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With Great Power #302... 22 Panels with Alex de Campi · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

0:02
Tad Eggleston: Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels. Our guest today, returning for the third time, is Miss Alex DeCampi, who has a Kickstarter coming up. Is this your first Kickstarter, Alex?
0:14
Alex de Campi: Gosh.
0:15
Tad Eggleston: I feel like I've seen it.
0:16
Alex de Campi: I've…
0:17
Phil: Definitely not first.
0:18
Alex de Campi: First was Smoke Ashes.
0:20
Tad Eggleston: Oh, okay, wait.
0:22
Alex de Campi: It was the cased semi-automagic.
0:25
Tad Eggleston: Oh, God.
0:25
Alex de Campi: another Dark Horse book,
0:28
Alex de Campi: Where we… where we did, like, an extra…
0:31
Alex de Campi: book Beyond the Trade the Dark Horse released, and, like.
0:34
Tad Eggleston: Right.
0:35
Alex de Campi: covers, because we could. Third was…
0:42
Alex de Campi: There's Maddie and True War Stories, which Z2 ran for me.
0:46
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
0:46
Alex de Campi: Smoke Ashes and semi-automagic myself, to the point where I, like, had the books delivered and, like, stuck them in the envelopes myself, and, like.
0:53
Tad Eggleston: Wow.
0:57
Alex de Campi: And then Z2 ran Matty and True War Stories. Not well. I could have done a better job had I been putting it in the envelopes myself.
1:10
Tad Eggleston: I got my copy of True War Stories, so it did come.
1:12
Alex de Campi: Good. Good. Now I'm remembering that you had another Kickstarter.
1:17
Alex de Campi: So, this would be my… fifth Kickstarter that I've been in.
1:21
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I have all of the books that you mentioned, I just bought them in stores rather than on Kickstarter, so I missed them.
1:29
Tad Eggleston: During funding stage.
1:31
Alex de Campi: Yeah, and then Maddie and True War Stories, because D2 kind of had a big management change, and also never had the books on digital,
1:40
Alex de Campi: we reprinted them last year… Right. …to image. I kind of, you know, checked over all the lettering, like, tweaked some stuff.
1:50
Alex de Campi: Got a new cover from Paolo Rivera from Maddie, which is really lovely. Yeah. Did a really cool spine design with a bit of Annie Wu's art on it. I was very happy with it. I think it's… the Maddie Dark Horse
2:01
Alex de Campi: I'm sorry, the image version of both of the books are the best versions.
2:07
Phil: Good to know.
2:08
Tad Eggleston: Sure, make me go buy new copies.
2:12
Alex de Campi: And they are now on digital, which means if you, you know, prefer to read digitally, you are able to do that with these books, finally.
2:20
Tad Eggleston: Err, make me buy them twice.
2:22
Alex de Campi: And they came out about a month after Reversal came out last year. So I had a bunch of books out, two of them were reprints, one of them, kind of slipped under the marketing radar, but.
2:34
Tad Eggleston: Well, I do remember the two reprints, because we were quite happy when we saw them in solicits, and.
2:41
Alex de Campi: Talked about them quite a bit, and reversal came up every time we talked about them, so… So you got love on 22 panels. There you go.
2:49
Tad Eggleston: No, that's true.
2:50
Alex de Campi: Wonderful.
2:50
Tad Eggleston: For, for our 8, 9, maybe, maybe a dozen listeners, something like that. Hi, Mom. Hi, Adam. Hi, Pete.
2:57
Phil: People who needed to know. They heard about it a few times.
3:00
Alex de Campi: There you go.
3:00
Tad Eggleston: Hey, my mom works in a library, she might have gotten.
3:02
Phil: Oh, yeah!
3:04
Tad Eggleston: Who has it, Mom, the book is Reversal by Alex DeCampi and Skylar Pedridge. Perfect for the library. Alex, why don't you give us the front counter pitch for Reversal?
3:15
Alex de Campi: Sure, we always say, the tagline for reversal is, is, you know, inside every hero is a 12-year-old girl, and the idea is that, suddenly, the ley lines reverse.
3:30
Alex de Campi: Magic becomes a thing again.
3:32
Alex de Campi: nobody is prepared for it at all, and people cope very badly. To the point where Matt… because no one understands it, not even, like, you know, the, like, Wicca people or, you know, your weird goth ex-girlfriend or something like that.
3:48
Alex de Campi: Nobody gets it. And the other thing is that magical monsters come back, so you have a small
3:55
Alex de Campi: city, where, a forest turns deadly, and monsters keep coming out of it and attacking the city. And people are still… and people are still living in the city, because, like, where else are you gonna go? Like, you can't… like, the government isn't gonna let everyone just, like, flee the city.
4:14
Alex de Campi: And, coping, as people do in times of,
4:19
Alex de Campi: distress and attack, and like, you just… you just keep living through it, because that's kind of all you can do. Keep breathing, keep moving.
4:28
Alex de Campi: And the story centers on one family, the mom, Robin, who's a scientist, who's the one who's… who figured out about the ley line reversal, and everyone's kind of waiting for her to figure out more about it, and they haven't, like, how to fix it, and what to do about magic. So, you know, she's very famous for having figured things out, but also people are…
4:51
Alex de Campi: annoyed that more hasn't been done. But, you know, science…
4:55
Alex de Campi: science moves at the pace science moves. You can't rush it. She has a daughter, Trey, Tracy, who's, got a,
5:07
Alex de Campi: chronic, chronic pain, chronic, and which means she has a lot of fatigue. So I wanted to have a teen girl hero, like, sort of a middle grade slash early teen hero, trace 12.
5:21
Alex de Campi: Who wasn't the kind of, like, kicking, fighting, skinny, like, go-get-em…
5:27
Alex de Campi: sword-wielding child, and it wasn't an orphan, like, that had a family environment around her, because it's very easy if the hero is an orphan. It's very difficult if
5:38
Alex de Campi: their actions have to consider their parents' approval, you know, the potential impact on their siblings, etc, etc.
5:48
Alex de Campi: And she has two older brothers. She has Omar, who's about 18, and, she has, Anthony, who's about, like, 15, 16. And together, they,
5:59
Alex de Campi: Well, trey discovers a magical item.
6:03
Alex de Campi: Gonna report it to her mom, as you're supposed to do.
6:06
Alex de Campi: And then, during a monster attack, kind of everything goes sideways, and then their family kind of ends up being the one who has to figure out what's going on with the forest, and stop the monsters, and try to understand the overall situation in the midst of a lot of,
6:25
Alex de Campi: anger and pain in the city from people who are being hurt by the monsters and who've lost relatives and friends and homes, and fear about magic, and, of course,
6:38
Alex de Campi: Demaguery and politicians using that fear and anger for their own self… elevation,
6:47
Tad Eggleston: Right.
6:49
Tad Eggleston: That actually reminds me a lot of… I just… I reread it yesterday, and what really stood out to me was, like.
7:00
Tad Eggleston: the secondary and tertiary storylines, the way that the world was built out. I mean, you brought up the politician, but I also love the family that they took in for a night that we then see.
7:12
Tad Eggleston: A couple of times later, and realized, oh, wow, they…
7:15
Alex de Campi: You know, cause… There's a lot more going on there than you think, yeah.
7:19
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, I mean, because…
7:22
Alex de Campi: She kept growing side characters, like the old lady with the cabbage, you know, she keeps coming back.
7:26
Phil: Fantastic. Oh, yeah.
7:28
Tad Eggleston: That wasn't around Liz Truss at all, was it? No, no, no. No, but weirdly…
7:34
Phil: the politician, this reread, looked creepily like Gavin Newsom, like, only more wrinkly, so that was, you know, a little prescient. Yeah, not sure… well, not sure the degree to which intentional, but, I, I also agree that the side characters, the world, the fact that you have a, like.
7:55
Phil: It's a little bit complicated premise that gets established super quickly and strongly in a way that,
8:02
Phil: you know, that keeps events moving forward. Like, I feel like fantasy as a genre can get bogged down in worldbuilding and setup, and…
8:11
Phil: you just… you just picked up and ran with it. As well as the family dynamic was marvelous. Yeah.
8:17
Alex de Campi: Yeah, I remember when we took it out as a YA middle grade book, people were like, you have to write less about the mom, and I'm like, as a mom, I actually object to that. You know, I want to write about what Robin was going through, you know? Absolutely. Getting home from a full day of work and being like, oh god, I guess we're getting takeout again, you know?
8:35
Alex de Campi: And genuinely caring for her kids, but also seeing, like, how much of a… how tired she would get, and, you know, how much stress she was kind of holding in while trying to, like, keep everything together and make sure that everything seemed fine to the family.
8:51
Alex de Campi: Yeah.
8:52
Phil: and especially her, she's the pivotal character in terms of understanding, the magic that's going on, because, you know, it's her kids that are experiencing it and embracing it. Yeah, the scene with Anthony was probably one of my favorites, like.
9:09
Phil: Like, in, like, a good, happy, happy, tearful moment, you know?
9:13
Alex de Campi: There's a lot of… there's a lot of metaphor going on in that book, and a lot of, you know, you can… you can take, you know, similarly, and like, I mean, it's not as good as Witch Hat Athlea, I don't know if you've read Witch Hat Athlea, it's a manga, it's amazing.
9:24
Phil: It's on my list.
9:25
Tad Eggleston: I've read the first volume and need to read more.
9:27
Alex de Campi: Where the, you know, the magic is essentially a metaphor for creativity, because you're literally drawing things, which is wonderful. And that's another book with a sort of a complicated premise and a wonderful world that just keeps going and going. And anime soon, too. Oh, nice.
9:47
Alex de Campi: But yeah, they always say there are two sorts of…
9:50
Alex de Campi: fantasy authors, there are worldbuilders, and there are character authors, and the world builders will build a world, and then they let that dictate what's going on with characters, and then the character authors write characters, and then kind of, like, the world happens around them. And I'm very much a character author, so I'm able to kind of, like, just…
10:10
Alex de Campi: get moving with it very quickly. You know, I'd like to take…
10:15
Alex de Campi: you know, I'd like to work at a different pace, I'd like to, you know, do a manga style, like, we're just gonna spend, like, a whole first chapter just, like…
10:23
Alex de Campi: With not much happening in the world, and just, like.
10:26
Alex de Campi: birds on the wires, and, you know, how the flowers grow, and it's raining now, and like, you know. And I'm walking home, and I'm kind of sad about it, like, why am I sad, you know?
10:38
Alex de Campi: But unfortunately, you know, I pay my art… like, you know, I pay my artist by the page, and…
10:46
Alex de Campi: Audiences have very short attention spans, so we gotta… we gotta get it moving.
10:51
Alex de Campi: Artists almost have very short attention spans, too.
10:55
Alex de Campi: Many of them.
