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With Great Power #290... 22 Panels with You Never Know Team · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

0:04
Tad Eggleston: Is it gonna tell me I'm recording?
0:06
samantharamos: I think you're already.
0:08
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Yeah, Ted's already recording.
0:10
Tad Eggleston: Well, that was Blair's that was recording. This is me recording now.
0:15
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Very messy.
0:16
Tad Eggleston: Now we're just, we're just, we're just, we're just starting in, in media res here. Welcome back to 22 Panels. My guests tonight are Elliot Mondory, Alicia Madden, and Blair Schiff, the writer, artist, and, editor of…
0:33
Tad Eggleston: And I had this… this book title in my head 30 seconds ago, You Never Know, from Calamity Comics. It's the… it's the first…
0:42
Tad Eggleston: First comics venture for Elliot and Alicia. Claire, are you… er… Blair.
0:51
Tad Eggleston: Right?
0:53
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): I love stuff either, you're fine.
0:54
Tad Eggleston: No, I covered up your name when I pulled up the comic. Have you edited other comics, or are you also new in this venture?
1:06
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): So I'm a copy editor by trade, so I've edited a gamut of all sorts of novels as well as comics, so run the whole spectrum.
1:16
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
1:17
Tad Eggleston: So…
1:19
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, first I'm gonna ask who wants to give the front… oh, I should also say, Psycho Comicology set this whole thing up, and they… they showed up to… to slum with us, and… and if you're in Algonquin… well, I was GONNA plug Modern Age in Algonquin, but then Dr. Ramos decided that he needed to flip me off, so…
1:39
Dr. Edgar Ramos: The next time.
1:41
Tad Eggleston: Algonquin. Oh, now they're number one science. Now I can plug Modern Age Comics and Algonquin as well.
1:50
Tad Eggleston: Where, where, Elliot and Alicia will be… it's both Elliot and Alicia going, right?
1:56
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Yes.
1:57
Tad Eggleston: On the… 28th? Is that right?
1:59
Alicia MADDEN: Yes.
2:00
Tad Eggleston: in the evening, I don't know if I'll make it over or not. I'll try. I normally have a Wednesday night… I normally have a Wednesday night commitment, but we'll see. It's his first… first in-store guest, so I might need to…
2:13
Tad Eggleston: to… to cancel Movie Club, or bail on Movie Club. It depends on what movie we're watching. Anyway, who wants to give the front counter, Rich? Who wants to tell Lee and Edgar how to sell this comic to people across the counter?
2:30
Tad Eggleston: At their store. Sam will be the one that actually succeeds, because that's the way it always works in that family.
2:36
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Honestly, a smile goes a long way. Just smile and be, like, you know, pat your eyes.
2:41
samantharamos: Yeah, no, it, it really… look where I am, so…
2:47
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): So, the quick pitches, you never know, deals with the concept of how you never know what other people are going through behind closed doors, and how strong of a hold anxiety can have on people.
2:56
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): The longer pitches, it follows this guy, Jason, who seems to be the postboy for success and wellness, and on the surface, everything looks okay, but as we keep going, we learn that something's wrong, and then you learn about how strong the whole anxiety can really have on somebody who seems to have it all.
3:13
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
3:13
Tad Eggleston: I like this idea, this is… I mean, I think…
3:20
Tad Eggleston: All of the hosts here have dealt with anxiety, either personally or professionally, or both, so…
3:30
Tad Eggleston: That, that's, that's right up our alley. What inspired
3:35
Tad Eggleston: First, what, what, what, what, cause, because I had your bio up a second ago. I started flipping through pages, and you know how it happens. Fine. So, so you're a Chicago-based lawyer.
3:49
Tad Eggleston: First of all, what, what, what, what part of law? Because no lawyer does everything.
3:55
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): No, we do criminal defense mostly, but criminal defense, personal injury, workers' comp, and traffic, so I always say everything from traffic tickets up to murder, everything in between, if you get in a car accident, or if you need… I also do intellectual property law as well.
4:09
Tad Eggleston: Okay, okay, so… You're closer to the everywhere than a lot of people.
4:16
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): In private practice, you kind of have to be.
4:18
Tad Eggleston: Well, sometimes. I mean, we won't get into that. We don't need to critique lawyers. I have a lot of them in my family, and that many more among friends and whatnot, so, like, I have people with all the lawyer opinions.
4:36
Tad Eggleston: And alicia?
4:41
Tad Eggleston: Is this, what's your day job? Do I know your day job, or…
4:46
Alicia MADDEN: No, the day job is just what I do for money.
4:49
Tad Eggleston: Oh, okay.
4:50
Tad Eggleston: There we go, I like that. Well, and that right there means that you're made for comics, because you understand that you don't do comics for money.
5:01
Alicia MADDEN: Absolutely. What I do every day kind of just, feeds my… my landlord and my DC addiction.
5:10
Tad Eggleston: Okay. That's about it.
5:11
Tad Eggleston: Okay, we'll do the quick question, what are your favorite DC books right now?
5:16
Tad Eggleston: Right now, I'm just going through, like, different, DC Universe Rebirth series.
5:24
Alicia MADDEN: Okay, so you're going backwards a little bit. Yeah, because, like.
5:27
Tad Eggleston: No, no, Rebirth was great.
5:29
Alicia MADDEN: It was great, and
5:31
Alicia MADDEN: Yeah, that's just the main one for me. I'm in love with, like, all of the Robins, so that's where I'm at.
5:38
Tad Eggleston: All of the Robins.
5:39
Tad Eggleston: Yep. Okay, okay.
5:41
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I would make a joke with that, but I should probably watch what I say.
5:45
Alicia MADDEN: You…
5:45
Tad Eggleston: Wife is here.
5:47
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I was gonna say there was a lawyer present, sure. I mean, she's not too. She showed me the jokes, you know, I mean, so…
5:53
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): I can take it.
5:53
Tad Eggleston: the Ramans. Well, he meant more that, like, you would be a bad witness in court. I mean, a good witness for Sam.
6:05
Tad Eggleston: But a… but a bad witness for him if he went across any lines.
6:15
Tad Eggleston: Okay, so… Why comics?
6:23
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): I mean, I can speak to why I made this as a comic, because to me.
6:28
Tad Eggleston: That's where we start.
6:29
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): the visual aspect of it is just something that really resonates with me. I am the worst reader when it comes to a novel. If you put a novel in front of me, I will read maybe three sentences and just completely zone out. I just struggle picturing it and feeling,
6:46
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): from just a regular novel, but when I read a comic book or something with visuals, I can really relate to it, I can absorb more like a movie, and it's easy for me to process that's just my learning style.
6:59
Tad Eggleston: I just need to warn you right now.
7:03
Tad Eggleston: More like a movie is almost… it's not quite, but close to one of my trigger sentences, because comics are so much better than movies.
7:13
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Agreed.
7:16
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): It's like watching a movie versus the audiobook. Like, let's say you're watching Harry Potter.
7:22
Tad Eggleston: I'll totally take the audiobook over the movie.
7:24
Tad Eggleston: Most of the time.
7:26
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): I'll take the audiobook over the regular book, but…
7:29
Tad Eggleston: That's also true.
7:30
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): To me, it's just… the visual aspect of comics is so powerful that it just… it lends itself to this type of story, and… that I wouldn't be able to tell in a prose novel.
7:42
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): So, when I had the idea for the story, I wrote the first issue, and to me, it just made sense, the visuals, when I was writing things out in panels, that it had to be in a comic book setting.
7:54
Tad Eggleston: And how many issues are we looking at right now?
7:58
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Right now, 9, for the first series, and then we're working on another series, which will be…
8:05
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): An undisclosed amount of issues at this time.
8:07
Tad Eggleston: Okay. This is… this is where it's great that you're a lawyer, because you can… you can…
8:13
Tad Eggleston: Keep the lights on.
8:17
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Hell yeah, goodbye.
8:18
samantharamos: If I can… if I can ask you a question, were you a comic book reader when you were a kid? Like, were you.
8:25
Tad Eggleston: Let's just get into dissertation questions. I thought you were done. No, go ahead.
8:28
samantharamos: I can't, I can't help it.
8:29
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): You have the fun dissertation questions.
8:32
samantharamos: I had a blast, let me tell you. Like, I had the best time.
8:36
samantharamos: But you know, did you… did you grow up reading comic books, or was it something that you started doing a little bit
8:42
samantharamos: You know, later in life, or… you know, just… was it something that you always had, or was it something that you realized was a tool that was there for you?
8:51
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Both. So, when I was really young, my uncle took me to San Diego Comic-Con, so I got exposed to comics early on, but it wasn't until I was older that I appreciated the comic medium as a whole, and that I was able to really resonate with the stories I was reading.
9:07
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Because I always thought it was just Batman, Superman, but when I got really into the indie comics and these really grounded stories based in reality, that's when I really started to look more into comic books and really, you know, dive deep into what other stories are out there.
9:23
Tad Eggleston: Just out of curiosity, what year did you go to San Diego?
9:32
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): I couldn't… I want to say maybe 2000 and… 4? Okay. Like, around there?
9:40
Tad Eggleston: That was… that was after I got to go.
9:42
Tad Eggleston: 98.
9:44
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): I was… 2 years old in 98, so… Okay.
9:49
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, that probably… No, no, I…
9:56
Alicia MADDEN: The shock wave that just sent.
9:58
Tad Eggleston: No, I knew he was younger than me, but I was 18 in 98, so, you know, he could have been, like, a 6-year-old in 98.
10:09
Tad Eggleston: He went after it became, like, Movie Fest, though. There was still comic stuff, but, like, I went to one of the last years where it was, like… I mean, the way I always tell people, I was in Southern California and heard about it on the radio.
10:26
Tad Eggleston: And we decided to drive down on Saturday morning, and we bought our tickets there. By 2004, that was not an option.
10:35
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Still get the tickets for the next year.
10:39
Tad Eggleston: Maybe.
10:41
Dr. Edgar Ramos: So, Ellie, I gotta… I gotta… I gotta ask you a question about the books. Obviously, I read it, and I won't even begin to go into the clinical yet, yet. I'm gonna give you time to kind of formulate, but some… some straightforward questions that I kind of…
10:54
Dr. Edgar Ramos: had through my… my mind was, one, so why a comic format and not, like, a graphic memoir or graphic novel? Like, what was… what was going on?
11:03
Tad Eggleston: He just hit one of my first questions.
11:05
Dr. Edgar Ramos: And either of you guys can answer that, just how… how did that come to a conclusion?
11:11
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Yeah, let's go with that first.
11:13
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): So just to… so I can clarify, so I know the right way to go about answering, when you say graphic memoir, do you mean, like, a full completed series, or, like, a full story, as opposed to.
11:22
Tad Eggleston: I mean, to me, the question would be, why do this episodically like a comic, rather than…
11:31
Tad Eggleston: Doing the graphic novel, doing it as a story at once, however many pages, not having to worry about those 22-page.
11:42
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Correct, yeah.
11:43
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Gotcha, yeah, so… Traffic novel can be complete, or it can be, like, two trades, for example, and… Right.
11:48
Dr. Edgar Ramos: The reason why I ask is just to kind of give you…
11:50
Dr. Edgar Ramos: build you a little bit more here, is that… is the idea of, like, right now, you see a lot of comic books being written almost for trades, you know, like Batman, absolutely.
11:58
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
11:58
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Look, and it's… I mean, you can see it being written for trade, like, you know, your first 6 issues, it goes into a trade. Next six issues, it goes into another trade. So, that's kind of, like, the hot thing going on, or business-wise, or whatever. So, what was going through your guys' mind, or… and yeah, if you can talk a little bit about that.
12:13
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): So, originally, it was just the full graphic novel. I think Blair, when we were working on it, we said it's just gonna be the full, nine issues as one giant,
12:23
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): graph novel, but then…
12:26
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): originally, the story you never know is going to be around four different characters and the different things that they were going through from different perspectives, but you wouldn't know what was happening when you were reading one person's storyline. And that was going to be interconnecting all within one story, and then I was walking around one day and thought to myself.
12:46
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): I don't have the emotional bandwidth to write that. So I decided to scrap the altogether storyline and just focus on one at a time, and it seemed that writing it as issues… we were gonna do a full
13:01
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): one, you know, nine-chapter graphic novel, like, I think even in the script, it's written as chapters as opposed to issues, but then we realized, one, by doing it as issues, we can improve as we go. We're not just kind of stuck in issue, like, no, this is what it is, it's not going to change. We can still make changes as we go.
13:21
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Two, it doesn't take as much time to release issue by issue, whereas I write the script, if it was a full trade or full graphic novel.
13:30
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): it would have taken probably 4 or 5 years to see the light of day, whereas this way we can get issues out a little quicker. And then it helps us as a team learn how we can work together better over the series, as opposed to just being
13:45
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): We're doing this one thing, here you go, and if it's bad, it's shit, because we didn't, get a chance to edit and hone our skills along the way.
13:54
Tad Eggleston: That makes sense.
13:56
Tad Eggleston: So it was… it was more of a… of a…
14:02
Tad Eggleston: what's the word I'm looking for? More of a developmental decision than a strictly storytelling decision.
14:07
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Yes, and also a financial one.
14:10
Tad Eggleston: Well, obviously. Obviously.
14:13
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): The underlying thing that we don't really have to mention, but we all know it's finances at the end of the day.
14:18
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, that's another interesting question. I assume that you're either…
14:25
Tad Eggleston: I mean, since you're co-founders of the press, I assume that you're essentially, going the…
14:33
Tad Eggleston: the self-published route of… of the… the late 80s, early 90s, you're… you're Terry Moores, you're…
14:41
Tad Eggleston: Jeff Smith's, etc, that went, rather than getting somebody to buy this, I'm just gonna make it myself.
14:48
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Yes.
14:51
Tad Eggleston: did you consider crowdfunding? I mean, that's… that's an option that didn't exist then, that is often more popular now to make it…
15:02
Tad Eggleston: Just a little bit more breathable.
15:06
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): We did do Kickstarter for the first issue. Oh, okay.
15:09
Tad Eggleston: What's the Kickstarter, then?
15:10
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Yeah, it ended, I think we ran it from… was it… at least, was it all of November we ran it?
15:17
Alicia MADDEN: We dropped it, November the 5th, and we are 434% funded.
15:27
Tad Eggleston: Excellent.
15:27
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Well done. That's amazing. Yeah.
15:29
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): We did well on Kickstarter, but…
15:32
Tad Eggleston: That's… that's… that's what I like to hear.
15:34
Tad Eggleston: And I wish that you told me at the beginning of the Kickstarter, because, like, I love to plug the hell out of Kickstarters.
15:43
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): There will be eight.
15:45
Alicia MADDEN: more.
15:46
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, there should be, yeah.
15:47
Tad Eggleston: What… what is the distribution plan beyond the Kickstarter, then?
15:52
Tad Eggleston: Right.
15:53
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Right now, obviously a lot of word of mouth, local stores, and just go into… we go to a lot of cons throughout the year. Like, I go to Seattle, try to go to Seattle every year, New York, San Diego, CT, so hitting up a lot of the big, cons, and just.
16:08
Tad Eggleston: So, so, so table sales and, and, and direct sale to Comic Shop?
16:14
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Exactly.
16:15
Tad Eggleston: No… no distribution partner.
16:17
Tad Eggleston: That… that makes sense.
16:20
Tad Eggleston: let's… let's talk about the book, because I think… I think I… I overly scared you beforehand, and that wasn't on…
16:28
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Not even slightly.
16:30
Tad Eggleston: Well, okay, I mean, the way I played it was… was…
16:34
Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna start with a couple of things that I loved.
16:38
Tad Eggleston: Alicia, I don't think I have seen a silent
16:47
Tad Eggleston: Restaurant scene, where I could hear the noise.
16:50
Tad Eggleston: as much as I did on this first page.
16:53
Alicia MADDEN: Yay!
16:54
Tad Eggleston: That's… it's… it's… it's actually… it's a difficult thing to pull off.
16:59
Tad Eggleston: without… Some sort of…
17:06
Alicia MADDEN: onomatopoeia.
