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With Great Power #298... 22 Panels with Jeremy Whitley · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

0:01
Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels. My guest tonight, returning for, I think, the third time? Fourth time? Something like that. I'll look it up soon. Is,
0:13
Tad Eggleston: Jeremy Whitley, one of my favorite writers in comics, and he has… like, I feel like every time I talk to you, you're doing something just a little bit different. And this time, it's actually, like, a lot bit different.
0:27
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, you know.
0:29
Tad Eggleston: We go from YA to…
0:33
Tad Eggleston: Now, I will say that, that, like, I… I think you, you guys went shock value on the cover of Slay, and I think it oversells…
0:44
Tad Eggleston: the bloodiness of the interior. I'm only saying this because there are some people like me that look at it and go, well, this is Jeremy Whitley, I need to read this, but that's a lot of blood.
0:58
Jeremy Whitley: And don't get me wrong!
0:59
Tad Eggleston: There's plenty of blood. Those of you who looked at it and went, awesome!
1:04
Tad Eggleston: there's a lot of blood. It's just not… not quite the… the slash fest that I was bracing myself for.
1:14
Tad Eggleston: And frankly, so much cooler than that. So, pitch me on Slay, Jeremy.
1:19
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, so Slate, which is the first of two books in this, like, flipbook we're doing. This is the first issue of it, so you don't need to have read anything else, this is…
1:30
Jeremy Whitley: fresh coming in. It is a, sort of a horror, western, post-apocalyptic story. It's about a, girl named Layla who really wants to,
1:42
Jeremy Whitley: become a monster slayer. She's learned that her mother was a monster slayer in this world before her, and wants to pick up where her mom left off, and is looking for somebody to train her, and the only person that she knows of is sort of this legendary monster slayer, the Scarred Rider.
2:00
Jeremy Whitley: It's very difficult to find, so she's on a… a quest to find this person, and while she is,
2:07
Jeremy Whitley: doing so, she's gotta survive somehow, so she decides to, impersonate the scarred writer and go in and,
2:14
Jeremy Whitley: take this, take this bounty on a monster that, they've posted for the writer, and she immediately finds herself in way over her head, both with the monster and with Scarred Rider, who,
2:27
Jeremy Whitley: Shows up and is not the happiest about being impersonated, and is probably much more dangerous than any monster she's gonna run into.
2:35
Tad Eggleston: It's almost like, and correct me if I'm wrong here, but…
2:40
Tad Eggleston: Identity theft mixed with implying that you have way more skills than you actually have while going after
2:51
Tad Eggleston: Horrendous monsters is not actually a good idea.
2:56
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, I feel like fake it till you make it is a bad plan when it comes to, like, slaying monsters, you know?
3:02
Tad Eggleston: I mean… I think… I think… I think it would have been…
3:11
Tad Eggleston: like, if it had been fake it till we make it, but without the identity theft, it might have worked. And if there had been the identity theft, but somehow not the going after slaying monsters, well, that would have been wrong!
3:23
Tad Eggleston: Wrong, just for anybody listening out there, I'm not advocating identity theft.
3:29
Tad Eggleston: It could have also worked. I think it's the putting them together…
3:33
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, the combination makes it so much more difficult.
3:35
Tad Eggleston: really…
3:36
Jeremy Whitley: Come on. Kind of.
3:36
Tad Eggleston: Put her in a really… Rough.
3:40
Tad Eggleston: rough spot.
3:43
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
3:44
Tad Eggleston: Can you tell that it's Friday and late? I'm goofy already.
3:50
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, so, I mean, we just wanted to go with, like… I love… I love Westerns, I don't always love the sort of, like.
3:56
Jeremy Whitley: there's a certain amount of colonialism and Western expansionism and everything mixed into the traditional Western formula, but I love that sort of, like.
4:05
Jeremy Whitley: frontier action, like, you don't know what's around the next corner, you don't know what's out there. You know, you're sort of on the edge of civilization, and no way to… nobody's out there to back you up, there's no, there's nobody that can take care of you out there.
4:24
Jeremy Whitley: So, like, that sort of feeling mixed in with this, post-apocalyptic thing, and these sort of…
4:31
Jeremy Whitley: high fantasy Monsters, which is, one of those things I… I love. I've always been a, you know, nerdy fantasy kid, but I feel like the more you play Dungeons & Dragons, the more you're, just, like.
4:44
Jeremy Whitley: Looking at the hit points and the, you know, the special abilities of these monsters, unless you feel like…
4:51
Jeremy Whitley: Alright, like, if I were to… if I were to meet a dragon in real life, that's not just, like, a big lizard, that's, like…
4:57
Jeremy Whitley: A natural disaster.
5:01
Tad Eggleston: You mean Godzilla's not our friend?
5:04
Jeremy Whitley: Not generally, unless he has the small one with him, Gatsuki, and then you're probably alright, but then you have.
5:10
Tad Eggleston: I mean…
5:10
Jeremy Whitley: Suzuki, so…
5:12
Tad Eggleston: I, I do remember my, my, my, my son, while…
5:19
Tad Eggleston: well, as, like, a 5-year-old watching the Matthew Peninsula when they're in Madison Square Garden.
5:25
Tad Eggleston: And the Godzilla eggs start hatching, and they start killing the little Godzillas and or shooting the eggs, and my son was right up at the screen, screaming at it.
5:36
Tad Eggleston: You don't kill Godzilla. Godzilla eats you.
5:41
Tad Eggleston: And when I pointed out that that… that wasn't… he just turned at me, and with, like.
5:46
Tad Eggleston: the type of eye roll that only a 5-year-old can pull off said, Dad, it's the circle of life.
5:56
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, eventually, I guess, The Godzilla…
6:00
Tad Eggleston: Probably most of them.
6:01
Jeremy Whitley: I mean, fish eat him.
6:03
Tad Eggleston: I stopped telling that story, but, you know, I like it.
6:09
Tad Eggleston: So…
6:11
Tad Eggleston: the girlfriend survives, is the flip of this. Now, I didn't get to see this, I'm assuming that it either wasn't ready, or I didn't ask nicely enough, or something.
6:22
Jeremy Whitley: But it's still… the colors are still being finished on it. It's already drawn…
6:25
Tad Eggleston: Kind of what I figured.
6:27
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
6:28
Tad Eggleston: So, so give me the pitch on The Girlfriend Survives.
6:31
Jeremy Whitley: So the girlfriend survives,
6:33
Jeremy Whitley: takes this thing that is so common in superhero books that we have a name for it, of fridging of the girlfriend in these stories, and, takes it from a new perspective. So it's about this,
6:48
Jeremy Whitley: this girl who is, name is Delilah, she is a barista, she starts dating what turns out to be the,
6:57
Jeremy Whitley: secret identity of, you know, their local superhero, without knowing, has sort of put herself in the crosshairs of his arch-nemesis. And in this first book is, on the edge of being
7:13
Jeremy Whitley: Murdered by a supervillain, and has to figure out how to survive the experience of being the girlfriend in a story where the girlfriend almost always gets killed.