10:58
Alex de Campi: But yeah, like, that's the same thing with the Dan Dare project that launches on, March 9th, where, you know, we're, like…
11:08
Alex de Campi: we're taking a classic British sci-fi character from the 50s and 60s, and…
11:14
Alex de Campi: kind of starting over again with it, so you don't have to know anything about Dan Dare, like, you don't have to go back and read the Frank Hampson book, stories from the old Eagle comics. You should, because they're really good, but you don't have to, and you don't have to know anything about him other than he's, like, this British sci-fi hero. And making it so that, like, it…
11:32
Alex de Campi: The story and the characters are still true to his vision, but also
11:36
Alex de Campi: appeal to a new generation, and appeal to people who've, like, never heard of him, and who could just chapter one bro it. Like, you pick it up, and the script tells you exactly what you need to know to enjoy the story.
11:50
Alex de Campi: That's all. And it pretty much jumps straight into an adventure, and there's… there's stuff you can see if you look carefully in the background that is the worldbuilding, but we don't have a lot of time to do exposition about it, or whatever. Because I… I also just wrote it as, like, a… essentially a, you know, not an action film, like, just a… just a… just a, like, straight down the line, like.
12:13
Alex de Campi: balls-to-the-wall action comic. And so the faster you can get going with those, the more you, like, the more… the more you have
12:21
Alex de Campi: The audience with you.
12:24
Phil: Absolutely, yeah.
12:25
Tad Eggleston: How did that project come about? I love how many different
12:30
Tad Eggleston: different genres, characters, places you pop up, you know? I don't know many people…
12:37
Alex de Campi: like, Ed Brubaker's, like, just so amazing at one… but just, like, likes to do one thing. And I'm like…
12:43
Tad Eggleston: What if I do… like, I've just done that thing, I don't want to do that thing again for… I mean, are there any other people who've written for both My Little Pony and Heavy Metal?
12:52
Alex de Campi: Probably. Maybe.
12:54
Tad Eggleston: Probably.
12:57
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I guess Tony Fleeks did My Little Pony, so maybe?
13:01
Alex de Campi: Maybe.
13:02
Tad Eggleston: I don't know if he's done heavy metal yet.
13:04
Alex de Campi: Yeah.
13:05
Tad Eggleston: I don't know my pony well enough.
13:07
Alex de Campi: I don't know if heavy metals, like, I don't know if the new… heavy metal wasn't paying for a little bit, and I know they have new management, and I hope they're treating their people well.
13:15
Tad Eggleston: Sounds like it.
13:16
Alex de Campi: Good, good.
13:18
Tad Eggleston: I like it.
13:19
Alex de Campi: Because, yeah, there's enough of that in comics already to add color.
13:26
Alex de Campi: project came about because I was reading old… I was… I moved house, and I was unpacking all my books and going through them and going, why did I pack these? I need to actually go through these books, I don't need to keep all of them, do I? And it's an old house, and it doesn't have any bookshelves. So, like, when you move… like, when you move into an 1850s house.
13:44
Alex de Campi: There's just nothing, like, there's no place to put things unless someone's gone and, like, renovated it, because they had furniture for that, they had bookcases, and they had, like, armoires.
13:53
Phil: turned into.
13:53
Alex de Campi: clothing, and they just had less clothing. So I got there with all my boxes, and all the boxes out of my mom's storage unit, and was like.
14:02
Alex de Campi: well. And so I was sitting upstairs on the third floor, like, getting boxes out of a box, and I was like, oh yeah, Dan Dare! And I, like, sat there and started reading a book, which is, like, the great danger when you're unpacking boxes of books. You're like, I haven't seen this in ages! You know, and then, you know, two hours pass, and you're like, oh, I've gotten four books out of the box.
14:21
Tad Eggleston: This is one of the reasons that I've lived in this house for 12 years, and I'm not totally unpacked yet.
14:30
Alex de Campi: So I was reading Dan Dare, and I was like, why haven't, you know, why haven't… why hasn't anyone really done a kind of, like, ultimate or, like, absolute Dan Dare? There have been plenty of, continuances of Dan Dare. I think Grant Morrison might have done one, Pete Milligan did one.
14:47
Alex de Campi: Garth Ennis might have done one?
14:49
Alex de Campi: But they were all kind of like…
14:52
Alex de Campi: you know, I am going to use Dan Dare to reflect on Britain's colonial past, and Dan's going to be old and sad and…
15:00
Alex de Campi: that's how it's gonna be. And then there was the 2000 AD reboot of Dan Dare, which was incredibly punk rock, like, back in the 80s, or early 90s. Right. That was just like, we're gonna, you know, we're gonna turn this into something that, like, you know, people who think Judge Dredd is cool will also think this is cool. Because there's a, there's a, you know, there, there, people, like.
15:19
Alex de Campi: Dandare was very, I don't know, it was, like, very pure in a way.
15:25
Alex de Campi: very much written as a post-World War II, like, you know, the whole world ends up, you know, as one unified, happy group, and…
15:34
Alex de Campi: Sorry, Frank, didn't happen. Getting worse, going back, backsliding real fast. And
15:43
Alex de Campi: you know, most people in the show comic were white, and it's, like, it's really, really good sci-fi, it's really well done, but there is a bit of, like, a Jolly Hockey Sticks, like, chocks Away, you know, peroff written kind of thing to it, and a lot of people, like, you know, a lot of writers now,
16:03
Alex de Campi: Take that sort of, like, hopefulness and sentimentality and do…
16:10
Alex de Campi: and can't do anything with it. That's not how they write. I think a good parallel is…
16:16
Alex de Campi: What a lot of writers tried to do with Superman. Once Superman was evil.
16:22
Alex de Campi: what if everything Superman stood for, like, died, you know? And then you get lots of bad Max Landis-style Superman stories. And then James Gunn comes along, he's like, what if we just make this lovely and fun again? And everyone goes, goddamn, what I want is something lovely and fun, I really like that.
16:39
Alex de Campi: you know, only superhero film my daughter's seen in ages. Like, she's 15, and she loves Superman.
16:46
Alex de Campi: And we're sort of doing that with Dan Dare, in that, like, a lot of people rebooted it, and I was like, what if he's old and sad, and like, you know, was let down by the whole concept of colonialism, and, you know…
16:55
Alex de Campi: what if you also sort of… but also there's stories, like, what if you sort of have to know all the continuity of Dan Dare in order to enjoy the commentary on how Frank Hammond's view of the future was actually kind of shit, actually? You know, and it's very…
17:09
Alex de Campi: you know, like, like, good for you, you can make story… you can make down endings, congratulations, which… where do you want your cookies?
17:17
Alex de Campi: And…
17:19
Alex de Campi: we just decided to make something fun and action-filled, that does wrestle with the colonial nature of some of Dandare.
17:30
Alex de Campi: But not in a, like, oh, what if we're sad about it way, we just, like, have better representation, and like…
17:36
Alex de Campi: you know, make it less colonialist, like, you can just do that. And so, you know, I actually just emailed the licensors and was like, hey, you know, it's been a minute since you guys have done a new Dan Dare comic, would you like to do a new Dan Dare comic? I would very much like to write one, and they were like, alright.
17:52
Alex de Campi: And then I was talking to Mark Lemming, who's… I've… First worked with, like.
17:57
Alex de Campi: 20 years ago on some Conan projects for…
18:02
Alex de Campi: Dark Horse, and we've been friends ever since. And he was like, I love Dan Dare, I, you know, pretty much can do a PhD. Like, Mark Lemming can give a TED talk on Frank Hampson, who's the Dan Dare creator, like, just if you just put a mic in front of him and be like, go, he will. And he's a wonderful artist, and he's great at, like.
18:23
Tad Eggleston: He is. He is. He's doing,
18:26
Tad Eggleston: endeavor with Stephanie Phillips right now.
18:28
Alex de Campi: Yes.
18:29
Tad Eggleston: That's just…
18:30
Alex de Campi: Finally finished drawing.
18:31
Tad Eggleston: Oof.
18:32
Alex de Campi: So good.
18:35
Alex de Campi: So, and he's very happy to be doing… well, he's going from…
18:39
Alex de Campi: Teenagers on one boat to, like, four characters in spaceships in space, so…
18:46
Alex de Campi: Though we did get to draw some, like, future London vistas on the way, on… on the way over.
18:52
Alex de Campi: And so, yeah, we did… we put a book together, B7 Comics, which is a small British outfit, who had actually done… who actually have a radio side, too, and had done the Dan Dare audio adventures, and thus were known to the licensor, agreed to… to… to…
19:07
Alex de Campi: kind of manage it, and, you know, we're just… we're just getting it together. I've done the lettering for the first 5 pages. Mark's gonna… Mark should have 8 pages ready for launch.
19:17
Alex de Campi: We had some, like, scheduling and, like, illness issues. We were originally gonna launch on March 1st, and now we're gonna… we're pushing it back to the 9th, so we can have more art. I just emailed Piepar and Henry Flint for… for… for trick… for covers,
19:33
Alex de Campi: See, I'm really excited about it. I mean, it was just, you know… It is exactly like…
19:38
Alex de Campi: being the person to come into Superman and be like, what if we just make this fun? And so I came into Dan Dare and be like, what if we just do space opera really fun? Space opera, space action, but it's fun.
19:50
Alex de Campi: You know, scary, and people have emotions. It's not like, you know.
19:55
Alex de Campi: Like, I'm still a character writer, but it's fun.
20:00
Phil: That's… that's definitely something that I think in…
20:04
Phil: the… especially… I'm thinking mostly Reversal and Bad Karma are two books that have some heavy gut punches that you still can laugh through and smile through. Yeah, and so I feel like that… that balance is there, and that's what's important. Too many people just think of the, like, oh, what's the most fucked up thing you could do for something?
20:23
Phil: Excuse me, sorry. And and then just don't know where to go from there, but I feel like that hope and optimism is vital, and even more so, like, as.
20:32
Alex de Campi: Like, now, yeah, we need it, you know.
20:34
Phil: Yeah.
20:35
Phil: If you can't imagine a better future, you can't get better.
20:37
Alex de Campi: Yes, exactly.
20:40
Alex de Campi: Yeah, I mean, I think it was also just from growing up reading a lot of manga and watching a lot of anime, which tends to be really, really good at emotional arcs. And sometimes I don't… I feel like some Western comics writers don't even really have an understanding of what an emotional arc is.
21:00
Alex de Campi: It's just, like, let's hammer the character, or let's, like, you know, let's be real about how depressing everything is. Like, no, I have that in real life, thank you very much.
21:12
Phil: That's what we're trying to avoid right now.
21:13
Alex de Campi: Very much so.
21:18
Phil: So is there… which had atelier, is there anything else that, that you're reading right now that's really, really jumping out to you?
21:25
Alex de Campi: Comics reading, I just picked up, Tower Dungeon, the Moony Hale. I'm only on, I'm only on Volume 1.