17:07
Tad Eggleston: Or lettering, or whatever. Just… just something to indicate noise. Which, one of the beauties of comics is that you can do that. That's an option.
17:17
Tad Eggleston: But this gave me the feel of a, of a…
17:22
Tad Eggleston: a semi-crowded restaurant with stuff going on. You could tell conversations were going on, and you could tell that it didn't matter
17:30
Tad Eggleston: That we heard what they were saying right off the bat.
17:34
Tad Eggleston: So that was cool. I also like a lot of your, your panel… Layouts.
17:41
Tad Eggleston: Yay, thanks! I'm a nut for a good page layout.
17:48
Alicia MADDEN: That means a lot coming from you as somebody who does care about formatting and layouts and stuff, because I never knew if I was doing it the right way.
17:59
Tad Eggleston: This is…
17:59
Alicia MADDEN: Yeah.
18:00
Tad Eggleston: One of the questions I ask any new comic artist, particularly one that, like, your bio says you were self-taught,
18:11
Tad Eggleston: Have you…
18:13
Tad Eggleston: Have you read any of the classic How to Make Comics Works? Have you read Scott McCloud? Have you read Will Eisner? Have you read…
18:23
Alicia MADDEN: I read those after I started making the comic. I was like, oh, please tell me that I did something right.
18:31
Tad Eggleston: You did many things right, but if you read them after you started reading the comic, I'm very much looking forward to the next one. This is where I'll also ask Elliot, did you read Brian Bendis? Did you read Scott McCloud?
18:45
Tad Eggleston: Not Brian Bendis comics, but Brian Bendis's, making comics, his writing comics book.
18:51
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Funny enough, no. I read it afterwards.
18:56
Tad Eggleston: Okay, and also, for both of you, I'd recommend, Matt Madden and Jessica Abel's,
19:05
Tad Eggleston: Drawing words and writing pictures.
19:08
Tad Eggleston: Which is actually, like, the textbook to the class that they teach.
19:12
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Huh.
19:13
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): The funniest thing about, I guess, this issue specifically was this is the very first issue that I wrote, period. I never… I didn't actually have much of a plan when I wrote it, I just scripted without really knowing how to script. So subsequent issues will look very different in terms of structure. This was literally, here you go.
19:31
Tad Eggleston: Well, and what I… the first thing I told Edgar today, and I'm like, how do I put this?
19:39
Tad Eggleston: This was half a comic.
19:40
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. It was a good half a comic, but it was half a comic.
19:45
Tad Eggleston: Most of the information that we get from this could have been, like, 10 pages, and the 10 pages that are missing is…
19:54
Tad Eggleston: setting up…
19:56
Tad Eggleston: even the lead character before we discover his anxiety. So, so you talked about the guy that's got it together, and everybody…
20:06
Tad Eggleston: I didn't know him at all until I met his anxiety. That's the part that's missing right now.
20:12
Tad Eggleston: And… and because it's a multi-issue series, I don't know if you plan on go… I assume that there will be more going into that going forward, and… and…
20:24
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): That sort of thing, but, but, but, like.
20:27
Tad Eggleston: I mean, just from my standpoint, like, the other thing is the only moment that I realized that he was dating the girl.
20:35
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Is when he kissed her.
20:38
Tad Eggleston: It wasn't established, established.
20:41
Tad Eggleston: I… I think that's a really interesting point that you… you bring up, Tad, because, like, being a…
20:47
samantharamos: clinician… it… for me, it resonated very differently, because when people come into the office, I meet their… Stop.
20:54
Tad Eggleston: Anxiety. Right.
20:56
samantharamos: So it's like, reading… reading this from our side, it was like, okay, like, I see this, I haven't met this person yet, like, I don't know their stuff yet, but I see, like, what they're carrying. So, like, I… understanding that, like, from a reader's point of view, and then, like, a clinician's point of view, where it's like.
21:13
samantharamos: I… I want… I want to know more about this person, because I want to know, like, what is making you tick?
21:20
Tad Eggleston: Because I can see…
21:22
samantharamos: What it's doing to you.
21:24
samantharamos: So it… I think from at least my standpoint, it was like, I want to know more, one, because I'm nosy, and two, like, because I want to know this person.
21:34
Tad Eggleston: Right.
21:35
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Eventually.
21:35
Tad Eggleston: All of this is to say, for me at least, and it sounds like Sam, I'm definitely reading Issue 2,
21:42
Tad Eggleston: I just kind of wish that more of it was already in issue one, and I say that with love. I told Edgar I was gonna use my old writer's workshop.
21:51
Tad Eggleston: line. I always used to tell people, like, if I tell you great story and nothing else, that means I hated it. If I rip it to shreds, that means that I loved it and I want it to be better.
22:07
Tad Eggleston: With comics, it's hard to do rough drafts, because, as Alicia can tell us, you probably wrote this whole thing in a week, and then she took, like…
22:17
Tad Eggleston: Okay, you know what I mean.
22:19
Tad Eggleston: You're a rookie, and you're a lawyer.
22:24
Tad Eggleston: Elliot's shaking his head at me. But Alicia then has to pour her blood, sweat, and tears over each page, and each page…
22:33
Tad Eggleston: takes her…
22:35
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): I'm still trying to figure out the number, because…
22:39
Alicia MADDEN: I really didn't know how long this was gonna take. I'm so glad that it was, like, we published it in, like, a year after starting it. Right. So I'm gonna try to keep it less than that.
22:50
Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, the fastest professional…
22:54
Tad Eggleston: comic book artists I know, the ones that… Don't have another job.
23:02
Alicia MADDEN: Oh…
23:03
Tad Eggleston: Spend at least 8 hours at the drawing board every day.
23:07
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): If only it was that simple.
23:10
Tad Eggleston: I do…
23:11
Alicia MADDEN: I should try that.
23:13
Tad Eggleston: No, no, what I'm saying is they do, like, A page a day.
23:18
Tad Eggleston: Pencils.
23:21
Alicia MADDEN: Oh, okay.
23:22
Tad Eggleston: So, like, this is what I'm saying, like, you guys are comics people, so you probably know Jacob Phillips. If you don't know Jacob Phillips, you probably know his dad, Sean Phillips. But Jacob Phillips drives… just mind-boggles me, because he's the one guy in comics right now that seems to be able to do
23:41
Tad Eggleston: About a book and a half a month, and color his dad's stuff.
23:48
Tad Eggleston: And it's like… Dude, where do you find the time?
23:51
Tad Eggleston: Like, cause I know that you actually do stuff in your life.
23:55
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): He's British, that's how he does it.
23:58
Tad Eggleston: Well, yeah, no, that's part of it. Part of it is, I mean, he just had to move out, and I felt so sad when I heard this, because his studio was actually a container.
24:10
Tad Eggleston: because he's from Manchester, and there's, like, a whole container yard.
24:15
Tad Eggleston: He was explaining, because when we talked to him, he was in his studio.
24:20
Tad Eggleston: a container in a container yard in Manchester. He was telling us about the yard. There was, like, a barber shop in a container, two containers down from him, and there was a coffee shop across the way in a container. It was, like, this abandoned container yard that had been turned into…
24:37
Tad Eggleston: Art studio space and small businesses.
24:42
Alicia MADDEN: Wow.
24:43
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): That's what you have to do, Alicia. That's what.
24:46
Tad Eggleston: And he pretty much lived there at the time.
24:48
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): The problem is you're not living in a box, and that's your flaw.
24:51
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): We're working and not living in boxes.
24:54
Tad Eggleston: Right.
24:56
Tad Eggleston: Well, no, it's not a flaw, it just means it's gonna take that much longer. And that's not a bad thing, you know? I mean, it's one of the reasons why…
25:09
Tad Eggleston: Like, the monthly comic crowd doesn't…
25:13
Tad Eggleston: We're still trying to teach the monthly comic crowd about the crowdfunding comics, and that there's a different… like, that monthly comics are either people who are insane.
25:24
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): We are.
25:25
Tad Eggleston: live very cheaply some… well, yes, all comics people are insane, I get that.
25:31
Alicia MADDEN: But we have receipts.
25:32
Tad Eggleston: Live very cheaply somewhere, or, you know, manage to get that semi-regular paycheck that they can somewhat live on.
25:42
Tad Eggleston: And everybody else, it's just not realistic to put out a comic a month.
25:49
Tad Eggleston: It takes way too much… way too much time and energy.
25:53
Tad Eggleston: That could be fair.
25:56
Dr. Edgar Ramos: So, because I've been marinating this thought in my head, I want to make sure I don't forget, because my ADHD.
26:02
Tad Eggleston: No, absolutely. We'll be all over the place. That's the other reason that, like, you shouldn't worry about us. We're so discombobulated that, hi mom, hi Adam, they won't pay attention to where we…
26:15
Dr. Edgar Ramos: So, you guys were talking about the art, and I know Sam was talking about the writing art as well, and it's funny because, Ted, you started up with the art, like, you heard the noise and the silent…
26:27
Dr. Edgar Ramos: And it's funny, because the first thing I told everybody, and don't get mad at me, Ellie, not yet, the fucking art was… Top notch. …captivating. Like, it captivated me. I sat there, like.
26:41
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Okay, I'm like, and everyone knows I'm pretty straightforward. I'm like, alright, I don't know this person, you know, I'm very kind of bougie and picky who I read and what I'm willing to read and whatnot, and I'm like, alright, but the picture… and it was actually the snippet that you sent me, Elliot, was the picture of the individual, like, the back or whatnot, and the reason for that is.
27:01
Dr. Edgar Ramos: It's funny, because I give a snippet of a picture similar to that when we talk about trauma, with hands crawling all around their back, and saying that's how it feels. So it fucking caught my attention, like.
27:11
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Okay, let me see. And then the restaurant scene, I'm like, I heard dishes cracking. I don't know if you had dishes cracking, but there was dishes… somebody threw a fucking dish in that cover. You know, somebody threw a dish down, and it broke. And I was listening to it, and I'm like.
27:24
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Okay, but now going into the actual, like, contextually, the words and what was being said, so I'm… I tend to kind of shy away when people write about mental health that aren't mental health
27:36
Dr. Edgar Ramos: trained, because they tend to kind of, you know, for lack of a better word, bastardize it, or kind of like, well, how did you feel about that? Or, you know, I mean, we know comics are notorious for
27:45
Dr. Edgar Ramos: you know, downplaying, you know, doctors. It's like, every doctor is a villain in comics, you know? From the days of Wortham or whatnot, so there's always this kind of negative connotation, so I was like.
27:54
Tad Eggleston: I think it's because of Wortham.
27:56
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Yeah, I mean, obviously, so…
27:59
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Well, as I was reading it, I'm like, alright, but I got to talk to you beforehand, so I'm like, alright, it sounds pretty rational, so let's give it… let's go with it. So I took a read of it, and first off, is for any clinicians and anyone out there, and just clinically, it's not about teaching about mental health, it's about sharing.
28:17
Dr. Edgar Ramos: mental health, and that's what I found, you know, excellent, is that I sat there going.
28:22
Dr. Edgar Ramos: you know, FOMO, you know, right off the bat, like, but that initial scene, when it's like, you didn't… you weren't saying nothing, and then Sam was like, what makes you tick? It's funny, because the thought that came to my head was, what makes you ick?
28:35
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Because I felt your anxiety, and I don't know, and…
28:40
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I'm gonna… I'm gonna give you guys… I'm gonna blow your guys' heads up for 2 seconds, then I'm gonna destroy it. But first off is to say, it's like, I don't know if the two… the artist and the writer, you guys work so well together that…
28:50
Dr. Edgar Ramos: you were able to let me feel that anxiety. I don't know if it was drawn to make me anxious, or the way it was worded at first, without saying it necessarily to make me anxious, but I felt you being in your head. And I'm not saying that you're the person in the book, and if you want to say that, that's great, but…
29:06
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I felt you being in your head, and I'm like, this guy must live in his fucking head all day, thinking and thinking, can't fucking turn it off. And then I'm like, fuck, I'm doing it now. Holy shit. I'm like, I'm by myself. That's what I thought was fucking great. I'm like, yeah, I kind of like it. I will say, I'm like.
29:24
Dr. Edgar Ramos: fuck, it stopped. I'm like, so there's a part where it makes me want to grab issue two, but it's also kind of like, fuck, I wanted to have it a little bit fuller, but that's a good thing, because it's like, you made me want more of it. So, I mean, at the end of the day, that's a good product to sell, so I thought that was really great. But clinically, right now, is that
29:42
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I love, I absolutely love that you didn't try to teach people, how to treat anxiety, and this is what anxiety is, is that you just sat there and go, this is a person that's anxious, this is anxiety for me. Without ever having a first aid, I'm anxious. It's you…
29:57
Dr. Edgar Ramos: you portrayed
29:59
Dr. Edgar Ramos: anxiety, and you drew. Anxiety was drawn, and I thought that was a great combination, and that's what I'm gonna… I mean, I'm looking at the picture right now in the shower, like, yeah, I mean, I was just like…
30:10
Tad Eggleston: Well, but I, I, I brought this up for a reason, just… just because,
30:18
Tad Eggleston: we… the one thing we've all agreed on is we wish that we'd had just a little bit more in this… in this issue, and if I'm putting on my amateur
30:28
Tad Eggleston: amateur but talks to Shelley Bond a lot, editor cap.
30:32
Tad Eggleston: This was the last page of your issue.
30:38
Alicia MADDEN: Mmm.
30:38
Tad Eggleston: Except that it wasn't.
30:42
Tad Eggleston: We had 4 more pages. If those 4 pages had been…
30:48
Tad Eggleston: earlier, you could have fleshed… I mean, the girl that got on a motorcycle, I mean, that's one of the most badass images in the whole comic, except that it took me until, like.
31:00
Tad Eggleston: Flipping through now to finally figure out that it was the girl that got on the motorcycle, because we see her… we see her in her leather jacket, but we don't see the helmet, and then she's got the helmet on when she's in the motorcycle, and we don't know that much about her, except that she's got…
31:14
Tad Eggleston: blue highlights and wears a leather jacket, you know, so, I mean, like…
31:19
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Like, I want to meet her.
31:21
Tad Eggleston: Oh, I do! And that's the issue, we didn't. So I'm really… I mean, A, I'm hoping that we meet some of these people a little bit more in issue two.
31:30
Tad Eggleston: B, since you said you were all about getting some constructive criticism, and I hope you're taking this constructively, I think I would have caught those 4 pages, and maybe…
31:42
Tad Eggleston: One of these three.
31:46
Tad Eggleston: you know, I don't know that you need 3 pages of the empty apartment, the walking to the shower, the getting into the shower. I feel like that could have been 2.
31:58
Tad Eggleston: And then you have 5 pages that you can put into… The bar to flesh out the characters.
32:07
Alicia MADDEN: I mean, I kind of like the abs. I mean, the abs are pretty good.
32:11
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): I was like, when do I get to be a female and be like, nope, the dude in the abs is good.
32:16
Tad Eggleston: Well, but I didn't… I didn't say you had to get rid of that page!
32:20
Tad Eggleston: Did you get rid of the page that's just the empty…
32:24
Tad Eggleston: I mean, this is a very pretty page.
32:26
samantharamos: It's just the empty apartment, but… No, no, no, no. Let me, let me, let me say right here.
32:30
Tad Eggleston: Absolutely.
32:31
samantharamos: Probably one of my favorite pages, when he walks.
32:33
Tad Eggleston: It is!
32:34
samantharamos: And it's… it's beautiful, like, the pillows are perfect, and the couch is white, because I have kids, and my couch is not white anymore. I'm like, wow, that looks amazing. But, like, I feel… That's an anxious room.
32:47
Dr. Edgar Ramos: That is…
32:48
Alicia MADDEN: Yes!
32:50
Dr. Edgar Ramos: It's so fucking wrapped up tightly, but that's what matched with the abs. I'm like, this motherfucker is wound so fucking tight, he thinks of everything. Like, his fucking room is immaculate. I'm like, fuck, American Cycle, here we come.
33:01
Dr. Edgar Ramos: It's wrapped up so tight, I'm like, dude, this guy is in his head, man! But again, I'm thinking like a fucking clinician, so that's where I'm like, yeah, you know, I'm like, alright, well, fucking…
33:14
Tad Eggleston: Then the answer is, is take these two four-panel pages.
