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With Great Power #338... 22 Panels with Erica Schultz · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:02
  Tad Eggleston: Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels. I'm welcoming back writer Erika Schultz. It's been a little while. I think the last time you were on, you were making your Moon Knight jacket.
• 0:13
  Tad Eggleston: So it's been… What?
• 0:16
  Erica Schultz: Long time.
• 0:16
  Tad Eggleston: two years. Yeah, something like that. Something like that. So, so thanks for, thanks for coming back.
• 0:23
  Tad Eggleston: You made me read a Spawn comic. I haven't read a Spawn comic in, like, 25 years.
• 0:29
  Erica Schultz: I'm sorry.
• 0:29
  Tad Eggleston: No, don't apologize, because it's fantastic.
• 0:34
  Tad Eggleston: But that's where I have to start, is like, you started playing in sandboxes that I don't generally jump into, but I like to read your stuff, so I…
• 0:44
  Tad Eggleston: jumped into them, at least somewhat, and it's nice to have you back to be able to talk about that. So, how are things? What have you been up to, other than Spawn and X-Men?
• 0:55
  Tad Eggleston: And a little different.
• 0:56
  Erica Schultz: Vaughn, X-Men, Vampirella.
• 0:59
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, that's right.
• 1:01
  Erica Schultz: Today's Wednesday, and Van Pearl is out today.
• 1:04
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 1:06
  Erica Schultz: So, a little bit of everything.
• 1:08
  Tad Eggleston: I can't say that you'd be making me jump into that sandbox, because Christopher Priest already did that.
• 1:14
  Erica Schultz: Yeah.
• 1:14
  Tad Eggleston: Though he didn't do it, like, immediately, it was, like, 10 issues in. Well, yeah, I love Christopher Priest, but it was, like, 10 issues in when I… when I had a friend go.
• 1:24
  Tad Eggleston: You're gonna think this is crazy, but you need to be reading Vampirella right now. No, no, I know, I know, but you need to be reading Vampirella right now.
• 1:32
  Erica Schultz: Yeah. Well, I mean, like a lot of characters, she… especially a lot of, like, the old kind of pulpy characters, she gets…
• 1:41
  Erica Schultz: sort of thrown to the side as, like, just being this, like, TNA kind of book.
• 1:45
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:46
  Erica Schultz: But I think one of the great things about, you know, Christopher writing her is there's so much more,
• 1:55
  Erica Schultz: there's so much more substance. One of the runs that I absolutely love is…
• 2:04
  Erica Schultz: Nancy Collins, her run on Vampirella when she was writing Vampirella.
• 2:09
  Erica Schultz: And it's probably the only… it's… I think it's the only Vampirella that I actually own.
• 2:15
  Erica Schultz: was when Nancy was writing, God Save the Queen.
• 2:19
  Erica Schultz: was the, I have the trade paperback, and it's, like, 8 issues for that arc, and it was… and it introduced Tristan.
• 2:27
  Erica Schultz: and the whole thing with, Madame Evely and, the Cabal and stuff like that, which may have, been in other, issues and such, but sort of the incarnations that were in the, the work that,
• 2:43
  Erica Schultz: That Nancy had written, and Patrick, I would butcher the last name if I said it, did a great job on the art.
• 2:54
  Tad Eggleston: Of course, my internet connection is running slow, because I was pulling up to look at it, and the page isn't coming through. So, one day I'll say what the Patrick is. But yeah, so, like, the last time I talked to you, I think we were talking about more…
• 3:15
  Tad Eggleston: creator-owned-ish stuff, because it was Deadly Bouquet, and we went back to M5 and whatnot, and now you're working in…
• 3:22
  Erica Schultz: Madam.
• 3:22
  Tad Eggleston: I'm 3. I'm sorry.
• 3:24
  Erica Schultz: It's okay.
• 3:24
  Tad Eggleston: I was just… I'm reading Slow Horses.
• 3:29
  Tad Eggleston: MI5, you know, now you're good, you got me. I already misspelled your name once in an email, and went, oh my god! I already hit send!
• 3:40
  Erica Schultz: I mean, honestly, it's… it's fine. A lot of people misspell my name. I've gotten it misspelled on commissions and such. It's just…
• 3:49
  Tad Eggleston: I know, but like…
• 3:50
  Erica Schultz: It's okay.
• 3:51
  Tad Eggleston: At the school I teach at, we actually, like, really prioritize, like, pronouncing kids' names.
• 3:59
  Tad Eggleston: Appropriately. So, so it's just ingrained in me that, like, It's a big deal.
• 4:06
  Tad Eggleston: And then I feel bad. But yeah, thank you for being okay with you.
• 4:12
  Tad Eggleston: So, so what's… what's it like getting to play in… in other people's sandboxes right now?
• 4:18
  Tad Eggleston: I mean…
• 4:19
  Erica Schultz: I mean, well, I've been doing it for a long time between…
• 4:22
  Tad Eggleston: I know that, too.
• 4:22
  Erica Schultz: I've been doing a lot of, of, I guess, what you would call, like, IP or licensed work and such.
• 4:29
  Erica Schultz: And I mean, it's always sort of a balancing act, because you have a story that you want to tell, you have to make sure that that is going to fit within the larger universe that the publisher is dealing with.
• 4:46
  Erica Schultz: Especially if it is a crossover, you have to make sure that the story that you're telling isn't going to conflict
• 4:54
  Erica Schultz: with any other, any other story than anybody else is telling within the same crossover. So, I mean, it's a lot of, sort of, like, weaving things together. It's, like, sort of, like, braiding things together and such.
• 5:09
  Erica Schultz: But I mean, it depends. Every…
• 5:13
  Erica Schultz: Every publisher sort of, has their own level of
• 5:19
  Erica Schultz: a helicopter parent, you know? Some have the drone that literally follows you with every draft, and then others are sort of like, alright, let me peek in every once in a while, just to make sure that you're still on the right track.
• 5:34
  Erica Schultz: So it just sort of, like, it depends on… on what character you're working on as well, because sometimes you have a character that nobody really, nobody really cares about. It's kind of almost like a throwaway. When I was working on Hollow's Eve with Mike Dowling.
• 5:52
  Erica Schultz: Back in 2020.
• 5:53
  Tad Eggleston: a fun book.
• 5:54
  Erica Schultz: Thank you. Nobody…
• 5:57
  Erica Schultz: gave a damn about that character, because she was kind of just this throwaway character, and then when we were, like, 3 issues in.
• 6:04
  Erica Schultz: And it was getting these, like, crazy, great reviews.
• 6:10
  Erica Schultz: editorial stepped in, was like, oh, we need to do this, and I was like, you do realize the reason why it's getting good reviews is because you're leaving Mike and I alone.
• 6:20
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 6:22
  Erica Schultz: You know, that's why it's getting good reviews. And it always comes back to that old adage of, like, you know, success has many parents, but failure's an orphan.