21:33
Phil: Okay.
21:34
Alex de Campi: But I really liked it, like, I mean, I just love him, because, like, he's, like, he leaves so much space in the book, in a way, like, there's, like, he's, like, they're… they're…
21:42
Alex de Campi: feels like there's space in the story, but also it feels dramatic and interesting. And then you get back, and he's got, like, random locust people who are the emissaries of the royal court, and I'm like.
21:54
Phil: Yep.
21:54
Alex de Campi: White locusts?
21:56
Phil: His choice of animal people is great.
22:00
Alex de Campi: Yes.
22:01
Phil: Yeah, and I guess…
22:02
Alex de Campi: And his creature design and everything.
22:03
Phil: Yeah, the sense of scale of, like, how
22:07
Phil: big this thing is. Yeah, there's…
22:10
Alex de Campi: So he's always been a master of scale, you know.
22:12
Phil: That's what I hear, because he used to be an architect, before…
22:15
Alex de Campi: That makes.
22:16
Phil: Making manga. Yeah. But yeah, no, this is the first of his I've read, but I just read Volume 4 this week as well, so… Okay.
22:24
Alex de Campi: I'm gonna get the other three volumes, they're out now. The other thing I read recently that I really loved was, Linnaeus Derta's, Garden of Spheres, which is magnificent. Like, it's truly, like, they're, like.
22:40
Alex de Campi: very much the modern, sort of, Mobius.
22:44
Phil: Okay.
22:45
Phil: I'd heard of it, but yeah, that's.
22:47
Alex de Campi: So it is, it's, like, this thick.
22:49
Phil: books, LFT.
22:50
Alex de Campi: It is a completely immersive fantasy world.
22:53
Alex de Campi: With lovely, lovely pacing, things happen, stories kind of, like, intertwine and stuff, and they've just been, like, kind of adding stories onto it, you know, it's kind of slightly vibes-based, but also, like, there's enough plot structure and crossing over and thought that's put into the world that you don't care that it's vibes-based, because things do happen.
23:13
Alex de Campi: Right, right. Characters do reappear, and like, there are consequences to things, and you're like, oh, well, that links into this person over here, and is that… that's that guy, you know?
23:21
Phil: Nice.
23:23
Alex de Campi: And I would… I would strongly recommend it. It comes out from a smaller studio that has a ton of interesting-looking things called Piao Studio, Piao, P-E-O-W dot studio, and I actually hassled them online to be like, you are sending this in to the Eisners, right? Like, you are, like, March 13th, like, clickety-click, come on, hurry up!
23:45
Alex de Campi: And they're like, yes, it's on our calendar, like, be cool. And I'm like, thank you.
23:49
Phil: I think I… I definitely went through their shop once, and was thinking, oh, you know, I'll pick a book, whatever's the most interesting, and then I think I ended up with, like, $200 in the cart, and was like, alright, I can't narrow this down. This is now… this is now, buying paralysis. So yeah, there's…
24:03
Alex de Campi: Yeah, yeah, that's, that's… yeah, the Piao store is extremely dangerous like that.
24:09
Alex de Campi: Let's see, what else am I… I mean, that's it, like, I'm not… .
24:16
Phil: I mean, those are two, two, you know, top-notch recommendations at some point, so, you know.
24:20
Alex de Campi: I'm not reading a ton of comics right now, so I'm sure there are great things I'm missing.
24:25
Alex de Campi: I just, like…
24:28
Alex de Campi: I don't know, I'm just kind of finding things as I find them. I've gotten very detached from the world of comics per se. Like, I have my friends who are making comics, and I know what they're doing, and…
24:40
Alex de Campi: Other than that.
24:43
Alex de Campi: like, all vibes. I just, you know, every so often, I'm like, oh, corporate comics is still kind of a bonfire, isn't it?
24:53
Alex de Campi: And then… Off I go.
24:57
Alex de Campi: But it's nice, like, I'm, you know, I'm creating more slowly these days, so it's not gonna be a yearly book. I'm not gonna… I don't think I have a book out this year. I have a full-time day job, which is good. I enjoy it. They pay me really well.
25:11
Alex de Campi: It's good for me, like, not gonna have to have a GoFundMe for my, you know, medical expenses someday, like, 90% of other comics people, apparently.
25:21
Alex de Campi: So…
25:23
Alex de Campi: I'm just… everything is happening more slowly and more deliberately. Like, I wrote Dan Dare last year, like, it's an 80-page graphic novel, and it's written, because I'm that weirdo who just writes the whole project,
25:36
Alex de Campi: And, in theory, there will be two more, it's a trilogy, two more books. I'm nearly finished a script for a book called King's Ransom, which is, like, Ocean's Eleven, but medieval, happening
25:50
Alex de Campi: 12, 16, history nerds might be able to guess what happens. But, that Tom Fowler's gonna work on it, but he's finishing up another project, so that's one that we're gonna, like, get our shit together, and it's gonna be out in, like, 5 years, maybe.
26:05
Phil: Okay. And once that's done… Stuff to look forward to.
26:07
Alex de Campi: Yeah, like, it's a, like…
26:09
Alex de Campi: Like, writing a really complicated heist with, you know, like, an 8-person heist crew, where they all have to have arcs and, like, be very distinct people, like, it's…
26:21
Alex de Campi: it's a lot, so I get, like, a couple of hours at it every week, and that's about it, but that's also, like, kind of walking away from it and then walking back to it is what's… We've got the actual main, like, I'm on…
26:34
Alex de Campi: I want chapter 7, it's gonna be… I think… I think we'll do it in 7 chapters, maybe… maybe there'll be a little bit of an eighth. So it's, like, I've written a ton of it, it's just not…
26:43
Alex de Campi: finished yet, and I need to…
26:46
Alex de Campi: finish it. And then I'm gonna do something really, like, fast and dumb, because I'm tired of…
26:52
Alex de Campi: Like, this really intricate, like, medieval heist with all these characters.
26:59
Alex de Campi: I still need to write my third book for Erica, the werewolf book.
27:03
Phil: Oh,
27:04
Tad Eggleston: That would be nice.
27:06
Phil: It's exciting. So, okay, so… I guess…
27:10
Phil: if, you know, there's Dracula motherfucker for a vampire, and then a werewolf book, then what kind of monsters and parasocial? Is that, like, a… a ghost, a possession story? Or,
27:23
Phil: I guess, what is the trifecta between, werewolves Vampires and what else? You know, it isn't really a Universal Monsters kind of thing.
27:30
Alex de Campi: There is no, you know, I mean…
27:33
Phil: I'm not expecting a Black Lagoon monster.
27:36
Alex de Campi: Yeah, no, the monster is social media, I suppose. The monster is, like, modern fandom, as both a… as both a attracting and repelling force.
27:47
Alex de Campi: You know, wonderful things happen through fandom, like, people have made lifelong friends, you know, like, you know, people have been quite literally kept alive by the bonds they've created in fandom, but also, there's, you know, like everything, there's a bell curve, and the bottom end of the bell curve is like, yikes!
28:08
Phil: Absolutely, yeah.
28:09
Alex de Campi: So that's… that's… that… that was the monster in parasocial, really. That sounds really jump the monsters ourselves.
28:17
Alex de Campi: the answer.
28:18
Alex de Campi: Fuck off.
28:19
Phil: Most specifically, Luke, Indiana, more than anyone else.
28:24
Alex de Campi: I mean, like, but that's the fun of parasocial. Is Luke the monster, or is Lily the monster?
28:31
Phil: Yeah, that's… that was what I was kind of…
28:34
Alex de Campi: Go ahead, sorry. Yeah, I mean, like, you know, and we… I wrote the book so that you'd kind of go back and forth between, like, who you supported, in a way,
28:46
Alex de Campi: because…
28:48
Alex de Campi: Luke's not a good person, like, he's a… he's a dirtbag. But does he deserve what hap- what happens to him?
28:55
Alex de Campi: Dano, up to you, really.
29:00
Alex de Campi: And that's the… but, you know, ultimately, it's… it's…
29:03
Alex de Campi: It's really sort of a story about him in the end, though, because of what this is… people listening at home might hear my tat.
29:11
Phil: There's a go.
29:11
Tad Eggleston: Hey!
29:13
Tad Eggleston: We're a very cat-friendly podcast.
29:15
Alex de Campi: Yes.
29:20
Alex de Campi: it is Luke's story, pretty much, because of what happens… the twist at the end, what happens to Luke, and what that says about both the entire story, and about everything Luke has done up to that point.
29:31
Phil: In a way.
29:34
Alex de Campi: So, I'm not going to say anything more about that, because it's just too major a spoiler, but there is a reason.
29:39
Tad Eggleston: I think we might have spoiled it the last time you were on anyway.
29:42
Tad Eggleston: So we don't need to do it again. I can't remember.
29:45
Phil: I think so, because I definitely listened to that one, and I don't… and I remember being surprised by the end of the book, so… Okay.
29:52
Tad Eggleston: then maybe it was just something that you or Erica said that made me look at the end a little bit more carefully and go, oh, okay.
30:03
Alex de Campi: Yeah. I can fully spoil it in email, and some of my thoughts around it, but I'm not going to necessarily do that for people who haven't seen it.
30:11
Tad Eggleston: Right.
30:11
Phil: Right?
30:12
Alex de Campi: But yeah, there's sort of a half-written…
30:14
Alex de Campi: werewolf book for… for Erica called, Intruder.
30:20
Phil: That's an intriguing title.
30:24
Alex de Campi: based on a Clara Denise movie, which…
30:28
Alex de Campi: just not beating, beating the, the, the pseudo-intellectual, accusations here. Naming, naming my books after Claire Denise.
30:40
Alex de Campi: It's a good film, too.
30:45
Phil: And hence the… the… not much more to say, because it's still being written at this point.
30:50
Alex de Campi: Yeah, yeah, it was one of those where I was kind of, like, sometimes you just have to, like, you have an idea, and like, what I often do is I have an idea, and I write, like, 15 pages of, like, just brain bomb out of, like, here's how it opens, and then, you know, you gotta figure out where it goes from there, and you sort of have a vague idea, and then sometimes you put it aside for a while, and you're like, oh, this is actually who the main character is, and this is how it has to end.
31:12
Alex de Campi: And… So forth, so…
31:14
Alex de Campi: putting things aside and then wandering around and letting them kind of live on the back burner for a year or so is kind of nice. And, you know, because I try to do a book a year, like, I have the luxury of doing that. It is a luxury to be able to get space from the stuff you're creating.
31:33
Alex de Campi: A lot of writers
31:35
Alex de Campi: don't get to have that, because they're just on to the next project for, you know, financial reasons, or monthly comics reasons, or a combination… or usually a wonderful combination.
31:44
Tad Eggleston: All of the above.
31:45
Alex de Campi: Yeah.
