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With Great Power #292... 22 Panels with Chris Ryall · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:01
  Tad Eggleston: Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels. My guest today is
• 0:07
  Tad Eggleston: editor, writer, general, all-round guy in comics for a long, long, long, long time, though not as long as some of the people we talk to. And you still look younger than me, so, like, don't take that as you're old. You clearly started in comics when you were, like, 2.
• 0:22
  Tad Eggleston: And… and now you're, like, 20-something, and…
• 0:26
  Tad Eggleston: just hitting your prime. Chris Ryle, how's.
• 0:29
  chris ryall: And I did, I did start reading them not long after 2, I was probably 4 or 5, so… See? See, there we go. That's true. Hey, hey!
• 0:37
  Tad Eggleston: And I love that you have a spinner rack. I love when people have their own spinner racks.
• 0:42
  chris ryall: I want.
• 0:42
  Tad Eggleston: I want my own spinner rack. Yeah.
• 0:45
  chris ryall: But see, during the pandemic, that became my… my sourdough starter, right? I started categorizing and reorganizing and constantly shuffling and…
• 0:54
  chris ryall: coming up with all these different cover themes I could do, and holidays, and so it's…
• 0:58
  Tad Eggleston: Right?
• 0:58
  chris ryall: It's taken on kind of a life of its own, but it's also led to a…
• 1:02
  chris ryall: a book that's coming up, so… so yeah.
• 1:04
  Tad Eggleston: Oh. Is this a book that you can tell us about, or is this a book that's coming up that we're not allowed to hear about yet?
• 1:10
  chris ryall: I mean, it hasn't been announced yet, but I… so I've been doing this substack for a couple years, and in there, I'm.
• 1:15
  Tad Eggleston: I read it.
• 1:16
  chris ryall: about different… oh, thank you. But I'm always talking about different themes for the spinner rack, you know, that you could categorize as I started doing, like, covers with all photo backgrounds, or all, like, smashed and broken logos, or all the floating head covers. And so…
• 1:31
  chris ryall: Doing that kind of categorization led to an actual covers book that's going to categorize everything in that same kind of way, so…
• 1:39
  chris ryall: So yeah, technically, it's all just been research for the last few years slash lifetime.
• 1:44
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, oh, you're nerdy OCD the ways I am. I love this. Do you also, like, organize and reorganize your music or movie collections?
• 1:55
  Tad Eggleston: Okay?
• 1:56
  chris ryall: The thing is that you care about?
• 1:57
  Tad Eggleston: out.
• 1:58
  chris ryall: Shelves of vinyl back there that are constantly also getting that, so yeah, it's not…
• 2:02
  Tad Eggleston: Yes.
• 2:02
  chris ryall: It's not quite as bad as the, John Cusack in high fidelity, but it's not far away.
• 2:07
  Tad Eggleston: I understand. I understand. I understand. But I think that's the point of John Cusack and High Fidelity being that extreme, is that… is that we're supposed to be able to look at him, and… and when… when our loved ones are going, oh, there are other… we can say, no, I'm not that bad.
• 2:26
  chris ryall: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and also, like, a lot of us now end up working from home, or, you know, spending a lot more time in the home office than we used to, and so I need to keep rotating things to, just have something different to look at.
• 2:39
  Tad Eggleston: No, I'm just… particularly because I'm at my mom's house right now, I'm thinking all the way back to childhood, and, like, this started with my baseball cards. I couldn't leave them in the binder in one order for, like, more than a week before I decide that they had to be completely… she's laughing, she can hear me.
• 2:55
  chris ryall: But I mean, you know, when you're… when you stop actively engaging with the stuff, that's probably when you should go, right? So…
• 3:01
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 3:04
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, okay. I just… I need to reset now, because I suddenly got to geek in a way that I wasn't expecting.
• 3:12
  chris ryall: No, bring it on.
• 3:14
  Tad Eggleston: And I can't wait for that book, because that, that sounds so fun. I want to make certain we talk about, though.
• 3:22
  Tad Eggleston: Megalopolis, because I finally saw the movie because I was gonna be talking to you. I had previously only read the comic.
• 3:31
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, wow.
• 3:32
  chris ryall: Hmm.
• 3:34
  chris ryall: It's hard to find, by the way, that movie.
• 3:36
  Tad Eggleston: It is. It is. It is currently available for rental on Plex.
• 3:43
  chris ryall: Yeah, whatever Plex is, and I think…
• 3:46
  Tad Eggleston: One of the streaming services. Yeah, and I know Francis screened it on New Year's Day at a bunch of the different Alamo Drive House locations. There are theaters that have had it recently, and I looked at trying to get to it, and I had a podcast recording scheduled, and I couldn't.
• 4:06
  Tad Eggleston: I wasn't smart enough to buy it during the brief period that it was, like, $20 for a digital copy on Amazon while it was still in the theaters.
• 4:18
  Tad Eggleston: So yes, it's not very easy to see, and I get the reasons that he's doing that, you know, because he really wants people to see it in the theater, and he's both old enough and rich enough and paid for the whole thing, so he can make those decisions.
• 4:31
  chris ryall: But I think he also likes the idea of doing them as events, sort of like the Kevin Smith model of, you know, doing the introduction and Q&A, like an in-person kind of thing, just so it becomes like a gathering more than it is just people sitting in silence for a couple hours.
• 4:45
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and I think that it's actually…
• 4:48
  Tad Eggleston: It's a good movie for that, because both the movie and the book
• 4:53
  Tad Eggleston: Fall into a category of things that…
• 4:58
  Tad Eggleston: I realize more and more, I'm really in a minority in how much I love them, which is the things that you like the more you think about them.
• 5:08
  chris ryall: I mean, that was the goal.
• 5:09
  Tad Eggleston: first time through and go, I don't know what that happened, and I don't know if I like it. But then you start going, oh, wait a minute, oh, wait a minute, this is brilliant!
• 5:21
  chris ryall: I equate it to the band Geese, which some people have loved from the start, and others, like, it takes a lot of listens to kind of try to…
• 5:30
  Tad Eggleston: the band… Understand what people were saying. You're introducing me to music that I don't know. You said geese?
• 5:35
  chris ryall: Yeah, they've been… they've been kind of compared to, like, a 2025 version of the Strokes, you know, kind of the hipster.
• 5:42
  Tad Eggleston: guy.
• 5:42
  chris ryall: Brooklyn Band.
• 5:44
  Tad Eggleston: Spelled like the animal, or with some weird spelling. Okay.
• 5:48
  chris ryall: But it is one of those things where the voice, you know, the vocals and everything takes, easing into. So, and I like that. I like a thing that challenges you, like, make a lot of this when I first… I do
• 5:58
  chris ryall: read it, I was like, I don't fully understand this, and I think that was good, and that was kind of the reaction he wanted, was, you know, you don't have to understand it, but you… I want you to interpret it the way you think you understand it, which is awesome, like, totally freeing.
• 6:13
  Tad Eggleston: That leads me to my first big question, and I'm gonna start with my understanding, and have you…
• 6:20
  Tad Eggleston: kind of correct and expand upon it. The way I've understood it is, like, he gave you the script, and you got to, like, talk to him, and maybe you were shown…
• 6:30
  Tad Eggleston: Some… Like, pre-production still type stuff, but…
• 6:36
  chris ryall: I mean, more than that, really.
• 6:37
  Tad Eggleston: To see the movie and whatnot, it was, go make your thing.
• 6:42
  chris ryall: Yeah, and he was still filming the movie when we started doing this, so he reached out, asked if I wanted to do this thing, and he said.
• 6:49
  chris ryall: I don't want an adaptation. I don't want a straight telling of the movie. That's what the movie is, and so I want you to know from the start that you've got the freedom to make this what it needs to be as a graphic novel. And, you know, he hasn't really engaged with comics for the last 50 years. He's been doing other things, you know, movies and wine and…
• 7:08
  chris ryall: everything else that he's done, but as a kid, he said…
• 7:10
  Tad Eggleston: I can still imagine him in the bathtub with a comic and a glass of wine.
• 7:15
  chris ryall: So, it might have…
• 7:15
  Tad Eggleston: engaged with it on one level, at some level.
• 7:18
  chris ryall: You know what I knew he was legit as a fan when he was a kid, was he mentioned his three favorites. One was the Phantom.
• 7:25
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 7:25
  chris ryall: One was, Jack Cole's Plastic Man, and then the third one he said he loved was The Heap, and nobody mentions The Heap unless they're a fan of The Heap.
• 7:34
  chris ryall: You know, that's not one you just kind of rattle off, that's not… it was like a… the heap was like… I love that I have to look up the heap.