7:29
Tad Eggleston: So… but she's not a clone. It's not like…
7:32
Jeremy Whitley: No.
7:33
Tad Eggleston: It's not like Gwen Stacy coming back.
7:35
Jeremy Whitley: No. It's, it's very much, having to sort of, scurry and, and…
7:43
Jeremy Whitley: survived for her life. She has a few surprises of her own up her sleeves.
7:48
Jeremy Whitley: But…
7:50
Tad Eggleston: Is she, like, one of those immortal characters from, from, Greg Rucka's Old Guard, you know, where she drops off the building and then just stands up again?
8:00
Tad Eggleston: Because, I mean, I thought that the rules were the girlfriend died.
8:05
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, she is.
8:07
Tad Eggleston: Superhero comic, so there's gotta be some reason.
8:11
Jeremy Whitley: Well, she is doing her best to survive, so I think.
8:14
Tad Eggleston: Silliness is coming out to us.
8:15
Jeremy Whitley: doing really good.
8:16
Tad Eggleston: I'm sorry.
8:18
Jeremy Whitley: No problem. Yeah, I think, like, that's sort of the…
8:23
Jeremy Whitley: The trick of it is sort of figuring out how to survive, and what to do, and what her,
8:30
Jeremy Whitley: What her secrets are, where… because, you know, every… everybody has secrets, and.
8:35
Tad Eggleston: Does she consider just losing the boyfriend?
8:39
Jeremy Whitley: Well, yeah, that's another problem, you know, how do you go about breaking up with somebody who is, you know, emotionally stunted and has the super ability to, I don't know, fly you into space or punch a hole through the.
8:53
Tad Eggleston: Oh, wait a minute, are you saying that he might be, like, an anti-hero?
8:58
Tad Eggleston: And have trouble.
9:01
Jeremy Whitley: I'm… I'm…
9:03
Tad Eggleston: I'm asking all of the worst questions, Jeremy. Let's go off on a different, better bet. Yeah, like, I am used to turning to Jeremy Whitley for completely wholesome stories, and I have a feeling that there will be some wholesomeness in these stories, just from what I've seen so far. But, like, completely wholesome, YA middle grade stories.
9:24
Tad Eggleston: And now, out of the blue, we've got very rated R, horror stories.
9:30
Tad Eggleston: Like, has this been simmering for a while?
9:34
Tad Eggleston: What… what was the inspiration to… to go off in this different direction?
9:40
Jeremy Whitley: Oh yeah, I'm… I'm a… I'm a sucker for horror stories in the first place. I am, I have my own podcast called Progressively Horrified, where we talk about scary movies and their politics.
9:50
Jeremy Whitley: All the time, so I'm always thinking about horror. It's just not always what people are looking for from me. It's, you know, been, I think, harder to… to sell to people who, are excited about what I do generally.
10:05
Jeremy Whitley: Which is why, you know, sort of start… made sense to sort of start with a crowdfunding campaign to kick these books off and, you know, get them out to an audience of people that are excited about them.
10:18
Jeremy Whitley: And, you know, that's… I always, like…
10:24
Jeremy Whitley: I feel like I have a grounding of the types of stories I write, regardless of what audience they're for. You know, with…
10:34
Jeremy Whitley: obviously, self-sufficient female protagonists and, you know, certain types of, you know, ways of interacting with the audience and the types of characters that I like to tell stories about.
10:48
Jeremy Whitley: But I think… I often talk about, like, when I started writing Princeless, the first thing I did was give my main character a sword, and then I realized that I couldn't have her stab anybody, because, you know, you're not supposed to have people being stabbed and murdered by your protagonist, I guess, in a middle grade story.
11:08
Jeremy Whitley: People get a bit stressed.
11:09
Tad Eggleston: I think stabbed is okay if somehow there's a lack of blood or death.
11:17
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, well, there's a lot of…
11:19
Jeremy Whitley: There's a lot of fights in Princeless that end with somebody getting knocked off of something, or tripped, or disarmed. You know, you have to…
11:28
Jeremy Whitley: It's a real exercise in writing to figure out how to end sword fights without somebody getting stabbed.
11:36
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
11:37
Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's… that was what made it fun.
11:40
Tad Eggleston: That's… that's… that's what Matt Madden would call a constraint.
11:44
Jeremy Whitley: It's my own little comics code.
11:47
Tad Eggleston: I'm going… I'm going to… I'm going to…
11:51
Tad Eggleston: Make a swashbuckling comic that somehow The swords are merely props.
12:01
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah. For nice dancing.
12:04
Jeremy Whitley: Nice dancing. Occasionally you get to, you know, knock somebody over with the sword. Hitting a lot of people with the flat of the sword, or the hilt of the sword.
12:15
Tad Eggleston: So we'll do the quick update. You are at $3,200, shooting for $5,000, and added a wonderful 101 supporters. This is a nice number to see, with 20 days to go, so I feel like you have
12:32
Tad Eggleston: the right momentum, and we'll get there. Among other things, I get… I get ruthless on… on Blue Sky if I start worrying about not being able to see a book.
12:44
Tad Eggleston: I start doing math lessons, explaining how…
12:48
Tad Eggleston: Okay, $10 for the digital copy. I have 300 followers.
12:54
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, I, you know, I love that. I have been doing a lot of, math on Blue Sky myself, because, I think we're at a good pace to be able to,
13:05
Jeremy Whitley: to get there, 1,800 is still a lot of money to make up. So, you know, be greatly appreciated, I mean, if 100 people, just got the physical.
13:16
Tad Eggleston: Though I…
13:16
Jeremy Whitley: right now.
13:17
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, exactly, I will say, 100 people getting a physical copy would… you'd be there.
13:25
Tad Eggleston: And… and seeing as there are… there are two different covers, you know
13:34
Tad Eggleston: People who aren't smart enough to go for both covers for $33.
13:40
Tad Eggleston: Could just buy both covers.
13:42
Tad Eggleston: And it'd only take 50 of them.
13:45
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
13:47
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm just… I'm just throwing that out there.
13:50
Tad Eggleston: Wait a minute, okay, that's one of them signed. For a second there, I'm like, wait a minute, we go from 33 for both to 30 for… oh, oh, that's 30 for 1 signed.
14:02
Tad Eggleston: 34 gets you the flipbook and the art print bundle.
14:08
Jeremy Whitley: And that's covers for both of those. So, I mean, I know I'm a big fan of both of those covers. As you said, the Slay one is, pretty vicious, but I think the girlfriend Survives of our heroine standing atop a pile of defeated and destroyed refrigerators is a pretty.
14:25
Tad Eggleston: Is… is… is fantastic.
14:27
Jeremy Whitley: look. Yeah.
14:28
Tad Eggleston: is fantastic. And I'm also gonna toss out here, for the retail… I'm shocked that we have no retailer bundles here, and I might have to talk to a couple retailer friends, and if any retailers are listening.