31:48
Phil: Yeah, I… I'm…
31:52
Phil: it's… it's one of those if I… I'm someone who has, you know, identified as a writer, but not really put anything out. And so…
32:02
Alex de Campi: Non-practicing.
32:03
Phil: Yeah, yeah.
32:05
Phil: And so, it's…
32:08
Phil: it's finding the right balance of time away is… is, you know, part of… part of the struggle. But at the same time, like, yeah, it's…
32:19
Phil: I can't imagine anyone just being an endless font at the keyboard who just, from sunup to sundown, just spits out words over and over and over, and they're good.
32:31
Alex de Campi: Yeah, I mean, like, you only have really about 2 hours in you a day anyway, and then you… then if you're… if you're really hammering it out, you spend a lot of…
32:39
Alex de Campi: The next day, rewriting some of the stuff he wrote.
32:42
Alex de Campi: The first day. You know, like, I find when I go slowly, I'm able to pretty much keep everything I've written. When I go quickly, I then have to go back and rewrite or remove things, because, you know, there is a…
32:54
Alex de Campi: And everyone has their own style, too. Like, there's… if you are listening to this at home, gentle listener, and they're like, wow, I have to write every day, or else I never get anything done, or like, oh, you know, this sounds completely alien to me, I wonder if I'm doing it wrong. You are not doing it wrong, as long as it works for you.
33:12
Alex de Campi: That's the correct way. And sometimes, what's really fun about writing is sometimes it will change from book to book.
33:19
Phil: That also…
33:20
Alex de Campi: come out in one go! Really easy, and some books you'll get half of them done, you have to leave them for 10 years, and then come back to them. Like, it's just… it's… it's no fun. Some books, you have to stop in the middle and, like, completely redo your outline.
33:33
Tad Eggleston: Because it just went somewhere. Or it just changed.
33:36
Alex de Campi: You don't need an outline at all, it's just there, yeah. So, writing can be frustrating. You're always adjusting how you do things.
33:46
Alex de Campi: And heaven forbid your easy book is the first book, because then… Yeah. Then you, then, then you're like, oh, this is no problem! You're… you're like…
33:53
Phil: You're like the, the child entertainer of writing at that point.
33:58
Alex de Campi: Yes, yes.
33:59
Alex de Campi: Yeah.
34:00
Phil: That's too much. No, I, I, I wrote, like, a.
34:03
Alex de Campi: I call it the difficult second album for a reason.
34:06
Phil: Yes, yes, but no, I wrote a, like, metaphor… or not metaphorical, but a metafictional, memoir, and as I finished it, I was like, I need to go live more, and then rewrite this. So yeah, it was kind of a happy acknowledgement of, like, yeah, I'm just gonna put this down, and then, come back, because right now, it doesn't really end.
34:25
Alex de Campi: Yeah. There's another really fun part of writing, which is where you, where you,
34:31
Alex de Campi: Realize all of your,
34:37
Alex de Campi: patterns and obsessions and habits, like, hopefully you realize them. Like, like, maybe you, maybe, like, you know, like…
34:45
Alex de Campi: Maybe you're just completely unself-aware about, like.
34:49
Alex de Campi: I don't know, like, how self-aware was Chris Claremont about, like, the whole kink thing? I don't know, like…
34:54
Phil: I… I was, oddly enough, just thinking of that today, of the idea of, like, look, if you've read the Dark Phoenix arc, you're… you're just… you…
35:00
Phil: you're into kink. It's… whether you realize it or not, I'm sure it's there, you know? Yes. That's where… that's where it's born for so many people. But, but yeah.
35:10
Alex de Campi: So yeah, like, there's a… there's a lot of, like, either you deny that, like, you keep coming back to certain story patterns, or certain character archetypes, or you, like, dig into that, and then it becomes this weird therapy thing where you're like, why am I… why do I keep writing this? Let me try to deliberately try to not write this person, or this dynamic, or this pattern,
35:31
Alex de Campi: And, yeah, that's… so there's… there's this kind of… there's a… there's this kind of metafictional, like, therapy process in all of writing at a certain point, or there's just willful ignorance.
35:41
Phil: Hmm.
35:42
Phil: Yeah. Or you turn into, like, a James Patterson-esque parasite that writes through other people at that point.
35:49
Alex de Campi: Yes, yes. Yeah, or you just be like, I am gonna write the same book over and over.
35:53
Phil: Yeah? It's… it's certainly…
35:55
Alex de Campi: Sure, for some people, like, it really has, like, fortunes have been made.
35:58
Phil: Yeah, and it's fascinating to think about the people that I start recognizing those themes in, and who can…
36:05
Phil: dance with them to stay entertaining about it, versus, yeah, the person who's like, oh, you're just… you're just circling a drain here. Yeah.
36:13
Alex de Campi: The writer's barely disguise fetish. Yeah.
36:17
Phil: Yeah, I was just like, okay, it's, it's,
36:20
Phil: Yeah, if you need your subtext to become text, that's fine, but I don't need that for myself.
36:27
Alex de Campi: I know writers who use subdex, they're all counted.
36:30
Phil: That sort of thing.
36:32
Alex de Campi: Oh.
36:33
Alex de Campi: Yeah.
36:34
Alex de Campi: Yeah, I think it's… there's a lot of… that's, you know…
36:39
Alex de Campi: I think that's sometimes why, when you see writers, like, great writers go into the,
36:47
Alex de Campi: mainstream comics monthly machine and come out 5 years later as not great writers. That's a lot of what happens. Like, they have, you know, a great point of view, and if they were allowed to create more slowly and with less dictates around them.
37:02
Alex de Campi: they would actually, like, develop their writing and their point of view and either lean into, consciously lean into, or consciously try to eliminate their patterns and ticks. Whereas I think
37:19
Alex de Campi: You know, once you go into the mainstream machine, there's a lot of pressure to essentially just
37:25
Alex de Campi: be nothing but patterns and ticks. And then 5 years later, your sales aren't very great, and then they don't know you anymore.
37:34
Phil: Yo.
37:34
Alex de Campi: Yeah, it's… And then you have ingrained, really bad writing habits, and probably several traumatic experiences.
37:42
Phil: Yeah.
37:42
Phil: That's… that's certainly one of those things that I think about more and more the older I get, of… of that, like, what is the cost of…
37:50
Phil: you know, this environment. Creative output-wise or not, you know?
37:55
Alex de Campi: And I've never loved, like, you know, superheroes are great, but I've never loved them enough that I've wanted to sacrifice a lot of self-worth and effort to
38:05
Alex de Campi: You know, service the brand.
38:08
Phil: Right.
38:09
Alex de Campi: For $70 a page.
38:13
Phil: Oh, it's… it's the… I imagine that there's someone who could misunderstand your situation of being someone with a full-time job who writes comics part-time, and is like, what does… who doesn't want to do it like that, you know, of, you know, the…
38:30
Alex de Campi: I mean, like, you know, I've been doing it for 20 years, it's not like I'm a dilett, you know, like, and I've been doing it full-time for a while, like, I, you know, creative writing was my… and filmmaking was my full-time job. It's just,
38:44
Alex de Campi: Yeah, like, this is, you know, I think…
38:48
Alex de Campi: as people get older, they get a lot more forgiving about how things… they… well, most people do. Some people… some people stay pig ignorant, but that's them.
38:57
Alex de Campi: About how people do things, you know?
39:03
Alex de Campi: And…
39:05
Alex de Campi: you also get more deliberate about being like, alright, well, this is, you know, this is how I'm gonna do it, I'm not gonna publish as much, I'm probably never gonna do a monthly book again. I'm alright with that. I like the way I'm publishing. I like the way I'm, I'm making things,
39:22
Alex de Campi: And then… you know, it doesn't really matter what people say, you know? I don't care.
39:31
Alex de Campi: they can buy my books or not buy my books. If they think that I'm a dilett and they don't want to buy my books, they're welcome to buy other books instead, like…
39:39
Alex de Campi: That's fine.
39:41
Phil: Well, it's… it's… I guess for me, it's… it's…
39:45
Phil: seeing it as, like, a shifting definition of success, because I think that getting to that point where you can choose to publish more slowly and take more time on projects is, is a good thing, you know?
39:56
Alex de Campi: Yeah, you know, part of it is because I do have, you know, there are very few publishers who have good creator-owned contracts and good vibes, and
40:08
Alex de Campi: I'm lucky enough to, at this point, still be able to publish through them.
40:14
Alex de Campi: You know, and that's… that's why I'm sort of able to do things slowly, because I can just… you know, we can take a long time to do a book, and
40:23
Alex de Campi: We know it will have a home.
40:25
Alex de Campi: Oh…
40:28
Alex de Campi: I've got a book with Carla Speed McNeil that we're… I forgot about that book. We're working on that really slowly, too.
40:33
Phil: Nice.
40:33
Tad Eggleston: Hmm.
40:34
Alex de Campi: It's a middle… yep. There you go.
40:38
Alex de Campi: it's a middle grade, like, animal action-adventure book called Raccoon Crime Squad.
40:43
Tad Eggleston: Oh, that sounds awesome.
40:45
Phil: That does sound fun, yeah.
40:46
Alex de Campi: Which is, you know, kind of Miyazaki if it happened in the dirtbag South.
40:50
Tad Eggleston: Oh, I really like it now.
40:52
Phil: Oh, that sounds… that sounds delightful.
40:56
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
40:57
Phil: Yeah, that also reminds me, I still need to go, pick up two copies of Scrapper, one for me, one for my nephew.
41:03
Alex de Campi: Oh, my God.
41:04
Phil: Yeah, because last time I asked, they didn't have it at the store, but we'll have to get that on order.
41:09
Alex de Campi: There you go. But yeah. Scrapper was a lot of fun.
41:12
Phil: Yeah, it looks a lot harder.
41:13
Alex de Campi: person to work with.
41:16
Alex de Campi: But yeah, like, so I could, you know, I have, I have, like, scripts almost finished.
41:23
Alex de Campi: Wrecking Crime Squad is done, Carla's done, like, 4 chapters of pencils, so she's just doing something else right now, and then we're gonna get back to it once life settles down a bit.
41:36
Alex de Campi: So yeah, just, you know, sitting here, making books slowly.
41:40
Alex de Campi: they'll eventually.
41:41
Tad Eggleston: Well, and living a life. I mean, that is a recurring theme that I try to remind anybody who doesn't know otherwise, is A,
41:51
Tad Eggleston: Pay for your comics. Pay for them a couple of times if you really like them, because then you get more comics, because writers, artists, they need things like roofs, and food, and health insurance.
42:03
Alex de Campi: Yes, yes. Yeah, I mean, that is, like, the secret to a lot of comics, is a partner with health insurance, you know?
42:10
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
42:11
Alex de Campi: Everybody in comics makes less than you think they do.
42:16
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
42:17
Alex de Campi: All of them.
42:18
Alex de Campi: Many of them don't make enough money to live on. Many of them have other side hustles anyway.