• 7:42
  chris ryall: It was, like, a swamp monster before Manhattan.
• 7:44
  Tad Eggleston: No, I see it. I see it.
• 7:48
  Tad Eggleston: an air.
• 7:48
  chris ryall: But again, it's not one of those… it's… yeah, an Airboy, right. So it wasn't one of those…
• 7:53
  chris ryall: Characters or titles you bring up unless you were actually familiar with it?
• 7:58
  Tad Eggleston: Reading it, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 8:00
  chris ryall: Yeah, so it was great, you know, not only talking old comics and what he liked about them, but also what he wanted this book to be. He's never really…
• 8:08
  chris ryall: done comics, you know, he had… there was the, Mignola…
• 8:12
  chris ryall: graphic novel adaptation of Dracula, but that was done through Universal, and that wasn't a thing he had an active hand in. This one, like, it was just me and him. I… I was kind of surprised by that. I thought he would hand it off to a team, and it would be like all the licensed comics I've used to, I'm used to adapting, you know, where you deal with
• 8:30
  chris ryall: Teams and groups and levels of approvals, and in this case, there was one person involved, and it was him.
• 8:36
  Tad Eggleston: Speaking of which, I was talking to Michael Torma last night, and he said, ROM, amazing.
• 8:45
  chris ryall: Excellent, I like it.
• 8:49
  chris ryall: Yeah, Rom will end up being my version of the heap someday. Or maybe it already is, I don't know.
• 8:58
  chris ryall: But yeah, so Coppola handed me… he wanted… he gave me an older version of the script, and he said, you know, I don't want you looking at what we're currently doing, because things have changed a lot. Like, he's been working on… he was working on Megalopolis for 3 decades, and so I…
• 9:10
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean, I've heard that the first time he mentioned it to Lawrence Fishburne was on the…
• 9:16
  Tad Eggleston: the set of Apocalypse Now.
• 9:20
  chris ryall: Yeah, and he started working on it in earnest in the 80s.
• 9:23
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 9:24
  chris ryall: And he got close to getting it going in the early 2000s, like, he said he went to Ground Zero after, you know, not too long after, 9-11, shot some B-roll footage, because the whole idea was, like, of the film from the start was sort of the crumbling of the American empire, and it's changed over the years as, like.
• 9:42
  chris ryall: The political structure, everything has kind of influenced the different versions of the story, but that was always his intent, was to look at, like, where it seems like we're headed, and how to avoid that, and how to maybe
• 9:53
  chris ryall: envision a better and different kind of future, right. Like, he's very humanist about the whole thing, you know? Like, I was…
• 10:01
  chris ryall: like, surprised… not surprised, but I, you know, I don't know the guy, and so he was just.
• 10:04
  Tad Eggleston: That's right.
• 10:05
  chris ryall: He was such a thoughtful, sort of deep thinker about the world, and where we're headed, and what's going on, and how to maybe not
• 10:12
  chris ryall: keep, you know, spiraling and all of that, and, like, he…
• 10:16
  chris ryall: As much as the world just feels like it's in this weird, dark, fractured place, he's got this positive view of humanity that he's still kind of pulling for everybody to…
• 10:25
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 10:26
  chris ryall: get their shit together. Well, I mean, that's…
• 10:27
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. That definitely comes through to me in both works. Again, I think you and Jacob brought it out even more for me, and I… I wonder if I would have noticed it as much in the movie if I hadn't read the graphic novel a couple of times.
• 10:44
  Tad Eggleston: because I also love Jacob's art, like, love…
• 10:48
  chris ryall: Yeah, Jacob's amazing. It was funny, when we were first batting around art options, like, I probably sent him, like, 40 different styles, you know, you can do this, you can do this, here's every possible flavor you could ever want, and he goes.
• 11:01
  chris ryall: pick one. I'm like, oh, okay, I… again, because I'm used to, you know, supplying all these samples and having the studio sort of sit in their tribunal and give the big thumbs up or thumbs down, and Francis was like, I don't know, make a… pick the book.
• 11:15
  Tad Eggleston: You're the comic maker, I'm making.
• 11:17
  chris ryall: Yay!
• 11:17
  Tad Eggleston: you're making.
• 11:18
  chris ryall: I mean, and it did. It took me a while to get used to, like, having that trust and freedom. I mean, it was great, but it… yeah, it's not the way these things are usually done.
• 11:28
  Tad Eggleston: No, no. I mean, it sounds like an amazing process.
• 11:33
  Tad Eggleston: He had me out to the set a couple times, you know, so I… Okay, so you did get to see the set.
• 11:37
  chris ryall: Yeah, and I went in there with my marked-up screenplay, and we sat down in his hotel room, and I ran through all my questions, and he goes.
• 11:46
  chris ryall: I don't know, what do you think? I'm like, oh, right. He doesn't… he doesn't want to… he doesn't want to spoon-feed this to me, and so, again.
• 11:53
  Tad Eggleston: This is Chris Ryle and… and… and Jacob Phillips Megalopolis. My name's on it, because it'll sell better that way, and because I have the story credit.
• 12:05
  chris ryall: He actually didn't want his name on it. He didn't want his name.
• 12:08
  chris ryall: He didn't want to call it Francis Port Coppo's Megalapos, because he goes, it's not mine, it's yours. I'm like, well.
• 12:13
  chris ryall: It's yours, and we're just, yeah.
• 12:15
  Tad Eggleston: I love that, but of course the publisher was like.
• 12:17
  chris ryall: God, yeah, it wasn't even a question.
• 12:18
  Tad Eggleston: Do I keep it?
• 12:19
  chris ryall: Yeah, because maybe…
• 12:20
  Tad Eggleston: Couldn't we just make it France's Ford Coppolas and leave Megalopolis off?
• 12:27
  chris ryall: Yeah, yeah, what do you mean your guys' names need to be on the book and art? No, just make a giant cover with his name.
• 12:35
  Tad Eggleston: Does the cover actually need to be a picture from the book, or could it be a picture of Coppola?
• 12:40
  chris ryall: Yeah, I know.
• 12:42
  Tad Eggleston: Or maybe the Godfather. People don't know the difference. If you make it Vito Corleone, people will think that's the Godfather.
• 12:48
  chris ryall: You mean, you mean the movie he first referred to when he was talking to me? He goes, you know, I once made this picture, involving gangsters, and people seem to like it, and I'm like.
• 12:56
  chris ryall: I'm aware, Francis Coppola. I've heard of your little gangster movie.
• 13:05
  Tad Eggleston: I may have quoted it a few times.
• 13:07
  chris ryall: Yeah, I don't know if it was humility, or just, like, sort of downplaying it because of the weight of it. Like, I almost didn't want him to reference Godfather in Apocalypse Now, because I'm like, don't remind me that you're that guy, because.
• 13:19
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah?
• 13:20
  chris ryall: I don't know what I'm doing in the room with you, and if I start thinking about it too much, like, I'm gonna collapse from, sort of, the weight of my own expectations.
• 13:28
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, one of the questions I'm going to be asking you later that I'll preview here, just because in some ways you may be answering it, and the best way to do it is, like.
• 13:38
  Tad Eggleston: being part of the comics world has made my life feel utterly and totally surreal, as I, like, have people that I hang out with, or talk with, or text with that, like.
• 13:51
  Tad Eggleston: Also, in the back of my head, it's like, but you did this!
• 13:56
  chris ryall: Yeah, yeah. And it's almost hard to know which I like better, when they're completely open about doing that, and that it almost makes it feel smaller.
• 14:05
  Tad Eggleston: Or… if… if they are, like.
• 14:08
  Tad Eggleston: it comes up, and I'm like, oh yeah, that's right, I don't know how to talk anymore, because you did that.
• 14:15
  chris ryall: Yeah, I… I didn't need those reminders, because I'm like, oh, I don't know why we're sitting here talking about goofy comics when you should be talking about, I don't know, movies with Robert De Niro or something.
• 14:26
  Tad Eggleston: The question is about a surreal experience that you've had, so try to think of a non-Frances Ford Coppola for later. But you're reminding me of… I talked to… I mean, one of the places where this question really solidified is when I talked to Matt Wagner, and his was when he got asked to do the Django Zorro.
• 14:46
  Tad Eggleston: He's like, yeah, whatever. Quentin's people never want to do it. And then they came back, and they're like, oh, no, Quentin's people are all over. And he's like, yeah, just never going anywhere. And it's like, oh, we heard from Quentin, he wants you to meet with him to write the screenplay. He's like, yeah, whatever, it'll never actually get scheduled. Yeah, he wants you to come down this weekend.