• 6:32
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 6:33
  Erica Schultz: You know, and that's kind of why sometimes I see, especially in TV shows, Season 1 will be, like, phenomenal. And then Season 2, everybody has to poke their hands in.
• 6:45
  Erica Schultz: And things start getting convoluted, and they start getting, like, overwritten, and, you know, characters start behaving uncharacteristically, and then you're just kind of like.
• 6:58
  Erica Schultz: Well, if you just left it be, if you just let… you took a chance on it, let the creative team cook.
• 7:06
  Erica Schultz: Without, sort of, like, running into the kitchen in the middle and deciding that you're gonna throw whatever in there, you know?
• 7:14
  Erica Schultz: So,
• 7:15
  Erica Schultz: It depends on the character. I mean, like, with Rogue being so integral to the, Uncanny, book that Gale is writing, I really had to make sure that the story that we told was
• 7:31
  Erica Schultz: going to be able to live on its own, but also wasn't going to…
• 7:37
  Erica Schultz: Mess up all of the…
• 7:40
  Erica Schultz: all of the characterization as well as all of the storyline and plot that Gale had already been laying out with David Marquez, Luciano Vecchio, tons of great artists have worked with Gale on that book.
• 7:57
  Erica Schultz: So I had to make sure, like, okay, well, this is the five issues that we're doing, this is where we sort of see the character going,
• 8:07
  Erica Schultz: There is going to be, you know, the big reveal at the end.
• 8:12
  Erica Schultz: now that Gail is aware of it, she can start seeding that in her scripts.
• 8:18
  Erica Schultz: And the artist can start making sort of little visual Easter eggs and references to that to be able to make sure that both stories are coalescing.
• 8:31
  Tad Eggleston: I've always been curious, and seeing that you were, like, working on X books, and similarly working on Spawn books that work all in the same universe, and, like, intertwine some, always wondered how the cross-seating goes on. I know that there are the occasional, like, summit
• 8:51
  Tad Eggleston: conferences or whatever, but… but are you in contact with the other writers? Does it all go through editorial?
• 8:59
  Tad Eggleston: How do you guys play together, I guess is what I'm asking.
• 9:01
  Erica Schultz: It depends. So, for Spawn, I'm currently working on Gunslinger Spawn, and, Jimmy Palmiati is writing Deadly Tales of Gunslinger. And so Jimmy and I were at a convention together a couple of months ago, and we had, like, a whole conversation about where
• 9:21
  Erica Schultz: The story that he's working on has…
• 9:24
  Erica Schultz: Has sort of started, and his plan for where it's going, and then, ways that we can sort of…
• 9:33
  Erica Schultz: pay off things in his book, or pay off things in, in the Gunslinger,
• 9:43
  Erica Schultz: that Carlo Barberi and I are working on. And it's a matter of, like.
• 9:47
  Erica Schultz: do you seed it before? Do you seed it after? Is it this sort of, like,
• 9:55
  Erica Schultz: Sorry, hold on one second, the cat is gonna look… No problem. She shouldn't.
• 10:00
  Tad Eggleston: I totally understand cats.
• 10:03
  Erica Schultz: I, like, just out of the corner of my eye, she wants attention, I'm not giving her attention.
• 10:08
  Erica Schultz: thing that she's gonna do is, like, well, what can I chew on?
• 10:12
  Tad Eggleston: Yep, yep. Mom.
• 10:14
  Erica Schultz: Keep me in touch.
• 10:15
  Tad Eggleston: My wife…
• 10:16
  Erica Schultz: If you can sit still, you can come and sit with me. If you can sit still, but you can't sit still.
• 10:23
  Tad Eggleston: Eddie gets locked out of the room now, even though he's our mascot cat.
• 10:28
  Tad Eggleston: Because he's… he's not able to behave during podcasts. My wife was putting together the new 22 Panels ad for… for…
• 10:36
  Tad Eggleston: Santos Sisters today, and decided to put the other cats into it, and that's our thing. 22 panels now with more cats. So, I get it.
• 10:47
  Erica Schultz: I… I… I, I… She's young.
• 10:51
  Erica Schultz: And she… this is… it… there's the parent,
• 10:56
  Erica Schultz: there's this whole thing where your parents say, you know, whenever you're a miserable child, I hope you have a child like you someday.
• 11:03
  Erica Schultz: you know the frustration that I had to go through raising you, and she is me. She is…
• 11:10
  Tad Eggleston: him.
• 11:11
  Erica Schultz: Hyperkinetic, and she doesn't listen, and she doesn't sit still, and… all of that, and I…
• 11:21
  Erica Schultz: I'm not gonna say I think my parents, you know, did an okay job, but I'm just gonna say I understand their frustrations with me a little more.
• 11:32
  Erica Schultz: But yeah, she's lovely, and I absolutely adore her, but she doesn't like to sit still, so I'm always like, if you sit still, we can do this podcast together.
• 11:43
  Erica Schultz: And she never sits still. When she was much, much younger, she would. She would just sort of, like, fall asleep in the crook of my arm, and it would be lovely, and she would just fall asleep, and that would be fine, but now, you know, she's gonna be 2 years old, so she's a big girl now.
• 11:55
  Tad Eggleston: that, that, the.
• 11:56
  Erica Schultz: I talked about that.
• 11:57
  Tad Eggleston: Fantastic.
• 11:57
  Erica Schultz: Evenings. Oh, God. Anyway.
• 12:00
  Erica Schultz: But yeah, it depends on the crossover, it depends on the people that you're working with, because,
• 12:07
  Erica Schultz: Jimmy and I are talking about, you know.
• 12:11
  Erica Schultz: certain storylines that he's doing that I might reprieve.
• 12:15
  Erica Schultz: in the book that… that I'm writing, or little things that I have that he can, you know, that may seem sort of like a one-off here, but if you go to Deadly Tales, you're… you'll start to see
• 12:28
  Erica Schultz: the origin of that story. So we've been having some discussions about that. In terms of the Xbox, we had a Discord server for a while.
• 12:40
  Erica Schultz: Where, if they're, between the,
• 12:46
  Erica Schultz: the crossovers, and also, somebody was like, oh, hey, you know, I need to add a character, you know, somebody who's not really consequential, but, you know, somebody who people will recognize, you know, who's on the table.
• 13:04
  Erica Schultz: Kind of thing.
• 13:06
  Erica Schultz: we can always do, you know, we'll always sort of just type that into the… to the Discord, and such. But, I mean, whenever you're talking about these big shared universes, it… it is good to…
• 13:22
  Erica Schultz: To have a little bit of distance, but also to sort of be… you know, you don't have to all sit on the same couch, but to be in the same room, because you don't
• 13:31
  Erica Schultz: Take it.
• 13:32
  Erica Schultz: where your audience has to pick up 12 books a week just to know what's going on. I don't think that's fair.
• 13:39
  Erica Schultz: Because…
• 13:41
  Tad Eggleston: Thank you for that.