42:28
Alex de Campi: And yeah, many of them, like, are able to do what they do because a partner's also bringing in income, and in countries that require it, health insurance.
42:37
Tad Eggleston: Right.
42:38
Tad Eggleston: Right.
42:39
Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's… That's such a recurring theme among the people that we talk to, is, like.
42:47
Tad Eggleston: They work as much as they can, but they gotta find… you know, for artists, it's a mixture of
42:52
Tad Eggleston: of doing the illustration here. I know artists that get
42:56
Tad Eggleston: Super excited when they get, like, a trading card gig, because they'll get… they'll get paid as much as they get paid for, like, half a comic to do one trading card.
43:06
Alex de Campi: Yes.
43:07
Alex de Campi: Or cover gigs, or…
43:09
Tad Eggleston: Right, cover gear.
43:10
Alex de Campi: Storyboarding, or, you know…
43:12
Tad Eggleston: I mean, every time…
43:14
Alex de Campi: of storyboarding, and that's why he's, you know, he supported himself like that for years.
43:20
Tad Eggleston: No, every time I get frustrated at the number of variant covers of this, that, or the other thing, I remind myself that that variant cover
43:32
Tad Eggleston: represented, like, half of the rent for somebody. Yeah.
43:38
Alex de Campi: Unfortunately, it also probably meant the interior artist was, like, you know, drawing and inking for some absolute shite rate, like, you know, $100 a page or something.
43:47
Phil: Yeah, there's definitely a line. There's a balance to it, but… but yeah.
43:50
Alex de Campi: Yeah.
43:51
Phil: It's… it is… it is a good argument for… to keep at least one variant covered, you know? Oh, yeah.
43:56
Tad Eggleston: Right.
43:57
Alex de Campi: I'd rather see the interior artist be paid more.
43:59
Tad Eggleston: I would very much… I mean, particularly because, you know, I'm a math guy, so I get really driven up the wall when I do the numbers in my head, and I'm sitting there going.
44:10
Tad Eggleston: You could pay everybody relatively well and still make the book for about $30,000 per issue, and you're selling them for 5 bucks a piece.
44:22
Tad Eggleston: it shouldn't… I mean, particularly when you then factor in the trade paperback down the road.
44:27
Tad Eggleston: It shouldn't be that hard to spend $30,000 per issue.
44:34
Tad Eggleston: And actually pay a living wage.
44:37
Alex de Campi: Yeah. Yeah.
44:39
Tad Eggleston: You know?
44:40
Alex de Campi: A lot of the problem was, that was the streaming boom, where…
44:46
Phil: Hmm…
44:47
Alex de Campi: companies like, you know, essentially IP… indie… indies who were IT farms, sprung up, purely to…
44:57
Alex de Campi: sign on, create your own projects. Spoiler they weren't.
45:01
Tad Eggleston: Nope.
45:02
Alex de Campi: Like, the phrase, creator-owned, and what it actually means when you see the contract drives me crazy.
45:11
Tad Eggleston: Right.
45:12
Alex de Campi: you know, there's an indie publisher who's kind of famous for bad contracts that announces a new creator online! So my friends are writing for it, and I saw the contract, and oh boy, it's bad. Be real bad. And this is a company that will launch campaigns.
45:28
Tad Eggleston: More lawyers.
45:29
Alex de Campi: create our own lines and then cancel them two years later, so it's like…
45:35
Tad Eggleston: I have a hunch I know which one we're talking about.
45:37
Alex de Campi: Yeah, as usual, and so, yeah, like, it's, you know.
45:43
Alex de Campi: Companies grew up to basically take
45:49
Alex de Campi: the work of writers and artists and sell them on to Hollywood, in a way that the writers and artists did not make
45:57
Alex de Campi: much money off anything, because they usually had a related production company, so they sold, you know, the comic book lost money, because they didn't actually bother with any marketing, and they sold the script to… they sold the IP to their related company for, like, five grand as an option, and then they went, oh, well, your comic's in the hole, so you don't actually get any option fee, because we're going to use that to, like.
46:21
Alex de Campi: fill in the hole, and I'm talking about, like, this… this happens.
46:25
Alex de Campi: And I can give you the name, companies that did it. I'm not going to, because I'm not going to choose violence, but, you know…
46:31
Tad Eggleston: I think they've been talked about.
46:34
Alex de Campi: It's a lot of…
46:36
Phil: ugly, and we'll get you some answers here.
46:37
Tad Eggleston: No, I mean, even on our air, as much as we try to only speak good of things and just not talk about the bad, I think we've talked about a couple of them.
46:46
Alex de Campi: you know, like, if you… you'll also notice that none of these companies, like, the creators aren't spoken of ever after that. Like, you know, they're not on the project as producers, because the producing fees are to make your money.
46:58
Tad Eggleston: Right.
46:59
Alex de Campi: You know, the option fee, you can… you can… you can mess around with to make it be very small, especially if you, as the…
47:07
Alex de Campi: comic book company have been
47:10
Alex de Campi: the control of the secondary rights. In some cases, they didn't even tell the authors that they'd sold the option.
47:18
Alex de Campi: And so, it then ends up being more money flowing back to the comic book company. So they're essentially just filling their own pockets while claiming to have creator-owned books. And luckily, because of the, you know, like, last year was a disaster in filmmaking, and
47:37
Alex de Campi: you know, almost nothing… like, there was basically a year-long moratorium on things being optioned. Very few people got optioned, so a lot of those companies… I mean, you'll notice some comic book companies are, like, kind of stopping publishing a little bit, and, like.
47:50
Alex de Campi: why? I've seen some positives.
47:52
Phil: Yep.
47:53
Alex de Campi: Yep, and the answer is because the VC money ran out, because the model that they had was that they would sell lots of options and make lots of films, and that didn't happen, and now the VC's like, buddy, I'm not giving you any more money. You're still in the red.
48:10
Alex de Campi: I mean, that's a hypothesis, but it's a likely hypothesis.
48:13
Tad Eggleston: No, it's…
48:14
Alex de Campi: The income that was supposed to come in from Hollywood did not come in.
48:20
Alex de Campi: So, a lot of the more cynical projects, and also a lot of younger creators who get picked up by these companies because they don't know
48:28
Alex de Campi: they are willing to sign them because it's their first couple of contracts, and we all… you all sign bad contracts your first couple of goes, because, like, you want to get published, and you can't get published by better companies until you're published by a shit company. It shouldn't be like that, unfortunately, it is. so it's… it was, you know, young, vulnerable creators, and cynics, and…
48:50
Alex de Campi: Nobody made any money, and now those creators don't have those books.
48:54
Alex de Campi: Because it's their own bite.
48:56
Alex de Campi: semi-bankrupt.
48:58
Alex de Campi: Or on their way to bankrupt. Create your own publishers.
49:03
Tad Eggleston: Though I will say there has been some luck…
49:06
Tad Eggleston: For a number of those creators, and clawing back rights.
49:09
Tad Eggleston: Yes.
49:10
Alex de Campi: So, so… If it's the company that recently paused, yes. I know they have called back rights, and I'm very pleased.
49:18
Tad Eggleston: I was actually thinking about one of the early, early ones wound up having people claw back some rights.
49:25
Alex de Campi: Yeah.
49:25
Tad Eggleston: I was talking to Jeremy Whitley recently, and he's…
49:28
Alex de Campi: Oh, actually love.
49:30
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
49:31
Alex de Campi: Dang.
49:31
Tad Eggleston: A lot of people managed to claw back some rights from Action Lab. I know that… I know there's still stuff going on with Aftershock.
49:40
Alex de Campi: Yeah.
49:43
Phil: And it's one of those where I get my hackles up at the idea that people have to fight for the return of something that they created, that the publisher did not, you know, complete their side of the deal with, and then still not relinquish in any way. Like, that just… that drives me up a wall here.
50:02
Alex de Campi: I feel real bad for the people that signed contracts with, like, AMC when it was briefly gonna do comics.
50:07
Phil: I forgot that, was it… oh, okay, yeah, no, I remember. I remember that now. Yeah, that did not last very long.
50:14
Alex de Campi: Literally, like, just, you know, within 6 months, it was closed down, and their rights were with AMC, and that was it. Those books will never come out.
50:21
Phil: Damn.
50:22
Phil: Yeah. I think, I think, Sienkiewicz was on one of those books. Yeah.
50:27
Tad Eggleston: It was Kelly Sue and Sienkiewicz, wasn't it.
50:29
Phil: Yeah, yeah, pretty sure. So, yeah, that's… that's a damn shame.
50:34
Alex de Campi: I can understand why they did it, because sometimes, like, bill ain't cheap. Yeah, right.
50:39
Alex de Campi: And Bill deserves a percent of that money, because his process is…
50:42
Alex de Campi: labor-intensive, and he's painting every page. Yeah. But… and so, like, you turn to someone like AMC to fund that. Right. But unfortunately, they took rights.
50:52
Alex de Campi: You know.
50:53
Tad Eggleston: But at least for that comic, I think it was a situation where some… they had actually lost the rights to it years ago.
51:01
Tad Eggleston: part of their deal with AMC is AMC bought the rights from whatever company had it and resurrected the project, so… and gave them a lump sum, so… so… so they… they didn't…
51:14
Alex de Campi: How did they lose the rights to that?
51:16
Tad Eggleston: Because they'd had some… I don't… I haven't heard the entire story, but it sounded like they'd made a deal on that book with some other company that was… it was gonna be, like, their first thing.
51:30
Tad Eggleston: And then it wound up not happening.
51:33
Tad Eggleston: I see you.
51:34
Alex de Campi: I should know better than that.
51:35
Tad Eggleston: Well, but I think it was earlier in her career. I think it was one of those…
51:39
Tad Eggleston: I think it was one of her learning moments that then it almost got made. This is something that I'd love to talk to Kelly Sue about, but we were too busy talking FML when she was on, so, you know…
51:53
Alex de Campi: Dave Lopez is… David Lopez is so great. I've worked with him, and he's a delight.
51:59
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
51:59
Alex de Campi: Actually, I just talked to Victor Santos, and… Hey! Another person I love! Yeah.
52:05
Tad Eggleston: I was about to say.
52:06
Alex de Campi: David Lopez, because they're both in Spain.
52:09
Phil: Nice.
52:10
Alex de Campi: I would love… Victor's another person I want to work with again. It's so frustrating, because, like, you know, Neil Edwards, who I did that long, road trooper run with in 2000 AD this year, he was like, I'd love to… like, and he's magnificent, and he's like, I'd love to work with you again, come up with an idea. And I'm like, sure, and then I have nothing. Zero.
52:29
Alex de Campi: I am, like, like, there's, there's, like, the goal is open, and I've got, like, 8 balls in front of me, and I'm just like, hmm, what if I don't kick any of them?
52:37
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, the.