14:41
Tad Eggleston: 5 copies for $45.
14:45
Tad Eggleston: all of them signed. So rather than the $30 for a signed copy… You can have…
14:54
Tad Eggleston: 5 signed copies for $45.
14:58
Jeremy Whitley: I, I think.
14:59
Tad Eggleston: Say it with him.
14:59
Jeremy Whitley: Emphasizing to retailers, especially, too, that, like.
15:03
Jeremy Whitley: this run that we're doing of it as a flipbook is just gonna be for the campaign, just for Zoop. Right. Obviously, both of these stories are stories that we want to do more with, that we want to have go on, but we think it's important with a campaign like this to have something that is
15:19
Jeremy Whitley: An artifact that is specific to the campaign, that you won't just be able to get the same thing 6 months from now.
15:24
Tad Eggleston: So also, Issue 2 of each of these will likely not be attached.
15:31
Tad Eggleston: To the issue once.
15:34
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, you know, at some point, I'm sure we'll see,
15:38
Jeremy Whitley: We'll see collections of them, once we get that far. But yeah, if you're… if you're looking for this…
15:47
Jeremy Whitley: Like, this special flipbook, this Issue 1 of both of these, this is gonna be the only place you can get it, so…
15:53
Tad Eggleston: Right.
15:53
Jeremy Whitley: Limited run.
15:54
Tad Eggleston: But I just, I just meant, I mean…
15:57
Tad Eggleston: I guess maybe you're planning on it, but when it gets to Slay Issue 2, and… and… and…
16:05
Tad Eggleston: The Girlfriend Survives issue 2.
16:08
Tad Eggleston: Are you doing another flipbook, or will you be doing just single issues and separating them?
16:14
Tad Eggleston: That's gonna depend a little bit. I mean, if this, if this campaign does really well.
16:18
Jeremy Whitley: and it makes sense to keep doing books like this, then I would be more than happy to do it. It gives me a little bit of heartburn to do, crowdfunding.
16:30
Jeremy Whitley: It's a little bit like.
16:31
Tad Eggleston: So cutting in half the crowdfunding would be… I mean, because actually, I was assuming that, like, this proof of concept would hopefully get them both picked up somewhere, possibly at the same publisher, possibly different publishers. If they're different publishers, they really won't be flipbooks.
16:47
Jeremy Whitley: Oh, absolutely. I mean.
16:49
Jeremy Whitley: I would also… I would also love that, and that would be, I think certainly you would see different covers if we… we end up going with different publishers, for future printings of the issue ones, but yeah, you definitely wouldn't see them together again.
17:04
Tad Eggleston: Right
17:05
Tad Eggleston: So, I'm just trying to… just trying to make out the likelihood that this is a serious collector's item, rather than…
17:12
Tad Eggleston: Just a little bit of a collector's item.
17:16
Jeremy Whitley: It depends how serious of a collector you are, right?
17:19
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean… Let's be honest, unless you turn it into a TV show.
17:26
Tad Eggleston: It's probably not the type of collect…
17:32
Tad Eggleston: It will appreciate in value. It'll just be hard to find and get one of your own if you suddenly decide that you want it.
17:40
Tad Eggleston: You know, one of the things I do love about good comics is most of the time when I decide that I want them.
17:47
Tad Eggleston: If I can find them, they're not that expensive.
17:51
Tad Eggleston: But the rub is, if I can find them.
17:55
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
17:56
Tad Eggleston: Whereas…
17:57
Jeremy Whitley: The ones that are hard to find that end up going up in value, and then you do find.
18:01
Tad Eggleston: I mean, again, not always. I'm shocked at the number of Love & Rockets books.
18:07
Tad Eggleston: That you can get for, like, 2-5 bucks.
18:10
Tad Eggleston: If you can find them to begin with.
18:15
Jeremy Whitley: It's… it's a funny thing, I think, and I've… I know you probably do like I do, where you get attached to a particular format, too, with long-running stuff like that. Like, I had, I had most of Strangers in Paradise in these old, like.
18:30
Tad Eggleston: It's another… That's another one that you can often find single issues really cheap.
18:36
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
18:36
Tad Eggleston: If you can find them.
18:38
Jeremy Whitley: Well, I have the old beat-up trades, I had them of about half the books, and I was looking to finish it out, and I was like, I don't want these nice, sleek, new editions. Like, I want the ones that match the beat-up-looking indie bookstore ones that I have.
18:51
Tad Eggleston: Well… Talk to me off air.
18:56
Jeremy Whitley: Well, I've got him now. Okay. It took me a little… took me a little work, but I had to track them down.
19:01
Tad Eggleston: Because I know Terry, and he often has stuff still in his warehouse.
19:08
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah. I… Terry's wonderful, I've had the…
19:12
Jeremy Whitley: Amazing opportunity to sit next to him at a couple of conventions, which is always…
19:16
Jeremy Whitley: always so cool, because then I end up spending all the money that I make, so…
19:21
Tad Eggleston: I, I, you know, since we're talking cons and Terry Moore, I will do my first on-air plug for myself.
19:28
Tad Eggleston: and one of the four panels that I got approved for C2E2.
19:36
Tad Eggleston: involves Terry Moore and four other independent comic creators, so…
19:42
Jeremy Whitley: Awesome.
19:42
Tad Eggleston: He's… he's anchoring one of my… One of my panels.
19:48
Jeremy Whitley: Fantastic. He's great to have on a panel, too.
19:50
Tad Eggleston: He's amazing.
19:51
Jeremy Whitley: I was on a panel with him in Baltimore a couple of years ago, and…
19:55
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
19:56
Jeremy Whitley: It was also incredibly cool, because the group of us that were up there, it was such that, like, various points, we were just flipping through each other's books, like, oh, that's really cool! Like, I like what you did here! Which is always.
20:07
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I deliberately put kind of a weird set together, with the only thing being they're all independent creators. I've got Terry Moore, I've got…
20:17
Tad Eggleston: Greg Petrie from Santos Sisters, I've got Spike Trotman from Iron Circus Comics, and then I have two
20:28
Tad Eggleston: young up-and-comers. Larry Stahl, who's for…
20:33
Tad Eggleston: First printed book will be coming out right before…
20:37
Tad Eggleston: C2e2, he's got a story in, in,
20:42
Tad Eggleston: Oh, what is it? The… the…
20:47
Tad Eggleston: I forget what the publisher is, right? I think Antarctic is doing a leprechaun, like.
20:55
Tad Eggleston: St. Patrick's Day horror anthology that he got a story in. And then Daria Faruhar will make out the rest of mine, and she… she will one day take over the world.
21:09
Tad Eggleston: But is at the, the…
21:11
Tad Eggleston: just finished college, just… just took her LSATs and… and… and… makes and sells her… her… her own comics on the…
21:23
Tad Eggleston: more DIY side and, and, like, super intelligent nonfiction.
21:30
Jeremy Whitley: Wow.
21:32
Tad Eggleston: So… so the whole idea is to have this panel to say, hey, you thought comics were just superheroes? Look at these 5 people.