33:21
Tad Eggleston: And make them a 6-panel page.
33:24
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Yeah, cause for me, for me, like, I gotta speak on this too,
33:29
Dr. Edgar Ramos: this whole, that 3-page tweet that you talked about, Tad, is that symbolized to me that he's alone.
33:35
Dr. Edgar Ramos: So, he went from having his relationships, which was a big source of…
33:40
Dr. Edgar Ramos: anxiety, which was the FOMO aspect of it, and now, what was interesting for me is, like, oh, him and his girlfriend, but they don't live together. Okay.
33:47
Dr. Edgar Ramos: But now… he's alone.
33:50
Dr. Edgar Ramos: So now we see him physically alone, and even if I put on my clinical hat for a moment, he's vulnerable because now he's naked.
34:00
Dr. Edgar Ramos: And then that's when most of his anxiety comes out. So for me, that was a very… it's like, okay, this guy, very much so. And that's… for sure, that… that page right there, that's what I felt.
34:12
Tad Eggleston: This pa…
34:14
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Nope, the…
34:15
Tad Eggleston: Two pages in the shower? Oh my god.
34:18
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Yep.
34:19
Tad Eggleston: Both the writing, the art, like, those two pages in the shower make this comic.
34:27
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Yes. Okay.
34:29
Alicia MADDEN: Can I, like, walk you through this? Like, what's special.
34:31
Tad Eggleston: Thanks!
34:32
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): change a little bit?
34:33
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): At this stage.
34:35
Tad Eggleston: Please.
34:35
Alicia MADDEN: Yeah, so, let me tell you that…
34:39
Alicia MADDEN: this has gotta be the best writing in this issue, because… and here's how I know that…
34:45
Alicia MADDEN: Back when we were nothing to each other, and we were just talking.
34:50
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I forgot to ask, when you're done with this, you gotta tell me how you paired up.
34:54
Alicia MADDEN: Okie doke. Well, he asked me to audition. He's like, here's the first issue, here's the script, and just pick out a page that speaks to you, and draw it, please.
35:04
Alicia MADDEN: And so, I'm reading it, and this is the page I chose of them all, because I'm like, this is gonna be powerful. And we call this the audition piece, so,
35:17
Alicia MADDEN: This is essentially the image I drew. The…
35:20
Alicia MADDEN: Quality's a lot better now, because I had a lot more practice.
35:24
Tad Eggleston: Well, and because if he made you go this, this far for an audition piece.
35:29
Alicia MADDEN: That would have been just mean.
35:34
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): If it's not my…
35:34
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): catered for the audition piece, so… It was not. Okay, okay.
35:37
Tad Eggleston: It makes it less meat.
35:38
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Thanks, Daley.
35:40
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, that's a good thing to throw out, is that you paid her for the audition piece. That changes everything. I'm used to the comics world, where you don't get paid for anything.
35:51
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Oh, no, no one does anything for free.
35:53
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): No, that's not how we work here.
35:55
Tad Eggleston: That's what I love to hear.
36:00
Alicia MADDEN: Yeah, but I have to say that this is the page, like, I'm most proud of, and I'm just… I'm happy that we stopped on it, because shoot, I mean, these last two panels were exactly what I turned into him.
36:09
Tad Eggleston: Talk me through some of the decisions here, because this is one of the pages that I'm really talking about in terms of some
36:16
Tad Eggleston: Brilliant!
36:18
Tad Eggleston: panel design.
36:20
Tad Eggleston: I don't think enough people have… You took… Courage to split panels without
36:29
Tad Eggleston: split it, or without having new pictures. So you've got two panels at the top, That are one picture.
36:37
Alicia MADDEN: Yeah.
36:38
Tad Eggleston: And then, your middle panel… Is not only borderless, but it overlaps the second of those panels.
36:47
Tad Eggleston: And then the one thing that is almost a border isn't actually really a border at all, it's just a line.
36:55
Tad Eggleston: And another borderless panel, And then an inset panel where you can just feel the…
37:02
Tad Eggleston: Energy wash out of him.
37:05
Alicia MADDEN: So, like…
37:06
Tad Eggleston: How much of this was…
37:09
Tad Eggleston: I always love talking to artists, because half the time, like, I… I step through all of it, and they're like, okay, yeah, no. And the other half the time, they're like, yes, this is exactly what I… you know. So, how much of this was…
37:24
Tad Eggleston: You going instinctually, and how much of this was, like, very carefully planned out?
37:30
Alicia MADDEN: I really wanted to work with Elliot on this, so every single move I made, I thought of a hundred times over. I'm like, okay, he's gonna like this, so I'm gonna do this.
37:42
Alicia MADDEN: as with a lot of the different poses in the comic, we ended up, whether, like, he knew it or not, like, when I would ask him for, like, a suggestion or something, we would always kind of act out what the characters would do.
37:55
Alicia MADDEN: Like, the left hand in panel number 2 is, Elliot's hand, like, he sent me a picture of that, so we have, like, our authentic.
38:05
Tad Eggleston: like, motions in here, and… Okay. 2, 3, 4…
38:09
Alicia MADDEN: And I believe, like, I was either doing 4 or 5, just, like, The motion of comforting oneself.
38:17
Alicia MADDEN: Kind of thing, and if you're… if you're falling apart.
38:19
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
38:20
Alicia MADDEN: I followed his script very literally, so, in panel number 1,
38:25
Alicia MADDEN: numbers 1 and 2. He does describe the face in panel number 1, and then he does describe the hand in number 2, so I'm like.
38:35
Alicia MADDEN: They are each the subject of their own panel, but I don't want to just completely disjoint a face from a hand, so that the math was mathing, and it kind of turned into one picture.
38:48
Tad Eggleston: Right.
38:48
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): What's interesting is there hasn't really been a time when we've gone from script to, page, where it doesn't look like what it looked like in my head when I wrote it.
38:57
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): So she's able to really capture whatever I wrote down in the script and what I was seeing, and put that onto the page.
39:03
Alicia MADDEN: Because I could see it too!
39:05
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): And I will give you credit, too, about, like, how you would script it. Like, even when we were talking about, like, the editing of the words themselves, like, you were really good at saying, like, well, this is how I want it to be, and then we would try to match the words, and sometimes we would actually move the words.
39:21
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): And speaking to the silent panels sometimes. Like, sometimes you need to give silence.
39:26
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Right?
39:26
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): To add poignancy to the moment. And sometimes we would legit move sentences, like, down a page.
39:33
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): So that way, we would just give space.
39:35
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Blair was really good at making me realize, Elliot, it's a visual medium first. You don't need to dummy it down. You don't need to spoon-feed them. Let the artwork speak for itself.
39:43
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Yeah, all the time he would be, like, grasping, like, I can't… I'm so mad, I just want to squeeze my head. I was like, you don't have to say that, you can actually just squeeze your head with the pictures, and he's like, right, right, right, sorry, strike that.
39:59
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
40:00
Tad Eggleston: The comics that were like that, those were the EC comics, and they're great comics, but they were saving money. Rather than typing up the scripts, they just wrote them on the Bristol board, and then the artists had to work around that. So, it was a money-saving thing, not a specific style choice.
40:23
Alicia MADDEN: -
40:24
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): I also have to give a little bit of credit to our, letterer, Justin, who.
40:28
Tad Eggleston: That was what I was about to… who did the lettering, and… and… yeah.
40:33
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): his name's, Justin Lett… he goes by Lettersquids, and… Okay.
40:37
Tad Eggleston: I've seen stuff from him before.
40:39
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): We auditioned about 5 different letters, and it came down to 2 people, and that page that you just showed was actually the tiebreaker page. And we… it just… everything that he did just really spoke to how we felt the story should be, and really brought the…
40:59
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): like, if you were to go to, I think, page…
41:01
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): 4 or 5. Some of the choices he made just really stuck out to us, and actually, the story's based on, you know, my friend group. I actually ran,
41:13
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): the first 5 pages by my friend, who's based on the blonde guy, Chris, said, hey, what do you think? And he goes, that's how I would have said that. And that's how I read… when I read the comic, that's how that conversation goes. This is the guy.
41:24
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
41:25
Tad Eggleston: So, so, so, so I'll, I'll, see, this is where I feel like…
41:32
Tad Eggleston: horrible, because if Chris feels like that's how he would have said that, then I shouldn't…
41:38
Tad Eggleston: I love the Jason and the Hit List here.
41:41
Tad Eggleston: I have issues with the font decisions on Cockface and Bitch. They just don't quite work for me. But, if the actual people saying them thought so,
41:58
Alicia MADDEN: Can I just, like, gush in a comic book nerd kind of way about this exact topic? Like, Tad, you both and Dr. Ramos were saying that, like, you can hear this scene. Well, like.
42:12
Alicia MADDEN: when it comes to the lettering, I can hear differently than I did the first time when I read it in just one font, and that was all Justin.
42:21
Tad Eggleston: No, no, and I agree that it needs different fonts.
42:25
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Like, you could read that, you could hear that font, like, it's not cockface, it's cockface.
42:32
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, see, that's my problem, is I can't…
42:35
Dr. Edgar Ramos: There's swag to it.
42:36
Tad Eggleston: I… I can't quite hear… I can hear the hit list. I can hear the Jason.
42:44
Alicia MADDEN: Hmm.
42:46
Tad Eggleston: I don't quite know how to… to hear the cock… the…
42:50
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Hear the what?
42:51
Tad Eggleston: Dude…
42:52
Dr. Edgar Ramos: That's like a term of endearment. That's the way I read that.
42:56
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
42:57
Dr. Edgar Ramos: If it's written in that font, it's an elegant font.
43:00
Tad Eggleston: But…
43:02
samantharamos: Yeah, I don't know.
43:04
Tad Eggleston: They can hear it, so this is… this is the other thing I always say, is that, like, the reason I don't say anything, ever, is bad, is because… because it doesn't resonate with me, doesn't mean it doesn't resonate with somebody else.
43:20
Tad Eggleston: even as they're saying it out loud, I'm…
43:24
Tad Eggleston: I can get what they're going for here, or what they're hearing, and I still would have lettered it just a little bit differently to get that.
43:32
Tad Eggleston: But I'm not a letterer, and, like, if two words are my problems with the red letter in the whole book, that's, like…
43:41
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): I'll take it.
43:42
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Yeah. Amen, that's a win. I'm also a monster on the East Coast, so I probably need to go in the next, like, 10 minutes, so if you have any editing questions, I would love to be selfish in that.
43:52
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Goodbye for, like, 10 minutes.
43:55
Tad Eggleston: What?
43:55
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Everything go to Blair for the next 10 minutes.
43:57
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): I was like, no, not to be selfish, I just wanted to make sure if you had anything for me, I wanted you to be able to ask it.
44:03
Tad Eggleston: I'll ask you, in general, how did you become involved in the book, is the first question.
44:11
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Yes, so first question is by happenstance, honestly. So, Elliot is friends with a
44:18
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): a person that I also copy-edited her novel, and she had seemingly a good experience with me, and so, she recommended me when he was talking about how he was writing something, and it was actually back when he was writing a
44:31
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): children's books, specifically, to start. Okay. And…
44:35
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): she was like, oh, you should ask Blair. And so, we met up, and we had a great vibe on our first call, where I… he…
44:44
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): He knew that I would be very honest with him.
44:47
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): And I'm one of those very honest people, I'm very Northeastern by my…
44:52
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): vibe, and I wanted to make sure I could just throw it out there, and make sure that I could just be honest with him, and he wouldn't take it really sensitively, and…
45:00
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Myers?
45:02
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Our non-EV Easterners? Is he just cause liars?
45:06
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I'm teasing, I'm teasing.
45:10
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Sort of things aren't, sorry.
45:12
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Okay.
45:13
Tad Eggleston: Y-you, you, said that you edit…
45:19
Tad Eggleston: prose as well as comics. Yes. I mean, first, about what is the balance between the two.
45:27
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): so it's actually kind of speaking to what I said earlier, is that, you know, when you have only words on a page, then you really have to describe every frickin' thing.
45:36
Tad Eggleston: No, I meant, I meant in terms of your work.
45:40
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Oh, for, like, how I work with… People who are writing, yeah?
45:44
Tad Eggleston: No, no, in terms of your experience, like, if we were giving percentages, do you do 50% prose and 50% comics? Do you do…
45:55
Tad Eggleston: 80% poetry and 10%… Instructional manuals and 10% costs.
46:03
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Oh, 99% of structural manuals. No, I wish it was that.
46:08
Tad Eggleston: There are lots of copy editors that…
46:11
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): well, dang, hook me up, that seems really great, I can put a comma anywhere. No, that's… that's not what I do. No, it really is quite variant, and it's mostly because, like what Elliot was saying, it's mostly word of mouth, right? You know, so it's people recommending me, and the fact that I know my…
46:30
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): stuff, and I can be malleable, depending on the platform. I mean, like, I… I would say probably right now, it's probably…
46:39
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): 25% comics?
46:42
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
46:43
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): It's probably a good percentage, just relevant to your audience.
46:46
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, absolutely. What, to you.
46:54
Tad Eggleston: And you were starting to get into it, is… is the… the… the…
46:59
Tad Eggleston: The difference and or challenge of, of, of editing
47:03
Tad Eggleston: A comic book versus… versus prose.
47:07
Tad Eggleston: And just because I've talked to enough editors that I know that that…
47:14
Tad Eggleston: Comics Editor, depending on the team, can encompass Billion different things.
47:21
Tad Eggleston: Y-y-you know,
47:24
Tad Eggleston: It can be cheerleader and spell checker, it can be keep everybody on task and on time, it can be make certain everybody gets paid, it can be find the artist, find the letterer, find the fill-in artist.
47:40
Tad Eggleston: etc. So… so… in general, when… and maybe there isn't a general, what…
47:47
Tad Eggleston: What is editing a comic for you?
47:50
Tad Eggleston: and… What do you like most about it?
47:54
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Okay, so first thing you learn in journalism is not ask multiple questions at once, but I'll try.
47:58
Tad Eggleston: I don't even know.
47:59
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Alright, so…
48:03
Tad Eggleston: That's why I gave up on journalism after high school.
48:05
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Well, I think you're thriving. So, you got this podcast, you're fine. So…
48:10
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): I would say working backward. I mean, what I like about comics specifically is actually the added medium. I mean, I think the hardest part about editing words only, specific, is that you have to paint such a picture.
48:24
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): With your words. And that can be a blessing and a curse, because whenever you describe Sam, who's a generic character, right? Like, we can all picture what Sam looks like, and maybe they'll…
48:34
Tad Eggleston: She's a generic character, she's a doctor suit.
48:37
samantharamos: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
48:39
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Excuse me, I was thinking Samwise Gamgee, but that's fine, you can name who… Whichever Sam you want!
48:46
samantharamos: Okay, my daughter would probably agree with you.
48:49
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): I mean, it's a… it's an amazing Sam. I'm sure you're just as great, and you would totally make sure the ring is destroyed. My point is that if you're describing random character in just words, like, everyone… you can describe the hair, you describe the stature, like, you can use all the words you can, but everyone still fills in the blanks.
49:09
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Right? Like, they still figure out what the cheekbones look like, because you don't describe that junk, like…
49:14
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): And what I think is really cool about graphic novels is that it at least gives you a structure to
49:19
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): start with. And then everyone can kind of…
49:22
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): go from there. And so I think that's, like, a really added benefit, honestly, because you get to actually just focus on the story and the dialogue. And the hard part of words only is that you have to do a lot of fluff.
49:34
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): to, like, world build and make people actually picture things, right? And… and, like I said, blessing and a curse.
49:43
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): everyone operates differently. Like Elliot was saying earlier, like, some people love that world, because they get to actually invent that, and some people go, oh my gosh, like, just invent it for me, and I'll live in it. You know, like…
49:54
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): And that's okay, both things are right. So, I think that's what's really cool about that. What I liked about this specific project is that, like I said earlier, is that, like, it's really just really good to collab with, and you talked about, like, the different aspects of
50:08
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): editing.