• 15:04
  Tad Eggleston: He's like, I was literally at the door, about to hit the doorbell, fully expecting to hear…
• 15:09
  Tad Eggleston: a butler go, I'm sorry, Mr. Jackson.
• 15:12
  chris ryall: Yeah.
• 15:12
  Tad Eggleston: by. He and Quentin are mini-golfing.
• 15:16
  chris ryall: I have my answer to this thing.
• 15:19
  Tad Eggleston: Instead, Quentin opens the door.
• 15:23
  Tad Eggleston: And we hung out for the weekend, writing, and he's like…
• 15:28
  chris ryall: You know what?
• 15:29
  Tad Eggleston: Because that's an end question, but yeah.
• 15:31
  chris ryall: I will, but, I… speaking of Matt Wagner, like, I almost had Matt Wagner doing a, Dick Tracy comic years ago, and just thinking about how great that would have been, and you know.
• 15:41
  Tad Eggleston: That would have been pretty.
• 15:42
  chris ryall: Come to pass with man, that would have been nice.
• 15:45
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. So, quickly, before we move on to a storied career, or at least parts of a storied career… A story about a career, yeah. Yeah, something like that. How did you wind up with this project?
• 15:58
  chris ryall: Oh, with Megalopos.
• 15:59
  Tad Eggleston: With Megalopolis, yeah. I mean, it seems like just… You checked your email.
• 16:05
  chris ryall: I… one morning, I wake up, and there's an email, and it's from, you know, Francis Ford Copela, and I… I figured, at first, when I just saw the name, that it was a spam for, like, his winery or something. Right. And I open it, and…
• 16:17
  Tad Eggleston: The one that he sold to make the movie?
• 16:19
  chris ryall: No, he still has the other one, but one of… Oh, okay. I figured it was one of those two, yeah,
• 16:23
  chris ryall: Buds, but…
• 16:25
  chris ryall: And it just said, you know, I am told you're, you know, I have this graphic novel story. In fact, I actually ran the email, he let me run the email in the, advanced reader copy edition that we've produced, just so people would see how, you know, how it got started, so I don't have it in front of me to…
• 16:39
  chris ryall: quote from it, but it was essentially saying, you came recommended to me as somebody, I want to make a graphic novel centered around my movie. I was told you're the right person to do that, is that true? Here's what it's about. Would you like to talk more?
• 16:51
  chris ryall: And so, as it came to pass, it was Robert Rodriguez, who's kind of a mutual acquaintance. I mean, he's friends of Francis's, and I know him a little bit through Kevin Eastman, so…
• 17:02
  chris ryall: I guess Francis was telling Robert that he wanted to do a graphic novel. Robert's like, oh, you gotta call Chris.
• 17:10
  chris ryall: So…
• 17:10
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, and you just listed, like… and this is one of those weird places, because I am a comic guy, more than a movie guy, through and through, but of the three names that you just dropped, the one that I care the least about is Kevin Eastman.
• 17:25
  Tad Eggleston: Don't get me wrong, I love Kevin Eastman, but, like, Robert Rodriguez is, like, on my shortlist for favorite directors ever.
• 17:33
  chris ryall: So it's like, oh, I mean…
• 17:34
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah, Robert Rodriguez recommended me to… Francis Ford Coppola, it's like…
• 17:41
  Tad Eggleston: How am I now the one talking to you?
• 17:44
  chris ryall: Yeah, it makes no sense. It's funny, because I once did a, I did a machete comic.
• 17:50
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 17:50
  chris ryall: But it turned out, and it was going to be a whole series, but it turned out that Robert was never informed by the studio, so when he found out, he goes, hey, I own that character. Like, Sony can't go making comics without me. And so the series went away, and I was like, oh god, I don't even know him yet. I hadn't met him at that point.
• 18:07
  chris ryall: Like, man, I pissed off Robert Rodriguez, and I love the guy, Desperado still, like, looms so large for me and everything.
• 18:14
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 18:14
  chris ryall: But then, like, we met a few years later through Kevin, and, you know, he's like, oh, no, no, it was just a thing with the studio. I thought the comic was fine, but I can't let them, you know, run off and do stuff without
• 18:25
  chris ryall: me being involved with characters that I own, and so…
• 18:27
  Tad Eggleston: You know, he seems to be that type of guy, where he knows the difference between creatives and suits.
• 18:33
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:36
  chris ryall: Oh, I tried to pull together with him a, a whole Rodriguez universe kind of comic, you know, bringing in,
• 18:43
  chris ryall: the mariachi character.
• 18:46
  Tad Eggleston: Right?
• 18:46
  chris ryall: machete and all these different characters into one thing, but it got complicated, because he did some of his films through Sony, some were Dimension, so it just, you know, lawyer, lawyers always,
• 18:56
  chris ryall: you know.
• 18:57
  Tad Eggleston: You mean…
• 18:57
  chris ryall: Spoil our fun.
• 18:58
  Tad Eggleston: Entertainment lawyers are difficult. Sorry, Britt. You're the exception.
• 19:02
  chris ryall: Occasionally, occasionally.
• 19:03
  Tad Eggleston: One of my regular listeners is an entertainment lawyer, so I have to… have to exclude him. Britt, you're not… you're not a pain.
• 19:11
  chris ryall: All the other…
• 19:12
  Tad Eggleston: Entertainment lawyers, though.
• 19:15
  chris ryall: Sometimes they'll enable stuff you never think could come to pass either, so if they're on your side, then, yeah.
• 19:20
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, that's just so cool.
• 19:24
  chris ryall: But so anyway, so I…
• 19:25
  Tad Eggleston: I didn't expect you to make me tungsten.
• 19:28
  chris ryall: No, no. Well, so.
• 19:29
  Tad Eggleston: I'm generally better at not getting tongue-tied, Chris.
• 19:33
  chris ryall: Well, so this is, like, this leads to my tongue-tied story, which is where, you know, we set up a call, and so the call was going to be me and his team, so I thought, to discuss the project. And so the Zoom opens, and I'm sitting there in my little space in the garage, like, this little claustrophobic area, and then it's like this expansive cabin in the woods.
• 19:53
  chris ryall: And then all of a sudden, he steps in a frame and sits down, and I'm like, holy… I was like, well, I didn't expect you, Mr. Coppola, I thought it'd be your team. And he goes.
• 20:04
  chris ryall: I'm my team.
• 20:05
  chris ryall: you and me are making this book, no one else. I'm like, oh! So that… that took a couple.
• 20:10
  Tad Eggleston: Oh!
• 20:11
  chris ryall: You used to.
• 20:12
  Tad Eggleston: That was not the meeting I prepared for.
• 20:15
  chris ryall: Yeah, yeah.
• 20:17
  chris ryall: And again, like, I'm used to the studio things, where you're… you never get to talk to the person
• 20:23
  chris ryall: who starts the idea. It's always, you know, the different levels and layers of people that, you know, go get approvals on their end, but yeah, it's never that kind of one-on-one, you know, collaboration.
• 20:33
  Tad Eggleston: Now, I know that you've done a lot of license work. Have you actually done any Hollywood work as well, or…
• 20:42
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, you mean… well, you mean… I mean, have you done, like, screenwriting, or… I mean, I know that you've done adaptations, I know that you've done licensed work of… but have you done…
• 20:54
  Tad Eggleston: Because you're in Southern California, aren't you?
• 20:56
  chris ryall: Yeah, so…
• 20:57
  Tad Eggleston: area where there are plenty of people who kinda… kinda play on both sides of the… Street…
• 21:03
  chris ryall: not yet gotten anything made. Like, my Zombies vs. Robots project that I do with Ashley Wood was optioned and eventually purchased by Sony, who's been trying to make a movie for the better part of 10 plus years, and I… I don't know if it'll ever happen, but at least that's…
• 21:17
  chris ryall: sitting with them, and during the pandemic, I sold a TV show to Paramount that we got as far as writing the pilot script, and it's kind of just sitting…
• 21:25
  chris ryall: Waiting to see if we can actually, activate it, so…
• 21:29
  Tad Eggleston: This is happening.
• 21:30
  chris ryall: Made it.
• 21:31
  Tad Eggleston: from the people I know who play on both sides of the aisle, this is exactly how it works, so… so I count that as you play at least a little on both sides of the aisle, because you have submitted a script, and they haven't gone, ha ha ha ha, and dropped it in the shredder.
• 21:46
  chris ryall: Oh, they bought it, in fact, so that'.
• 21:48
  Tad Eggleston: This is what I'm saying.
• 21:50
  chris ryall: And I was, I was a EP on the Lock and Key series. Okay.