21:40
Tad Eggleston: And the… just… Massively different work that they do.
21:45
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
21:47
Tad Eggleston: Sounds funny.
21:47
Jeremy Whitley: really cool.
21:48
Tad Eggleston: I'm looking forward to it.
21:50
Jeremy Whitley: Looking forward to it.
21:51
Tad Eggleston: But done plugging me, back to plugging you.
21:56
Tad Eggleston: Talk to me, about your artist.
22:02
Tad Eggleston: Because… cause I… I only kind of recognize names.
22:07
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I recognize… I recognize your colorist and your letterer.
22:11
Tad Eggleston: Let me rephrase.
22:13
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, both,
22:15
Jeremy Whitley: you know, both my colorists and letters are folks I've worked with on other stuff. Jamie Noguchi, who is coloring, The Girlfriend Survives, was my… is my artist on School for Extraterrestrial Girls.
22:26
Jeremy Whitley: He has very bright, vibrant, fun colors. I wanted to get some of that superhero feel to it. He is working on that one with Luke Nakashoji.
22:37
Jeremy Whitley: who, is a Canadian artist, they do a lot of webcomic stuff, but they're… they're really wonderful if you check out their, stuff on Blue Sky and everything, they've got links to their other work. Beluga's really cool, and…
22:52
Jeremy Whitley: is doing, in addition to, like, everything that they've already done for the campaign and for the book, also is offering commissions as part of the, one of the tiers of the whole thing, so you can get a commission from Luke for, $75.
23:10
Tad Eggleston: That… that is… that is what's called a steal?
23:13
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
23:16
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, he's… Luke does digital.
23:17
Tad Eggleston: comes to commissions?
23:19
Jeremy Whitley: They're, they're really cool. The other one that's… Jamie is also doing commissions, which, you can jump in there for his or…
23:28
Jeremy Whitley: A little bit less restrictive with what he'll do, but they're, $150, so he does all kinds of fun stuff. As you can see, he did, one of the cast from School for Extraterrestrial Girls dressed as each other that's on the…
23:41
Jeremy Whitley: Website is an example of what he'll do.
23:44
Jeremy Whitley: But also, I don't think a lot of people know Alex Smith's work. Alex is my, my pencil and inker on Slay, and Alex really…
23:59
Jeremy Whitley: Alex hasn't done a ton of interior work. He did a book for Keen Spot called The D-Ward, but he has a real, like.
24:07
Jeremy Whitley: rough, inky style, and with this sort of, like, western vibe of sleigh, it's got real…
24:17
Jeremy Whitley: Real heavy inks and real, like, frenetic pacing when it comes to fights and everything, where, you know, you'll see, sort of, the action gets wild, it gets very,
24:29
Jeremy Whitley: bloody and fun to watch, I think.
24:32
Jeremy Whitley: That's… to me, that's one of the keys to making, like, a good, action-based comic, is just to have art that feels…
24:42
Jeremy Whitley: in motion, and feels like you can feel this character's terror as they're facing off with this, giant monster, and
24:51
Jeremy Whitley: see, like… Get a… get a real sense for,
24:56
Jeremy Whitley: How… how difficult this is, and how,
25:00
Jeremy Whitley: like, the real impact between these blows. And Alex does amazing commission work, which I feel like he's done a lot more than he has for interior stuff, but there's sort of a…
25:12
Jeremy Whitley: There's a commission he was working on of the bride.
25:16
Jeremy Whitley: the Bride of Frankenstein that is on our, page, which, like, It's so… is so…
25:23
Jeremy Whitley: Beautiful, like, if,
25:25
Jeremy Whitley: if you've got the extra money to put in to support the book, I highly recommend, putting that $150 in to get a commission from Alex, because you're gonna get something absolutely crazy. See, as they say, will put his foot in it. It's gonna be…
25:42
Jeremy Whitley: Brilliant.
25:44
Jeremy Whitley: Piece of work to look at.
25:47
Tad Eggleston: And, and there's 3 left.
25:50
Tad Eggleston: 2 of 5 have been claimed.
25:52
Jeremy Whitley: Yes.
25:54
Tad Eggleston: Luke has, has, has 5 digital commissions available.
26:02
Jeremy Whitley: Okay, no.
26:03
Tad Eggleston: Jamie Noguchi has 4 commissions available.
26:08
Tad Eggleston: And and you still have 2 more editorial reviews. Now, what do you do with an editorial review?
26:15
Jeremy Whitley: So as somebody who's been in comics for 15 years, who has been… who's written literally hundreds of comics at this point, it's an opportunity for people who are creators, who are maybe just getting started.
26:28
Jeremy Whitley: want to have somebody sit down and look at their stuff and give them notes before they try to take it to a press, or they try to get it out there.
26:38
Jeremy Whitley: I'm very much like a developmental editor on that front, which means I'm not going to give you a lot of notes about commas and things like that, but, you know, I will sit down and give you my thoughts about what you're, what you're working on, how I think it can improve.
26:54
Jeremy Whitley: questions that I think editors would have that, you know, you can, address before you get to that point. But mostly, just, you get to benefit from my slog of experience of, you know, 15 years of doing all of this.
27:10
Tad Eggleston: Now, do you have a red pen?
27:14
Jeremy Whitley: I do around here somewhere, yeah.
27:16
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
27:17
Jeremy Whitley: I got a red Sharpie, even.
27:19
Tad Eggleston: My friend Shelly would tell you that that's the essential part.
27:24
Tad Eggleston: Gotta have the red pen. She makes stickers of them now.
27:29
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, that's,
27:31
Jeremy Whitley: They're very useful. I even have, I don't know if you know this, but you can make the font on a computer red, so that you can have a red pen on the.
27:39
Tad Eggleston: I know. It's crazy.
27:42
Tad Eggleston: It's weird, cause, like… It's not as much fun.
27:47
Jeremy Whitley: Wow.
27:48
Tad Eggleston: I mean…
27:50
Jeremy Whitley: It all depends. As an editor, you gotta take joy where you can find it, you know?
27:54
Tad Eggleston: That's true. That's true.
27:56
Tad Eggleston: I sometimes write jokes in the margins.
28:03
Jeremy Whitley: the… It's the best place for them.
28:06
Tad Eggleston: or have conversations in the middle of the shared Google Doc.
28:13
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, I've definitely had a few of those.
28:16
Jeremy Whitley: Shared Google Docs end up with very, very long conversations, some of which are just a series of jokes, but yeah.
28:24
Tad Eggleston: Right.
28:25
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, I mean, that's… that's a big thing for me. It's not something I do a ton of, but it is,
28:32
Jeremy Whitley: something I do very thoroughly, so you'll get, you know, any notes from me, any thoughts that I have, if that is something you're looking to do, and you want somebody who is going to be happy to give you notes without you having to worry about whether or not they'll publish your thing.
28:47
Jeremy Whitley: You know, it's always.