50:09
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): And that can be challenging, because one of the things that's really cool about editing is that you like to control things, right? Like, you like to be like, oh, yeah, that's how that should go. And then when a letterer comes in, or a person who's drawing comes in, or, like, someone who's designing something, or the way they do page design, that's…
50:28
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): 100% out of your control. So a lot of it is, like.
50:31
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): letting go and realizing you're this cool cog that's part of a larger project. And what you were saying also is that, like, second volume is so neat to be able to, like, learn everything from the first collaborative.
50:47
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): And look at it and, like, go, oh yeah, that worked, that didn't. When we do this again, for whatever story we tell next, I don't know, Elliot, if we're actually disclosing that. Are we disclosing that?
50:57
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): We can't, we can if people really want to know. I don't want to, like, break news.
51:03
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): But, whatever's.
51:04
Tad Eggleston: I just pulled up your website, you're a journalist, of course you want to break news.
51:09
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Is that really, like… no, like, we talk about it a little bit. You can talk about it if you want. Well, my point is, whatever story we want to tell next, like, we get to learn from the first story we told, and that's what I appreciate you giving feedback on, is because then we get to bring that into the next
51:25
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): issue that we issue. Like, I think that's really neat, that we get to look at it and go, oh, we could tell that story, and then it's also really cool when you say, oh, you should have told that, and both Elliot just
51:37
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): he and I look at each other, we're like.
51:39
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): It would be really neat if we did that.
51:41
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): And we may or may not have already done that. You know, like, I think that's cool that we get to, like, collaboratively learn on that, so…
51:48
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): the neat part of, like, being a copy editor in this specific genre is that we get to iterate, and we get to learn, and we get to learn each other, too, about how each other work, and I just really want to give a lot of credit to this team, because
52:04
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): we were open to criticism, and sometimes we didn't like it, you know, on all directions, and we would just listen to each other. And that doesn't happen all the time.
52:12
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): If it's for the first time… the first draft of the series was just 4 issues, Blair read it, and she says, I have the email somewhere, and she said, this is shit.
52:23
Dr. Edgar Ramos: But we can make it better.
52:25
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): I was like, I believe it… my exact point…
52:28
Tad Eggleston: Also, then, double your rate?
52:31
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): No, I should've. I legit told Ellie, I was like, this is shit, I super hate it, but I can't wait to make it better, I believe was my exact quote.
52:41
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): But that was also…
52:41
Dr. Edgar Ramos: What's the hope.
52:43
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): What happened?
52:44
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I said, I like the glimmer of hope she gave you.
52:46
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): I just…
52:47
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): I really did, because I did see the potential. I mean, like, I think everyone in America has dealt with some semblance of mental health issues, like, whether it's tangentially or by themselves, right? Like, and I think that's why it's so important to tell stories like this.
53:02
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): It, you know, especially in this…
53:04
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Genre, because it's not done enough, and it's not done, like you said earlier, like, in a real way, you know?
53:11
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): And collaboratively, you know, it helped that…
53:15
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): This… I always say that when I finish writing, my job's done. Now it's just, how can we make this better? How can we make it the best version of itself? And a lot of people want a yes man. I don't want a yes man, I want someone to tell me this is garbage, let's make it good.
53:28
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Because then that's how I improve, and then how we all improve as a team. Like, Alicia will tell you how many times that I've gotten art back from her, I'm like, no, this has to be better, and here's why.
53:39
Alicia MADDEN: Yeah, it's true.
53:40
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Annalise is so kind, and like, I really appreciate her.
53:45
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
53:45
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Ability to take feedback, because especially…
53:47
Tad Eggleston: Yes.
53:48
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): As an artist, right?
53:49
Alicia MADDEN: Please tell me that's a.
53:50
Tad Eggleston: the rough stage.
53:52
Alicia MADDEN: Yeah, I mean, I don't know, you guys have, like, helped me be brave and stuff, like, I've said no, and you guys have said no to me, and it's fine.
54:02
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Yeah, you have not been in the writing room with Blair yet, trust me, this is… that's where the fun really happens.
54:07
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): But also, like, Blair and I work really well together, because when we're… whenever we have one-on-one meetings, the first 30 minutes is us just bullshitting with each other and having a good time.
54:15
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Absolutely. But I think that that's how you get…
54:18
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): to know someone, and you talked about that earlier, right? Is, like, how do you actually collaborate? And the key is to, like, get to know your client, or whatever phrase you want to use. Like, you can't work to the best of your ability if you don't know what that person wants and needs and wants to get out of this. Like, you don't know their motivations, you don't want to know where they want to go, what do they want to accomplish, then, like, it's all moot.
54:38
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Right? Like, the whole point is to actually make sure they realize their vision, and I also think that's the struggle of being a copy editor, is that, like, I can't write it for you. Like, that is not my job.
54:50
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Like, my job is to elevate your work and your mission and your goal, and that is hard, as a person who's not bad at writing, to not just go, no, no, no, no, no, you should just write it like this, but then it's… then it's my words, and that's not the…
55:06
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): point. Then I should just write the dang thing, and then I'm just… I'm ghostwriting, and that's not the point. Like, it's just… that's…
55:14
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): that's not why I'm here, and that's what I like about Elliott, is that we can really collaborate.
55:20
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): And like I said, like, elevate his words and make it better.
55:24
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Very well said.
55:26
Tad Eggleston: Alright, I have… Three more questions for Claire before we lose her.
55:34
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Damn.
55:35
Tad Eggleston: The first is, like, I went through with, with, elliot and… and… Alicia.
55:44
Tad Eggleston: a little bit on whether they'd read some of the seminal books on making comics. If you… Picked up.
55:52
Tad Eggleston: what is… among the young comic people I know.
55:58
Tad Eggleston: The most popular book right now
56:04
Tad Eggleston: Shelley Baum's Filth and Grammar, the comic book editor's Secret Handbook.
56:09
Tad Eggleston: To, to, to see how…
56:13
Tad Eggleston: how they did it at Vertigo back in the day.
56:18
Tad Eggleston: Is that your question, or you just… Yes, that's the question.
56:21
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I'm like, don't fuck with me.
56:24
Tad Eggleston: What else that have you picked up?
56:25
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Have you picked up.
56:27
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Did anyone… was that just me? Okay, so…
56:29
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Other than you, I was like, wait.
56:31
Tad Eggleston: No, I messed it up.
56:33
Tad Eggleston: Clearly. That's cool.
56:34
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): You're fine. You're doing great.
56:38
Tad Eggleston: No, I'm not, but that's okay. My listeners are used to it.
56:41
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Well, it's one of those Zoom moments, too, right? It's like, I don't want to jump on you, like.
56:45
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
56:45
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Are you still asking a question?
56:47
Tad Eggleston: No, no, no
56:49
Tad Eggleston: I had to… she's done a trilogy, and I was debating whether I was saying all of the books or just talking about the first one, which was the heaviest on the editing, which is filth and grammar.
57:00
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Alright, so have I picked it up?
57:03
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): No. Have I seen her Instagram and summaries? Yes.
57:09
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
57:10
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Are most of the things she says things I mostly knew? Yes. Does that make her not cool? No. Like, you know, like.
57:18
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): I mean, I think about this with, like, Marie Kondo all the time. Like, I have been a minimalist my whole life. Like, all of a sudden, she's like, does this start joy? And I was like, do people not ask that about every item in their house? I guess not, weird. Like, I guess I could have made gazillions of dollars if I had just written that in a book.
57:36
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): That's me, with her summary.
57:38
Tad Eggleston: Trust me, Shelly's not making gazillions of dollars.
57:43
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): You know what I mean.
57:44
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, that's fair.
57:49
Tad Eggleston: My, my, my follow-up, because I noticed it at, at, you have an Ais Nin quote on your website. Have you read?
57:58
Tad Eggleston: My friend Leone's.
58:00
Tad Eggleston: Fantastic graphic novel about.
58:02
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Absolutely.
58:03
Tad Eggleston: Okay, good. And finally, and this means Elliot and Alicia get a preview of the last question I'll ask them.
58:13
Tad Eggleston: Tell me something you love, preferably a comic, but we don't really have rules.
58:19
Tad Eggleston: that… Not enough people around you have experienced?
58:25
Tad Eggleston: And you need them to, so you have more people to talk about it with.
58:30
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): That's a really good question, and I went to school for question asking.
58:37
Tad Eggleston: Just because I'm not a journalist doesn't mean I don't occasionally play one on a podcast.
58:42
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): I'm super proud of you. So I…
58:45
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Never told me she was proud of me.
58:47
Dr. Edgar Ramos: It's.
58:48
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): It's true.
58:49
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Neither has my wife.
58:50
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Sure mesh.
58:51
Tad Eggleston: friends. I have lots of journalist friends.
58:55
Tad Eggleston: Spencer Ackerman's been on this show twice.
58:58
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): He's a great journalist. So… and Elliot knows this, so I will be fully…
59:04
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): fully transparent. I loved comics via my brother when I was a kid. So, like, when I was a kid, he's 10 years my senior, and so he would, like, come in and, like, read me comics, and that was, like, my bedtime story.
59:19
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): So, I didn't get to, like, read-read them, if that makes any sense. Like, he would, like, read them like storybooks, if that makes any sense. So I really just didn't. And…
59:30
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): To my husband's credit, he is a giant.
59:34
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): comic book person. Like, I mean, I cannot…
59:37
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): tell you how many I have downstairs. Y'all, it's not okay, it's unhinged.
59:43
Tad Eggleston: Edgar bought a comic shop?
59:46
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Okay, like, my husband could open one, it is called my living room, so my point is…
59:52
samantharamos: I understand, I thought there were… You should see, I thought there was a.
59:55
Tad Eggleston: living room.
59:56
samantharamos: shop. I thought that was the point.
59:58
samantharamos: was that that… that was gonna repl… I thought… I thought… I thought wrong, so…
1:00:04
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): And that's okay. We've all been misguided in our life, you know? And that was yours. And it's okay.
1:00:10
samantharamos: That was it. I trusted, and I wanted to.
1:00:12
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Drugs, I don't drink, I do comics, come on!
1:00:15
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): It's okay, everyone has their vice. Both doc… as I've said, 2026 is the year of both things can be correct at the same time.
1:00:23
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Absolutely.
1:00:23
samantharamos: T.
1:00:25
samantharamos: It's dbt right there.
1:00:27
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): It is.
1:00:28
samantharamos: The 2026 year of DBT.
1:00:30
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Yes, that's what it is. Both things can be cracked. So honestly, like, my husband got me back into comics, and I say back in, not that I was out, but in the sense of, like.
1:00:40
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Seeing him read them, and enjoy them.
1:00:44
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Really brought me joy.
1:00:46
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): So I'm going to… is probably not the right answer, but I am…
1:00:53
Tad Eggleston: No, Rob.
1:00:53
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Oh, man.
1:00:54
Tad Eggleston: I mean, Andrew Biden said his tomato garden.
1:00:57
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Yeah, you're right. Okay, good point.
1:01:00
Tad Eggleston: There's not a wrong answer here. This… this… I said there are no rules. You don't even have to do a comic. I love that you're doing a comic, but it…
1:01:05
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): No, I want to strive. I'm an overachiever. Hi, I'm a journalist. So…
1:01:10
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I don't know any over-cheasing journalists.
1:01:14
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): I… Really love Coheed and Cambria.
1:01:20
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): So, I actually really love a lot of their
1:01:24
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): graphic novels, and they're comics, whatever derivation you want to call them, and so that would be my answer, because
1:01:32
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): I love Claudio, and I love everything he does, and I just want to sit there, and I want to, like, nerd out about how that guy's vocals doesn't match his face, and I just want to talk about that entire world he created, because it's badass, and, like, I am just into it. So that is probably my answer.
1:01:49
Tad Eggleston: There we go.
1:01:50
Dr. Edgar Ramos: We're gonna put the phone.
1:01:50
Tad Eggleston: I like it.
1:01:51
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Pardon me?
1:01:54
Tad Eggleston: No, they had graphic novels.
1:01:57
Tad Eggleston: Oh my golly. So you managed to… oh, I guess I knew their graphic novels, I just didn't realize…
1:02:04
Tad Eggleston: Wait, am I alone? Did I just, like, outclass everyone I know?
1:02:08
Dr. Edgar Ramos: No, no, I mean…
1:02:10
Tad Eggleston: Yes, in that…
1:02:12
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I have two over here.
1:02:15
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:02:15
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Thank you, I could go downstairs and get you three?
1:02:18
Tad Eggleston: No, no, no, I, I, I, I know the, like…
1:02:22
Tad Eggleston: I looked up Coheed in Cambria, and I immediately got the music, which I expected. And I went.
1:02:28
Tad Eggleston: So I had to add the graphic novels. I'm like, oh, Emery Wars! I didn't… I had never connected the two.
1:02:35
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): They're so amazing, because that's what I love about it, is, like, speaking back to, like, a multi-sensory experience, like, I think it's, like, so amazing, like, his music, to me, like, is… is a multi-sensory experience, like, where you get, like.
1:02:50
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): You were talking about earlier, where, like, the silence, you could hear the restaurant?
1:02:55
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Right. Same thing. Like, I hear his music, I'm like, I'm picturing the world, I am in a spaceship, like, put me in coach, like, I hear it. Like, it's so awesome.
1:03:06
Tad Eggleston: I love it.
1:03:07
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): That's my answer.
1:03:08
Tad Eggleston: It's a great answer. I'm very impressed.
1:03:11
Tad Eggleston: Very impressive.
1:03:12
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): I'm just so excited that I… that… okay, thank you, Doctor… I don't know if your beautiful wife understood it, too. But thank you for knowing my reference.
1:03:23
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I read every now and then, I can't help it.
1:03:25
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Yeah, every so often. Partially literate is what I… my husband always calls himself. I'm partially literate.
1:03:31
Dr. Edgar Ramos: No, I would say the same thing, partially.
1:03:34
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): It's okay, know your strengths.
1:03:36
Tad Eggleston: I read so much that sometimes you can tell me something that I read earlier today, and it'll go over my head, because…
1:03:45
Tad Eggleston: So, I will say, you got me here. I knew Amory Wars, I knew Kehoi DiCapria, I had never put them together. So, thank you.
1:03:53
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Okay, well then, I'm just here to enhance your experience, before I go to small bed. So I'm just gonna go sleep, sleeps, but thank you for inviting me to this experience, and I'm sorry that I have to go to bed.
1:04:05
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I believe I mean…
1:04:07
Tad Eggleston: half of our East Coast people don't even come to the psychocomecology book clubs, because they're like, 7 o'clock? That's 8 o'clock for me. And I'm asleep already.
1:04:23
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): No, you're good. I have friends downstairs, they're all, like, drinking old-fashions and having a blast, so… I'm just gonna kick them out and say, it's been a nice night.
1:04:32
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): I…
1:04:34
Tad Eggleston: Fair enough.
1:04:35
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Thank you, Blair.
1:04:36
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): No, absolutely. Thanks for having me on, y'all, and keep talking to Elliot and Alicia, because they're amazing humans, and you need to hear from them.
1:04:42
Tad Eggleston: No, I'm certain we'll have you back, because they said they're doing 8 more of these.
1:04:46
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): It's a whole thing.
1:04:48
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Yeah. Yeah, she stuck with us for the long term. That's why she's the editor-in-chief.
1:04:51
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): I know.
1:04:52
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Comics for forever.
1:04:53
Tad Eggleston: And I'm telling you, you should read Shelly's book. You think it won't teach you anything, but it will.
1:04:58
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): I don't even think that it wouldn't. I love learning.
1:05:01
Tad Eggleston: No, I know, I'm just giving you a hard time.
1:05:04
Blair Shiff (Calamity Comics): Alright, bye y'all!
1:05:05
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Team Blair.
1:05:09
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): And then there were two.
1:05:10
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Well…
1:05:12
Tad Eggleston: 6 still, cause, like, we came in force.
1:05:17
Tad Eggleston: Lee hasn't actually said anything all night, but, you know.
1:05:22
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Let's…
1:05:23
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): We did earlier.
1:05:24
Tad Eggleston: And we even introduced, like.
