual issue, too, which is pretty cool. Likely they're not gonna be able to find issue one in single issues right now, but. But hopefully they do. I'm lucky enough to have it. And again, I'm. Maybe I will just hang it up as a comic in my, you know, room out there. See, there's a guy, Tyler Turnbull, I don't know if you've heard of this guy on Instagram. He takes, like. And goes to, like, thrift shops and buys, like, old paintings and then paints, like, pop culture references into the paintings.
And I have one that's Rugrats in my bathroom legitimately. Like. Like my half bathroom that everybody uses. When they come over and it does take. People are like, leave the bathroom. And they're like, wait a second. They go back in there and there's like a large chunk of Chucky just like from. From. From. From Rugrats. Like, walking around. It throws people off. So I kind of want that. I kind of want that idea. Someone goes, that's a beautiful pig. Wait, is that a dead cow?
Wait a second. No. But yes. This comes out April 8th at local comic book shops. Everything dead and dying in trade format, as well as May, the beginning of May at bookstores everywhere. Which is pretty cool with Image two is they give the little, you know, advanced sales basically to your local comic book shop so you can get it. But also it's available on bookstores, which also, like you mentioned, Jacob is, like, so cool to see. Like, I'm friends, good friends with the owner of a bookstore and a comic book shop, and both of them have, like, different takes on different things. And it's always fun to hear, like, he doesn't give a crap about single issues. The bookstore order wants the trade. And so it's cool to see that comic book shops get the, you know, advance. I'd say advance. The first taste of a trade release nowadays over at Image is pretty cool. But you guys are both still busy doing other things too, and I wanted to just quickly touch. You're back in the slaughter verse.
Tate, come up here pretty soon. Are you excited for the fall, the House of Slaughter?
[00:39:44] Speaker B: Yeah, it feels like going home if the home was full of mass murderers. And it's. It's wonderful. It's a great feeling.
It's really cool.
It's going to be like the first event series, basically, like in the Slaughterverse, where it's all leading up to issue 50 which is a huge milestone.
So it's going to be coming out the same time as 46, 47, 48, 49, and it'll lead right into 50. Yeah. So fall of the House of Slaughter, where the. It's me. It's me writing Conclave fanfic, but instead of a bunch of cardinals, it's. It's monster hunters vying for to be the next dragon of this. Of this organization.
So, yeah, it's really fun. It's monsters, political thrillers, and, yeah, I'm
[00:40:36] Speaker C: having a great time.
[00:40:36] Speaker B: It's been like. It's probably my favorite thing I've written in the Slaughter verse, so I'm very happy.
[00:40:41] Speaker A: Oh, that's awesome. That's coming May 6, the first issue that's hitting your local comic book shops. You also have obviously, like, the oddly pedestrian Life of Christopher Kay is going on there. You got new, new titans. You're busy as a whole. But I wanted to touch on the Fall of the House of Slaughter because that's. People are clamoring for more stuff from that Slaughter verse, I'll tell you that much. They. I mean, they.
James and all those people, they get me. Every time I bought the 10th printing of whatever that, you know, the Glow in the Dark cover or whatever the hell it was, I was like, it's got me.
It's like we talked about the Walking Dead. I'm like, robert Kirkman's got me. I'm buying the deluxe edition now. I have 99 of the first run and I'm still buying the deluxe edition for some. I got the colored version of. It's a lot more interesting.
[00:41:22] Speaker B: It.
[00:41:22] Speaker A: But I'm just saying, like, he's hooked me. He's gonna do the deluxe deluxe edition next. And he's got me again. That's it. It's one of those things.
But it's. Yeah. So it's fun to see more coming out of this. Something that I don't know if a lot of us saw when Something's Killing the Children first came out, saw all of this branching out of it, which is really kind of cool to see see happen nowadays over there at Boom. But the peril of the brutal Dark and Ezra Cain mystery over at Vertigo. Jacob back with Chris Conan again.
You guys again. You live in his basement, according to Tate. So you have. You're required by law or by force, I guess, to work Chris together. No, Chris is a great phenomenal writer. So what's it been like to reach writing over at Vertigo? To me, it's really cool. I would be very, very, very honored to be at Vertigo. Is that something that's pretty cool for you too?
[00:42:07] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, it's so cool. It's been great because it's. Because I'm so used to working. So my cat's just arrived on.
[00:42:16] Speaker A: No complaints here.
[00:42:19] Speaker C: Yeah. Because I'm so used to working with image. So, you know, there was sort of.
I was a bit tentative because it's. I was like, am I going to be giving up all these, all this like, creative control?
But it's, it's been the perfect sort of balance of having full creative control, everything we're doing and also the sort of backing of this huge machine behind us.
So, yeah, it's been great. And like, Matt Levine's our editor on it and he's been absolutely amazing. Like he's, he's just made it a better book than it would have been without. So that's what. That's all you can ask for from, from an editor. So.
Yeah, so that's been really great. Obviously exciting to have the Vertigo logo on the book. I've just had the second issue, my comps delivered for that.