• 13:42
  Tad Eggleston: Because sometimes I don't know if Marvel and DC agree.
• 13:46
  Erica Schultz: I, I can, I, I…
• 13:48
  Erica Schultz: I say very often, I'm as much of a fan as I am a professional.
• 13:52
  Erica Schultz: And I understand that
• 13:56
  Erica Schultz: I understand that, you know, everyone… well, not everybody, but the vast majority of us have limited resources, and I understand that
• 14:05
  Erica Schultz: You want to… To be able to take in a story.
• 14:11
  Erica Schultz: And not have to feel as if…
• 14:13
  Erica Schultz: So much is being left out of it.
• 14:16
  Erica Schultz: You know, so…
• 14:18
  Erica Schultz: We wanted to be able to make the rogue story, just as an example, we wanted to be able to make the rogue story something that you could
• 14:25
  Erica Schultz: read whether or not you're reading Uncanny. If you happen to be reading Uncanny, then this is gravy. If you're not reading Uncanny, and you just like the character of Rogue.
• 14:36
  Erica Schultz: Give it a read, and if you like it, and you want to turn around and maybe pick up uncanny, you can do that too. But it's not necessary, it's not required reading.
• 14:48
  Erica Schultz: And… what I… and I… what I try and do…
• 14:55
  Erica Schultz: no matter what book I work on.
• 14:57
  Erica Schultz: is sort of the gym shooter. Any issue that you pick up could be your number one.
• 15:04
  Erica Schultz: And especially when it came to Gunslinger, because the first issue that I worked on on Gunslinger was 54.
• 15:10
  Erica Schultz: And I'm writing… I'm finishing up the script for 61 right now, And for Gunslinger54,
• 15:18
  Erica Schultz: there are people that have said, wait a minute, you mean I have to read 53…
• 15:24
  Erica Schultz: issues of Gunslinger to pick up your book.
• 15:26
  Erica Schultz: And I said, no, because that first issue, the first three pages tells you all you need to know about Gunslinger. He's a man from the past who was brought into the… brought into our time.
• 15:38
  Erica Schultz: He's the weakest of all the gun… of all the, house bonds.
• 15:45
  Erica Schultz: Which means he has a chip on his shoulder.
• 15:47
  Erica Schultz: he… Tends to… he's very resourceful, but he tends to overestimate his abilities, and he tends to underestimate.
• 15:56
  Erica Schultz: his…
• 15:57
  Erica Schultz: his opponents. And when I was teaching writing at Cubert School, one of the things that I would say is, every character that is important
• 16:07
  Erica Schultz: To the plot, to the… The story to the…
• 16:13
  Erica Schultz: Furtherance of the adventure of the…
• 16:17
  Erica Schultz: Protagonist, and even the antagonist as well.
• 16:21
  Erica Schultz: you have to know four things. You can obviously know more, but there are 4 crucial things that you need to know. You need to know somebody's name.
• 16:29
  Erica Schultz: You need to know where they're from.
• 16:32
  Erica Schultz: You need to know what they're proud of, and you need to know what they're afraid of.
• 16:39
  Tad Eggleston: Seems about right.
• 16:40
  Erica Schultz: And if you have those 4 things.
• 16:46
  Erica Schultz: then that's just enough information for the audience to be able to then understand who they are. So, these gunslinger.
• 16:55
  Erica Schultz: Where's he from? The 1860s?
• 16:58
  Erica Schultz: What's he proud of? He's proud of the fact that he's resourceful, despite being, you know, the weakest of all the hellspawns. And what's he's afraid of? He's afraid that he's never going to get back to his own time.
• 17:17
  Tad Eggleston: I like it.
• 17:18
  Erica Schultz: And those are the 4 things that you learn in those first 3 pages.
• 17:21
  Erica Schultz: And then, you don't need to know anything else, because as the story develops, it…
• 17:27
  Erica Schultz: it develops based on those things. That is your foundation.
• 17:31
  Erica Schultz: and…
• 17:35
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 17:36
  Erica Schultz: And to me, that's… that's very.
• 17:37
  Tad Eggleston: That's…
• 17:38
  Erica Schultz: storytelling. That's… that is… that is foundational, that is just the fundamentals of storytelling.
• 17:44
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 17:44
  Tad Eggleston: No.
• 17:45
  Tad Eggleston: Though my autistic brain is also sitting here trying to write, like, like, duncan of York…
• 17:53
  Tad Eggleston: The, the, the night, proud of the, you know, just…
• 17:58
  Tad Eggleston: Trying to put it all into one sentence in my head, because I'm crazy.
• 18:01
  Erica Schultz: Kind of like, about, like.
• 18:04
  Tad Eggleston: People…
• 18:04
  Erica Schultz: talk about, like, log lines and distilling an idea down to a sentence or two. It is very difficult as a creator, because you have
• 18:15
  Erica Schultz: So much that you've put into a character, into a story, into a world.
• 18:21
  Erica Schultz: that just distilling it down to a sentence or two, I mean, I can't do that. How can you… you know, this contains multitudes, how can you, you know, distill it to a sentence? But that's… that's the way you have to think of it, because
• 18:36
  Erica Schultz: When… especially when you are presenting it to people.
• 18:41
  Tad Eggleston: Right?
• 18:43
  Erica Schultz: Especially if you're pitching something. If you're pitching any idea, even if you're pitching, like, you're a teacher, if you're pitching an idea for a new class or a new lesson.
• 18:52
  Erica Schultz: You have to make it bite-sized and manageable, because you need to present this to the administrators or whomever, and you need to say, this is the name of the class.
• 19:06
  Erica Schultz: this is why it's important, this is what I, think the students are going to get out of it, and this is where I need your help
• 19:18
  Erica Schultz: to… Make this, this proposal more robust, to make this class.
• 19:23
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 19:23
  Erica Schultz: lost.
• 19:25
  Erica Schultz: Break it down for pretty much anything.
• 19:28
  Tad Eggleston: Absolutely.
• 19:29
  Tad Eggleston: Absolutely.
• 19:30
  Erica Schultz: And that sort of shows the sort of the universality of storytelling in general.
• 19:39
  Tad Eggleston: This is why I like talking to writers, they always make me think as I'm
• 19:43
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I like talking to artists, too, they make me think in different ways, but… but, like…
• 19:48
  Tad Eggleston: You both… you both fascinate me and throw me off my game when I'm…
• 19:53
  Tad Eggleston: They're going, oh, no, no, I don't really have a game, so being thrown off of it is… whatever.
• 20:00
  Tad Eggleston: Do you have… I mean, like, I know… I know when you got to write Moon Knight, when you got to write Daredevil, those were things that you had experienced, like, a history in the universe. When it comes to X-Men, Spawn…
• 20:14
  Tad Eggleston: Vampirella, were these titles that, that you…
• 20:17
  Tad Eggleston: You had on your bucket list were these universes that you had spent lots of time in your life as a fan with?