1:05:26
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I just want the audience to know. He's a pretty guy, you know?
1:05:31
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Appreciate it.
1:05:32
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Everybody listening, know that Lee is a handsome individual.
1:05:36
Dr. Edgar Ramos: All three audience members. Smart as a rock.
1:05:38
Tad Eggleston: That's right.
1:05:39
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Very pretty.
1:05:41
Tad Eggleston: Well, no, actually, I think we have 4 now, because Mom, Adam, John, and Britt are probably listening.
1:05:48
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Sam said something, but she's still muted.
1:05:52
samantharamos: I don't want you to check the iPad.
1:05:56
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I gotta, I gotta ask Elliot, so, and I wanna make sure I word this correctly.
1:06:02
Dr. Edgar Ramos: So, what were your thoughts on having
1:06:06
Dr. Edgar Ramos: When you were writing it psychologically, or if you were trying to write it psychologically, were you looking to write it psychologically, or were you looking just to be…
1:06:15
Dr. Edgar Ramos: vulnerable? Like, what was the aspect that you were coming from? That's the first part of the question. Second part of the question is, is…
1:06:21
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Would you have, or did you, consult with a psychologist? Which leads to the third question. I am available, but go ahead.
1:06:30
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): First of all, we love a good plug. So I did not… I am not a mental health professional. I can't write from that perspective, so I actually wrote the story when I was in therapy.
1:06:42
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): as a way to understand what I was going through. So, like, all of what happened in Issue 1 is my take on… it was me trying to understand my anxiety, and understand… like, I would just write out
1:06:53
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): what was happening, how I was feeling, like, what a panic attack feels like, what the anxiety feels like, you know, him going from the scene where he comes back from the bathroom, like, what are they talking about? That happened to me a lot of times.
1:07:04
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): And how it would feel as a result, the handshaking, the tremors, the going, you know, back to your house and you're alone, all of a sudden goes from… and if you guys look… pay attention to the lighting, the lighting goes from very warm and colorful to very dark and more,
1:07:20
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): More muted colors as we keep going.
1:07:22
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): And it's that…
1:07:24
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): coming in, and everything starts feeling more and more restricted. So that's what I was trying to, just write and understand. So that's what I was trying to write out, and I feel like if I could write it down, I could understand it, and I could try to analyze it from a third-person perspective, as opposed to try to dissect it, like, okay, I'm… this is what I'm feeling, blah blah blah blah blah.
1:07:45
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Let me give it a name, let me give it a person.
1:07:47
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): and have them go through this, and then what would I tell him if, to get through the situation?
1:07:54
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Okay. What would you tell someone that's anxious, that… is…
1:08:00
Dr. Edgar Ramos: on the fence of looking at it, reading it, because they're anxious, it's like, oh, I don't want it to trigger me, or is it gonna make me anxious to think about it? Like, what would… what would you say to them?
1:08:09
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): I actually did have somebody say that, that they read the trigger warnings, like, I can't read this.
1:08:13
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): And that's why we have the next page, where it says, you know, let this be a letter to all those suffering in silence, you're not alone and you are loved. And that's… that was the first thing that I wrote before I wrote the story, was I wrote that line.
1:08:27
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Because that was me wishing for a more hopeful future for myself and for others.
1:08:31
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): And I feel like if I could write that, and understand and, really believe that, then I could get through to the next thing.
1:08:41
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): So what… as far as, like, what I would tell someone who's anxious, first thing is that, again, you're not alone, and that you are loved. And at Calamity Comics, like, that's our tagline, you're not alone and you are loved. Because when you realize you're not the only one going through this, the world opens up a little more. And that…
1:08:57
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): My personal belief is that everything is better in the morning, because the thoughts get really bad at night. Like, with Jason, showers, it's nighttime, it's… if you look at the clock, it's like 10.30, you're alone, and everything just kind of comes into you.
1:09:11
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): But if you give yourself the time to step back, get a good night's rest, things might be better in the morning. As far as the anxiety.
1:09:21
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Everyone deals with it differently. I can't speak to your anxiety, to Sam's anxiety, to Alicia's anxiety, to Kad's anxiety, because everybody experiences anxiety.
1:09:30
Tad Eggleston: Clearly, because you just said everything's better in the morning.
1:09:33
Alicia MADDEN: the kids.
1:09:33
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Yeah, everything's better in the morning. I said, personally.
1:09:35
Tad Eggleston: No, no, no…
1:09:39
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Then, let me prep, let me follow up on that.
1:09:41
Tad Eggleston: Things are best from, like, midnight to 3 AM, when everybody else is asleep, and therefore can't be thinking about me. The problem is, I'm a teacher now, so I'm asleep during those hours?
1:09:57
Tad Eggleston: And I have to get up at, like, 5, and nothing is good at 5 AM.
1:10:03
Dr. Edgar Ramos: You know what, Elliot, you are not alone, because I…
1:10:07
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Good morning, especially once I have my cups of coffee, then I'm good to go.
1:10:12
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Yeah, like, yeah, life's worth living.
1:10:14
Tad Eggleston: Go and good are very different things.
1:10:21
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): That's what I said personally. I'm not a clin… I'm not a clinician. I'm just a dude who had anxiety. But no, so the whole story came from just trying to understand what I was experiencing and give it some type of form that I could dissect and
1:10:37
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): think from a third-person perspective, hey, what would I tell someone else who's suffering? And what would that look like?
1:10:43
Dr. Edgar Ramos: If I could ask, and you don't have to answer this, I don't want to… I don't want you to need to divulge what you don't want to divulge. I'm going to ask the question and do whatever you're comfortable with. So, in what we do, and I'm speaking as Sam and Lee and myself, is that one of the skills that we offer, or one of the interventions that we tend to do in…
1:11:03
Dr. Edgar Ramos: goes out to everybody listening, whoever listens, is that journaling, or, or, you know, schematic writing, or thematic writing, or, you know, art therapy is…
1:11:14
Dr. Edgar Ramos: A very strong and pivotal intervention that we use in treating anxiety and in treating depression as well.
1:11:20
Dr. Edgar Ramos: So, if you'd be comfortable, was that something that was encouraged while you were in therapy, was write down your thoughts, write down your feelings, and journal it, or, you know, draw it, or whatnot? Or is that something you came up with on your own? Like, how did that formulate?
1:11:35
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): That was my own doing. I've always written, whether I would write my feelings more in, like, a prose setting, or I'd write, like, letters to myself or to others and try to express what I'm feeling. But then, as I was reading more and more comic books, I thought that this is a more…
1:11:53
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): elaborate way that I could get these thoughts out, so it wasn't really necessarily encouraged in therapy for me, it was more of just a byproduct of what I was working on in therapy.
1:12:02
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Wow, so your therapist didn't use your own skill or strength to kind of…
1:12:06
Dr. Edgar Ramos: highlighted. It was like your own thinking. You didn't bring it to therapy, like, yeah, I'm writing, and it's really helping me.
1:12:12
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): We did, yes, we did, but that wasn't the big… it was… keep… if it's helping you, keep doing it, but… because I was dealing with just trying to…
1:12:20
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): get the anxiety from a 10 to, like, a 6. So, at that point, the focus wasn't, hey, how's the writing going, blah blah blah. It was…
1:12:30
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): You know, how can we get it from here to here, and then, hey, I'm able to write about it, and that's starting to bring it down a little more.
1:12:38
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Gotcha. Last quick question, Matt, on the clinical side. Obviously, that's the.
1:12:42
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Oh, feel free to deep dive, I'm an open book.
1:12:44
Dr. Edgar Ramos: That has me intrigued. So, does the main character, and because we only read Issue 1, will the main character take medication?
1:12:53
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): We cannot talk about that at this time.
1:12:56
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Okay.
1:12:57
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Well, you send me pictures?
1:13:00
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): We cannot talk about that at this time.
1:13:03
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Okay.
1:13:04
Dr. Edgar Ramos: That's a lawyer. That's a lawyer's answer right there.
1:13:06
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): My legal team has advised me otherwise, and it's just me off to the side in a suit.
1:13:12
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): I'm also the Calamity Comics legal team.
1:13:14
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Yeah, that makes sense. I'm intrigued now, I'm much more intrigued.
1:13:19
samantharamos: You should have spun around in the chair and just been like…
1:13:22
Tad Eggleston: What you needed to do was spin around in the chair, and while you did that, part your hair to the other side and put on a pair of glasses.
1:13:30
Dr. Edgar Ramos: There you go. Clark, can it.
1:13:32
Tad Eggleston: This is comic books.
1:13:34
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Yeah, yeah.
1:13:35
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): But my glasses are, unfortunately, non-existent because I don't wear glasses.
1:13:42
Tad Eggleston: No, then you can't be the legal team and the writer.
1:13:46
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): That's what the suits are for. The suit gives a whole different aura.
1:13:52
Tad Eggleston: Alright.
1:13:54
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Let me ask one more question.
1:13:56
Tad Eggleston: No.
1:13:56
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Ask as many as you want on the clinician side. I love answering these questions.
1:13:59
Dr. Edgar Ramos: This one is for Alicia.
1:14:02
Dr. Edgar Ramos: include, and that I actually… my thought is actually directed to her, is that… so…
1:14:08
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I saw and felt the anxiety, so, you know, I'm gonna believe that that was the goal of both of you, was to do it. But if I could just… if you could…
1:14:17
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Paint a picture of what anxiety is without the use of words, without
1:14:23
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Any scripted word, what would it have looked like? How would you have drawn it?
1:14:29
Alicia MADDEN: describe it without words? Like…
1:14:32
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Who's drunk? How would you have drawn anxiety?
1:14:35
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Like, when you picture it in your head, what do you see?
1:14:41
Dr. Edgar Ramos: -Oh, what was that?
1:14:42
Alicia MADDEN: I'm figuring…
1:14:43
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Oh my god.
1:14:45
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I just want to say that I think the last panel on page 28.
1:14:51
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Don't spoil it, that's what I was trying to see you get to, is which one, which panel?
1:14:56
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Which panel would say was the one for you that was… that you saw… was anxiety for you?
1:15:02
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:15:03
Alicia MADDEN: Or like…
1:15:03
Tad Eggleston: words. Yeah, it was no…
1:15:05
Alicia MADDEN: words, what does, like, a painting of anxiety look like?
1:15:08
Tad Eggleston: We lost… we lost Sam.
1:15:11
Alicia MADDEN: I think it would be, like, a very blinding white light.
1:15:16
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Wow.
1:15:18
Alicia MADDEN: Yeah, cause there's, like… Anxiety is, like…
1:15:23
Alicia MADDEN: It's… it feels to me like…
1:15:26
Alicia MADDEN: the complete opposite of how depression feels, because depression, I mean, you can't feel anything, and you're slowly, like, falling towards the pit of death, but, like, anxiety… you feel all of these…
1:15:42
Alicia MADDEN: Overpowering emotions that you cannot hide from.
1:15:46
Alicia MADDEN: It's… it's like just standing in front of headlights, and those headlights will just follow you everywhere you go.
1:15:53
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I know, I think that's… that's beautifully said.
1:15:57
Dr. Edgar Ramos: It's funny, because it's a white light, it's so overwhelming, and that is anxiety. It's so overwhelming, like, you're… it's…
1:16:03
Dr. Edgar Ramos: You know, I don't agree with the depression. I think depression, you're… you're so overly hurt, you feel everything too much, and that's why you're in such pain. But I agree with the anxiety, that white light, like, it's… I… I can feel that. That's… that's good. I like that. Yeah, even sitting here thinking about it, it's like, my own experience. Yeah. White light, huh? Yeah.
1:16:23
Alicia MADDEN: That means a lot, coming from a room full of doctors.
1:16:26
Dr. Edgar Ramos: That's, that's…
1:16:28
Tad Eggleston: Oh, Lee's not a doctor.
1:16:29
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Ted.
1:16:33
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): You're a doctor by association at this point.
1:16:35
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I'll take that. That's good, okay.
1:16:39
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): A doctor of life, as it were.
1:16:41
Dr. Edgar Ramos: You know, the…
1:16:42
Alicia MADDEN: Can I just back up and answer Tad way in the beginning? You kind of wanted to know how Elliot and I met. Yeah. We met at C2E2, and it was…
1:16:55
Alicia MADDEN: It was a panel, it was kind of like a speed dating panel, where writers met artists and vice versa. You sat down for 7 minutes and just talked about what kind of stuff you wanted to do. And Elliot
1:17:08
Alicia MADDEN: came, like, the least prepared, but the most prepared, because he kind of knew exactly, like, what he wanted to accomplish, even if…
1:17:16
Alicia MADDEN: Like, neither of us showed up totally prepared, this is our very first comic, so not a whole lot in the chamber.
1:17:22
Alicia MADDEN: But I remember I went through many different writers who wanted to tell, like, entertaining stories and, like, fantasies and stuff.
1:17:31
Alicia MADDEN: Nothing wrong with that, but I… I don't derive a whole lot of pleasure from just zoning out and passively receiving, stories from, like, movies and things like that. Least of all comics. Like, I really want to learn, I really want to feel. So when Elliot told me about his project, his script.
1:17:51
Alicia MADDEN: Like, I thought what was unique about him is he's the only writer in the room who…
1:17:57
Alicia MADDEN: Wrote about himself using fiction.
1:18:01
Alicia MADDEN: I was interested in working on something like nonfiction or historical, but he really convinced me when he talked about mental health kind of thing, because
1:18:11
Alicia MADDEN: And, like, I just, like, volunteered right away. I was like, I've been to therapy, and I had PTSD for years and years, and it, like.
1:18:19
Alicia MADDEN: stole a lot of time from my life, and I decided, like, I don't want to be depressed, I don't want PTSD, I went to therapy, and I'm better now, and I want to help people feel that way, too. And he's like, that's what I'm trying to do!
1:18:33
Alicia MADDEN: So, even without the experience behind us, we shared what was important, like, the experiences and how we wanted to impact readers.
1:18:45
Alicia MADDEN: And… so that's kind of how…
1:18:48
Alicia MADDEN: That's sort of the reason why we work well together behind the scenes, is because we have a whole lot of understanding.
1:18:54
Alicia MADDEN: Even if maybe not all the pieces are here yet, they will be.
1:18:58
Alicia MADDEN: And I think it does show up in the pages, like, the artwork works in tandem with the writing, too, because they're both people who, like, have been there.
1:19:07
Dr. Edgar Ramos: It definitely shows. It definitely shows. I can… I felt it, definitely, both in word and in art. It was…
1:19:17
Dr. Edgar Ramos: it shows that you guys feel what you're saying and trying to demonstrate, and I think that's the beauty of it. You're not trying to sell a product, you're trying to share an idea and a feeling, and I think that's what's beautiful about it.
1:19:31
Alicia MADDEN: Yeah, I had a question for you guys, but I don't know how to, like.
1:19:35
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Spanish, English, French, and English.
1:19:39
Sam Ramos: English, preferably.
1:19:41
Alicia MADDEN: Yeah, okay, I can.
1:19:42
Dr. Edgar Ramos: At that point!
1:19:45
Sam Ramos: It's me!
1:19:47
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Agents.
1:19:49
Alicia MADDEN: I don't know, like… When you brought up the trigger warning in the beginning of the comic.
1:19:55
Alicia MADDEN: I would hate to, like.
1:19:57
Alicia MADDEN: I'd hate to be like Procter & Gamble putting something out there that could, like, harm somebody just to have it out there in the world, but I don't really think that that will happen.
1:20:06
Alicia MADDEN: Because what… One thing that I think it offers is transference.
1:20:12
Alicia MADDEN: Instead of feeling those anxious feelings inside kind of thing, reading a really sometimes violent or sometimes upsetting story or comic book
1:20:23
Alicia MADDEN: It's like you're holding that pain in your hands instead, in, like, this little comic book.