It looks great.
So like. And I'm really, you know, I'm proud of the story that we're telling and also it couldn't have worked better where evident. I finished in January and then this came out in February and it's.
And then in June we've just announced that we're doing that sort of. We're running straight into that and then hopefully we'll be back after that with more as. Okay. And stuff. So it's. The idea is that we'll be doing these sort of six issue arcs and then having a break and come out
[00:43:36] Speaker B: with a new adventure.
[00:43:36] Speaker C: And each one's a self contained adventure, which is how we like to work on Texas Blood. Anyway, it's like each arc is a sort of self contained story in a bigger world with the same characters.
So. Yeah. So hopefully we're going to be sort of bouncing back and forth between that
[00:43:52] Speaker B: for, for a while.
[00:43:55] Speaker C: Yeah, it's great. And it's. And it's fun to sort of stretch these different muscles doing this sort of like period piece New York and doing this sort of noir tinge stuff. And also the sort of, as we go through this series, it becomes much more of a sort of like bigger adventure story, which is something that I've never really done before. So it's.
Yeah, it's got sort of fantastical elements in it and you know, science fiction stuff. So. Yeah, yeah. I really enjoyed it. Like, I, I'm. I finished working. Well, I'm still cold. I finished drawing it months ago. So it's like I'm excited for it to keep coming out for people to read the rest of it.
[00:44:34] Speaker A: I talked to Kyle Starks earlier. He's like so pumped about all the different books coming out at Vertigo. He's like, I don't know why I'm part of this, but.
But I'm. I'm cool with everybody else. Like, he's like, usually I read them all. He's like, these are fantastic. It's like, you know, and then like I said, talking about my LCS owner, he also was on the edge of not ordering your book because of how long the lot the title was.
He's like, I'm putting it on the polis. It's so hard to like put it on. I was just kidding. He's like, it's kind of funny again. And he does. He looks at a light title. He's like, that's super long. And then he looks at the creators. He's like, okay, cool, we're gonna create that. We're gonna keep that in there and make sure we get that with you and you and Chris on that.
[00:45:09] Speaker C: Chris still. Is that sort of like pulpy as well? So it's like the, the next art. Chris has written a sort of, you know, pitch treatment thing for the, for the next arc and it's got an equally long and ridiculous title. So more of that to come.
[00:45:27] Speaker A: So I just. Now I'm asking, I want to ask, you know, why isn't it called the Fall of the House of Slaughter Colon? Something's killing the Children story.
I need to have this be this long. No, I. And my day job is.
I'm a creative director for a brewery. And when I. We create beer title names for the beer labels, we're always very conscientious nowadays of like, we used to call it whatever the heck we wanted to because whenever we designed the label, it was flat on a screen. But then when you rolled around a can, you realize that you don't see the whole thing. So like. And also like writing it on menus
[00:46:00] Speaker C: and all that stuff.
[00:46:01] Speaker A: So we started like two word, three word beer names. Now because of the fact that we're like, okay, it's more better for the design, better for the beer, like promoting and marketing of it. But sometimes, Jacob, they just need to be long because they need it designed to be that way. Or again, technically it's. It's the, you know, Ezra Kane story is the second part of that. It's not actually the full. It's the full title, but you know what I mean.
Yeah. So you two are both busy. Everything Dead and Die is phenomenal. I think everybody should go out and get that trade. Put it on your shelf. I have all five single issues. I'm still going to go out and get the tr. My brother asked me that. My brother visited my house for the first time since I moved in here. And he's like, why do you have so many trades if you have so many comics? So I go, because I'm crazy and I wanted to support the creators who are making them. No, because I like the idea that I could pick up the trade and read it. I don't like as much reading my single issues.
[00:46:50] Speaker C: I don't want to.
[00:46:50] Speaker A: I don't want to mess with them. Especially when one of your comics is worth 20 bucks. I might as well keep it in the bag and board, right?
But no, I'm so happy that you two took the time out of your busy schedules to chat with us here on the podcast Everything dead and dying. April 8th at your local comic book shop. And May 5th, I believe. Or 6, I think it's May 5th. May 5th at your local bookstore or bookstores everywhere. You can get it on bookshop.org which is a place that I like to send people because that supports local bookstores and they'll ship it right to your house and so on and so forth.
And then check out those. Like I said, the follow the House of Slaughter is coming up here pretty soon, as well as the Azerkane mysteries coming over at Vertigo from Chris's and Jacob as well. So thank you so much. I appreciate you guys taking the time out.
[00:47:33] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you. This was great. Thanks for having me back.
And thanks for continuing to just like, support creators so much and create spaces like this. And it's like, it's so. We're always just so grateful for it.
[00:47:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I appreciate it very much. Yeah. Keep up the great work and keep up the great work, Jacob. We're always. Thank you for joining us for the first time. We'll get you back at some point in the future, but I. I'm glad we able to work this out and get this going. So thanks you very much and I'll talk to you soon.
[00:48:00] Speaker C: Yeah, see you. Bye.