52:39
Alex de Campi: Yeah, I do…
52:40
Alex de Campi: 2000 AD, though, like, 2000 AD is a little bit of a problem, because they take all the rights to the story, and it's just something I'm having fun with, sure, but…
52:50
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
52:50
Alex de Campi: I haven't had a kind of back pocket story I want to give someone else for a bit.
52:55
Tad Eggleston: Well, you said when you're done…
52:57
Alex de Campi: To keep.
52:58
Tad Eggleston: You said when you were done with this medieval caper, you wanted to do just a fast and dirty fun thing, so there you go.
53:05
Alex de Campi: I should do that. I should do that. Neil's lovely, and he's such a good artist. And we could do something… interesting.
53:14
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, Victor actually, when I was picking my top 3 books of the year, The reason reversal got…
53:21
Tad Eggleston: pushed out was the third slot wound up going to Cantwell and Santa's on for, kid Maroon.
53:29
Tad Eggleston: I was literally going back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and when I saw Phil put you on his list, I'm like, okay.
53:37
Alex de Campi: There you go. Yep.
53:38
Tad Eggleston: Rather than having one book twice between our six.
53:42
Alex de Campi: That makes more sense, honestly. That's a good call.
53:46
Tad Eggleston: Because, you know, between… I like all of you.
53:52
Tad Eggleston: Haven't met Skylar, but I love her art.
53:55
Alex de Campi: I love these two, yeah.
53:56
Tad Eggleston: the three of you, you know, Cantwell's a good friend of mine, Victor, I hadn't met yet, but really wanted to, and I'd heard only amazing things about, and the two books were just outstanding, and they were already fighting for the three spot, because, you know…
54:13
Alex de Campi: Jesse Lonergan put out Jerome, and Meredith McLaren put out Meat Eaters, and… Yep, yep.
54:19
Tad Eggleston: And those two were both so good that it's like…
54:23
Tad Eggleston: I don't even know how to go 1-2 with these!
54:26
Alex de Campi: Yeah.
54:27
Alex de Campi: Well, you're gonna, you're gonna love Garden of Spirits, it's gonna blow your mind.
54:30
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I literally have the page up, I haven't pulled the trigger on buying it yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if I have by the end of the afternoon, because I was looking.
54:41
Alex de Campi: Don't look at anything else, like, just buy that. It ships from Chicago, it's like…
54:47
Alex de Campi: I had the tab open with 200, like, 250.
54:51
Tad Eggleston: Okay, yeah, now Phil was saying that, okay, you have…
54:53
Phil: I'm gonna have to zero in on just.
54:55
Tad Eggleston: I, I, I, I have…
54:57
Tad Eggleston: I have gone to the cart, I'm away from everything else, proceeding to check out. There you go.
55:03
Alex de Campi: There's, like, they, they sell to.
55:06
Tad Eggleston: If it…
55:06
Alex de Campi: books.
55:07
Tad Eggleston: If it ships from Chicago, I could get it super fast, because, like.
55:11
Tad Eggleston: I could be in Chicago in 45 minutes.
55:15
Alex de Campi: There you go.
55:16
Tad Eggleston: So…
55:17
Alex de Campi: You might get it on, like, Tuesday.
55:19
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Or Wednesday.
55:21
Phil: it's like a… it's like a full-time short box comics fair, because that… that happened to me once right before their…
55:27
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's…
55:27
Phil: out.
55:28
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it's just too bad that they have to mail it to me, because, like, I could save 7 bucks and just go pick it up.
55:36
Phil: I have Monday off. There you go.
55:40
Alex de Campi: So, but yeah.
55:45
Tad Eggleston: Yes, it's done. I'll stop looking at the page now.
55:48
Alex de Campi: Fantastic.
55:48
Tad Eggleston: You convinced me.
55:50
Phil: This is a question I thought, might have come up earlier, but didn't. Are there any thoughts, plans, hopes, dreams for a reversal sequel? Because you definitely teed it up at the end there for some open plot news.
56:02
Tad Eggleston: That, that was in my, my, my, question list, too.
56:07
Alex de Campi: I would love to do a reversal sequel. I got no advance from Dark Horse on it, and then because of the layoffs that happened in Dark Horse last spring, there was a big interruption in their marketing, and the book got no marketing.
56:19
Tad Eggleston: Right.
56:20
Alex de Campi: So, like, if someone wants to pay me to do a reversal sequel, I will do a reversal sequel in a hot second. Right, right.
56:30
Alex de Campi: But, you know, I labored on that book for 8 years, I wrote it.
56:34
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
56:35
Alex de Campi: Skyler was drawing it in around other things, and so it, you know, Kelly drew it in around other things, and it was…
56:43
Alex de Campi: it truly was a labor of love. Like, I… I commissioned the cover from Corey and paid for it. Oh, wow.
56:50
Tad Eggleston: Alright.
56:50
Alex de Campi: You know, this is into, like…
56:53
Tad Eggleston: I literally just go out and make my books, and…
56:58
Tad Eggleston: I mean, frankly, it's a brilliant YA book that should be in the library market, so if it's not already, somebody needs to get it to ALA this year.
57:10
Alex de Campi: Well, like…
57:13
Alex de Campi: I don't think… I can't trust Dark Horse to do that, you know? They sort of went, oh, well, we don't really have any marketing during these weeks when we're, you know, like, we're sort of redoing things. And I've… I've asked them to even just, like, retweet me, like, re-skeep
57:29
Alex de Campi: a post about it, and they haven't done it, so, like, you know…
57:32
Tad Eggleston: Right.
57:32
Alex de Campi: think… I think they're on to other things mentally, and unfortunately, it's a real shame it's not in the library market. It should have been sent to school library journal. It was not. They never did it. I asked them, I'm like, so, you know, like, what about the usual stuff? And they were like,
57:47
Alex de Campi: we forget.
57:47
Tad Eggleston: I mean, because, like, because, like, even now, I mean, the thing about… and this is one of the things that frustrates me, that it seems like so many of the… the monthly comic companies just don't get, is that, like, the bookstore and library market look at books
58:02
Tad Eggleston: so much differently than the comic shop market. It doesn't matter if it came out 2 years ago, if it's good and they didn't have it yet.
58:09
Tad Eggleston: you can… you can still get major publicity, major, you know…
58:14
Alex de Campi: Yes.
58:15
Tad Eggleston: there are articles in the New York Times every… I mean, not that the New York Times is what it once was, but…
58:22
Tad Eggleston: But they're New York Times articles, you know, the 5 books we missed 3 years ago, you know?
58:27
Alex de Campi: Yeah, yeah.
58:29
Phil: There's the, the Time War book that, like, took off, like, a decade after it came out, or something like that.
58:34
Alex de Campi: Yeah, I mean, it sold pretty well when it first came out. Like, like, that was… it was… it was well known when it first came out. It just got… it just got a wild kind of social media kick. I mean, it deserves… that book absolutely deserves it. Amal and Charlie are lovely. So,
58:50
Alex de Campi: Yeah, like, you know, I don't know what to say, like, I just… I've… I've really struggled to get Dark Horse to…
58:58
Alex de Campi: do any marketing?
59:00
Alex de Campi: And they haven't, and…
59:02
Alex de Campi: like, I don't know, I don't think their heart's really in graphic novels. They've kind of pulled back from that market, and…
59:10
Alex de Campi: you know, they used to be very, very good in graphic novels. They used to, you know, they used to have all of Carla's books, and and they've just not, like…
59:20
Alex de Campi: I don't… I sort of don't know what they're doing. I know they've had a lot of trouble after being bought by that games company, so…
59:26
Phil: Right, right. I forgot that happened.
59:27
Alex de Campi: Yeah, so… .
59:30
Phil: That seems like it'd lead to trouble.
59:33
Phil: Pretty much. No, because they have… they have such a wide library, so that's… that's a damn shame. then I'll just mentally hope for whenever they revert back to you, and then we'll get a new edition, wherever you are, and then, you know, I have the sequel.
59:47
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, and or what it does seem in the comics book industry is anybody who manages to keep their properties together and, like, not go under waxes and wanes. Oni was a mess for a while, Oni's doing great right now, you know?
1:00:06
Alex de Campi: They still don't have a great creator-owned contract. It's not really creator-owned. That's… that's the problem. Like, they have a lot of good… like, all these places have good people, there's any shade on Oni, like, I can never sign the Oni contract, because they take part of my rights, and I'm not gonna do that, because I've seen too many of these companies flake out. Right. I've lived through it.
1:00:24
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:00:25
Alex de Campi: my book to go down with them.
1:00:27
Phil: Yeah, that's… that would be soul-crushing, honestly. Yeah. So.
1:00:34
Alex de Campi: You know, even for me, who's had a ton of books out, like, but imagine if it's your first book, and, like, you find…
1:00:38
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
1:00:39
Alex de Campi: They found someone to publish it, and it comes out, they don't do any marketing, and then the company fucks up, and then, like, you… they have your book forever.
1:00:46
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:00:46
Phil: Yeah.
1:00:47
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:00:48
Tad Eggleston: Right. No, I mean, there's not nearly enough creator-owned, period, unless… I mean, I've heard that the image contract is the only one that's really creator-owned, unless you're just publishing on your own.
1:01:00
Alex de Campi: Dark Horse will do a creator-owned contract, you just have to ask for it.
1:01:06
Tad Eggleston: I was about to say that, because… because.
1:01:08
Alex de Campi: I don't know whether it's because I have the legacy contracts, and I know what their contracts used to be, and I'm like, you give me.
1:01:14
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:01:14
Alex de Campi: contract. Like, we're still working on the same contract, guys, right? Right.
1:01:18
Tad Eggleston: Well, but…
1:01:19
Alex de Campi: whether, like, I don't know whether a new creator going to Dark Horse would get.
1:01:23
Phil: Mmm.
1:01:24
Alex de Campi: contract that I can get, because sometimes if you're old and mean, they give you better terms.
1:01:28
Tad Eggleston: Well, I just… Good to know, like, you're gonna see through their bullshit. Right. They did manage to bring Stan Sakai back, and they did,
1:01:38
Tad Eggleston: bring Terry Moore reprints into the fold, and neither of those guys are guys that, like… When…
1:01:46
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean…
1:01:48
Alex de Campi: Me too. Terry, like, is his own thing.
1:01:50
Tad Eggleston: Terry's never… I mean, the fact that they're doing it at all, I imagine, means that A Robin approved the contract, and B, Robin decided, oh wait, somebody else will pack up the books for a while?
1:02:02
Alex de Campi: Good, yeah.
1:02:03
Tad Eggleston: Maybe we can travel.
1:02:09
Alex de Campi: The other people who have good contracts now are boom.
1:02:13
Phil: Mmm, okay.
1:02:14
Alex de Campi: That's go.
1:02:14
Phil: here.