1:20:29
Alicia MADDEN: Kind of thing? Is that…
1:20:32
Dr. Edgar Ramos: So, so I… when you first… when you first said transference or transference, I'm like, wait, are we talking Freudian transference? What kind of, what kind of… you know, then I'm like, oh, okay, it's kind of like sublimating? So, the nerd in me was starting to get clinical. I'm like, wait, what are we talking about? So…
1:20:48
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I… and I don't want to answer for everybody, but… so…
1:20:53
Dr. Edgar Ramos: how do I say this? In… So…
1:20:56
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I don't really… I'm not a big fan of, like, needing to have to put a trigger warning, because I think you don't need to put any limitation on…
1:21:03
Dr. Edgar Ramos: on any book, because I think that's the beauty of books, is that I'm not a big proponent for banned books, it's like, you have the choice to read it, it's your choice, you choose what you want to read. I think it's great that, you know, if you so choose to do that, like, that's great, because you want to make sure, like, everyone's prepped for it.
1:21:18
Dr. Edgar Ramos: So I think that's good. In terms of the actual process of, you know, when you're reading something that, you know.
1:21:25
Dr. Edgar Ramos: can affect or cause one to emote, whether aggressively, emotionally, you know, whatever the case is. Yeah, I think, I think where we're heading is that, is that, can it be cathartic? Is there a cathartic experience when you read something like that?
1:21:41
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Absolutely, because, you know, some of us are, you know, and not to get too clinical, when we're overly restrained or well-tight, sometimes being able to see it in writing or in art is that it lets us out, it lets it out for us in that fashion. So yes, it can be extremely cathartic, you know, in that fashion, and two, it's an escape, and I always tell everybody, like, my thing is that
1:22:05
Dr. Edgar Ramos: reading comics was always an escape for me, so when I see anything on things that…
1:22:09
Dr. Edgar Ramos: remind me of my past, or remind me of my problems or dilemmas. It's a beautiful thing to be able to see it, feel it tangibly, or, you know, and mentally, emotionally, because it lets it out for me. So yeah, so I think that's probably the best way I can… I don't know if that was… if that answers what you were saying… asking?
1:22:28
Alicia MADDEN: Yeah.
1:22:29
Sam Ramos: So, the… when I… when I read the trigger warning, because, like, reading… reading comics that do talk about, like, mental health issues, or somebody's, you know.
1:22:40
Sam Ramos: what they have gone through, right? Because there's… there's a number of different comics that talk about trauma, that talk about, you know,
1:22:46
Sam Ramos: substance abuse, that talk about, you know, child abuse, like, there's a lot of comics that do that, and graphic novels, but… and they don't have the trigger warnings in front of it. So, reading this comic, seeing the trigger warning, like, I guess for me, it… it…
1:23:01
Sam Ramos: Made… it… it triggered, like, this thought that, like, oh, this is serious.
1:23:06
Sam Ramos: Which was, like, you know, because it's like a disclaimer. And it's like, you know, you get a disclaimer before something serious, like, you're about to do something serious. Like, I have to sign a waiver before I go to a trampoline park, right? Like, this was, like, the disclaimer before reading this. And it was like, okay, it…
1:23:24
Sam Ramos: Not that it gives it more credit than other works that talk about mental health issues.
1:23:31
Sam Ramos: But it… it was, like, a sense of, like.
1:23:33
Sam Ramos: okay, like, I'm… I'm going to feel something reading this, like, because it… it is real.
1:23:41
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Would you say it almost kind of, like, sets the tone, in a way?
1:23:44
Sam Ramos: Yes, because it's… It felt more serious than, you know, just jumping into a…
1:23:51
Sam Ramos: A novel or a comic that talks about these issues, that talks about, you know, a character going through something.
1:23:58
Sam Ramos: It… it just made it feel, like, more, like.
1:24:01
Sam Ramos: Okay, I have to take this seriously. This is a… this is a real thing.
1:24:06
Dr. Edgar Ramos: You know, you know what's funny is that, because I'm… well, now I'm laying out our personal stuff.
1:24:10
Sam Ramos: Don't do that.
1:24:12
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I'm gonna air out our stuff! So, it's cool, because it does show our personalities and how we approach, or how we broach, you know, mental health or treatment, but also our own lives, is that… so my wife, who's the type who, you know, I love very much, is the type, when we're watching a movie…
1:24:29
Dr. Edgar Ramos: She's on her phone, looking at the ending, and reading the ending, and looking at what's going on.
1:24:33
Alicia MADDEN: You know what I mean.
1:24:33
Dr. Edgar Ramos: And you're like, motherfucker, like, you know, just watch the movie.
1:24:36
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): The movie!
1:24:37
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I'm surprised, you know? Like, the twist is what catches you, and she's like, no, I don't want to see the twist. So it totally makes sense that you want to see the trigger warning, like, you're prepared for it.
1:24:46
Dr. Edgar Ramos: And I'm opposites, like, I didn't want to see the trigger warning, because I wanted you to, like, oh, shit, this guy's, like, dude, like, I wanted that, like, I wanted to, you know, get that boom, that wham feeling, so it's funny, I mean, not… it's good either way, but it's funny how…
1:25:02
Dr. Edgar Ramos: it's the different personalities and different perspectives of how we see that, you know, so it's pretty cool. It's pretty cool to see that. Yeah. Neither here or there, it's just interesting.
1:25:12
Tad Eggleston: We were…
1:25:13
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Where's your middle ground?
1:25:15
Tad Eggleston: My whole issue with the trigger warning is the wording.
1:25:19
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Like, the word warning?
1:25:21
Tad Eggleston: No, the way the warning is worded, I think rather than saying it contains content that may trigger, I would just say.
1:25:30
Tad Eggleston: This book contains depictions of blank.
1:25:34
Tad Eggleston: Reader discretion advised, and then if you're gonna, tell people to consider seeking support, you should throw in a hotline.
1:25:44
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): So I've… the reason we've gone back and forth on the hotline, the reason I didn't include it is because I had very negative experiences with hotlines, so I didn't want to…
1:25:54
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Put that out there for people.
1:25:58
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): So, that's why it's considered.
1:25:59
Tad Eggleston: That's fair.
1:26:00
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): If needed, because you don't want to say, hey, this is the only way that you can get, support and help. There are many other avenues. Some people might do hotlines, some people might go to therapy, some people might talk to a loved one. There's a lot of different ways, so you don't… I didn't want to pigeonhole somebody saying, this is the only way that you can get help.
1:26:15
Dr. Edgar Ramos: That's excellently said, yeah, not everybody goes to a therapist or a hotline. Some people go to a pastor, you know, or a church, or, you know, ethnically… yeah, beautifully said, yeah, I like that answer. Damn, you offer, aren't.
1:26:27
Tad Eggleston: And, and, and, and… I love that answer, but I would add to it, then… then…
1:26:37
Tad Eggleston: One of the most difficult people who… or things for people who are seeking support is figuring out how.
1:26:45
Tad Eggleston: So, if it's not a hotline, then…
1:26:48
Dr. Edgar Ramos: The card in the comic will include my card in every comic.
1:26:51
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): There we go.
1:26:52
Tad Eggleston: Sure, but, but, but, I mean, you could do it as a hotline, a professional therapist, you know, just that little thing that…
1:27:05
Tad Eggleston: Makes it more than considering support, it's…
1:27:10
Tad Eggleston: And hey, support is more available than you realize it is, because here are ways to get a support.
1:27:17
Tad Eggleston: Does that make sense? It does. But also, if you read the book to the end… No, I, I, I, I… but in that case, I say drop the line entirely.
1:27:29
Alicia MADDEN: It's foreshadowing.
1:27:31
Tad Eggleston: Rather than consider seeking support if needed, just don't have that as part of the warning up front. Does that make sense?
1:27:38
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Yeah, I think we originally had that part out, and then… I don't remember if Blair said to put that in, or somebody said to put that in. I honestly don't remember, I just wrote the first part.
1:27:48
Tad Eggleston: And again, I wouldn't have said anything, but we were talking so much about the warning, I'm like, okay, if we're gonna talk this much about the warning, I have to…
1:27:56
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Let's get into it. I have to jump in.
1:27:59
Tad Eggleston: because I did have issues with the warning, they were just nitpicky autistic ones.
1:28:05
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): I love nitpick.
1:28:09
Dr. Edgar Ramos: So, as I was sort of reflecting here, like, everybody's sort of input here.
1:28:15
Dr. Edgar Ramos: My first initial thought is, I'm not a big fan of trigger warnings, just, period. Like, me, I'm a little bit more competitive, I'm like, okay, well, let's see how good this is, then.
1:28:23
Dr. Edgar Ramos: But, going back to Alicia's real question, as, like, that sort of transference of the reader putting it
1:28:31
Dr. Edgar Ramos: into the comic, rather than themselves. And I think that's a powerful sort of question.
1:28:37
Dr. Edgar Ramos: So then…
1:28:39
Dr. Edgar Ramos: my only sort of feedback I would even have, if I have any sort of critique at all, is.
1:28:43
Dr. Edgar Ramos: You're, you're not alone and you are loved, and the trigger warning, Switch them.
1:28:50
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Have the you are loved and you're not alone.
1:28:52
Dr. Edgar Ramos: First, That way, the…
1:28:56
Dr. Edgar Ramos: in my head, as a reader, it's like, I'm putting that into literally my hands, and I think that's where you're getting at, is that anxiety, whatever that we're depicting here, I'm literally holding that in my hands, and I have a sort of sense of hope.
1:29:10
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Because even, Elliot, as you mentioned, the person that read the trigger warning first and said, oh, I don't want to read it.
1:29:17
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Well, son of a bitch, the glimmer of hope was the next page.
1:29:21
Dr. Edgar Ramos: It's just like… Okay, but I think that could be something that you would lean more into to say.
1:29:28
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Hey, like, this is what we're talking about, and you can do it.
1:29:32
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Yeah, see, I… once I see you're not alone, I'll be like, well, I fucking am.
1:29:37
Dr. Edgar Ramos: But that's the, like, maybe that's the ban for me, it's like, how are you gonna tell me I'm not alone? I am.
1:29:44
Dr. Edgar Ramos: You see, like, there's that rebel… that's why I said the perspectives are so interesting, because it's like, if you're depressed or anxious, you are alone. Like, you are. That's what you feel, and you are what you feel, so… But now, this is where we're as clinicians, and we're getting this sort of debate here, is like, there's a difference between feeling alone and being alone. But they didn't distinguish that.
1:30:03
Dr. Edgar Ramos: They just said you are alone. So you're… if you overanalyze, you're going too deeper than just, it says you are alone. It doesn't ask you feel alone.
1:30:10
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I think you're over-analyzing it.
1:30:13
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Exactly, yeah, that's like… Any damn thoughts?
1:30:16
Dr. Edgar Ramos: It's just, it's just straightforward.
1:30:17
Sam Ramos: I think you're over-analyzing it.
1:30:20
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Look, if Elliot can be litigious and judicious in what he's saying, then we could be fucking analytical, alright?
1:30:27
Sam Ramos: But you are not getting paid to be analytical, reading this sentence.
1:30:32
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Free, you know, this is free! No, I…
1:30:36
Tad Eggleston: No, actually.
1:30:37
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I'm gonna get in trouble now. Those are you, I'm gonna go home and get in trouble now.
1:30:42
Dr. Edgar Ramos: No, that was Alicia who brought this up. Because of you!
1:30:46
Tad Eggleston: So, I, I…
1:30:47
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Oh, no.
1:30:48
Tad Eggleston: I… I have… I have one more process question, because I've only read it digitally, but… but I'm… I'm… I'm…
1:30:57
Tad Eggleston: realizing… I kind of internally do…
1:31:01
Tad Eggleston: Page turns and spreads, even when I'm only seeing one page.
1:31:07
Tad Eggleston: So I have the quick question for both Elliot and writing.
1:31:11
Tad Eggleston: And… Alicia in… in drawing, Were you considering your page turns and spreads?
1:31:21
Tad Eggleston: Alicia, when you were… when you were, drawing, did you… I mean, I'm assuming you work digitally, this… this looks like you work digitally.
1:31:31
Tad Eggleston: If I'm wrong, I apologize.
1:31:33
Alicia MADDEN: Your… your question was, do I…
1:31:37
Tad Eggleston: Did you have it set up where you saw your pages side by side as you were drawing them, or were you doing the individual page?
1:31:45
Alicia MADDEN: I have yet to do, like, a two-page spread, I think.
1:31:50
Alicia MADDEN: I work just page to page.
1:31:52
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
1:31:52
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): But do you… so do you mean, like, you know, for example, the…
1:31:56
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): like, shower scene from the, you know, the one where it's all the voices, and then the next one where it's just no dialogue, like, was that considered in the, like, physical version, you mean? Or…
1:32:07
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, I think, like…
1:32:11
Tad Eggleston: 28… so those are gonna be side-by-side pages, I think.
1:32:19
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): No… I mean, I did read the physical.
1:32:23
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
1:32:24
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): One back at the office, because we got those in now.
1:32:29
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): I don't know how it looks on your, what page you're looking at, but if I'm looking at PDF, digital reader version 19 and 20, if we're looking at the…
1:32:37
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): one with voices all around him, then the next one with the shower, like, where he's like this, where he said that should have been the last one. It actually goes from the two shower scenes and, like, where he's panicking. Next page, dead silent panel, where just the.
1:32:51
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah, no,
1:32:55
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, the dead silent page is page 20, which means it's gonna be a left-hand side.
1:33:01
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Correct.
1:33:03
Tad Eggleston: But what I… what I mean is, the in-the-shower, like, it…
1:33:10
Tad Eggleston: Like, it's gonna be a two-page spread of…
1:33:14
Tad Eggleston: The shower page that we talked a ton about, and the shower page that's equally good that we didn't talk about.
1:33:20
Tad Eggleston: Are… you're gonna see them at the same time.
1:33:23
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Yes.
1:33:25
Tad Eggleston: And that, actually, is… isn't the one that I was… was most… Like, like…
1:33:35
Tad Eggleston: I wonder if… I mean, I know Sam loves, and I love, the empty apartment page, but I wonder if it's gonna feel the same when it's sharing space
1:33:45
Tad Eggleston: with the outside.
1:33:48
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Let me see…
1:33:51
Alicia MADDEN: I get what you mean, Tat. I think, like… Yeah.
1:33:54
Alicia MADDEN: if… if I could possibly, like, do that again, I think it would be a lot… it would be a lot easier on me to draw the inside of an apartment in a landscape.
1:34:09
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, honestly, I think that that page would have worked better as a full page. I mean, as much as I think that there's an argument for cutting it as a one page, I think that if you'd made it two pages, it would have been the argument for keeping it there.
1:34:24
Alicia MADDEN: It was definitely kind of hard trying to fit, like.
1:34:29
Alicia MADDEN: I'm just, like, not that versed in art, or at least I wasn't at the time. Right. So I was kind of putting it together as I went, and I didn't really know that.
1:34:39
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): That could have been on me… that could have been on me for writing it in the script as a one-page as opposed to a two-page, but…
1:34:44
Tad Eggleston: Well, but, but, but, and again, like…
1:34:49
Tad Eggleston: one of the things that… and this is… I mean, this is your first comic, so this is… this is… and it's the type of stuff that really only nerds like me
1:35:01
Tad Eggleston: really glom onto.
1:35:03
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Unless it's done incredibly well.
1:35:05
Tad Eggleston: Right? It's hard to kill your book by not doing this. It's just one of those things that… that when you do it well, it just elevates things.
1:35:16
Tad Eggleston: like…
1:35:18
Tad Eggleston: as much as we think of reading comics panel by panel, we essentially take in the two-page spread and then start reading panel by panel. So what those two pages together look like
1:35:30
Tad Eggleston: matters a lot. So if you've got dark on one side and light on the other, it's gonna stand out as soon as you look at the page.
1:35:39
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Right, but I mean, if we're looking at the, you know, 14 to 15, then it is that transition from out in… Right.
1:35:50
Tad Eggleston: But what I'm saying is, in some ways, and this is one of the things that, you know, until I see it physically, I can't say. I almost wonder if that would be a better page flip translation.
1:36:03
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Maybe? Maybe not? I mean, I'm trying to look at the… Right. But, you know, if you come to, Modern Age Comics on, you know, the 28th, you can find out for yourself.
1:36:12
Alicia MADDEN: Bring your friends!
1:36:14
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Spread the word, tell your friends. Modern Age Comics, Algonquin, Illinois.