• 21:55
  chris ryall: But to the extent where I was, you know, reading scripts and kind of suggesting notes to make sure that we didn't go too far afield from the comic story, but I wasn't, like, actively involved in
• 22:06
  chris ryall: You know, the casting, or a lot of stuff, that sort of the… The day-to-day executive producers manage.
• 22:13
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Right.
• 22:15
  Tad Eggleston: I mean…
• 22:18
  chris ryall: So I guess tangentially, but not anything directly.
• 22:20
  Tad Eggleston: No, I get it. Yeah, yeah.
• 22:23
  Tad Eggleston: I'm trying to figure out the simplest way to ask this question.
• 22:30
  Tad Eggleston: What makes comics cooler to you, or are you slumming it? I don't think you're slumming it. That was… the slumming it part was a joke. You don't hire Shelley Bond, which will be where we go next, if you're slumming in comics.
• 22:44
  Tad Eggleston: So, like, you're in Hollywood, you clearly have both the skills and at least some connections where if you really wanted to push that way, you could, but you make comics, and I love that you make comics, but I always love to hear why people love comics, because I know why I love comics, but…
• 23:01
  Tad Eggleston: I like.
• 23:02
  chris ryall: I mean, they were… they were… they were effectively my first love, you know, and so they've been a part of my entire life, but I think more than that, like, the making of them is…
• 23:11
  chris ryall: I don't know if I stressed it enough, but when I've done life-sensed comics in the past, it involves every possible layer of complication, and studio approval, and people that are weighing in that have no business weighing in, and all of that stuff. And when you make a comic, you write a script, and you work with an artist, and the artist draws it, and…
• 23:28
  chris ryall: you know, there's a team of people you can count on one hand for the most part, and so it's probably the purest form of the kind of storytelling that I love.
• 23:38
  chris ryall: The most pure version of marrying visuals and words and everything else that comics offers in such a unique
• 23:44
  chris ryall: way, as opposed to doing stuff by committee. I mean, certainly.
• 23:50
  chris ryall: a lot more money over there, but there's really nothing more gratifying than just, I don't know, making a comic with your friends, and getting that thing done and out, and…
• 24:00
  chris ryall: you know, like, I've been trying to get that TV show going for the better part of 5 years now. Comic, you can start it in January and release it in the summer, and…
• 24:08
  Tad Eggleston: I have a friend who finished MAKING a TV series.
• 24:14
  Tad Eggleston: Like, the whole thing.
• 24:15
  chris ryall: Hmm. Two years ago.
• 24:17
  Tad Eggleston: And it's not out yet, and he only kinda knows when it will come out.
• 24:23
  chris ryall: Hmm.
• 24:23
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, even Francis, the stuff he's…
• 24:25
  chris ryall: Like, the stuff Francis is paying for himself, like, it took him 35, 40 years to get to a point where…
• 24:30
  Tad Eggleston: Exactly.
• 24:31
  chris ryall: made and released it. So, yeah, I mean, I… and also, I've… I've never met better, more inspiring people in my life than people I met in comics.
• 24:40
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean…
• 24:43
  Tad Eggleston: aside from just the… I also think the medium has more flexibility. I think you can do more with a comic than you can do in a movie.
• 24:51
  chris ryall: So, yes, just to kind of punctuate that, years ago, this sounds like a name drop, but I'm only mentioning it because it's the person I was talking to, is I'm adapting a story with Stephen King, and he was telling me, you know, I was doing this book at DC, this vampire thing. He was writing the backup stories for Scott Snyder's American Vampire.
• 25:08
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 25:09
  chris ryall: And one of the editors at DEC was like.
• 25:11
  chris ryall: Hey, old man, we don't… we don't use thought balloons anymore. I guess he wrote in his first draft, he had thought balloons, you know, and…
• 25:17
  chris ryall: Do you like that I held it up? So, this is a thought balloon up here.
• 25:21
  Tad Eggleston: I love it. For those of you listening at home, he held his hand up to.
• 25:25
  chris ryall: Yeah.
• 25:26
  Tad Eggleston: And now I'm holding my hands up to show him that I know the thought balloon that he held up.
• 25:31
  chris ryall: But… but so, so this editor told Stephen King, who had accomplished quite a bit by then, had written some comics before that, you know, anyway, it said, hey, we don't do thought balloons anymore, that's… that's old style, like, we do captions now, we do interior monologues, we don't…
• 25:47
  chris ryall: And I was just like, imagine being so presumptuous that you, first of all, tell Stephen King how to write a story, but more than that, like, why are you removing one of the cool, unique tools that comics offers? You know, it's the marrying of.
• 25:58
  Tad Eggleston: I, I…
• 25:59
  chris ryall: tool, and words.
• 26:00
  Tad Eggleston: Yes.
• 26:00
  chris ryall: and sound effects, and all those things.
• 26:02
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, one of the coolest comic conventions is literally called Thought Bubble.
• 26:07
  chris ryall: Yeah, yeah.
• 26:09
  Tad Eggleston: He's so lucky that, that at least from what I've heard, Stephen King is impeccably polite.
• 26:17
  chris ryall: Yeah, because…
• 26:18
  Tad Eggleston: Because I think if I'd been Stephen King, I would have turned to it and said.
• 26:23
  Tad Eggleston: Fuck you, brat, let me talk to your boss.
• 26:26
  chris ryall: Well, it's… so the comic I was adapting with him, it was a story that he and Joe Hill wrote together called Throttle.
• 26:32
  chris ryall: it was, like, a tribute to Richard Matheson's duel, but in the adaptation, I purposely put in some thought balloons, just as a way to, like, no, no, you can still do this, just do it right, you know? There are times when people have tried to bring back thought balloons, and they're…
• 26:46
  chris ryall: They just don't quite understand how to make it work right, and you can tell, but if it's done effectively, like, every part of what comics offers is useful if it's done right.
• 26:56
  Tad Eggleston: Right. I mean, we drifted away from them in large part because…
• 27:01
  Tad Eggleston: an incredibly well-known writer that will… that will remain nameless, though his partner, Jack Kirby, will say that he has a lot of trouble remaining nameless.
• 27:16
  Tad Eggleston: like to use them for everything. And it became a little bit… I mean, there are some of those…
• 27:23
  Tad Eggleston: Spider-Man comics with Romita, where it's like, is he talking or thinking?
• 27:28
  chris ryall: Well, this is one of the things that, like, comic nerds talk about at conventions when we all get together, is like, when did they fall out of favor? Like, when did they become, like, cool? And I think it was the Wolverine miniseries with Frank Miller and Chris Clark.
• 27:40
  Tad Eggleston: Possibly.
• 27:41
  chris ryall: Because it was all interior monologue, you know?
• 27:44
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 27:45
  chris ryall: so effectively done that I think everybody's like, alright, let's do that now.
• 27:48
  Tad Eggleston: Right, but… but, like, and, like, Comics isn't the only place that has this problem, so, like, I don't want to beat it too hard, but, like.
• 27:59
  Tad Eggleston: Something else being good doesn't mean the other thing is bad.
• 28:04
  chris ryall: Right, yeah. I mean, it's like voiceover in a film, you know, like.
• 28:07
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 28:07
  chris ryall: It can be done well, or it can be blade right now.
• 28:10
  Tad Eggleston: The fact that you figured out another way to do it doesn't mean that nobody should ever do it the other way ever again.
• 28:19
  chris ryall: Yeah, yeah.
• 28:20
  chris ryall: So I think, I think that's the short answer why I like it, just because it offers all these unique ways.
• 28:25
  Tad Eggleston: It does. Well, but then the other thing that I was gonna add that I thought you'd hit on already is that it still gives you the option to be collaborative.
• 28:36
  Tad Eggleston: like a film, you can make a comic all by yourself.
• 28:40
  Tad Eggleston: But, if you want a collaborative team, if you want that
• 28:45
  Tad Eggleston: product of multiple imaginations, it still lends itself to that as well. It's not…
• 28:53
  Tad Eggleston: There's not one way to make a comic.
• 28:56
  chris ryall: No, I mean, I do think…
• 28:58
  Tad Eggleston: Cool as well.
• 28:58
  chris ryall: I think a cartoonist is probably the purest form of comic making. You know, the same person writing a drawing and doing everything is… but since most of us can't do that, I will say there's also just a huge thrill in
• 29:11
  chris ryall: writing a thing, envisioning it in your head, and then you send it off to an artist who's more talented at bringing the visuals to life, and then you get this thing in your inbox, and you're like, oh my god, that's so much better than I thought.