28:49
Tad Eggleston: And there is that nice… that nice lack of pressure.
28:53
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
28:54
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Yeah, anything… I mean.
28:56
Jeremy Whitley: you know, at 75, anything that I tell you that you don't like, you can just tell me to fuck off and do whatever you want. You don't have to worry about it.
29:08
Tad Eggleston: Oh, it is 75. I, I, I thought, I thought you were, you were valuing yourself higher than that. I thought it was 150. I was gonna, like, give you a hard time for quoting a,
29:19
Tad Eggleston: a cut-rate price, but as it turns out, it is the real price, not the cut rate price.
29:25
Tad Eggleston: We got a couple of cool,
29:29
Tad Eggleston: From your personal stash, signed Strange Tales number 1.
29:34
Jeremy Whitley: Yep.
29:35
Tad Eggleston: And a Raven Princess Year 2 number 1.
29:38
Tad Eggleston: That's the… is that at New York Comic-Con? Yes, it is.
29:42
Jeremy Whitley: Yep, that was a New York Comic-Con variant. It's actually from
29:45
Jeremy Whitley: 2016, it is art by the great Sora Sung.
29:48
Tad Eggleston: That is a cool cover.
29:50
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
29:51
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
29:52
Jeremy Whitley: we did a pretty limited run of these, and I still just had a stack
29:57
Jeremy Whitley: Hidden away in my garage here, where all my… all my comic stuff is. And so I… you know, I know I… I know there are still some people out there who are pretty big fans of…
30:07
Jeremy Whitley: Raven, even though it hasn't been coming out for a while, and I know…
30:11
Jeremy Whitley: There are people who are fans of Sora, there should be a lot more people who are fans of Sora, because her work is amazing. But this particular variant was only ever available through the New York Comic-Con, and I've got a handful of them left.
30:26
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I might have to update my…
30:30
Tad Eggleston: But I have cars to buy this weekend, so I don't want to update it now.
30:34
Tad Eggleston: We'll see. I've got 20 days to decide, or until 7 more people beat me to it.
30:41
Tad Eggleston: But, but speaking of… Raven, and I imagine we can't talk
30:50
Tad Eggleston: much. Are all the rights still in limbo? Is there any chance that we'll see Raven and Princeless return at any point? Because I know that I'm…
31:01
Tad Eggleston: One of the people that misses it.
31:04
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah,
31:06
Jeremy Whitley: our big hope right now, we do have, rights back on that, we've gotten it. I had a long conversation last year with the folks over at the big book website about the fact that
31:20
Jeremy Whitley: the, there's nobody on the other side of that email address that they're sending stuff to, and that… they functionally don't exist anymore. And Amazon agreed with me and took that stuff down.
31:33
Jeremy Whitley: So…
31:35
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, it's been a year since there was anything on there at this point, so the rights are very much back in our court, and we are just looking for a good home for it that'll treat both Raven and Princess the way that they deserve to be treated, and
31:51
Jeremy Whitley: You know, would let us keep, finishing out the story that we have going there, and hopefully tell more stuff within that world, too.
31:59
Tad Eggleston: You have… you have my sincere hopes.
32:02
Tad Eggleston: Thank you. And a wish that there was a 22 Panels comics, and I could pitch you on the idea that I'd publish for you, but that would require
32:13
Tad Eggleston: Money that teachers don't… make.
32:17
Jeremy Whitley: I'm pretty familiar with teachers' salaries. My wife's an English teacher for, 10 years? 12 years?
32:25
Tad Eggleston: So you, you also made the unwise decision to find a sugar mama that was a teacher?
32:31
Jeremy Whitley: Yes.
32:34
Jeremy Whitley: Yes.
32:35
Jeremy Whitley: And in one of the worst-paying, teaching states in the country, too, in North Carolina, so…
32:40
Tad Eggleston: Ugh.
32:43
Tad Eggleston: But, that's right, because, you know…
32:49
Tad Eggleston: I was just… I was just reading a book.
32:53
Tad Eggleston: About dark money.
32:55
Tad Eggleston: And North Carolina, in particular, is a really, really sad tale, because they almost overnight went from
33:05
Tad Eggleston: A top 10 in the country.
33:08
Tad Eggleston: education state to a bottom 10 in the country education state, just because…
33:17
Tad Eggleston: There were a handful of people that Wanted to make that… happen.
33:23
Tad Eggleston: I mean, largely… For reasons.
33:27
Jeremy Whitley: Largely, our current congressman, Tom Tillis, is responsible for a good chunk of that.
33:34
Tad Eggleston: Well, and the people who made him a congressman.
33:37
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
33:38
Tad Eggleston: Like, like the… particularly, you know, we hear all, all about woke colleges.
33:47
Tad Eggleston: And the thing that… one of the things that stood out to me in the…
33:52
Tad Eggleston: In the book, which, if I recall correctly, is actually just called Dark Money.
33:58
Tad Eggleston: I could look it up, and I might in a second, but
34:02
Tad Eggleston: A… a playbook of the… the… various networks.
34:10
Tad Eggleston: of… of large donors was to cut higher education funding?
34:18
Tad Eggleston: And then come in to save the colleges with their philanthropy that came with… with requirements that they teach certain things.
34:29
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
34:32
Tad Eggleston: And it's like, wait a minute…
34:35
Tad Eggleston: And then you turn around and talk about woke colleges?
34:41
Jeremy Whitley: Yep. And they cut their legs out from underneath them, and then,
34:46
Jeremy Whitley: You know, continue to complain about what they do and don't do, even as they're the ones, deciding what they do and don't do, so…
34:57
Tad Eggleston: Damn.
34:58
Tad Eggleston: Particularly in economics, there, there's so many economic theories that have just, like, aren't…
35:05
Tad Eggleston: don't really pass the laboratory test, but certainly don't pass the real-world tests that are still part of many economics programs, and that's just…
35:19
Tad Eggleston: Problematic.
35:20
Tad Eggleston: But it's also not comics. So, talk to me about,
35:28
Tad Eggleston: We've got these two comics, do you have anything else on the horizon? Anything…
35:32
Tad Eggleston: You're looking at? Anything you're looking forward to?
35:36
Jeremy Whitley: So Jamie and I have our, third book of School for Extraterrestrial Girls coming out this summer. I believe that should be available in May. If you haven't checked out the first two, they're a lot of fun.
35:49
Tad Eggleston: Oh, I read the first one of…
35:53
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
35:54
Tad Eggleston: Trying to remember if I read the second one.
35:56
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, it's fantastic.
35:58
Jeremy Whitley: For anybody who hasn't read it, you know, it's a nice combination of coming of age and science fiction, and if you love a good, like, you know, boarding school story as well, there's certainly some of that in there.
36:11
Jeremy Whitley: So that's a lot of fun. That is,
36:16
Jeremy Whitley: That's the big thing. The…
36:19
Jeremy Whitley: second book of, the Dog Knight series.