• 20:26
  Tad Eggleston: What were these opportunities that you got, and…
• 20:29
  Erica Schultz: It's more for me, it's more of…
• 20:32
  Erica Schultz: characters rather than, like, the worlds.
• 20:35
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 20:37
  Erica Schultz: I don't think I ever saw myself writing Spawn.
• 20:42
  Erica Schultz: at the same time, I'm not writing Al, I'm writing, Javi for Gunslinger, and Peter for, Rat City. So, I'm not writing, like, what people would consider Al Simon, you know, Spawn, because I'm not writing Al Simmons, but,
• 21:00
  Erica Schultz: I think that… for me, getting to play…
• 21:07
  Erica Schultz: Getting… getting the opportunity to tell a story, any story,
• 21:14
  Erica Schultz: is important. That's something that I have to do. It's kind of, you know, it's… it's… my core is… is to tell stories. And to be able to do that in…
• 21:27
  Erica Schultz: A universe that is very well established, and a universe That has beloved characters is…
• 21:36
  Erica Schultz: terrifying, but it's also invigorating, you know?
• 21:41
  Erica Schultz: I know that when I first started working on Spawn back in 2022, which was when I first met Thomas Healy.
• 21:49
  Erica Schultz: who's the editor-in-chief over at McFarlane.
• 21:51
  Erica Schultz: I know that…
• 21:56
  Erica Schultz: And there were people saying that I was a publicity stunt, being the first woman to ever write Spawn and such.
• 22:03
  Erica Schultz: And I've had, like, OG spawn heads come to me at conventions saying, like.
• 22:11
  Erica Schultz: I, you know, I thought you were, you know, full of BS when they announced you and everything, and now Rat City is, like, my favorite book. Or, you know, I picked up Gunslinger and, like, holy crap.
• 22:23
  Erica Schultz: You know, so… Walking into…
• 22:28
  Erica Schultz: Those universes, are difficult, because there's a certain amount of baggage that comes with it.
• 22:37
  Erica Schultz: Right. And I think, no matter what side of the aisle you're on, you can agree that fandom has become toxic.
• 22:46
  Erica Schultz: Or you could say has always been toxic.
• 22:50
  Tad Eggleston: There have always been corners of fandom that are very toxic.
• 22:54
  Erica Schultz: Yeah. So, the idea of… going into… that room.
• 23:01
  Erica Schultz: and saying, Hey, this is gonna be something different.
• 23:06
  Erica Schultz: is scary, but at the same time, I'm, you know, I'm an old broad from Jersey.
• 23:12
  Erica Schultz: What are you gonna show me that I haven't seen?
• 23:14
  Tad Eggleston: You know?
• 23:16
  Tad Eggleston: Right. I was actually thinking more from the research side. Were you…
• 23:20
  Tad Eggleston: were you already steeped in the characters and were immediately like, oh, I know what to do with this, or did you… did you need to go read old… I mean, you talked about Nancy Collins with Vampirella, was that something you read long before you knew you were doing Vampirella, or was that… okay.
• 23:37
  Erica Schultz: I had read Nancy Samparella
• 23:39
  Erica Schultz: like, years and years and years ago. So I had read Spawn when it was first coming out, and I had read probably about 75 issues,
• 23:50
  Erica Schultz: In the past couple of years, I have the compendiums.
• 23:54
  Erica Schultz: And I've read probably up, like, 225.
• 23:57
  Erica Schultz: And everything, and, you know, they're… they're going close to 400, so obviously that's not the entirety of it.
• 24:04
  Tad Eggleston: Hey, it's 200 more issues than I've read of Spawn.
• 24:08
  Erica Schultz: With Rat City, though, we didn't…
• 24:12
  Erica Schultz: the point of Rat City was that you could…
• 24:16
  Erica Schultz: read Rat City, having never read
• 24:19
  Erica Schultz: regular Spawn, having never read Kingspawn, having never read Scorched.
• 24:25
  Tad Eggleston: And I can completely attest to the fact that that is 100% true, because I barely remembered any of my regular Spawn. I went, oh, Erica Schultz, wait, it's a Spawn book.
• 24:38
  Tad Eggleston: I'm just gonna dive in.
• 24:40
  Tad Eggleston: It worked.
• 24:41
  Erica Schultz: But that was the point. So for… when it comes to continuity and things like that.
• 24:46
  Erica Schultz: we didn't really have that for Rat City, because Jay and I were sort of…
• 24:51
  Erica Schultz: We were the jumping off point.
• 24:53
  Erica Schultz: With Gunslinger, there were 49 issues out.
• 24:59
  Erica Schultz: Alrighty. And I read all 49 issues, and I took notes on all 49 issues, and I took notes on all the issues of Deadly Tales.
• 25:09
  Erica Schultz: And, I had written… I don't know, I had written probably…
• 25:19
  Erica Schultz: 3 or 4 issues before I saw the last issue that was coming out before 54.
• 25:27
  Erica Schultz: And I was like, oh, there's a couple of continuity errors. Well…
• 25:30
  Erica Schultz: That's why God invented dialogue balloons. So.
• 25:34
  Erica Schultz: those up right now. You know, so I tend to…
• 25:39
  Erica Schultz: I tend to, research and read what I can of a character, if for no other reason than to get their voice.
• 25:48
  Erica Schultz: but…
• 25:51
  Erica Schultz: I'm pretty well-versed in these characters anyway, and when it comes to something like Vampirella doing, like, a one-shot like this.
• 25:59
  Erica Schultz: vampirella has had…
• 26:03
  Erica Schultz: you know, long stretches, like we were talking about Christopher Priest's writing, the character… Vampirella's had long stretches, but also there have been these moments where it's just sort of, she just dips in and out of time.
• 26:16
  Erica Schultz: And, when I was speaking with the editor about it,
• 26:22
  Erica Schultz: He basically said, this is a story that can live anywhere.
• 26:26
  Erica Schultz: You know, it can live anywhere on her timeline.
• 26:30
  Erica Schultz: So that gave us a huge amount of freedom.
• 26:34
  Erica Schultz: To sort of just…
• 26:36
  Erica Schultz: Have fun with it, you know? I mean, it's comments. You're supposed to have fun with it.
• 26:40
  Tad Eggleston: I would hope. That's why I read them.
• 26:43
  Tad Eggleston: I mean…
• 26:44
  Tad Eggleston: Not the only reason I read them, because I feel like I learn a lot from them, too, but fun was the thing that brought me to them first. You hit on it a little bit.
• 26:54
  Tad Eggleston: But I'm gonna ask you to expand a little bit. When you're doing… Your reading of older material,
• 27:05
  Tad Eggleston: are… like, I get reading for continuity, but I've always kind of looked at that as, like, to… one level, that's what the editor's for. How much are you reading for the voice of the character, for the mood of the world?
• 27:21
  Tad Eggleston: How… what specific things are you… are you kind of looking for to… to… to get yourself into the mindset?