1:36:17
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, that, that, that, that, that I realized is, is, is one of the things that, that, that.
1:36:24
Dr. Edgar Ramos: That was beautiful, by the way. Well said, well said.
1:36:27
Tad Eggleston: That's one of the things that I realized, like…
1:36:34
Tad Eggleston: I've been thinking of… I mean, another sign that it's… it's a good book, and with a lot there, is that I've been thinking about it since I read it. And thinking about what worked, and thinking about, okay, what were the actual things that made me not immediately
1:36:55
Tad Eggleston: I'm trying to phrase this properly, because I like it more having talked about it and gone through it now, but… but… but I didn't love it the first time I read it. I saw potential, and, you know,
1:37:08
Tad Eggleston: And I think the fact that I could feel that it was done
1:37:12
Tad Eggleston: Page by page, and again, Alicia's your first comic, this is not like, oh my god, how did you not know how to do that? Because I know professionals that don't do that very often, because it's hard to do that. You know, you either need bigger Bristol boards, or you need a big enough screen iPad to really be able to do it, or…
1:37:30
Tad Eggleston: You know, it…
1:37:31
Alicia MADDEN: You know, Tad, until you brought it up, like, 30 seconds ago, that never occurred to me to do that. I'll find a way, like, with the size of my Bristol board, and… I mean, I have two monitors, I can… I can… I'll find a way, because you told me.
1:37:44
Tad Eggleston: Well, and, and, and, like, I know a lot of…
1:37:46
Dr. Edgar Ramos: No, wait, hold up, for those that don't know, what the heck is a Bristol board? Yeah.
1:37:51
Alicia MADDEN: Oh, you called me.
1:37:52
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Immediately, I'm like, you know? I don't know. I could Google it.
1:37:55
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): I'm actually Googling it right here.
1:37:56
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Elliot, do you know what a Bristol board is?
1:37:58
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): No, I was googling it.
1:37:59
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Oh, I'm like, what the fuck is a goddamn Bristol board?
1:38:02
Tad Eggleston: Okay, Edgar, when you buy an original piece of comic book art.
1:38:09
Tad Eggleston: That's normally what it's drawn on.
1:38:11
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Okay.
1:38:14
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): So, to give a little bit of,
1:38:17
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): What you said earlier, Ted, so Alicia does work digitally, but every single page starts on pencil. Like, she pencils out everything, inks it, physically, and then scans it in, and then does the rest digitally.
1:38:29
Tad Eggleston: Okay, so you're doing your… you're doing your, your, your pencils…
1:38:34
Alicia MADDEN: Yeah. Yeah.
1:38:36
Tad Eggleston: What are you working on? I mean, I'm… I'm…
1:38:39
Tad Eggleston: by no means the pro, I don't have any of my art pros with me, but I've picked up a little over the last 4 years.
1:38:45
Alicia MADDEN: I've had this… the same collection of, like, art… art supplies since I was a teenager, and so it's just, like…
1:38:51
Alicia MADDEN: just a bunch of, pencils from, like, H to B, if you know, you know.
1:38:56
Tad Eggleston: No, I meant, I meant, like, like, are you using one of… I can't… I have one downstairs. A friend of mine just sent me a piece of original art. Are you using the comic page…
1:39:08
Alicia MADDEN: I just upgraded to something much larger, and I got one of those, like, elevated desk board deals, so I'm not drawing flat on the…
1:39:18
Alicia MADDEN: table, and it feels more ergonomic and everything. Yep, starting with pencils, old-ass pencils, and, and…
1:39:26
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I just… I know a lot of people, when they're doing their thumbs, tend to…
1:39:31
Tad Eggleston: And that's the other… I mean, what's your… really quick, just because we didn't… we didn't get deep into this before, what's your process? You gotta go in 5 minutes. What, Edgar? You don't have to go! You're in your own shop! They don't throw you out!
1:39:46
Dr. Edgar Ramos: hour away!
1:39:50
Tad Eggleston: You haven't set up a cot yet?
1:39:53
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I want to see my wife and kids at some level before I go to bed.
1:39:57
Tad Eggleston: They'll come visit tomorrow, the in-laws are down the road.
1:40:01
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I don't like my in-laws, I like my wife and kids.
1:40:04
Tad Eggleston: Go visit the in-laws.
1:40:07
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Are we just gonna change from Dr. Edgar Ramos to Lee.
1:40:13
Tad Eggleston: So, oop.
1:40:15
Tad Eggleston: What's your… what's your process, both individually and… and collaboratively? Like… like…
1:40:23
Tad Eggleston: essentially, how many times are you drawing it? Are you…
1:40:29
Tad Eggleston: Are you starting with penciled layouts? Are you starting with thumbnails? Are, you know…
1:40:35
Alicia MADDEN: Here's what, like, I'm doing right now, because at the time we started, didn't know what I was doing, but this is what I'm going to do from now on, is after I get his script.
1:40:47
Alicia MADDEN: I'm going to thumbnail each and every page, and I do it very quickly, usually just with one pen and a marker.
1:40:55
Alicia MADDEN: They're not fancy at all, we just kind of agree on camera angles, and like, this is what's in this shot.
1:41:00
Tad Eggleston: And then once those are approved, then I move on to pencil sketching. So I just take each of those thumbnails and…
1:41:07
Alicia MADDEN: and translate it into a sketch in pencil, show it to Elliot, he okays the sketch… the… yeah, pencil sketch. Then I move on to ink.
1:41:17
Alicia MADDEN: And, right now…
1:41:20
Tad Eggleston: He's not okaying the inks, he's a… he's just… he'd better be paying you a lot.
1:41:24
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): I'm a dick at that point.
1:41:25
Alicia MADDEN: Well, then I'll…
1:41:28
Alicia MADDEN: I will just write a little note next to it, so that when I scan it and upload it to Photoshop, I have a little note, it says, make this arm longer, why is it so short?
1:41:38
Tad Eggleston: So you're physically inking and then just coloring in Photoshop, or…
1:41:42
Alicia MADDEN: Yes.
1:41:43
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
1:41:44
Alicia MADDEN: You know, I'm not really a great pencil artist, I'm really great with inks, and in fact, that's what I wanted to do when I went into comics. I was, talking to writers, and I was like, yeah, I can be your inker, because I know it's, like, a collaborative process, so I was like, yeah, let me be the ink guy.
1:42:00
Tad Eggleston: Have you met, Anthony Fowler?
1:42:04
Alicia MADDEN: No.
1:42:05
Tad Eggleston: Make a point… if you go to C2E2 this year, make a point of going to his booth. That's what he does.
1:42:10
Alicia MADDEN: Maybe I have… wait a second, what has he worked on?
1:42:13
Tad Eggleston: He's done some stuff at DC, he's done a fair amount of.
1:42:17
Alicia MADDEN: Did he… was he a DC? Did he…
1:42:19
Tad Eggleston: stuff.
1:42:20
Alicia MADDEN: Did he do Hush?
1:42:22
Tad Eggleston: I don't think so.
1:42:25
Alicia MADDEN: Fowler actually sounds familiar.
1:42:26
Tad Eggleston: He… he's not that level.
1:42:28
Alicia MADDEN: Okie doke. He's still a young guy.
1:42:31
Tad Eggleston: Hopefully, someday, he'll do that sort of thing, but .
1:42:36
Alicia MADDEN: Nino!
1:42:38
Tad Eggleston: I know he, he did… he did most of the inking on… The… the milestone…
1:42:49
Tad Eggleston: Oh, he did New Gods 11.
1:42:51
Tad Eggleston: DC power?
1:42:54
Alicia MADDEN: That sounds familiar.
1:42:57
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, he did most of the inking on Milestone Initiative.
1:43:01
Alicia MADDEN: Yeah, I'd love to look at his stuff.
1:43:02
Tad Eggleston: special.
1:43:06
Tad Eggleston: They did an issue of Batman vs. Big B, and a couple issues of Batman vs. Big B, it looks like.
1:43:13
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, he's a good guy.
1:43:15
Tad Eggleston: And he's at C2E2 every year. He's already among the list of guests.
1:43:20
Tad Eggleston: But he's one of the few younger people I know who's… who's…
1:43:25
Tad Eggleston: actually an inker, because it's one of the jobs that's kind of started to drift away with…
1:43:32
Tad Eggleston: digital, because so many… The temptation is there to just skip that step, which… Yeah, so many people will scan their pencils and then do their inking digitally.
1:43:41
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): You gotta ink it physically.
1:43:44
Alicia MADDEN: For two…
1:43:45
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): I see.
1:43:45
Alicia MADDEN: For two reasons, because, on page 5 of Y&K, that is one that I…
1:43:52
Alicia MADDEN: Scan the… the pencil sketches?
1:43:55
Alicia MADDEN: And I should just say, like, although it's a great page and everything, it doesn't compare to the other ones where I did ink.
1:44:04
Alicia MADDEN: There's just something more, like, lifelike about it when you ink and everything, and that's kind of where, like, I cut my teeth and everything, so…
1:44:11
Alicia MADDEN: Yeah, just know not to do that again. The temptation's there because it's so much, so much simpler.
1:44:17
Alicia MADDEN: Hey, one of my favorite artists, like.
1:44:20
Tad Eggleston: Because the other thing, like, if you wind up having a career in this, you're gonna discover that you make as much or more money on selling your original art as you do
1:44:30
Tad Eggleston: From getting paid to make the comics.
1:44:35
Tad Eggleston: One of my favorite artists does the loosest pencils imaginable.
1:44:39
Tad Eggleston: scans them and does everything else from there, but then goes, this page will sell, and goes back and tightens the pencils. This page will sell, and goes back and tightens the pencils.
1:44:54
Tad Eggleston: But.
1:44:55
Alicia MADDEN: Diabolical.
1:44:57
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, when you're thumbnailing, I, you know, the non-artist me would recommend
1:45:05
Tad Eggleston: Thumbnailing the two pages together, just so you see how the flow between them works.
1:45:11
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Can you do that, though, Alicia?
1:45:14
Alicia MADDEN: Yeah, kinda.
1:45:15
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
1:45:15
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Yeah, because when we pre… when we… she scans over the thumbnails, she puts them side by side as if it were in the comic format, like, the physical format.
1:45:22
Tad Eggleston: But I meant even when she's drawing them, make a two-page box.
1:45:28
Tad Eggleston: And lay it out.
1:45:29
Alicia MADDEN: Yeah, can do.
1:45:31
Tad Eggleston: Because then you… then you really see how the line… because sometimes it can be jarring when even the panels don't line up
1:45:39
Tad Eggleston: If they line up weird. And this also, like, it can be fixed in printing, because if you make the gutters…
1:45:47
Tad Eggleston: wider, that then the pages are more separate, and you don't connect them, but, like…
1:45:54
Tad Eggleston: This is where we get into the book design and…
1:45:56
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Me too.
1:45:57
Tad Eggleston: That wasn't where I meant to go right now.
1:45:59
Alicia MADDEN: Yeah, this is a fun chapter that, like, I'm embarking on.
1:46:02
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): If we're talking about the panel layouts, like, looking jarring, the first thing I said to Alicia when we were talking about design is, I don't want the stereotypical box panels, like, I want it to be… Oh, absolutely. I want it to be dynamic, and that's where her panel, like.
1:46:17
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Obviously, her art's amazing, but the effort she puts into panel design and layout is what makes the comic, in my opinion.
1:46:25
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
1:46:26
Tad Eggleston: So, because Dr. Ramos needs to leave, soon. I want…
1:46:35
Tad Eggleston: And because it turns out you guys are ridiculously young, or at least Elliot is.
1:46:40
Alicia MADDEN: I'm younger than him.
1:46:42
Tad Eggleston: That was my guess.
1:46:44
Alicia MADDEN: Okay.
1:46:45
Tad Eggleston: I've only seen your picture in the comic, but, but, like, I…
1:46:50
Tad Eggleston: I had Elliot in his 30s, and he's not, and I was assuming that you were younger than him, so…
1:46:58
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Thank you!
1:46:58
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Yeah. What?
1:47:01
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I thought you were talking to me.
1:47:04
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Gregor, you are… you are young.
1:47:06
Tad Eggleston: Thank you. Well, I mean, Sam certainly feels like it when she's gotta take care of 3 kids every day.
1:47:13
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I'm not even gonna acknowledge that statement right now.
1:47:17
Tad Eggleston: No, but it looked like Sam was going to.
1:47:19
Tad Eggleston: I saw the mute go on.
1:47:20
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I chose to let you live, is what she did.
1:47:23
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): I'm still getting in trouble when I get home.
1:47:26
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Let's build it from here.
1:47:28
Tad Eggleston: So, I imagine that this'll be abbreviated anyway, but it's one of my favorite questions to ask. Give me your comic's biography. Clearly not a bibliography, because we've already gone over it. Your biography, what do you…
1:47:42
Tad Eggleston: first remember reading that made you like comics? What… what, made you start going, hmm, maybe I'd like to make comics? What… what… what…
1:47:53
Tad Eggleston: made you go, oh, I want to make comics like that, that sort of thing. Give me titles, give me dates, not necessarily dates. I mean, if you remember, I bought my first comic on June 2nd.
1:48:05
Tad Eggleston: Sure, go for it, but… and… and titles, and, like, what…
1:48:11
Tad Eggleston: What are the comics that mean something to you?
1:48:14
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): I think when I was… when I was younger, my uncle would always bring me, it wasn't necessarily comics, but he'd bring me, like, The Adventures of Batboy.
1:48:22
Tad Eggleston: I didn't know they let high schoolers be lawyers, but…
1:48:27
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): It's really fun when I walk into a courtroom and they're like, are you licensed? Yes, judge, I am. In multiple states. Thank you. Do you ever need a lawyer in Chicago, Indiana, or Florida? Mondri, Mondrie.
1:48:39
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I mean, let's…
1:48:41
Tad Eggleston: Let's be real, anybody can be licensed in Florida.
1:48:44
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): They have one of the harder bar exams, I will say. Like, they really gatekeep.
1:48:49
Tad Eggleston: We definitely have one of the more expensive bar exams, the way I've heard it.
1:48:54
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): They're all expensive. That's another podcast for a different day.
1:48:57
Tad Eggleston: See, I was making a different illusion.
1:48:59
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): When I was younger, though, my uncle would have me read, like, The Adventure of the Batboy, and I remember that could be my first, like.
1:49:08
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): oh, what is this? This is different. This isn't just news and, like, strips and stuff. This is, like, fun.
1:49:15
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): So that's my, probably, earlier memory of comics, and then obviously, like, old issues of Batman, Superman, and Spider-Man that my dad would give me.
1:49:24
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): But I think what really changed for me when I got older
1:49:30
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): there were probably 3 comics that I will mention that changed my perspective on comics. One was, a comic called Anarchy Dreamers by one of our parent artists, Emily Rhee, and that was when I really first saw for the first time somebody taking trauma
1:49:48
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): and putting that into comic book form, because I had never seen someone do that before. And their story was about, these kids who.
1:49:57
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): A high school kid who… their friend die, and then what would happen if they come back?
1:50:02
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): And that concept really struck a chord with me.
1:50:06
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): And made me start thinking about, you know, you can write yourself into a story in this way.
1:50:12
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): And then the book that really made me want to and inspired to write comics was, Ted Sakora.
1:50:19
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): His whole cinematic universe of Here Tomorrow Comics, Tap Dance Killer, Punchline, Apama.
1:50:25
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Bloom, just this collected story of,
1:50:30
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): people that wasn't just sup… like, the, you know, Marvel DC, like, an indie creator making their own cinematic universe of comic book and interconnecting storylines, and the way that the stories were written, the paneling, the pacing, everything was clicking with me, and I'm like, this is what comics can be, and what I want to do with it.
1:50:48
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): And then, the third comic that…
1:50:52
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): I want to mention, because I think it's important for the audience we have here, is Warhead by my good friend Cash Kudstman, who's the owner of Biolumen Press, took another… their experience with anxiety and put it into this
1:51:07
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): three-volume series that made me realize that I want to create stories about mental health, and that I'm proud to be in this area of, comic books.