36:23
Jeremy Whitley: has gotten pushed back to the first quarter of 2027, so that'll be out next year. But our hope with that is that, it'll give us enough time to get Book 3 done, so that hopefully we'll have, 2027 and 2028 new, new Dog Night books.
36:42
Jeremy Whitley: And, and certainly other things coming up.
36:47
Jeremy Whitley: Sorry, go ahead.
36:49
Tad Eggleston: No, go ahead.
36:52
Jeremy Whitley: I was gonna say, there's certainly other things coming up, but not ones that I can, talk about.
36:57
Tad Eggleston: Talk about yet.
37:01
Tad Eggleston: I was gonna say, yeah, you have… I mean, this flipbook aside, you have really kind of transitioned to do a lot more…
37:11
Tad Eggleston: Graphic novel work, then… Single-issue comic work is that.
37:19
Jeremy Whitley: I think that…
37:20
Tad Eggleston: intentional? Is that where the market has gone? Is it…
37:24
Tad Eggleston: Is it more relaxing, or more pressure? Talk to me about the differences.
37:30
Jeremy Whitley: So…
37:34
Jeremy Whitley: I think the first stuff I've done in a while that's come out in single issues was the Strange Tales miniseries that I just finished for Marvel, which was still a lot of fun, it's still stuff I like doing. I think, for me.
37:50
Jeremy Whitley: A lot of the stuff that I find,
37:55
Jeremy Whitley: you know, that I find that I can do what I want to in and tell those kinds of stories I want to, often tends to be in the, the graphic novel space, whether it be YA or middle grades or adult.
38:09
Jeremy Whitley: I think the direct market publishers tend to be a little bit on the fickle side with trying to figure out, what's gonna be…
38:17
Jeremy Whitley: What's gonna be the next thing, what they expect, and what they expect from me, given, sort of.
38:23
Jeremy Whitley: I think I'm definitely best known for writing for younger age groups, so sometimes it's hard to sell editors on the idea that the guy who wrote
38:34
Jeremy Whitley: Princess and 60 issues of My Little Pony, could also write an extremely bloody monster story, but that's part of why we're here.
38:45
Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, sometimes you gotta… you gotta prove it. Sometimes you get typecast, and you just have to play Robert De Niro over and over and over again.
38:54
Tad Eggleston: It's just, you know… I mean, it can be good, because it's a steady job, But…
39:04
Jeremy Whitley: But every once in a while, you want to get cast as, you know, Frankenstein's monster, right?
39:08
Tad Eggleston: Right.
39:09
Tad Eggleston: I thought De Niro got cast as Frankenstein.
39:11
Jeremy Whitley: He did.
39:15
Tad Eggleston: I haven't… seen it. Did he not play De Niro in that?
39:18
Jeremy Whitley: No.
39:19
Jeremy Whitley: No, the, Kenneth Reynolds, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, he is a… not a particularly…
39:27
Jeremy Whitley: Robert De Niro-y version of the… of Frankenstein's Monster.
39:31
Tad Eggleston: It's, it's It's… it's not a Frankenstein with a Bronx accent.
39:36
Jeremy Whitley: Although… I… I don't know, I'd pay to watch that.
39:41
Tad Eggleston: I think I would, too.
39:43
Jeremy Whitley: Call him Frankie.
39:51
Tad Eggleston: I should have so many more questions.
39:55
Tad Eggleston: Actually, I'll go back to Slay, because,
40:04
Tad Eggleston: You definitely work with a trope.
40:07
Tad Eggleston: That you've worked with before, because kinda… kinda where we…
40:12
Tad Eggleston: Where we get towards is, like…
40:17
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yes, I was pretending to be this person, and yes, I ran off to get…
40:23
Tad Eggleston: get myself possibly killed, but really, my hope was that this person would come save me, and I could say.
40:31
Tad Eggleston: Can I be your squire?
40:36
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
40:38
Tad Eggleston: So, I mean, like, I hope I didn't spoil too much there, but talk to me about the two characters, and their interactions, and…
40:52
Tad Eggleston: why that's important to you, because I feel like it's not the first time that you've kind of had the mentor-mentee
41:00
Tad Eggleston: I mean, sometimes they're closer in age, and they're peers, but it often feels like your stories involve
41:11
Tad Eggleston: someone who…
41:17
Tad Eggleston: again, is more the mentor than the other. I mean, there's always learning going back and forth, but it kind of feels like, you know, whether it was in Princess, or Raven, or…
41:30
Tad Eggleston: Why can't I… I always… it's my favorite work of yours, and I always forget the name, the… the… the Maverick graphic novel that we talked about.
41:39
Tad Eggleston: A while ago.
41:40
Jeremy Whitley: Oh, navigating with you.
41:42
Tad Eggleston: Yes, that one.
41:44
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
41:45
Tad Eggleston: That, they're… they're… that there's…
41:50
Tad Eggleston: Again, there's definitely the give and take, where they both learn from each other, but there always seems to be…
41:58
Tad Eggleston: be one that's kind of like…
42:00
Tad Eggleston: got things figured out a little bit more in… in whatever the central conflict is. Does that make sense? Or am I just talking out my ass?
42:10
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, I mean… I certainly… I think part of it is I really like the,
42:17
Jeremy Whitley: dynamic of one character who's very excited and gung-ho about doing a thing, even if they lack some of the skills of it, and the other person who's grumpy and just doesn't have time for their nonsense.
42:34
Jeremy Whitley: And that's very much the…
42:36
Jeremy Whitley: like, the duality here is you have Layla, who is, you know, 19, has sort of been… even in this post-apocalyptic world, has been a little sheltered, has sort of grown up, you know, in a religious community, away from
42:52
Jeremy Whitley: real danger,
42:54
Jeremy Whitley: But, like, has learned this thing about her mom, that her mom used to be a monster hunter, and she…
43:01
Jeremy Whitley: Her mom died when she was very young, so she wants to, pick up that mantle and go out and do what her mom was doing and help people,
43:10
Jeremy Whitley: But the sort of reality of being…
43:13
Jeremy Whitley: you know, the scarred rider of being somebody who does that stuff is that it's a lot of solitude, and a lot of losing people that you care about, and a lot of, like.
43:24
Jeremy Whitley: being over-prepared for, bad things to happen. And that is sort of… the reality of Ryder's World, is that she's been out there on the road by herself for a long time, and
43:35
Jeremy Whitley: has zero desire to have a mentee, or to, really get stuck teaching anybody anything. You know, she is in a world where it's, it's kill or be killed, and
43:50
Jeremy Whitley: She… she's gonna be a pretty hard one to convince that she should take this annoying kid under her wedding.
44:01
Tad Eggleston: That's fair, that's fair.
44:03
Tad Eggleston: In a similar sense, what would you say the… the… the… theme beyond, obviously.
44:14
Tad Eggleston: You know, flip… flipping the fridging on its head, but, like, the… the… the… Character development theme of…
44:25
Tad Eggleston: The girlfriend Survives… is… What's… what's your dynamic there?