• 27:30
  Tad Eggleston: Of whatever you're writing.
• 27:32
  Erica Schultz: The voice of the character is very, very important, because I think it's very easy…
• 27:36
  Erica Schultz: for another… I think it's easy for another writer to come in.
• 27:41
  Erica Schultz: And change the voice of the character.
• 27:44
  Erica Schultz: And then everybody's kind of like…
• 27:47
  Erica Schultz: what? And it kind of pulls you out,
• 27:50
  Erica Schultz: Continuity is important to me, and I know that, like, everybody's, like, you know, wibbly, wobbly, timey-wimey, you know, comics, comics, comics, but I think continuity is important.
• 28:02
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I don't know, some of those fans we were talking about before are very much not like that. They're like, in issue 42!
• 28:11
  Tad Eggleston: In 1961…
• 28:14
  Erica Schultz: But that's the thing, is I've been that fan, and it's…
• 28:16
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 28:17
  Erica Schultz: I've…
• 28:19
  Erica Schultz: I was… you know, there's… there are characters in Gunslinger, and Todd was writing Gunslinger prior to me, taking the Writing Man. All there were characters in Gunslinger
• 28:31
  Erica Schultz: That dipped in for a page and for an issue, and then disappeared.
• 28:37
  Erica Schultz: So I had made notes of all these different characters that were sort of, like, hanging chads, you know?
• 28:43
  Erica Schultz: And I said,
• 28:46
  Erica Schultz: you know, what was the plan for this character? What was the plan for that? And we were on a call, and he was just like.
• 28:53
  Erica Schultz: you give me too much credit. He goes, listen, this is the way I do it. I think of something cool that I want to draw, and I draw it. And then…
• 29:03
  Erica Schultz: I think of something else cool that I want to draw, and I draw that, and then I find a way to make it all work together.
• 29:10
  Erica Schultz: And then I draw the boring bits, you know.
• 29:13
  Erica Schultz: Because there were a couple of characters, like, there was one character in issue 26, and then there was another character in 47,
• 29:22
  Erica Schultz: And… and I was like, well, what are your plans for these? And what about this? And what about that? And he's just like.
• 29:29
  Tad Eggleston: What do you want to do?
• 29:31
  Erica Schultz: Yeah, well, that's… that's basically what it was, because I said, I was like, well, there's this character that you brought in, and they have a child, and the child seems really important, and he's like.
• 29:41
  Erica Schultz: Whatever.
• 29:43
  Erica Schultz: He's like, what do you see happening? I was like, well, you could do blah blah blah. He's like, yep, sounds good.
• 29:48
  Tad Eggleston: This is reminding me of the… their… in Claremont's run on X-Men.
• 29:54
  Tad Eggleston: There was, like, this… this mysterious…
• 29:58
  Tad Eggleston: black helicopter or something like that, that popped up in, like, 6 or 7 issues, and… but they never figured out what they wanted to do with it, so then it just…
• 30:07
  Tad Eggleston: It was the seed that they had planted, but then nothing grew.
• 30:12
  Erica Schultz: Yeah, and that… and that's the thing, is like…
• 30:16
  Erica Schultz: because I try and tell a contained story,
• 30:23
  Erica Schultz: the things from, like, the person that I'm talking about from issue 26.
• 30:28
  Erica Schultz: Or the person that I'm talking about from issue 20… 47.
• 30:32
  Erica Schultz: I can turn around, and I can tell the contained story.
• 30:38
  Erica Schultz: And because they don't have any backstory, really.
• 30:42
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Right.
• 30:44
  Erica Schultz: the… the backstory is in the present. If you want to turn around and go back to issue… and read issues, you know, 1 through 26, go for it! If you just want to.
• 30:56
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 30:56
  Erica Schultz: Issue 26, then you will see that this character was introduced with
• 31:01
  Erica Schultz: No… with no preamble, just, here's the person, they happen to have a kid, And stuff happens.
• 31:10
  Tad Eggleston: This is… this is… this is one of the things that I… like, I go back and forth on how much I like shared universes, just because I am not a continuity guy, but I have…
• 31:22
  Tad Eggleston: I have the gene for it. Like, the biggest reason I'm not a continuity guy is, like.
• 31:28
  Tad Eggleston: I don't want to spend the next 6 months mapping out the entire Marvel universe, and if I let myself start, I might not stop.
• 31:37
  Tad Eggleston: You know, but… but then there's…
• 31:40
  Erica Schultz: But now I'm just like, who's got time for that?
• 31:44
  Tad Eggleston: Exactly, exactly. But then there's things like, you know, the original what, 11-page…
• 31:53
  Tad Eggleston: Spider-Man story that Stan Lee and Steve Ditko did, at this point, every single character that's in that
• 32:03
  Tad Eggleston: at all.
• 32:04
  Tad Eggleston: Has at least a single issue about them.
• 32:08
  Erica Schultz: Yeah.
• 32:09
  Tad Eggleston: You've seen this story from every different imaginable angle.
• 32:14
  Erica Schultz: It turns into the original Rashomon kind of thing.
• 32:17
  Tad Eggleston: Right, right. And that… that part of the huge universes, I love. The ability to go, oh.
• 32:27
  Tad Eggleston: You know that kid that looked up and pointed at Spider-Man, and then his mom said he was silly? Let's tell a story from his point of view.
• 32:38
  Erica Schultz: Yeah.
• 32:39
  Tad Eggleston: Which they did.
• 32:42
  Erica Schultz: I mean, I was fortunate enough to be part of Spider-Man Black Suit and Blood, and one of the things that
• 32:50
  Erica Schultz: it was weird, it's like, I was… I was… I had just done a signing or something at the Marvel booth.
• 32:56
  Erica Schultz: And one of the editors came up to me after the signing, and he was like, hey, you know, I was wondering if you wanted to do this, and blah blah blah.
• 33:06
  Erica Schultz: And I said, yeah, it would be cool to do a story
• 33:12
  Erica Schultz: In that time… I mean, there's been Venom stories, obviously, but no one told a story from Venom's perspective when Spidey first got the suit.
• 33:21
  Tad Eggleston: I totally forgot that story. Oh, that was so good!
• 33:24
  Erica Schultz: And so, he's like, huh.
• 33:29
  Erica Schultz: I never thought about it that way.
• 33:32
  Erica Schultz: And so, you know, so telling that story is, you know, Spidey just gets back from Secret Wars.
• 33:42
  Erica Schultz: He has the black suit.
• 33:44
  Erica Schultz: And there was a whole thing when Spidey first came back from Secret Wars, because there was a publishing issue where the last two… one or two issues of Secret Wars didn't come out yet.
• 33:55
  Erica Schultz: And they had to go back to ASM, and ASM has him in the black suit.
• 34:02
  Erica Schultz: And so there was this weird thing of, like, people not recognizing Spidey because he's in the black suit.