• 29:21
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, as much as I agree that a cartoonist is probably the purest form, like…
• 29:34
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know that I agree that the most of the absolute best comics come from one mind. There are definitely a lot of them. Lovin' Rockets…
• 29:45
  Tad Eggleston: I think the stuff that Jesse Lonergan is doing solo is still better than the stuff that he's doing with people right now, but I'm not at all certain that that's gonna stay true.
• 29:55
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Because he's definitely a much stronger artist than overall storyteller, as brilliant as a…
• 30:01
  Tad Eggleston: writer, storyteller as he is, you know, and, like, the stuff that he's done with Mike Mignola, the stuff that he's done with Portsack Pichet Shot is also brilliant. Didn't he do a graphic novel with Van Jensen? That was even.
• 30:15
  chris ryall: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:16
  Tad Eggleston: Was that while you were there, or was that after you left?
• 30:19
  chris ryall: That was after. But yeah, you're right, when you look at, like, an Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, and they kind of… they're like the artistic equivalent of people that finish each other's sentences, you know? Like, I think they both sort of pull out each other's strengths to such a great.
• 30:32
  Tad Eggleston: I agree.
• 30:32
  chris ryall: that…
• 30:33
  Tad Eggleston: They're absolutely greater than the sum of their parts.
• 30:37
  chris ryall: Yeah.
• 30:38
  Tad Eggleston: I've seen Sean Phillips
• 30:40
  Tad Eggleston: books that Ed Brubaker didn't write. I've read everything Sean Phillips has ever done. He's never better when he's with Brubaker. I've read everything Brubaker's ever done. He's never better than…
• 30:53
  Tad Eggleston: than when he's with Phillips. And actually, this'll bring me back to my last Megalopolis point.
• 31:01
  Tad Eggleston: their absolute best when Jacob's coloring them, and my non-popular opinion that I still voice on a regular basis.
• 31:11
  Tad Eggleston: Jacob is already better than his dad.
• 31:17
  chris ryall: I don't… They're… it's funny, they're similar, but different. Like, you could certainly tell that he's… he's…
• 31:24
  Tad Eggleston: And I think.
• 31:25
  chris ryall: Peak in general.
• 31:26
  Tad Eggleston: Anything his dad can do, and more. That's why I say he's better than his dad.
• 31:32
  chris ryall: It bothered me when he told me, like, when we were at Megalopolis, he was… I think he turned 28 or something. I'm like, come on, man. Like, you're that good? I mean, I'm.
• 31:41
  Tad Eggleston: It's like when you realize that the first issue of Love and Rockets, Jaime was 21, and… and Beto was, like, 24, and some of the stories had been drawn 3 years earlier.
• 31:53
  Tad Eggleston: And it's like, what? Fuck you.
• 31:57
  chris ryall: No, I mean, Jacob's amazing, like, and I… everything he does since this book, like, I just think it's gotten better and better, like, I got the first issue of his new Vertigo series, and it's… it's great, like, he's amazing.
• 32:08
  Tad Eggleston: No, Chris, Chris sent me that a while… well, and actually, one of the reasons I was able to really twist Chris's arm to send me that was I was one of their Patreon backers, so I saw…
• 32:22
  Tad Eggleston: Because that series started as when the pandemic hit, and pencils went down on That Texas Blood.
• 32:28
  Tad Eggleston: They started a Patreon.
• 32:31
  chris ryall: Telling that story, so there's, like…
• 32:33
  Tad Eggleston: There have been, like, 10 or 12 pages of it out.
• 32:36
  Tad Eggleston: on their Patreon for ages. And then pencils went back up, and I'm like, but Chris, I want more of that one!
• 32:44
  chris ryall: Well, see, I…
• 32:46
  Tad Eggleston: I love that sound!
• 32:46
  chris ryall: less of that, and do more Megalopolis? I think Megalopolis ended up becoming a thing that just… Over… not.
• 32:54
  Tad Eggleston: 32 covers.
• 32:54
  chris ryall: But just consumed him for a while, yeah.
• 32:56
  Tad Eggleston: No, I remember when he finished it, and I remember when he finished it and put out the picture of the stack of pages, and said, it's finally done.
• 33:08
  chris ryall: I don't think either of us thought it was gonna be, like, a two-year project, but that's kind of what it became.
• 33:12
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 33:13
  Tad Eggleston: What was it like working with Jacob? I mean, other than the fact that it is, it's just wrong that he's so young.
• 33:20
  chris ryall: with that, but he's also so good, you know, and I mean, he would send these pages just in black and white, and I'm like, oh yeah, those are great, you know, and he does the gray washes and everything, but then when you finally get the color version, like, he does so much good.
• 33:33
  chris ryall: fishing work with his colors, and his colors are so unique and cool, and I just…
• 33:38
  chris ryall: It was impressive to me that he didn't see frame one of the movie. You know, I got to visit the set a couple times, I saw, like, probably 3 or 4 different edits and rough cuts along the way. He saw none of that, so he only worked off descriptions and concept art, and he was drawing these scenes, and I'm like, that's exactly what it looks like in the movie, but he couldn't know that. He just…
• 33:58
  Tad Eggleston: Right?
• 33:59
  chris ryall: I mean, it was probably just that the script was so effective that he, right. But no, I mean, just that he was nailing.
• 34:05
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, there's your way to pat yourself on the back, Chris. I wrote the script so effectively, he knew what to do.
• 34:11
  chris ryall: Right, right, right. But no, he… he was just that good, and so it was…
• 34:14
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 34:15
  chris ryall: a thrill that it took that long, because then it just meant there was going to be great pages coming in for, you know, a sustained
• 34:21
  chris ryall: 2-year period.
• 34:23
  Tad Eggleston: Did you hear that he moved out of his studio, though?
• 34:26
  Tad Eggleston: I loved the… I loved the compartment studio.
• 34:30
  Tad Eggleston: Apparently, he moved into a new house, and there's space for the studio in the house now, so he gave up the compartment studio, too.
• 34:38
  Tad Eggleston: That… that was one of my more fun Zooms. This is… this is one of those things… the people who were listening, I think we wound up talking about it, but… but talking… talking to Jacob Phillips about the fact that his studio was in a compartment, two compartments down from the barbershop compartment, across the way from… across the way from the… the… the…
• 34:57
  Tad Eggleston: The coffee shop compartment in just a, like… shipping yard in Manchester.
• 35:05
  chris ryall: Yeah.
• 35:06
  Tad Eggleston: That had been…
• 35:07
  chris ryall: But I mean…
• 35:08
  Tad Eggleston: turned into small businesses was one of the coolest things I ever heard.
• 35:13
  chris ryall: Although, the good thing is that the fact they moved to a bigger space means comics are going pretty well for them, so that's… that's a good sign.
• 35:19
  Tad Eggleston: Yes, it is. It's a great sign.
• 35:21
  chris ryall: It's a great sign, it's just…
• 35:23
  Tad Eggleston: again, like, I just… I feel like there needs to be a comic set in the… the…
• 35:30
  Tad Eggleston: converted shipping yard.
• 35:34
  Tad Eggleston: Village.
• 35:36
  chris ryall: I mean, that feels like a scene out of a Cumming Brubaker-Phillips graphic novel at some point, so…
• 35:41
  Tad Eggleston: Doesn't it? Or Condon Phillips, could be Condon Phillips.
• 35:44
  chris ryall: Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
• 35:46
  Tad Eggleston: They're, they're, they're, they're, they're doing some good stuff.
• 35:50
  chris ryall: Jacob does his best work with Chris's, yeah.
• 35:53
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean… I mean, he does great work with you, so yes, he does his best work with Chris's, but…
• 36:01
  Tad Eggleston: I don't think he's ready to go all-in only working with Condon, and I know Condon's not ready to go all-in, only working with Jacob, but…
• 36:12
  Tad Eggleston: I could see 20 years from now, when Brubaker and Phillips have retired, they're still being…
• 36:20
  Tad Eggleston: Lots of Contin Phillips stuff.
• 36:22
  Tad Eggleston: coming out. They… Mesh.
• 36:26
  chris ryall: Yeah, agreed.
• 36:27
  Tad Eggleston: Really, really, really well.
• 36:29
  chris ryall: Yeah.
• 36:30
  Tad Eggleston: I'm so happy that they somehow found it, I mean, because Chris is in New Jersey, Jacob's in Manchester, like…
• 36:37
  Tad Eggleston: The craziness of them connecting and making
• 36:41
  Tad Eggleston: Independent comics together is, in and of itself, just… One of those little miracle… Happenings.
• 36:51
  Tad Eggleston: Oh.
• 36:52
  chris ryall: Well, it's funny, because I also, like, looking at all the work those guys are doing together, and the way Jacob's been blowing up, like.