44:31
Jeremy Whitley: I think, the girlfriend survives…
44:34
Jeremy Whitley: A lot of it is about,
44:38
Jeremy Whitley: Fact that nobody is any just one thing,
44:42
Jeremy Whitley: That no character is just somebody's girlfriend, no character is just a superhero. They are people who have…
44:49
Jeremy Whitley: a lot of their own, issues, problems, secrets, whatever, you know, certainly our, our main character in that, Delilah, has,
45:00
Jeremy Whitley: A lot of stuff going on. But also…
45:05
Jeremy Whitley: You know, the world of superheroes is something where there's…
45:09
Jeremy Whitley: When we're talking about secret identities, constant lies, and hiding the truth, and a lot of deciding, who gets to be the people who are in charge and hiding the truth, and who has to be the one who is just suddenly surprised when, you know, a supervillain shows up to murder them.
45:27
Jeremy Whitley: So it's… it's a lot about just sort of the…
45:32
Jeremy Whitley: I think the social rules and ideas that even go into the concept of…
45:37
Jeremy Whitley: Getting to a place where things like fridging are a possibility, and sort of the way that,
45:45
Jeremy Whitley: The way that our expectations of superheroes and of girlfriends, for that matter, sort of shape what ends up being these people's ultimate fates.
45:59
Tad Eggleston: I'm feeling the hour.
46:03
Tad Eggleston: catching up with me, so I'm gonna… I'm gonna pivot into…
46:07
Tad Eggleston: into closing questions. I now have two of them, so one of them you've heard before, and the other one will be new for you, unless you've been listening to recent episodes, in which case, thank you.
46:18
Tad Eggleston: Well, and for that matter, that would put you in a short category that includes my brother Adam. I didn't mention him last time. My apologies. Adam and my mom listened to all of the episodes.
46:31
Jeremy Whitley: Hi, Mom!
46:32
Tad Eggleston: Hi, Mom. Hi, Adam.
46:34
Tad Eggleston: So… This is my, my… Fifth year.
46:43
Tad Eggleston: of doing this podcast. And… and I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone half the time, because…
46:50
Tad Eggleston: Because, like, every time I turn around, it's like… it's like earlier, when you were talking about the specific sizes of Terry Moore comics, and I'm like, oh, I get to moderate a panel with Terry Moore in, like, a month and a half!
47:06
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
47:07
Tad Eggleston: Because I was able to email Terry Moore and say, hey, you want to be on a panel?
47:14
Jeremy Whitley: That was… that, I think, is one of the wildest things that I've learned being in comics, is that comic celebrities aren't real celebrities.
47:22
Tad Eggleston: Well, it's partially that, but it's partially the, like, it's just a… it's a community that is…
47:30
Tad Eggleston: Generally… open to each other.
47:33
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, I mean, most of our…
47:34
Jeremy Whitley: If you're in… if you're in the comics industry, most of them, you can email them, and they will email you back.
47:40
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I…
47:41
Jeremy Whitley: their email might be, I am very busy right now.
47:44
Tad Eggleston: Oh yeah, no, that.
47:45
Jeremy Whitley: Maybe we'll get back to you.
47:46
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
47:49
Tad Eggleston: But, like, surreal experiences like that have become commonplace for me, but that hasn't made them any less surreal.
47:58
Tad Eggleston: And I find that that's true of…
48:00
Tad Eggleston: Of almost everybody I talk to in the industry.
48:06
Tad Eggleston: You know, no matter how long they've been in the industry, they have stories where, like, they just sit back and go, I can't believe that this happened in my life, and it never would have happened if I didn't work in comics.
48:20
Tad Eggleston: So I've started asking for those stories. Give me a story of just some surreal…
48:25
Tad Eggleston: occurrence in your life, some… something you got to do, or something you… somebody you met, or some conversation you had that, like, never in a million years would have happened if you hadn't…
48:39
Tad Eggleston: Decided to be one of the people who took comics way too seriously.
48:43
Jeremy Whitley: I was actually just talking about this the other day, because I had…
48:47
Jeremy Whitley: an experience like that, that I will never,
48:52
Jeremy Whitley: I'll never forget, because, so I got… you know, I had met Mark Waid, and gotten to know Mark Waid in one of those very, like, conversations I was talking about, where, like, you can just email people, and you can, get to know them, and
49:08
Jeremy Whitley: he had suggested, me two folks that I had been working with at Marvel to work on Unstoppable Wasp.
49:16
Jeremy Whitley: And, it wasn't even called that at that point, it was just a Nadia book. And…
49:24
Jeremy Whitley: he said, you know, we're gonna introduce her in this free comic book day story, and then I want her to be a main character for these, like, 2 or 3 issues of Avengers, when he's writing all new, all different Avengers at that point. And he said, do you wanna… would you be interested in co-writing these issues with me?
49:41
Jeremy Whitley: So would I be interested in co-writing the flagship Avengers book with Mark Waid? Yes, I think I would be okay with that.
49:50
Jeremy Whitley: Which was big enough to begin with, but then I remember, like, Mark and I went back and forth over the script a couple of times, and we sent it in to Tom Breufort, who was the editor in the Avengers office at that point.
50:02
Jeremy Whitley: And I got this email, that I was having trouble understanding, because it was just like… Hey, Adam!
50:10
Jeremy Whitley: Jeremy and Mark are copied on this, we wanted to go, you know, here's the first draft of the script, wanted to see if you had any thoughts or notes or anything, and I was like, who the fuck is Adam?
50:20
Jeremy Whitley: Like, is this just somebody that's working at Marvel? Is this another, like, editor? And I go up, and I pull up the addresses, and it's Adam Kubert who is drawing the book.
50:31
Jeremy Whitley: And I was like, I…
50:36
Jeremy Whitley: I never thought I'd be writing something for, you know.
50:41
Jeremy Whitley: Adam Cubert, or from anybody from
50:43
Jeremy Whitley: The, like, family that has a literal, like, you know.
50:47
Tad Eggleston: The comics aren't…
50:48
Jeremy Whitley: School named after them.
50:51
Jeremy Whitley: And so, like, this… you know, it looks incredible, obviously, that issue of Avengers, but that moment of just being like.
50:58
Jeremy Whitley: Oh, Adam Kubert's drawing in this book that I… I wrote maybe too fast. I should go back and, like, look at this and make sure it's good, you know? Because I… you know, I definitely felt like it was good, but there's a point where… at which you're like.
51:12
Jeremy Whitley: Well, and see, that's just funny.
51:14
Tad Eggleston: You brought up to begin with.
51:16
Tad Eggleston: Right. That's just… it's funny to me, because when you brought up Wasp to begin with, I immediately thought of your artist on Wasp, who hadn't quite taken over the world yet, but, like, it was clear that she was about to.
51:31
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, I… you know, that's funny, too, to me, because,
51:36
Jeremy Whitley: I mean, Elsa Charitier is… she's insane. She's very good at what she does, and she's very, very fast, which I don't think is something that everybody can really appreciate how fast she is, because you're not, sort of, getting the pages in as they're happening. Right.