• 34:07
  Erica Schultz: So, we have that story of, you know, the black suit… you see Peter in the suit doing X, Y, and Z, but then we have this sort of, like, moment of the suit being like, I'm in a strange place, I'm in a different place, I don't understand where I am, and feeding off of
• 34:26
  Erica Schultz: The anger and the energy
• 34:29
  Erica Schultz: of Peter, and then you sort of start to see how that is now influencing Peter.
• 34:37
  Erica Schultz: You know, throughout.
• 34:40
  Erica Schultz: Yeah, I mean, Venom's been told 8 Ways to Sunday, but just in that moment, in that time.
• 34:46
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 34:46
  Erica Schultz: on that timeline, nobody said anything about Venom. It was… it was more or less not a sentient thing.
• 34:55
  Erica Schultz: So…
• 34:56
  Tad Eggleston: That, that actually leads me to,
• 35:00
  Tad Eggleston: One of the things that I've loved in comics in general lately, is the… the…
• 35:11
  Tad Eggleston: Resurrection of… of anthology books.
• 35:14
  Tad Eggleston: Where we seem to have a lot more…
• 35:19
  Tad Eggleston: Books coming out with a series of short stories from different perspectives, and not… as…
• 35:25
  Tad Eggleston: tied to anything, or, like, the EC resurrection over at Oni, and, Boom's got Hello Darkness, you know, just a lot of anthology-type books.
• 35:38
  Tad Eggleston: you've gotten to participate in a number of the Marvel ones. What's it like to have to come up with this, like, way shorter story?
• 35:50
  Erica Schultz: Well, I mean, that's part of the challenge, is… and one of the things that I always tell people who are new writers, or they want to get into writing, is I say, you know, look at…
• 36:00
  Erica Schultz: Anthologies, because telling a story in 5, 8, 10 pages is a lot more difficult than, you know, you have to really get to the meat of it.
• 36:12
  Erica Schultz: And it's… I mean, it's all the same thing of, you know, your opening, you build up, you have your… your high moment kind of thing, and then your denimal. I mean, it's all the same, you know, storytelling, but it's a matter of how many pages do you have for your setup, how many pages do you have?
• 36:30
  Erica Schultz: For your real, like, I mean, it's superhero comics, so the banging the action figures together.
• 36:39
  Erica Schultz: I would say, out of…
• 36:43
  Erica Schultz: out of all the ones that I've done, because I've done quite a few of the Marvel anthologies, the Black, White, and blood, the Black Suit and Blood, the Black, White, and red, because you can't say blood in Star Wars.
• 36:54
  Tad Eggleston: Star Wars.
• 36:56
  Erica Schultz: I would say that my f…
• 37:01
  Erica Schultz: favorites had to be the, Marvel Zombies.
• 37:07
  Erica Schultz: Where I finally got to write Beta Ray Bill, who's one of my favorite characters.
• 37:12
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 37:12
  Erica Schultz: And, and the…
• 37:17
  Erica Schultz: Eisner Award-nominated, Moon Knight Black, White, and Blood, because I have a soft spot for Jake Lockley.
• 37:26
  Erica Schultz: And, my dad drove a cab in New York City in the early 80s.
• 37:32
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 37:33
  Erica Schultz: I have a… I have a soft spot for Jake.
• 37:35
  Erica Schultz: And… As of more recently, I would say in the last, like.
• 37:43
  Erica Schultz: 7 years, give or take, for whatever reason, they…
• 37:47
  Erica Schultz: whether it was editorial, creative, whatever, but they turned Jake into this, like, crazy psychopath.
• 37:55
  Erica Schultz: And… That never…
• 37:59
  Erica Schultz: That never worked with me, because I'm… you know, Jake was just… he's a bruiser, but he's also…
• 38:07
  Erica Schultz: somebody… I mean, historically. But he's also somebody who…
• 38:13
  Erica Schultz: really gets along with people well, because Jake is a man of the people, and he gets information, he gets intel.
• 38:19
  Erica Schultz: You know, the way I always saw Moon Knights… three human personalities was…
• 38:30
  Erica Schultz: you had Steven, who bankrolls Things.
• 38:34
  Erica Schultz: He was the face, he was the debonair, and he was… he was the wallet.
• 38:41
  Erica Schultz: you had Jake, who would… Hang out at Gina's Diner.
• 38:48
  Erica Schultz: Who would talk to people, he would listen.
• 38:51
  Erica Schultz: He was a man of the people, and he was really,
• 38:58
  Erica Schultz: He was very personable, because that's how he got information.
• 39:03
  Erica Schultz: And once he received that information.
• 39:06
  Erica Schultz: then Mark and or Moon Knight would be the one who would then act on that intel.
• 39:15
  Erica Schultz: And that's kind of how I saw it, and it… or you could see them… them all getting intel in their own way, Jake being amongst the people.
• 39:24
  Erica Schultz: Steven being amongst the other people and paying people off to get information, and then you have Park, who's the one who's bugging your house.
• 39:35
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 39:35
  Erica Schultz: Or, you know, you know,
• 39:38
  Erica Schultz: So, I wanted to get back to Jake being being a regular guy.
• 39:46
  Erica Schultz: But who could still, you know, kick ass?
• 39:50
  Erica Schultz: And David Lopez, when he was originally drawing it, it was around the time
• 39:57
  Erica Schultz: that… I don't know if the Moon Knight TV show had come out yet, or… but it was definitely… we… we knew the cast.
• 40:04
  Tad Eggleston: Right in there, right.
• 40:04
  Erica Schultz: that.
• 40:05
  Erica Schultz: And, originally, David had drawn
• 40:12
  Erica Schultz: mark to look very much like… Like Oscar Isaac.
• 40:18
  Erica Schultz: And we were told, no, no, no, you can't do that.
• 40:21
  Erica Schultz: But… he turned it around, and I said, I was like, you draw a very handsome Jake.
• 40:29
  Erica Schultz: You know? So we had… I had a lot of fun with that, simply because I got to play with Jake.
• 40:35
  Erica Schultz: Whereas all the other moonlight stories that I've written, have been Mark.
• 40:43
  Erica Schultz: or focused on Marlene and Frenchie.
• 40:47
  Erica Schultz: Or had, We're focused on Max Coleridge, the Shroud.
• 40:54
  Erica Schultz: coming into the Moon Knight, mantle.
• 40:58
  Erica Schultz: So it was… it was fun to be able to focus on, you know, a short story, but a fun story to show that, you know, Jake is like, oh, you know, I'm just this dumb cabbie, I don't know what I'm… I don't know what I'm talking about, and meanwhile, he's absorbing everything that these, that these people are saying.
• 41:17
  Erica Schultz: And understanding exactly what he has to do.
• 41:24
  Tad Eggleston: I like it. Before I get to… to wrap-up questions.
• 41:30
  Tad Eggleston: What are you looking forward to in the next year?