1:02:15
Alex de Campi: Boomgap, I'm sorry for… this is inside baseball for everybody else, and I'm sorry.
1:02:18
Tad Eggleston: Inside baseball's fun sometimes. Yeah.
1:02:20
Alex de Campi: Okay, so Boom used to have the worst contracts in the market, to the point where, like, an artist died trying to get work done for them. Yeah, like, as you.
1:02:30
Phil: shit.
1:02:30
Alex de Campi: Yeah, on a licensed book. They're licensed… I don't know…
1:02:34
Alex de Campi: Then they got bought by Penguin Random House.
1:02:37
Alex de Campi: And the PRH people were like, you know, could…
1:02:41
Alex de Campi: brought the contract more into line with, like, Random House Graphic and, like, accepted.
1:02:47
Alex de Campi: Book.
1:02:47
Phil: Okay.
1:02:48
Alex de Campi: I think you still have to ask for it, and, you know, like in anything, you have to be like, I ain't signing away my rights, you know, wasn't born yesterday, thank you very.
1:02:56
Tad Eggleston: Which is where I'll toss out to the handful of lawyers that I know listen to this podcast. There's total need for inexpensive lawyers, for comic book creators who are willing to give, like, once-overs of contracts relatively
1:03:12
Tad Eggleston: Inexpensively, or better yet, free, and say, yeah, no, you want this, this, and this, and this.
1:03:17
Alex de Campi: Or just you have a stock contract, you know, like, you know, from these companies.
1:03:23
Alex de Campi: And be like, you know, like, experience says you're not going to change this contract as a young creator, so you have to, like, but here are the things that you can possibly redline. Right. You know, there are some companies that will simply not change their contract for you.
1:03:38
Alex de Campi: And there are others where there is wiggle room, like, you know, Boom, you can… you can push them, and you can keep your rights, now, which is amazing, and which is going to… which is why a lot of, older, like, experienced creators wouldn't touch Boom previously, and…
1:03:54
Alex de Campi: the new class of editors, like, literally all of them, the first thing they said to Boom when they were being interviewed was like, you have a massive problem with creator relations, and you need to fix your contract, and the new publisher, who's from PRH, was like, okay, I will do that.
1:04:12
Tad Eggleston: limits.
1:04:12
Phil: great news. I was worried Boom was one of the publishers you were talking about in the, in the, you know.
1:04:18
Phil: bad advances, so it's good to know that that's not happening anymore, if it ever did. Or at least.
1:04:23
Alex de Campi: Boom had some… Boom, like, had.
1:04:26
Tad Eggleston: Boom's had some…
1:04:27
Alex de Campi: They were… Yeah.
1:04:28
Alex de Campi: They did some bad stuff.
1:04:30
Phil: Yeah.
1:04:31
Alex de Campi: And they treated people really appallingly, and the page rates were, like…
1:04:38
Alex de Campi: they were… they were paying tiny page rates on licensed books, and pushing people… pushing artists on unrealistic schedules, and it was, you know… I mean, I don't know too much about that world, because I… I just don't generally do licensed books.
1:04:52
Alex de Campi: If I'm gonna, you know, learn all the continuity to write someone else's story, I might as well just build my own world.
1:05:02
Tad Eggleston: Except for Dan Dare.
1:05:03
Phil: I was just thinking.
1:05:05
Alex de Campi: Like, if I don't like it, like, you know, except for Rogue Trooper, when I did a giant Rogue Trooper piece, you know, like, if I like it.
1:05:12
Tad Eggleston: Karna.
1:05:12
Alex de Campi: and the project has good vibes, and the people are nice, I'll do it, but, like.
1:05:17
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:05:19
Alex de Campi: you know, people occasionally call me up about doing work for hire, and I'm like, you know, no.
1:05:25
Tad Eggleston: Well, and it should also… we should remind listeners that with Dan Dare, you called them, which is… which is not actually the way it works.
1:05:33
Alex de Campi: Not at all. Not at all.
1:05:35
Alex de Campi: I called them, I wrote the story, I got their approval on the story first, and they were actually very sweet and laid back. Like, I mean, I, you know, tried to put an eyepatch on a character, and they're like, that makes him look like a bad guy, and I'm like…
1:05:49
Phil: anime.
1:05:52
Phil: Eye patches are cool!
1:05:54
Alex de Campi: Yeah, like, this makes this character way cooler, and he canonically, like, had a cra- like, he canonically was a pilot who had a crash, and is now…
1:06:01
Phil: Oh.
1:06:02
Alex de Campi: Like a commanding officer, because he can't fly anymore, because he's disabled. Like, he's…
1:06:06
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:06:07
Alex de Campi: leap.
1:06:07
Phil: Yes.
1:06:08
Alex de Campi: Like, they really soft-pedaled it with Frank Hampson, but, like, you know, the character was canonically unable to fly anymore. Right, right.
1:06:17
Alex de Campi: And so I was like, what if he actually had a smash-up? Like, what if he looks like he had a smash up? And, I wanted the eyepatch, and they didn't let me have the eyepatch, because the licensor is not, like.
1:06:29
Alex de Campi: in touch with the kind of, like, 20-something Tumblr vibe, and that's fine, like, he should not. He knows many things, he's a really nice guy. I would be shocked and horrified to see him on Tumblr. He would also, in short… he would also be shocked and terrified.
1:06:45
Tad Eggleston: I was once at a panel where both of the panelists had done license books, and one of them had the story where it was, like.
1:06:57
Tad Eggleston: Well, they gave me this whole sheet of notes, but my editor said, think of them as suggestions, and we'll see what happens. So, I did, and I never got anything again, and that's how we got the thing. And the other one was like.
1:07:09
Tad Eggleston: I went through 12 drafts of every book to get…
1:07:15
Tad Eggleston: Point where they would accept it.
1:07:17
Tad Eggleston: Never, ever, ever again. I'm glad I did it once!
1:07:22
Alex de Campi: Yeah, see, with Frog Trooper, I, like, I, you know, I outlined, like, my first, like, I pitched 3 different stories. I pitched one, Thorg was like, no, and clarified what he wanted. I pitched the other one, he's like, yeah, you know, like, no, this is more, like, let me, it's more, it should be like this. And then I pitched the third one, and Tharg was like, finally, you understand. I'm like, sorry. And, then that, and then once…
1:07:45
Alex de Campi: I had to kind of out, you know, once I had a pretty vague outline of it.
1:07:48
Alex de Campi: They were fine.
1:07:49
Alex de Campi: you know, I… there wasn't any… I think they asked me to change the character name, and that was it.
1:07:56
Alex de Campi: Or if they did a bunch of edits, like, I… you know, it was after I turned the script in, and, like, they… I didn't notice them in the final book. So that's… that's the sort of thing I like, like, they need to kind of trust me to do the thing, and I'm happy to get it, you know, an outline approved, but then I don't want to be sitting there, like…
1:08:16
Alex de Campi: dealing with…
1:08:20
Alex de Campi: If I have to do more than 4 drafts, they're paying me hazard pay.
1:08:25
Tad Eggleston: That makes sense to me. You're running out of time, so let me ask the final two,
1:08:32
Tad Eggleston: Mandatory questions,
1:08:35
Tad Eggleston: I'm in the fifth year of this podcast, and I pinch myself, like, regularly, because my life feels like it's in the Twilight Zone now, just because I get to have all sorts of weird experiences just because I'm part of comics. My new, most surreal experience is
1:08:52
Tad Eggleston: a couple of weeks ago, we went from having two cars to having no cars in the span of a couple of days, and because of a comics connection, we had two cars again on Saturday.
1:09:04
Tad Eggleston: Just inside of what we could afford.
1:09:09
Alex de Campi: That's great.
1:09:10
Tad Eggleston: So that's my… I mean, that even beats out going to a baseball game with Dennis Kitchen in terms of my surreal comics experiences, and sitting at a baseball game with Dennis Kitchen was pretty freaking awesome. But I find that everybody in comics has crazy stories that they just, like, they sit there and go.
1:09:29
Tad Eggleston: I got to do that!
1:09:31
Tad Eggleston: And I never would have gotten to do that, except that I'm part of this medium, part of this community. So I started to ask for those stories. Give me just one surreal experience that, like…
1:09:42
Alex de Campi: Oh, Lord, I mean, you know, just…
1:09:55
Alex de Campi: I mean, some of it's just, like, you know, is just being able to work with wonderful people, like, that I never
1:10:02
Alex de Campi: able to work with, like, you know, like, working with Bill Sienkiewicz and Jerry Orton. Yeah. Bill Sienkiewicz on a Kickstarted book, that I had lettered with collage lettering, and he absolutely loved.
1:10:14
Alex de Campi: you know, that… that's really sort of it, you know, like, just kind of crazy things, like, you know, I was asked to pitch a continuation of Rank Xerox when Heavy Metal thought it had the rights, and they didn't, it turned out. But, that was… that was during, like, one of Heavy Metal's, like, shady… like, they did really shady periods.
1:10:34
Alex de Campi: That was a shame, I would have loved to do that. Golly,
1:10:45
Alex de Campi: ended up being friends with Chris Weston very early in my career, because he dropped his credit card, and when I was at a convention, and I found it, and was like, you might need this.
1:11:00
Alex de Campi: Signed Chris Weston, you know, signed Chris Weston original, I can put it on eBay, but I figured you'd want it back.
1:11:09
Alex de Campi: Oh gosh, what else? I know there's weird stuff, I know, I know we're gonna fix that.
1:11:13
Tad Eggleston: That's pretty… that's pretty good, and I'm hoping you'll come back. You can give me a different one next time.
1:11:18
Alex de Campi: Okay.
1:11:18
Tad Eggleston: Because we do need, though Phil cheated a little bit on this, and asked you about stuff earlier, tell me something you love.
1:11:26
Tad Eggleston: Preferably a comic, but we don't have rules.
1:11:29
Tad Eggleston: Preferably storytelling, but again, with the rules, but something that you love, that not enough people around you have experienced, and you want them to.
1:11:37
Tad Eggleston: So they have more people to talk about it with.
1:11:43
Alex de Campi: I mean, I've mentioned it already, but Witch Hat Atelier.
1:11:47
Tad Eggleston: Captain.
1:11:48
Alex de Campi: Which, again, anime's coming out soon, so, like, a good time to read the book. The art is heartbreakingly good. It's a wonderful metaphor for creativity. Also, it's an amazing thing to get kids. It is the magic school book… the magic school story that you should be excited about this year. The other one can get in the C.
1:12:08
Alex de Campi: And, it's, you know, it's, it's…
1:12:14
Alex de Campi: truly gorgeous worldbuilding. There's an amazing canonical, disabled character with, like, a really cool adaptive device, that doesn't, like, minimize or put to the side his disability. You know.
1:12:29
Tad Eggleston: Now I really need to read it. I'm a special ed teacher, so, like, that's…
1:12:33
Alex de Campi: Yeah. Like, the character… Something that I'm always looking for.