51:51
Jeremy Whitley: And…
51:52
Jeremy Whitley: So, like, that was so cool working with her on that book, and when the book was coming back.
51:58
Jeremy Whitley: She wasn't available because she was working on a graph novel with Fraction at the time.
52:03
Tad Eggleston: November?
52:05
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, November.
52:05
Tad Eggleston: Just a little four-parter that…
52:08
Jeremy Whitley: Which I knew nothing about, I just knew she wasn't available.
52:13
Jeremy Whitley: But it was, it was so interesting, because I had had a very similar…
52:18
Jeremy Whitley: issue the first time I wrote a book for Marvel, because my first ever work for Marvel was on an anthology book called, Secret War, Secret Love,
52:29
Jeremy Whitley: where I wrote a Danny and Misty, story in there, so Iron Fist and Misty Night, and,
52:37
Jeremy Whitley: I turned in that… it's like an 8-issue story, and I had no idea who would be drawing it, no idea of when it would be published or anything, and my editor, Alana, who I've worked with on a ton of stuff, she was my editor on WASP as well,
52:53
Jeremy Whitley: Just sent me this note that was like, hey.
52:58
Jeremy Whitley: I don't know who you had in mind for drawing this, but I just found out that Gurihuru is available. Would you…
53:05
Tad Eggleston: would that be cool with you? Do you think that would be a good match? And I was like… And he said, yes, please.
53:11
Jeremy Whitley: Yes, please. Like, I would love to have Greehu work on this. And so, when it turned out that Elsa couldn't do the second book of Wasp.
53:20
Jeremy Whitley: I…
53:22
Jeremy Whitley: I pressed my luck, and I was like, hey, so… remember I worked with Gurihiru before? I know… I know that at this point, Gwenpool just ended. So, they're not doing another book with Marvel right now. Would they be free to jump on Wasp?
53:37
Jeremy Whitley: And got a… oh, I'll check, we'll see. And then, you know, the next thing I knew, they were on WASP, and I was working with them again, and they're…
53:44
Jeremy Whitley: Their stuff is just always so good.
53:48
Tad Eggleston: Then Kelly Thompson gave them Jeff, and you'll never hear from them again.
53:52
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
53:54
Jeremy Whitley: Ugh, they're… they're so good, they're disgusting.
53:57
Tad Eggleston: They are.
53:57
Jeremy Whitley: good.
53:58
Tad Eggleston: They're amazing.
53:59
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
54:00
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, so, I mean, like, you might not have a ton of Marvel work, but you've gotten, like, the creme de la creme of various artists that…
54:11
Jeremy Whitley: Oh, yeah, and I mean, Bailey, who was working on Strange Tales with me, Bailey Underwood, is.
54:16
Tad Eggleston: aren't…
54:16
Jeremy Whitley: really good.
54:18
Tad Eggleston: She hasn't done a ton of stuff, she's still…
54:21
Jeremy Whitley: Fairly new to longer sequential stuff, but, she's a rock star.
54:28
Tad Eggleston: Excellent, excellent.
54:30
Tad Eggleston: Alright, closing question.
54:32
Tad Eggleston: It's my favorite question, because it makes my reading pile bigger and bigger and bigger.
54:37
Tad Eggleston: Tell me something you love?
54:39
Tad Eggleston: Preferably a comic, but we don't have rules.
54:41
Tad Eggleston: Preferably storytelling, but again, with the rules.
54:45
Tad Eggleston: But something that you love.
54:47
Tad Eggleston: That not enough people around you have experienced, and you need them to, so that you have more people to talk about it with.
54:59
Jeremy Whitley: I'm gonna go… so…
55:02
Jeremy Whitley: I have read a lot of comics and a lot of manga recently, but they're pretty popular stuff already. What I want to go with is actually a horror movie, because I watch a lot of scary movies for my podcasts, and then just generally beyond that.
55:20
Jeremy Whitley: Last year, there were several good horror movies, that I would rank very highly, like, all time. Obviously, Sinners is great, Weapons was great. We just talked about Bring Her Back on the podcast, which is a very good, feel-bad movie of the year, I would say.
55:38
Jeremy Whitley: But the one that I really loved that not enough people have seen is sort of a German horror movie called The Ugly Stepsister.
55:48
Jeremy Whitley: Which is a retelling of Cinderella, basically, from the perspective of the ugly stepsister, who is, going through a series of…
56:01
Jeremy Whitley: Mostly real, operations and processes to
56:08
Jeremy Whitley: get less ugly so that she can beat out Cinderella for the prince. And these are all, like, time-specific, so they're horrible things. It is a catalog of horrible things that we've done to women in the name of… of beauty.
56:23
Jeremy Whitley: And is, an incredibly painful watch, but a very good and weirdly sometimes funny movie.
56:31
Tad Eggleston: And streaming on… Hulu.
56:36
Jeremy Whitley: Oh, is it on Hulu now?
56:37
Tad Eggleston: It is. Nice.
56:38
Jeremy Whitley: I saw it on Shutter, but yeah, I highly recommend it.
56:42
Tad Eggleston: And also, just because there's the package, it's weird to look and see… see the logo that says Disney, Hulu, HBO, as you're describing it, because it just so feels like a Disney movie.
56:58
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah, it is, you know, it is a German version of… Cinderella.
57:03
Jeremy Whitley: Boy, is it rough. So, you know, I would definitely recommend it. Don't eat it, or don't watch it while you're eating, I would say.
57:09
Tad Eggleston: Watch it while you're eating, and probably long before bedtime.
57:14
Jeremy Whitley: Yeah.
57:17
Jeremy Whitley: I mean, you're probably still gonna have nightmares about it, but it is, it is an incredibly good movie, and a weird indie film on top of that, which I'm always for weird indie horror.
57:30
Tad Eggleston: I like weird and indie. I don't always like horror, so I don't know if I'm gonna wind up being the one that you can talk about this one with, because even watching the trailer here on the IMDP page is making me a little queasy.
57:46
Tad Eggleston: It is not… it does not jump-out-at-you shock horror kind of stuff, but it is…
57:50
Jeremy Whitley: I very much body horror.
57:53
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, so, Jeremy, it is always a pleasure. I love The Slayer, I can't wait to read.
58:02
Tad Eggleston: The girlfriend survives, and
58:06
Tad Eggleston: Can't wait for your next round of graphic novels, because they seem to keep…
58:11
Tad Eggleston: This is the advantage of being a writer. You can write it and pass it off to the artist, and they gotta do the long work.
58:18
Jeremy Whitley: Oh, yeah.
58:19
Jeremy Whitley: I've…
58:20
Jeremy Whitley: I've got things now that I've been working on for, like, 3 and 4 years that still haven't even been announced, because they're in the art process somewhere.
58:27
Tad Eggleston: Right, right. Always, always a pleasure, and
58:33
Tad Eggleston: For… for Jeremy Whitley, this has been 22 Panels, and we will see you after the next page.