• 41:32
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, you seem to have all sorts of things on your plate, so what that you're allowed to talk about are you most excited about right now?
• 41:39
  Erica Schultz: So, Vampirella Witchblade is another one shot that is coming out in September, I believe.
• 41:46
  Erica Schultz: And, Marguerite Bennett, who is writing…
• 41:50
  Tad Eggleston: I can tell you right now, that will be the first Witchblade comic that I ever read.
• 41:54
  Erica Schultz: Well, Marguerite Bennett is doing Witchblade now, the ongoing.
• 41:58
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 41:59
  Erica Schultz: Marguerite's gonna be doing Witchblade Vampirella, and then I'm gonna be doing Vampirella Witchblade.
• 42:05
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 42:06
  Erica Schultz: Valentina Pinty is doing the artwork, and Sean Mandrake is going to be coloring it.
• 42:11
  Erica Schultz: And Valentina and I worked together on
• 42:15
  Erica Schultz: Daredevil Unleash Hell, and Laura Kinney…
• 42:19
  Erica Schultz: Sabretooth, so it's good to be back with Valentina. And, so that's gonna come out in September. Also in September is, Sword in the Stone. It's a Disney, graphic novel coming out from Mad Cave.
• 42:35
  Erica Schultz: Nice. In late October, we're gonna have the trade paperback for Rogue is coming out. Gunslinger will hopefully continue, hopefully I won't get fired off of that. And.
• 42:51
  Tad Eggleston: That doesn't seem likely.
• 42:53
  Erica Schultz: Knocking on wood right now.
• 42:55
  Erica Schultz: And I got a bunch of convey August, I'll be at…
• 43:01
  Erica Schultz: I'll be at Terrificon in August and Fan Expo Chicago.
• 43:06
  Tad Eggleston: Cool.
• 43:06
  Erica Schultz: September, I will be at Fan Expo Dallas and Baltimore Comic-Con. October, I will be at WickedCon in Boston and GalaxyCon St. Louis. And November, I will be at Halcon in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
• 43:24
  Tad Eggleston: So you're skipping New York Comic-Con?
• 43:26
  Erica Schultz: I'm skipping New York Comic-Con. I've made statements about it on social media, but long story short, ReadPop has a, contract…
• 43:36
  Tad Eggleston: Gotcha.
• 43:37
  Erica Schultz: Department of Homeland Security and, ICE, and,
• 43:43
  Erica Schultz: I don't agree with that, so I am not going to be, participating in reaches.
• 43:50
  Tad Eggleston: read Popper right now. I gotcha. I gotcha.
• 43:55
  Tad Eggleston: And completely fair.
• 43:59
  Tad Eggleston: So, my closing questions that I have cultivated over time, one of them new.
• 44:08
  Tad Eggleston: I feel like I fell into the Twilight Zone when I started this podcast, because the number of cool conversations I get to have, the people that I meet, the people that become my friends, the…
• 44:21
  Tad Eggleston: Things that I get to do are just, like…
• 44:23
  Tad Eggleston: if you told 15-year-old me, reading comics, that, like, some of the names that were just names on a page of things that I loved were gonna be friends, or…
• 44:34
  Tad Eggleston: people that I hung out with, or whatever, I would, like.
• 44:37
  Tad Eggleston: I would've told you you were fucking bonkers. It's that simple. I would've just told you you were fucking bonkers.
• 44:42
  Tad Eggleston: But I find that, that, like, everybody in comics, everybody… in…
• 44:50
  Tad Eggleston: Artistic careers in general seem to have similar…
• 44:55
  Tad Eggleston: stories, you know, the things that they got to do that, like, even… even now that they're veterans, they sit back and they go.
• 45:04
  Tad Eggleston: was that really me in that room? Did I get to do that? Did I get asked to do that? Did I have somebody come up and say that to me? Whatever. So I started collecting those stories. Tell me… tell me one of your pinch-me moments from your… from your time in comics.
• 45:21
  Erica Schultz: Probably… meeting Bill Sienkiewicz, and him turning into a friend, and a colleague, and…
• 45:30
  Erica Schultz: Someone who has been a huge cheerleader for me.
• 45:34
  Erica Schultz: bills… Place in comic book history is… Undeniable.
• 45:43
  Erica Schultz: Not only with his art, but storytelling in general.
• 45:48
  Erica Schultz: Stray Toasters, if you haven't read it, is just…
• 45:50
  Tad Eggleston: I love stray toasters.
• 45:52
  Tad Eggleston: Actually, it's funny, I have Bill's Jimi Hendrix on my sweatshirt right here.
• 46:00
  Erica Schultz: So, I mean…
• 46:01
  Tad Eggleston: Marry a printmaker, you can get as many bootleg sweatshirts as you want.
• 46:05
  Erica Schultz: There you go.
• 46:07
  Erica Schultz: So…
• 46:09
  Erica Schultz: you know, hanging out with Bill, and people then coming up to me and saying that meeting Bill is their goal, and me taking them over to meet Bill, and seeing that pinch-me moment from their eyes as well. You know, I saw Bill at San Diego
• 46:28
  Erica Schultz: I mean, I saw him in New York last year, but I also saw him at San Diego probably a year or two ago.
• 46:34
  Erica Schultz: And, he said to me,
• 46:39
  Erica Schultz: I might get choked up saying this, but he said, he's like, I'm so proud of you. You set out
• 46:44
  Erica Schultz: to do this, and you did it, and… because I've known Bill since, like, 2010.
• 46:51
  Erica Schultz: I've known him for a long time. And he said, you know, you set out to do this, and you did it.
• 46:56
  Erica Schultz: And… you know, I… I…
• 47:01
  Erica Schultz: I think it's wonderful, I think it's beautiful, I'm so proud of you, I love you, and I'm just like, I love you too, Bill!
• 47:08
  Erica Schultz: But yeah, like, being colleagues and friends with people who I admire their work so much, and I know people say, don't meet your heroes, etc.
• 47:20
  Tad Eggleston: It's so great when they don't let you down, though.
• 47:22
  Erica Schultz: No, and they absolutely don't, and… Right.
• 47:25
  Erica Schultz: no matter where I am in my career, knowing that he…
• 47:32
  Erica Schultz: I mean, there's tons of people who've been cheerleaders for me, and I… and I thank all of them, but knowing someone of his caliber, and someone of, like, his…
• 47:42
  Erica Schultz: I hate to use the word status, but I mean, there's really…
• 47:46
  Tad Eggleston: How about stature?
• 47:47
  Erica Schultz: Stature, thank you.
• 47:50
  Tad Eggleston: Feels more earned.
• 47:51
  Erica Schultz: Yeah, well, I mean, he certainly earned it.
• 47:53
  Tad Eggleston: And he has, he has. Now, I've only gotten to meet him once, but there was an exhibit of his stuff at, like, the local Libertyville History Museum, because…
• 48:04
  Tad Eggleston: Essentially, because Alex Ross lives nearby, too, so he'd done his exhibit, and they were able to go through Alex to get Bill's exhibit.