1:12:35
Tad Eggleston: floor.
1:12:36
Alex de Campi: One of the coolest characters in the book!
1:12:38
Alex de Campi: In a chair. Awesome.
1:12:41
Alex de Campi: What else, what else have I really loved recently?
1:12:49
Alex de Campi: I mean, I'm reading lots of medieval stuff for… for.
1:12:53
Tad Eggleston: For research.
1:12:54
Alex de Campi: for research. So, like, medial history and things like that.
1:12:58
Phil: Hmm.
1:12:59
Alex de Campi: So, a lot of, like, like, Maurice Keene's Chivalry, which is amazing.
1:13:07
Alex de Campi: And which tracks, like, the Crusades, the changing attitudes of Christianity towards warfare, up to the moment of Pope Urban II, you know, declaring the crusade and saying that, like, you know, not only is it okay to kill people, like, you will, like, just by going on this mission to kill people, you will be cleansed of all sin.
1:13:27
Phil: Wow.
1:13:28
Alex de Campi: And, like, in two pages, he goes through and goes, like, well, if you think about it, like, you know, the first real nail in the coffin of Christianity as a religion of peace was, you know, the conversion of Emperor Constantine, because as soon as a monotheistic religion becomes a state religion, it then has to support state policy.
1:13:51
Alex de Campi: And states go to war. So, you can't… you kind of… like, there's… there will always be an erosion of the…
1:14:00
Alex de Campi: of the religion's attitude towards killing when it's a state… it becomes a state religion. And I think, like, for polytheistic religions, you could keep, like, the good gods who didn't like killing, and then you could have your war god. But, like, when you've only got one god, you know, you've got problems.
1:14:17
Alex de Campi: And then, I think it was, Pepin, who was, crowned King of the Franks in the 7… 750? Like, middle of 8th century.
1:14:27
Alex de Campi: could be, like, it's a bit fuzzy. Medievalist… medievalists don't at me. And he was the first king, crowned in a cathedral as part of a religious service. So, you know, there was still some separation of church and state, like, you know, it was like a, you know, Rome was Christianized, but then, like, the real ties happened… started happening in Western Europe around the middle of the 8th century.
1:14:52
Alex de Campi: century, and then, in the 8th and 9th centuries, you had
1:14:57
Alex de Campi: Christian Western Europe being pressured on all sides from, you know, from Vikings, you had the Vikings coming down as Normandy, you had the Arab nations coming out through Spain, you had various Slavic nations pushing and
1:15:14
Alex de Campi: I don't think it was the Turks at that time, pushing, west, and so, you know, Rome was sacked,
1:15:23
Alex de Campi: Again, and, actually, no, sorry, the original Rome sacking was, was, was…
1:15:31
Alex de Campi: the reason for Augustine's just war theory, because what a lot of people don't realize when they're reading Augustine suddenly going on about just war, you know, again, happened after
1:15:42
Alex de Campi: Rome was Christian, Rome got sacked, everyone very nervous for a while and very unhappy that this happened. Augustine's like, sometimes war can be just! And everyone's like, oh, good! And that was, I wanna say… 450?
1:15:58
Alex de Campi: Around there.
1:16:00
Alex de Campi: I'm bad at exact times. So yeah, so Augustine just wore after a sacking of Rome, like, directly in response to that.
1:16:08
Alex de Campi: Pepin Crown Cathedral, set in the middle of the 8th century. Generally everybody very nervous in the Christian part of Western Europe, in the 8th and 9th centuries due to pressures from other nations, non-Christian nations coming in.
1:16:21
Alex de Campi: So gradually, like, the attitude towards war and killing got, got, got eroded, but it really, like, the, the…
1:16:28
Alex de Campi: The total, you know.
1:16:31
Alex de Campi: nail in the coffin was… was… was the calling of the First Crusade, and… because before then, like, 100 years before then, if you killed somebody, you had to spend, like, you know, 30 days in… in just, like, contemplation, and, you know, there was very… there were very strict rules around that, for,
1:16:50
Alex de Campi: for Christianity, and then you started to see, like, you know, like, we're gonna bless the sword. And that was what came out of the,
1:16:58
Alex de Campi: the… of Pepin being crowned in a cathedral, is suddenly you are starting to bless the sword that the king was put on, and then it's a very short step to blessing the swords of the knights, and then, like, what are swords used for? Like, you are blessing an instrument of killing, and then, so, like, erode, erode, erode, and then you… then you get the Crusades, and…
1:17:18
Alex de Campi: were… which were all a terrible idea, only one of them actually conquered anything. The other nine…
1:17:25
Alex de Campi: if we include some side quests, did fuck all and just resulted in people going east and getting killed. And then that's also why the worst people you know are like, crusades! We need to crusade! Like, oh, so we need to act… we need to mean to go to Israel, but instead go to Egypt and get killed? Good, good, good.
1:17:45
Alex de Campi: Or are we just gonna go steal shit from Constantinople again?
1:17:48
Tad Eggleston: I mean, all of that makes sense to me.
1:17:51
Alex de Campi: A random TED talk on, like, you know…
1:17:53
Tad Eggleston: I love it! I really just wanna…
1:17:55
Alex de Campi: Holy crazed.
1:17:56
Tad Eggleston: I love having you on, Alex, it's like…
1:17:59
Alex de Campi: None of that is in my book!
1:18:02
Tad Eggleston: You are one of the few people in the world that I'm in the room with, and know that I'm not the smartest person in the room. And I love it. Because I just have to… to…
1:18:14
Tad Eggleston: Zzz, like…
1:18:17
Tad Eggleston: I'm not even finding the right words. I have to focus and listen to everything, and I learn and have a reading list when I'm done with every conversation we ever have.
1:18:26
Alex de Campi: So yeah, Murray's Keane's Chivalry, it is, like, you know, it is an older book, there's a wonderful folio edition version of it that I've got, that I've got for Christmas. I ordered it myself, and then gave it to my daughter. I was like, hey, wrap this!
1:18:40
Alex de Campi: I sundown.
1:18:43
Tad Eggleston: and take suggestions for me for Christmas presents.
1:18:47
Alex de Campi: It's… it's a struggle.
1:18:49
Alex de Campi: We also have just normalized, like, just tell me what you want, you know, kind of things, and I get some surprises, but, you know, we have pretty good communication about it. It just saves so much effort.
1:19:00
Alex de Campi: So yeah, Maurice Keane's Chivalry, I… I think everyone knows about Kelly Link's Book of Love, because it was, like, a giant book, like, a couple years ago, but it is really great, and… for prose book, fiction, kind of a… kind of a… urban… I don't… I'm not even gonna say anything about it, like, if…
1:19:18
Alex de Campi: If you are listening to this and you like very good, very unexpected books, buy Kelly Links, Book of Love.
1:19:25
Alex de Campi: And, I'm not… it's not… it's…
1:19:28
Alex de Campi: sounds like a romance, it's absolutely… it's sort of… It's absolutely not. And I want you to not read any reviews, or any synopsis, or anything. I just want you to buy the book and start it.
1:19:42
Alex de Campi: And…
1:19:43
Tad Eggleston: sold.
1:19:44
Alex de Campi: you will fly through it. It also has really short chapters from different points of views, and, like, it just goes the wildest places, and it goes there, like, well, and with conviction, and
1:19:56
Alex de Campi: yeah, it's such a fun book. The other book I read was much quieter afterwards, and I'm like, oh, this is a book about gaming, I don't really want to read this. It was so good, I just kept reading it, which is Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, which… I need to look up the author,
1:20:14
Alex de Campi: But those…
1:20:14
Tad Eggleston: I should know that one.
1:20:17
Phil: Is this… in this quiet little… I just wanted to say, you… Alex, you are also the guest that has gotten the strongest reaction out of my wife when I told her that we're doing an interview, because I said, hey, so today we're, you know, talking to one of the writers of Scavenger's Reign, and she just kept drawing for a second, and then was like, wait, what?
1:20:36
Tad Eggleston: Yep.
1:20:38
Tad Eggleston: I wipe.
1:20:38
Alex de Campi: I was created.
1:20:39
Alex de Campi: I didn't write full episodes, but, like, I am responsible for what plot the thing had.
1:20:45
Phil: X.
1:20:45
Alex de Campi: Oh.
1:20:46
Phil: It was, yeah, it's really funny, because I actually felt like I could… once I…
1:20:51
Phil: heard that you would… you had been involved with it. It was the, I'm forgetting her name, but the, the mean scavengers towards the end, the leader of them, I felt like had… had some of your… your voice to her. So, yeah, it was very, very cool.
1:21:05
Alex de Campi: Okay, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is by Gabriel Zevin.
1:21:10
Alex de Campi: Also, if you're a listener who's Jewish, and if you are really into Jewish main characters, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, both the main characters are Jewish, and it's like, it's just a really good book. The author's obviously Jewish. She's writing about people in the games industry, and it's a really wonderful story about, like.
1:21:26
Alex de Campi: flawed people and friendships evolving, and it's ultimately very, very hopeful and has a happy ending, although you sweat a bit to get there.
1:21:35
Alex de Campi: It's kind of like the book about gaming that, you know, if you… like…
1:21:43
Alex de Campi: Ready Player One is at one end, in terms of just being kind of like…
1:21:48
Alex de Campi: look, I know about things, and I'm going to put them in a book to, you know, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, which is, like, a really deep meditation on the process of creating games by someone who clearly loves games, and I want to play the games that she talks about in the book. And so that's a lot of fun.
1:22:05
Phil: That sounds fantastic, yeah, I… would absolutely… that, yeah. Stories about gaming, whether…
1:22:12
Phil: People playing games or creating… yeah, that's… that's totally up my alley, that sounds great.
1:22:16
Alex de Campi: Okay, yeah, I think you'd like it. It's a little slower book, like, I went from Book of Love to this, and I was like.
1:22:22
Phil: Mmm.
1:22:23
Alex de Campi: You know, because this is, like, more meditational, and, like, slower, and more character-driven, and Book of Love is, like, you read the first 8 pages, and you're like, oh shit, I'm going downhill, and I don't have any breaks!
1:22:34
Alex de Campi: Which I respect, like, as a writer who can just, you know, come in and just, like, she just keeps, like, flipping tables, like, just walks along, flips a table, walks along, flips another table.
1:22:46
Tad Eggleston: Well, that is exactly the type of book that I'm looking for, and I need a new car book for this week, because I just wrapped up one, so I will let you know, like, next week what I think.
1:22:57
Tad Eggleston: Alex, such a pleasure.
1:23:01
Tad Eggleston: Always wonderful. I can't wait to see your Dan Dare, and
1:23:06
Tad Eggleston: Hopefully we'll talk again one of these days soon. Okay.
1:23:10
Tad Eggleston: For 22 panels, this has been Alex DeCampi, and we will see you after the next page.