• 36:58
  chris ryall: I don't know that there would ever be another time where I could get Jacob to do a book like Megalopolis, so I'd…
• 37:04
  chris ryall: It was kind of like.
• 37:05
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, you're gonna…
• 37:06
  chris ryall: Doing the graphic novel of Rain, you know, like, when Zoe did that book, like, he was just on the cusp of blowing up and doing, like, she doesn't need anybody else at this point.
• 37:15
  Tad Eggleston: Josh is brilliant.
• 37:16
  chris ryall: But yeah, getting her right before she was in a spot where she could just move on and sort of never look back and never need to work with anybody else if she didn't want to was…
• 37:27
  chris ryall: Pretty good timing.
• 37:29
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 37:29
  chris ryall: Yeah.
• 37:32
  Tad Eggleston: So, like, talk to me about the difference between the writing role and the editing role, and at some point, talk to me about, like…
• 37:41
  Tad Eggleston: how you found out Shelly was available, and how many negative seconds it took you to pick up the phone and go, if DC's too dumb to have this person on payroll, I'm gonna put her on mine. Because it appears that you knew before she did, almost.
• 37:56
  chris ryall: I mean, I… yeah, I don't remember where I heard, I don't know if it was somebody internal or not, or if it was just, like, I happened to catch right when the Bleeding Cool article went up or something like that, but…
• 38:05
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 38:06
  chris ryall: But just, there shouldn't be a world where a Shelley Bond is not…
• 38:10
  chris ryall: You know, gainfully employed in comics, and it just struck me as so ridiculous that they would
• 38:15
  chris ryall: lose someone like that after losing Karen, after losing Stuart, it's like, everybody that built Vertigo into what made people love Vertigo
• 38:22
  chris ryall: was… was now out, and so, well, if she's not able to do what she did there, then I want her to come do it here. Well, there. I'm no longer there either, but
• 38:33
  chris ryall: Yeah, so…
• 38:34
  Tad Eggleston: But, like, but the way I understand it, at least from reading it in the graphic novel, you guys didn't know each other well, well, so, I mean, it was like, you knew her work, and you went, wait, she's available? Boom!
• 38:46
  chris ryall: Yeah, I mean, I knew her.
• 38:47
  Tad Eggleston: This is a business that often has a lot to do with relationships, so, like…
• 38:52
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, big pat on the back for going…
• 38:56
  chris ryall: Yeah, and I didn't really have one with her. I mean, we probably met at a convention or something like that, but I didn't know her, other than knowing her work, which to me was what mattered the most. I'm like, every good Vertigo book, like, her name is on.
• 39:09
  chris ryall: And I like her taste, and from afar, and so I just wanted to see if you know.
• 39:13
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, when I feel like making… when I feel like making her squirm a little bit, I remind her that, like…
• 39:21
  Tad Eggleston: Comics as we know it right now owes more to her taste than any other thing.
• 39:28
  chris ryall: Yeah, and it's funny, like, she's also the type of editor that doesn't exist too much nowadays, you know, somebody who's not afraid to get in there with, like, as she always talks about, her red pan, and just…
• 39:39
  Tad Eggleston: Push the writer to do 7 drafts of a script, whereas.
• 39:43
  chris ryall: In a lot of cases now, like, schedules are so tight, and it's so hard to just get stuff out the door that…
• 39:48
  chris ryall: you feel like it almost becomes more of a factory, just keep things moving and don't get in the way, where she's like, no, no, I'm gonna get in the way, and I'm gonna make this thing better, no matter how much time it takes, and I…
• 39:58
  chris ryall: I can see how a big publisher doesn't…
• 40:02
  chris ryall: Have the ability to wait on that.
• 40:04
  Tad Eggleston: Which always drives me off the wall, because, like, you'd think that the big publisher… Had more ability to.
• 40:11
  chris ryall: I know, you guys have 70 other books coming out this month, like, if this one…
• 40:15
  Tad Eggleston: Beyond that, beyond that, you have… you have…
• 40:19
  Tad Eggleston: You have the Disney or the Warner Bros. War Chest.
• 40:25
  Tad Eggleston: Like, you can pay for it to be done and then solicit it, rather than having… like, I always… the example I always use, like, DC built their entire year around Doomsday Clock.
• 40:43
  Tad Eggleston: And then it fell off schedule. And I'm like…
• 40:46
  Tad Eggleston: How did the book fall off schedule? How did you build your entire room year around a book that wasn't done? Why on earth would you build your entire year around a book that's not done?
• 41:00
  chris ryall: I mean, I can tell you why, because you get excited about a thing, you think, this book's gonna sell a ton, get it on the schedule as soon as you possibly can, so we can sell a ton of copies as soon as we possibly can.
• 41:12
  chris ryall: Or you go, well, we got 6 issues banked, that's more than enough head of steam, we're gonna be fine going forward. And then something goes wrong, life gets in the way, and it doesn't matter how far out you plan a book, like, it's still inevitably
• 41:25
  chris ryall: Falls off his schedule by issue 5 or 6, no matter what you do to try to get in the way of that.
• 41:30
  Tad Eggleston: But this is where I say that if it's a maxiseries, if you know it's gonna be 12,
• 41:35
  Tad Eggleston: Just finish it.
• 41:37
  chris ryall: Yeah.
• 41:38
  Tad Eggleston: Just finish it.
• 41:40
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's what they do in… that's what they do in Hollywood.
• 41:44
  Tad Eggleston: done before it gets announced. That's what they do with graphic novels. It's often.
• 41:48
  chris ryall: I don't know.
• 41:49
  Tad Eggleston: Therefore, it gets announced.
• 41:50
  chris ryall: I can just tell you that, from my experience, there's usually not the patience to…
• 41:54
  chris ryall: cash flow 12 full issues, so it's… I mean, there were times we would sign a big property where we had to get a book solicited on the schedule before we had a creative team in place, and so that's when you're like, you know you're gonna be screwed from the start.
• 42:08
  Tad Eggleston: No, I know the realities. I'm not asking why Chris Ryle, the editor, doesn't get it done. I know why Chris Ryle, the editor, doesn't get it done. What I don't get is why the Warner Bros. board of directors isn't willing to drop what is essentially a
• 42:28
  Tad Eggleston: a peanut.
• 42:30
  Tad Eggleston: On the floor to get it done.
• 42:34
  Tad Eggleston: Rather than…
• 42:35
  chris ryall: Yeah, yeah.
• 42:36
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it makes way more sense to me, even at a Dark Horse or an Image or an IDW, which all of those publishers are actually more likely to have it in the can ahead of time than Marvel or DC are, even though it's a bigger risk for them.
• 42:51
  chris ryall: Well, what's even more infuriating is… is when you think about
• 42:54
  chris ryall: like, going way back, like, when I was a kid, stuff like Camelot 3000, it ran incredibly late. Like, the final issue, I think there were probably a 4-month gap or whatever, or maybe 6 months, but who cares? Like, now you've got the entire book drawn by the same team, whereas sometimes, you know, we've kind of entered a world now where modern comics is like, oh, that artist needs a break?
• 43:14
  chris ryall: Get a fill-in.
• 43:16
  Tad Eggleston: Right. You know, and then the book that you end up getting on your bookshelf.
• 43:19
  chris ryall: Falls apart because it's drawn by two different people or something.
• 43:22
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and we've stopped to… I mean, like, and this is a great place to bring up Shelly again, because Shelly…
• 43:30
  Tad Eggleston: Shelly told a story at CXC a couple years ago about when she hired J.H. Williams, and everybody was like…
• 43:40
  Tad Eggleston: You know he's slow.
• 43:42
  Tad Eggleston: And she's like, but he's brilliant. Well, but you know he's slow.
• 43:46
  chris ryall: She called them up, and she said, how long will it take you to do an issue?
• 43:50
  Tad Eggleston: He's like, I could get it done in 4 weeks. She's like, no, no, no, no.
• 43:53
  Tad Eggleston: Don't tell me what I want to hear.
• 43:55
  chris ryall: Yeah.
• 43:56
  Tad Eggleston: Tell me how long it will take to get it done the way you wanna get it done.
• 44:04
  Tad Eggleston: He's like, 6 to 8 weeks.
• 44:07
  Tad Eggleston: She's like, okay. And she picked up the phone, and she called an author that I'm not gonna name today, because, well, he's had a rough year in ways that I neither want to pile onto or want to absolve him for. But she called up an author of this very famous book, and she said, hey, I need four fill-in issues.