1:51:19
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): So I'd say, that's my big 3, and then Batboy.
1:51:23
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Nice.
1:51:25
Alicia MADDEN: Lovely. Same question?
1:51:27
Tad Eggleston: Yep.
1:51:28
Alicia MADDEN: Yeah, different answer, oh.
1:51:33
Alicia MADDEN: So I've always been a DC kid, since a very, very young age. Before it was, like, even that appropriate. My mom, like, happened upon two trades of Teen Titans.
1:51:46
Alicia MADDEN: And the show, the 2003 cartoon series is really big, with kids in my age demographic, we don't have to go into that. It was like…
1:51:56
Tad Eggleston: I'm, like, I'm beginning to think that you're younger than my kids.
1:52:03
Alicia MADDEN: Anyway…
1:52:04
Tad Eggleston: I know that you're younger than at least one of Edgar's kids.
1:52:07
Dr. Edgar Ramos: How did you… why'd you throw…
1:52:10
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Just catch a stray. Quietly, I'm attentive, I'm listening, and…
1:52:17
Alicia MADDEN: I'm being read to filth over here, I'm just trying to spell.
1:52:20
Tad Eggleston: Whereas, whereas you're probably peers of Lee, so, like…
1:52:25
Dr. Edgar Ramos: First of all, I saw the Teen Titans, and I thought the writing was amazing on the Teen Titans, you know? With the Teen Titans Go, that changed, but the original Teen Titans series was fabulous, and people don't… they don't… they sleep on how well that show is written, how intellectually well that show is written.
1:52:41
Alicia MADDEN: Yes.
1:52:41
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): People also forget how… Amazing that that version of Robin was. Oh my god.
1:52:48
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Awesome.
1:52:50
Sam Ramos: The one where he has, PTSD, and it's.
1:52:55
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Yup, what's name.
1:52:56
Sam Ramos: Deathstroke, and it's just like, you know, is he seeing him? And then, like, you find out that, like, he, you know, I don't… I actually don't want to put any spoilers, but, like, the PTSD aspect of it, and his friends are trying to help him, and they're just like, it's okay, like, you can… you can let go, but, like, he can't let it go, because he keeps hearing him, and he keeps seeing him, and it's just like…
1:53:15
Sam Ramos: wrote that! Like, that's amazing!
1:53:17
Alicia MADDEN: Oh my god, and the heartbreak, where, like.
1:53:19
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Starfire.
1:53:20
Alicia MADDEN: has to essentially, like, fight him just to calm him down.
1:53:24
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): That changed something in me.
1:53:28
Dr. Edgar Ramos: They did a whole thing just on the Teen Titans that watch it, like, that… it was… oh my god, yeah.
1:53:32
Alicia MADDEN: Yeah, so naturally, that's why I never stopped reading Teen Titans. Like, I have the, like, Geoff Johns series, that was, like, 100 issues.
1:53:42
Alicia MADDEN: And ever since then, like, I pick up on the other proteges. Like, I haven't really liked Justice League all that much, but I will read the hell out of Nightwing. Tom Taylor, and…
1:53:56
Dr. Edgar Ramos: How about Tom King's Nightwing?
1:53:59
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Grayson.
1:54:00
Tad Eggleston: racing.
1:54:01
Alicia MADDEN: Mmm…
1:54:03
Dr. Edgar Ramos: So you're, like, like the 80s George Perez Nightwing, you know, with the… She just said Tom Taylor.
1:54:10
Alicia MADDEN: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's, like, Tom Taylor and…
1:54:12
Tad Eggleston: I did love the, the scroll issue.
1:54:16
Tad Eggleston: that I actually had to… to… to… I sent my wife
1:54:21
Tad Eggleston: Screenshots of every page so that she could print it up on her high-res printer at school and make it into a scroll for me.
1:54:29
Alicia MADDEN: They could just read it again.
1:54:29
Tad Eggleston: cross.
1:54:31
Alicia MADDEN: That's… that's a fan.
1:54:34
Alicia MADDEN: And then, oh my gosh.
1:54:35
Tad Eggleston: If they're gonna go to the trouble to make an issue that's all one panel…
1:54:39
Alicia MADDEN: I want to read it as one panel.
1:54:42
Alicia MADDEN: Yeah.
1:54:43
Alicia MADDEN: Oh, and what's his… what is his name?
1:54:47
Alicia MADDEN: From Howling Pages, our good friend.
1:54:51
Tad Eggleston: Oh… the owner?
1:54:54
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Bro, are we talking about the guy who worked… Declan?
1:54:57
Alicia MADDEN: Not exactly.
1:54:58
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Timothy, Kim Perry…
1:55:00
Alicia MADDEN: Tim Seeley, who… Tim Seeley. Yeah, he was also one of the artists on one of the best, like, one of my favorite Nightwing series, neither here nor there, but,
1:55:11
Alicia MADDEN: The one that really got…
1:55:12
Tad Eggleston: it during, rebirth?
1:55:16
Alicia MADDEN: Yes. Rebirth and the really controversial, Nightwing gets shot by KG Beast.
1:55:23
Alicia MADDEN: Right. Arc. Anyway, and… I have to say.
1:55:27
Tad Eggleston: Well, that was for his buddy Tom King that he'd done Gracie with.
1:55:31
Alicia MADDEN: Oh, okie doke, I wasn't putting them together, sorry.
1:55:34
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, he actually got shot in Tom's Batman book.
1:55:39
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Yep.
1:55:42
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I'm a nerd here, see?
1:55:45
Alicia MADDEN: This… it's okay, this is exactly what you expect to hear in a comic shop kind of deal, it's like, actually?
1:55:51
Alicia MADDEN: Oh.
1:55:52
Tad Eggleston: I wasn't trying to say, actually, because I don't know if he also did the scene in his book. I know that I read it in Tom's book.
1:56:00
Alicia MADDEN: It might have been crossed over, because…
1:56:02
Tad Eggleston: I… that would be the way that you should do it.
1:56:06
Alicia MADDEN: Makes sense. And the two comics that I think made me want to get into comics more is, Mouse, I read when I was also very young, and that's…
1:56:18
Tad Eggleston: Art Spiegelman last year.
1:56:20
Alicia MADDEN: Whoa!
1:56:21
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Please ask, is that a manga?
1:56:24
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I'm sorry, it's an inside joke, sorry, go ahead.
1:56:27
Alicia MADDEN: I would love to meet him too, you gotta tell me more about that.
1:56:30
Tad Eggleston: He was at CXC last year.
1:56:35
Alicia MADDEN: Oh, I see. Yeah, that really inspired me, to do a couple of things.
1:56:40
Alicia MADDEN: like, learn more about history, and it's really difficult reading history books, so condensing them into personal… first-person accounts in comic books was something that, like, anybody can grasp, even if you're very young or very old. It's like, we all read the exact same story, and it…
1:56:59
Alicia MADDEN: really, some pages really stick with you forever. Right.
1:57:03
Alicia MADDEN: And then, right around that same time, I read Watchmen 2, and that was… that was very groundbreaking for me, because I was like, okay, so you can tell of history, you can tell of personal history, you can do it in…
1:57:19
Alicia MADDEN: You can do it in multi…
1:57:23
Alicia MADDEN: plots. You could do all these, you know, different plots and everything.
1:57:28
Alicia MADDEN: In a masterful way, and it challenges you to read, like, 9 panels on a page.
1:57:35
Alicia MADDEN: But you know what? Like, we'll never forget how I cried when I finished it. So, I was like, yeah, comics are great, they're for me, I'm gonna do this.
1:57:47
Tad Eggleston: Alrighty. Well, you guys both already know the, the closing question.
1:57:54
Tad Eggleston: Tell me something you love, preferably comics, but we don't have rules. Preferably storytelling, but again, with the rules. But something that you love, that not enough people around you have experienced, and you would like them to, so that you have more people to talk about it with.
1:58:11
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Lisa, you wanna go first?
1:58:13
Alicia MADDEN: Yeah, mine's, like, it sounds mean, it's education.
1:58:18
Alicia MADDEN: like, not enough people… I'm just kidding. No, I just love… I love learning.
1:58:23
Alicia MADDEN: I do! I mean, I love to learn. I don't…
1:58:27
Tad Eggleston: See, here I thought you meant the novel, which was also pretty good.
1:58:30
Alicia MADDEN: Oh… no. I mean, I like to just… I do not like to just sit back and relax and passively receive entertainment all day long. It's so boring, so I really need to be challenged and look at art and, like, pick it apart kind of thing, so…
1:58:48
Alicia MADDEN: Yeah, I would love to chat about that with other people.
1:58:52
Tad Eggleston: What's your… what's your most recent deep dive?
1:58:56
Alicia MADDEN: I don't think I have one.
1:59:00
Alicia MADDEN: That's… I would say I love it because I want to do it.
1:59:05
Tad Eggleston: You haven't fallen down a rabbit hole recently?
1:59:09
Alicia MADDEN: Oh, yeah, I did.
1:59:11
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): There you go.
1:59:13
Alicia MADDEN: I mean… I should really freshen it up between podcasts, but I'm still on Ants.
1:59:20
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
1:59:22
Tad Eggleston: There, there's, there's some cool things to, to unpack about ants.
1:59:30
Tad Eggleston: I like the buzz.
1:59:31
Sam Ramos: Like, the bug ants?
1:59:33
Alicia MADDEN: Yes! They're adorable.
1:59:34
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): movie ants.
1:59:36
Sam Ramos: No!
1:59:36
Tad Eggleston: No, I saw where she was going.
1:59:39
Alicia MADDEN: Oh, see, I already met Zach Tyler Eisen, we just talked about Avatar the whole time, but, no, I mean Hyman Optra, you know?
1:59:47
Tad Eggleston: I don't know enough about ants, but when you say something like that, it reminds me of… and unfortunately, I think this podcast is no more, but there used to be a podcast called Surprisingly Awesome.
1:59:57
Alicia MADDEN: Hmm.
1:59:59
Tad Eggleston: and I'm pretty certain you can still, like, download the episodes, but, like, Which of them was a… What?
2:00:06
Alicia MADDEN: How was it?
2:00:08
Tad Eggleston: It was amazing, because each episode was about something that, like…
2:00:14
Tad Eggleston: Nobody would think that they… you know, there was an episode on concrete, there was an episode on broccoli, there was an episode on free throws.
2:00:24
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I mean…
2:00:25
Tad Eggleston: That, they, they could, they could…
2:00:28
Tad Eggleston: They would take things, and spend an hour on them, and make them
2:00:34
Tad Eggleston: Surprisingly awesome, hence the name of the podcast.
2:00:38
Alicia MADDEN: Wow.
2:00:40
Tad Eggleston: That was Adam McKay, who…
2:00:42
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Nice.
2:00:44
Tad Eggleston: Bunch of movies.
2:00:46
Tad Eggleston: did the big short.
2:00:49
Tad Eggleston: I'm looking it up now. Elliot, can,
2:00:53
Tad Eggleston: can answer the question while I'm looking for the podcast.
2:00:57
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): I'm so glad my important thing is gonna be in the background of your research.
2:01:02
Tad Eggleston: Oh, because I already found it, I just had to Google the word surprisingly awesome. It's not that hard. Adam Davidson and Adam McKay.
2:01:10
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): I would say…
2:01:12
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): I've… there's an anime which I've forced Alicia to watch. It's a movie called Makia When the Promised Flower Blooms, and…
2:01:21
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): to me, it's one of the most important things I've ever…
2:01:25
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Watched, absorbed, and, just learned from, because it tells the story of a
2:01:32
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Girl who can't age, who finds a human boy.
2:01:36
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): And… you know how it's gonna end.
2:01:38
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): from the very beginning, you know how the story's gonna end, but I remember watching for the first time, and I had…
2:01:45
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): I was in theaters, and I was by myself, and I cried so hard that I had to wait 10 minutes until after the credits rolled to calm down, and then put sunglasses on when I walked outside so people didn't think I was smoking in the theater. And not only from a perspective of
2:02:05
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Art, it's beautiful.
2:02:06
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): the story is one of the most beautifully written stories I've ever seen in my life. It interconnects two storylines perfectly. It builds the emotional relationships perfectly. It builds the viewer's relationship with the characters perfectly, and it does so many things right.
2:02:26
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): that it makes me mad that I will never write something that good.
2:02:31
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): And, I think that's something amazing and beautiful to me that I wish more people could experience that movie for that reason.
2:02:41
Alicia MADDEN: Mmm.
2:02:41
Tad Eggleston: Just went on my list.
2:02:45
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I'm gonna look into that.
2:02:47
Tad Eggleston: Just, just went on my list.
2:02:49
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): When the Promised Flower Blooms, crunchyroll,
2:02:54
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): I will say, I have seen it dubbed and, subbed. There's always the argument of dubbed versus sub. There's a very specific reason why everybody should watch it dubbed as opposed to subbed, and I will die on that hill.
2:03:04
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): And it has to do with the way… the line translation in the ending. And that is all I will say on that.
2:03:10
Dr. Edgar Ramos: So, dubbed, then?
2:03:11
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Doubt.
2:03:12
Dr. Edgar Ramos: You bet.
2:03:14
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Unless you can speak the language.
2:03:16
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Sure.
2:03:20
Tad Eggleston: it doesn't even look like it was based on a manga, and I didn't think there were any good anime that didn't have a comic first.
2:03:27
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Nope, it's… Just its own thing.
2:03:30
Tad Eggleston: I suppose that's allowed.
2:03:32
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Wasn't it based on, Carmilla?
2:03:35
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Oh, I wouldn't know.
2:03:36
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Yeah, I'm…
2:03:39
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): I showed it with the same director who did,
2:03:45
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Hanohana, the flower we saw that day.
2:03:48
Dr. Edgar Ramos: Yeah, so, if I recall, I think there's also a… because it's kind of…
2:03:53
Dr. Edgar Ramos: We'll talk later about it. Okay, yeah.
2:03:56
Alicia MADDEN: Cool.
2:03:58
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): I mean, Alisa, I mean, I forced you to watch it, so…
2:04:01
Alicia MADDEN: I remember it.
2:04:03
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I'm not even gonna say anything about that one.
2:04:08
Tad Eggleston: That said, overwhelming.
2:04:12
Tad Eggleston: Recommendation. I remembered it.
2:04:15
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): remember it.
2:04:18
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): You're also not an anime person.
2:04:19
Alicia MADDEN: Not an anime person, I watched it, but…
2:04:23
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I agree.
2:04:24
Tad Eggleston: I am a much bigger manga person than… than anime person, which is… which is why that was my first… first search, is, okay, where's the manga that's been… what do you mean it's the one of the few?
2:04:36
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): One of the.
2:04:36
Tad Eggleston: I thought only Ghibli movies weren't manga first.
2:04:41
Elliott Mondry (Calamity Comics): Because Ghibli gets so much, attention, and rightfully so, but this is one of those sleep… to me, it's a sleeper movie that nobody talks about, that nobody's really seen.
2:04:50
Tad Eggleston: No, it looks good to me. Again, like I said, I thought only Ghibli movies were not manga first.
2:04:57
Tad Eggleston: Because those are original. He got out of manga when he started making movies. His manga's pretty good. Edgar's trying to say goodbye, because he wants to go see Sam.
2:05:06
Dr. Edgar Ramos: My computer's dying, and I gotta go.
2:05:09
Tad Eggleston: Right. Well, I will say, for the folks at Calamity Comics, Elliot Mondory and Alicia Madden, this has been 22 Panels. The book is, you never know, they will be at…
2:05:24
Tad Eggleston: Modern Age Comics in Algonquin, somebody want to give me the address?
2:05:27
Dr. Edgar Ramos: 2214 East Algonquin Road, Algonquin, Illinois, January 28th, 5 to 7. Come on by, signing pictures. We may even have snacks and refreshments.
2:05:39
Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna hold you to that, Edgar. If I show up and there's not pizza…
2:05:42
Dr. Edgar Ramos: I'm sorry, just for the artist and writer.
2:05:48
Alicia MADDEN: Thanks, guys!
2:05:50
Tad Eggleston: We will see you after the next page.
2:05:52
Alicia MADDEN: Thank y'all.