• 48:11
  Erica Schultz: Yeah.
• 48:11
  Tad Eggleston: that I, like, it was between school and home, so, like, I stopped and walked through 3 times a week.
• 48:20
  Tad Eggleston: For the entire time that it was there.
• 48:23
  Erica Schultz: And it just… I mean, it just… it makes your head explode, the…
• 48:27
  Tad Eggleston: Does.
• 48:28
  Erica Schultz: the talent, the skill, and the evolution of… of him as a creator. But yeah, I mean, I think a pinch-me moment was probably meeting Bill, and…
• 48:42
  Erica Schultz: having… The… the verbal encouragement, the phone calls, the emails, the texts.
• 48:51
  Erica Schultz: Continually encouraging me, because one of the things that you will find in this
• 48:55
  Erica Schultz: In this industry, in any creative industries.
• 48:59
  Erica Schultz: It will test you, and you're gonna hear more no than you hear yes.
• 49:05
  Erica Schultz: and… having that…
• 49:07
  Tad Eggleston: at all.
• 49:09
  Erica Schultz: Yeah, well, that's the other one. But having the encouragement from someone who not only has worked through the nos to the yeses, but someone who had faith in you, and
• 49:23
  Erica Schultz: Wants to help you on your journey, and wants to…
• 49:27
  Erica Schultz: you know, support you emotionally and everything, I mean, that's… It's pretty amazing.
• 49:33
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. No, I,
• 49:36
  Tad Eggleston: I know that feeling. It's just so weird when you suddenly start thinking of people that were heroes as my friend so-and-so, rather than… and when you described the getting to introduce
• 49:48
  Tad Eggleston: people to… to bill, I immediately, like, the…
• 49:51
  Tad Eggleston: C2E2 this year, you know, was the first time that I was, like, a pro there. You know, I had… I had panels and whatnot, and… and therefore, I wound up in a situation where I was introducing people to their heroes. I'm like, oh, that was what it was like when I got to do that. That's… that's…
• 50:09
  Erica Schultz: You feel like… you feel like you're stewarding.
• 50:11
  Tad Eggleston: Ficulously relayed.
• 50:13
  Erica Schultz: Make me feel like a steward of…
• 50:15
  Erica Schultz: of creativity, of just art in general, and I think art is something that is so important.
• 50:22
  Erica Schultz: you know, I was talking to a friend of mine, and
• 50:26
  Erica Schultz: I do a lot of other things, like I sew, I upcycle stuff, I make, you know, all kinds of stuff, and…
• 50:33
  Erica Schultz: I had said to him, you know, hey, like, let me know if… I'm making a bunch of purses right now, and I was like, oh, let me know if, you know, your daughter wants one of these. And he's like, that's very generous of you. He's like, you know, you put a lot of yourself into it. And I said, yeah, but art needs to be seen.
• 50:50
  Erica Schultz: You know, art needs to be seen by…
• 50:54
  Erica Schultz: Whether it's a random person or someone close to you, art needs to be seen, because the purpose of art is to…
• 51:03
  Erica Schultz: invigorate something in someone, whether it's hate, love, whatever, but the purpose is for it to be seen, is for it to be experienced.
• 51:13
  Tad Eggleston: You know? Right.
• 51:14
  Erica Schultz: So…
• 51:15
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 51:16
  Tad Eggleston: Alright, closing question. Tell me something you love, preferably a comic, but we don't really have rules. Preferably storytelling, but again, with the rules, but something that you love.
• 51:26
  Tad Eggleston: And not enough people around you have experienced it, and you really want them to, so that you have more people to talk about it with.
• 51:34
  Erica Schultz: What do I love?
• 51:37
  Erica Schultz: I mean, I… I tend to go back to, like.
• 51:43
  Erica Schultz: the first trade of Hellboy, see destruction… of destruction. I mean…
• 51:49
  Erica Schultz: with BPRD, and… I mean, there's been so many Hellboy comics since then.
• 51:55
  Erica Schultz: But going back to the original, and seeing…
• 52:02
  Erica Schultz: the… I mean, first of all, the art itself is so damn expressive.
• 52:06
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 52:07
  Erica Schultz: you know, the style and everything Mignola, you know, doing… was doing, and I think with the first one, I think John Byrne might be credited with, like, the script, I think?
• 52:19
  Tad Eggleston: And he wrote the script for, like, Issue 1?
• 52:22
  Tad Eggleston: In the first couple issues.
• 52:24
  Erica Schultz: But it is.
• 52:24
  Tad Eggleston: He was helping.
• 52:26
  Erica Schultz: Yeah, he's… and when you have it as a trade, there's these sort of, like, preamble,
• 52:33
  Erica Schultz: you know, almost poetry kind of, almost, like, poetry slash journal entry kind of thing that you get, and I think he may have written this for the rest of them.
• 52:42
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 52:43
  Erica Schultz: But really seeing the inception of that character, or that… those characters, you know, Abe and Liz, obviously.
• 52:53
  Erica Schultz: And, and Broom.
• 52:57
  Erica Schultz: And seeing them sort of blossom, and know ahead of time what they became.
• 53:04
  Erica Schultz: I think is inspiring.
• 53:07
  Erica Schultz: Yeah. Stop.
• 53:08
  Erica Schultz: So, I… I genuinely like to just go back to that.
• 53:13
  Erica Schultz: Just in general, to be, like.
• 53:16
  Erica Schultz: You know, things can start small.
• 53:20
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 53:21
  Erica Schultz: You know, when I was.
• 53:21
  Tad Eggleston: Is he good.
• 53:22
  Erica Schultz: really little, I had a t-shirt. I was probably a toddler, and my parents got me a t-shirt that said, Dynamite comes in small packages.
• 53:33
  Tad Eggleston: Speaking of t-shirts, I meant to thank you on the air for wearing the Enough t-shirt at San Diego Comic-Con way back when.
• 53:42
  Erica Schultz: I wore… I was at…
• 53:44
  Tad Eggleston: We still need more enough.
• 53:46
  Erica Schultz: the sign-in.
• 53:48
  Tad Eggleston: What?
• 53:49
  Erica Schultz: I wore it for a signing.
• 53:50
  Tad Eggleston: Any word for the signing? Yeah, thank you very much.
• 53:53
  Tad Eggleston: I wish we could convince the Supreme Court that enough.
• 53:57
  Tad Eggleston: Is enough?
• 53:59
  Tad Eggleston: I wish we could… but that's a whole…
• 54:00
  Erica Schultz: It's a whole lot of people, a lot of things.
• 54:03
  Tad Eggleston: But that's a whole other thing. Erica, it is always a pleasure. Hopefully we can do this every couple years or so. I know that you're always really busy, but
• 54:14
  Tad Eggleston: I really enjoy talking to you. So for 22 panels, this has been Erica Schultz, and we will see you after the next page.