• 44:27
  Tad Eggleston: I need 4 one-shot issues, because this is the way we're gonna do this next arc. You're gonna do these three issues, we're gonna have a one-shot. We're gonna do these three issues, we're gonna have a one-shot. And that, in that way, she was able to manage to set it up.
• 44:43
  Tad Eggleston: So her artist was able to work at the… at the pace that He did his best work.
• 44:49
  Tad Eggleston: And the story was still great.
• 44:51
  chris ryall: Yeah.
• 44:52
  chris ryall: And… and a guy like J. Williams is worth waiting as long as he possibly needs on something, like, find that guy just a uniquely amazing talent, so… so yeah, and again, like, it's that kind of, sort of.
• 45:05
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 45:05
  chris ryall: ability to manage the schedule or manage whatever the process might be, that made me think Shelly was
• 45:11
  chris ryall: Gonna be the right fit for whatever.
• 45:13
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah. I mean, Tom King tells a similar story about his Batman run, where the biggest reason that you have the Nightmares segment was you could have six one-shots because he knew he wanted Michael Yannon
• 45:27
  Tad Eggleston: For that whole, like, 8-12 issue ending, and he knew he needed to give him runway.
• 45:36
  Tad Eggleston: But then on the flip side, Chip Zdarsky did that in his Batman, and… with his… his… Joker.
• 45:45
  Tad Eggleston: year one.
• 45:46
  Tad Eggleston: thing, and DC went, oh, this is great, we're gonna go weekly rather than monthly, and he's like, so I wound up buying him 2 weeks rather than 2 months.
• 45:56
  chris ryall: Yeah.
• 45:58
  Tad Eggleston: You know, and it's like… Why don't you understand creativity?
• 46:04
  chris ryall: I mean, I think…
• 46:05
  Tad Eggleston: And I know that's way above the editorial level, I just…
• 46:09
  chris ryall: It shouldn't be, you know, Part of it is building in, like, a realistic schedule so nobody's
• 46:15
  chris ryall: trying to make comics at an inhuman pace, because that's gonna eventually end badly. So you build and stuff, like, even, like, back with Starman would have the time's past issues drawn by somebody else to give Tony Harris a break, like, knowing that people are going to need breaks, and that they can't just pump out 240 pages a year.
• 46:33
  chris ryall: Without something getting in the way and derailing that.
• 46:35
  Tad Eggleston: Don't tell Jacob that.
• 46:38
  chris ryall: Yeah.
• 46:38
  Tad Eggleston: Actually, I think he worked it out. Last year, he only did something like 60 pages, but he colored, I think, 200 and…
• 46:49
  Tad Eggleston: 70, something like… he puts up his year-end stats every year, and I sit there going, do you sleep?
• 46:56
  chris ryall: Yeah, yeah.
• 46:59
  Tad Eggleston: But I got off track. What's your editorial philosophy? What do you strive for when you're editing versus when you're making a book?
• 47:09
  Tad Eggleston: well, not… obviously, you're making a book when you're editing. Yeah. When you're editing versus… versus writing a book.
• 47:16
  Tad Eggleston: what, what's…
• 47:17
  chris ryall: I mean, kind of the same role as, like, watching Coppola direct.
• 47:21
  chris ryall: You know, he was such a gentle hand with everybody, until there was a scene where he felt strongly about something, you know, and then really needed to make sure that they understood, here's what this has to be.
• 47:33
  chris ryall: But I think just trying to get the best work out of people, and you're never going to get that if you're yelling at them, if you're haranguing them, if you're second-guessing everything, if you're making tiny tweaks and changes just to sort of
• 47:45
  chris ryall: established that you're the… in charge. You know, I've never been that guy, and I could care less about being that guy. Like, I'd rather find ways to sort of bring out the best in the entire team, and just…
• 47:56
  chris ryall: make sure that the story is as coherent as it should be, that everything's flowing properly. You know, there's…
• 48:03
  chris ryall: like, every… every project kind of has its own specific needs, every creative team has its own specific needs, but for the most part, it's that. It's like, what's… what's the path that's gonna, sort of, bring the best out of everybody and make this the best working situation for everyone?
• 48:20
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 48:20
  chris ryall: I like it.
• 48:21
  Tad Eggleston: What's your favorite part of editing? Because the editing job is the one where you get to
• 48:29
  Tad Eggleston: To wear the most different hats.
• 48:32
  chris ryall: Yeah, and I think it's probably that. It's probably being able to have input into all the different parts of it, you know, the lettering style, the logo on the book, the design of things like, I don't know, the credits page, or the…
• 48:44
  chris ryall: collected edition, as well as, you know, working with the writer on the script, getting the pages coming in. I mean, there's really nothing better than a new page showing up in your inbox. Like, that's… that is for everybody in the business. Like, that's kind of the best part, is just…
• 48:58
  chris ryall: seeing the artist, bring something to life in such a cool way. But yeah, I think it's… I think it's that. It's kind of being the ringleader, the person that's… that's wrangling and
• 49:08
  chris ryall: Sort of pulling all the different parts together to make, you know, the cool final product.
• 49:14
  Tad Eggleston: We're starting to run up on time, and I don't want to keep you too long.
• 49:18
  chris ryall: So, well, no, no, I have two relatively in-depth questions that are my closing questions. One of them I already gave you, and you've had time to think about it.
• 49:28
  Tad Eggleston: So… so I'm not… not trying to kill this now, I'm just… mostly I'm saying, I'm gonna beg you to come back to talk to Daredevil in a bigger conversation after I've read the book, because I love Daredevil, I love Mazzicelli.
• 49:43
  Tad Eggleston: I love Frank Miller, so, like, we could spend all of this time on Daredevil, too, so rather than spend.
• 49:50
  chris ryall: I was gonna say, then Born Again probably worked for you, knowing that you like all those things.
• 49:54
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, I'm… this is… and, like, I would wind up probably trying to bring a group together and make it either a roundtable or a book club to…
• 50:04
  Tad Eggleston: to talk Daredevil 2, because I… I…
• 50:06
  Tad Eggleston: I know a lot of other people who love Daredevil and love some of the same things. In fact, Joe Illage and I have a back and forth, because he thinks Born Again is the best Daredevil ever.
• 50:17
  Tad Eggleston: And the second best Mazzicelli ever behind… Esterio's polyp, and I think… that Born Again.
• 50:30
  Tad Eggleston: is the second best Daredevil ever.
• 50:34
  Tad Eggleston: And the second best Mazzicelli Daredevil, after the one-shots, or loosely connected O'Neill, Mazzicelli.
• 50:46
  Tad Eggleston: Daredevil that comes between Miller's run and Born Again.
• 50:51
  chris ryall: Well, at least one of you is right.
• 50:53
  Tad Eggleston: Probably him, in your opinion, but I… I love how much
• 51:00
  Tad Eggleston: the fact that they weren't tied into… and part of this is an editorial thing. I don't think they thought Miller was going away for that period, so they were kind of scrambling, which is how O'Neill went from being the Daredevil editor to being the Daredevil writer in an era where Marvel didn't like their editors to do writing.
• 51:19
  chris ryall: Oh, they knew he was going away, Miller, but they didn't think he was coming back.
• 51:22
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, okay. But just the way that that period worked out, I don't feel like they realized he was going away…
• 51:30
  Tad Eggleston: that soon? I mean, 190… 191 is a great…
• 51:36
  Tad Eggleston: They clearly knew with 191 that that was his last issue.
• 51:40
  chris ryall: I don't know that if they knew at 190 that 191 was gonna be his last issue. Does that make sense?
• 51:48
  chris ryall: Yeah, it does.
• 51:49
  Tad Eggleston: is how it feels, because there's a lot of, kind of, searching around, but in that, I think David Mazzicelli got to do some of his…
• 51:58
  Tad Eggleston: Absolutely most inventive superhero artwork… ever.
• 52:03
  chris ryall: He did, so it's funny, because when he… when he first started, like, he was probably, what, 23, 24? Something like that. Yeah. Yeah, so he was raw, and… and he was also… his pencils were kind of buried at times by,
• 52:16
  chris ryall: Danny Boulonatti, but every now and then, you would see this panel, and I remember the one that won me over was… it was in the issue that Harlan Ellison wrote.
• 52:23
  chris ryall: You know, at the big house, the Deathstalkers…
• 52:27
  chris ryall: mother or something, and there was this amazing shot of this house, this sprawling estate, and I was like, that's a crazy, impressive piece of art. Like, this guy's… this guy's got something more going on than
• 52:39
  chris ryall: Than what you first thought when you saw him. And then once he started inking his own stuff.
• 52:43
  chris ryall: you know, before Born Again, but when he was doing, like, the story set in the past in the Old West, it's like, oh, this guy… this guy is amazing already, and just watching how quickly he developed at such a young age was… it was a blast.
• 52:56
  Tad Eggleston: See? See, then we're… we… we… this is what I'm saying. At some point, we need to have, like, we need to get you, me, Joe Illage, Sherman Alexi's a big Daredevil guy.
• 53:07
  chris ryall: Alex Agura would be good.
• 53:08
  Tad Eggleston: Alex Segura's a big deal.
• 53:09
  chris ryall: Yeah.
• 53:10
  Tad Eggleston: We need to get the Daredevil crew together, and totally geek out over this run.
• 53:17
  chris ryall: I… yes, I'll set aside 3-4 hours for that.
• 53:21
  Tad Eggleston: So, rather than die… I will… I will plug the book, because I picked it up and I flipped through it today.
• 53:27
  chris ryall: I'll even show it.
• 53:28
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's Born Again, the Marvel Age of Comics, Daredevil Born Again by Chris Ryle, and it's,
• 53:38
  Tad Eggleston: I don't quite want to say a scholarly take, because it feels like it's supposed to be more accessible than your average scholarly scholarly writing.
• 53:46
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 53:48
  Tad Eggleston: But…
• 53:48
  chris ryall: It's not a university press kind of book, but it was trying to tread the line between opinion and…
• 53:55
  chris ryall: It was trying to approach scholarly without stepping over that line, which was never a concern of mine anyway, so…
• 54:01
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Though I will say, have you read Ryan K. Lindsay's Daredevil?
• 54:08
  Tad Eggleston: scholarly book? Oh, he wrote a good one. Yeah, I'll try to send you a link. He's… he's a heck of a writer, too.
• 54:15
  chris ryall: I agree, yeah.
• 54:16
  Tad Eggleston: So, but we will. We'll wrap up with my two closing questions. The first, you know, obviously, other than the Coppola-Rodriguez stuff that we've already gotten.
• 54:30
  Tad Eggleston: 2. I've been doing this for only, like, 4 plus years, and already I feel like my life has become an episode, and, like, the best episode of the Twilight Zone, where, where, like.
• 54:42
  Tad Eggleston: Even as the world burns down, I'm like, my life is awesome.
• 54:47
  chris ryall: I just texted with blank?
• 54:50
  Tad Eggleston: To rib him because his baseball team is losing?
• 54:54
  chris ryall: Yeah, right.
• 54:54
  Tad Eggleston: Blank just sent me a picture of the kid that his wife had 10 minutes ago?
• 55:03
  Tad Eggleston: Never mind just the random, like…
• 55:07
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I still remember the first time, like, I handed a business card to somebody at a con where they knew who I was.
• 55:16
  chris ryall: Hmm.
• 55:17
  Tad Eggleston: Even though I had, you know, where they looked at the card, and they went, 22 panels, you guys are great! And I'm like…
• 55:22
  Tad Eggleston: You know… I thought only my mom listened. Like, you… Yeah.
• 55:30
  chris ryall: it's…
• 55:31
  Tad Eggleston: But the more time I spend in comics, the more I realize that it doesn't matter who you are, how much success you've had, etc, you have these stories. So I've started asking people to tell me a story, tell me a moment.
• 55:44
  chris ryall: Alright.
• 55:44
  Tad Eggleston: In comics, where it's just, like.
• 55:46
  chris ryall: Fuck, how did that happen?
• 55:48
  chris ryall: Well, I mean, part of it is… is…
• 55:51
  chris ryall: for me, it's weird to be friends with guys that I grew up just loving their stuff, and I mean, that's the same thing that a lot of us have discovered and enjoyed, you know, is getting to know the people that told these stories that have meant so much to us over, you know, the course of our lives, so…
• 56:08
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 56:09
  chris ryall: that in itself, like, getting to know and… or collaborate with, or have John Byrne do a cover for me, and be a guy that I can call a friend, is still so weird.
• 56:19
  chris ryall: Because he was really the first guy that, as a kid, I… I recognized that there was something better about his style than the other comics I was reading. You know, everything else kind of had a similar sort of look and feel to it to me as a little kid, but even at 5 or 6 or 7, whatever age I was.
• 56:36
  chris ryall: I was like, there's something I like more about this. You know, and so he was the first superstar in my mind, and so to go from that to then, you know, like I say, being friendly with him, but…
• 56:46
  chris ryall: But that's also a thing that I think a lot of people experience, you know, because comics is way more accessible than.
• 56:52
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but it's still not…
• 56:53
  chris ryall: Music and…
• 56:54
  Tad Eggleston: People not in comics experience, so it counts as the surreal…
• 56:59
  chris ryall: Yeah, and so this is… this…
• 57:01
  Tad Eggleston: 10-year-old self wouldn't believe that you were one day going to be friends with John Byrne.
• 57:07
  chris ryall: Totally, right. Or, like, Stan Lee wrote an introduction for one of my books, you know, and when I was a kid and I'm reading a Stan Lee book, I'm like.
• 57:15
  chris ryall: I'll never even be in the same room as that guy, let alone have any kind of personal thing with him. But the one that… the one that stands out for me in the weird way that… it makes me think of… you ever see The Simpsons, where they go to New York?
• 57:26
  chris ryall: And Bart's whole thing is like, I want to go to Mad Magazine, I want to go to the Mad Magazine offices. And so, what he's envisioning is opening the door, and there's Spy vs. Spy, and a Don Martin character jumping around, and just like…
• 57:38
  chris ryall: So, I was doing this book with Clive Barker, I was doing the Great and Secret Show.
• 57:42
  chris ryall: And Clive was a guy who I read when I was younger, you know? I remember Stephen King calling him the new voice in horror, the new face of horror, whatever it was.
• 57:50
  chris ryall: that he was the next big thing, and so I…
• 57:53
  chris ryall: as a young Stephen King fan, I started reading Clyde Barker's stuff, and just loved what he was doing. So it was weird enough to be doing a book with him, and he was another guy like Coppola, where he was…
• 58:04
  chris ryall: he would just go, you know, tell the story you want to tell. I don't… don't worry about what you think I wanted. I want it to be your version. So it was… that was cool enough, but there was a time I went to his house.
• 58:16
  chris ryall: And he was in the back, so he said, you know, I'll be in the back painting, just come on in.
• 58:20
  chris ryall: And in one room.
• 58:22
  chris ryall: There were all these people getting body painted, you know, fully nude body, getting body painted, for a photoshoot that was gonna go on.
• 58:30
  chris ryall: And then the bathroom door opens, and Tony Todd, Candyman walks out and just walks out the front door, just goes on his way, and I'm just like, I just walked into a Clap Barker book! Like, I… and it was just so surreal that, like, every room, there was something…
• 58:43
  chris ryall: weird and cool that I never would have envisioned before, all just, like, going on around me, and it was just one of those where I was like, huh.
• 58:52
  chris ryall: This is pretty great!
• 58:54
  Tad Eggleston: That sounds amazing. Sounds amazing. I just feel like Tony Todd just came out, didn't say a word, just kind of did the little head nod acknowledgement, and then just went on his way, and I'm like, well, of course Candyman would just be using.
• 59:05
  chris ryall: Clive's bathroom, and…
• 59:08
  Tad Eggleston: You're here, he's here, you're both in the right spot, you know, whatever.
• 59:16
  chris ryall: So yeah, there's things like that. I mean, you know, like, it's like anything, it's a hard business, and there are the ups and downs, but the ups are the stuff that you try to, like, cling to, because stuff like that is just so far beyond what I would have envisioned as a young kid reading comics.
• 59:29
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah. No, I mean, I… again, like…
• 59:34
  Tad Eggleston: And I tell a lot of them on the air, which is, I mean, I'm holding them in more for the listeners not hearing them than because I don't want to name drop with you, but, like, you know, I get the feeling, because it's like…
• 59:48
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, one of the weirdest things, I mean, in the short version, one of the weirdest things for me is, like, I consider Dennis Kitchen a good friend. Dennis Kitchen isn't just somebody that, like.
• 59:58
  Tad Eggleston: I admire his work, like, Dennis Kitchen I know of because people whose work I admire, admire Dennis Kitchen's work.
• 1:00:08
  Tad Eggleston: You know, so it's not even like the, I grew up on kitchen sink. It's like, as I got deeper into the stuff I loved, I discovered that they loved his stuff.
• 1:00:22
  Tad Eggleston: And now I've gone to a minor league baseball game with him.
• 1:00:27
  Tad Eggleston: Because we were hanging out and wanted to watch a baseball game, and that was what was available.
• 1:00:32
  Tad Eggleston: The birds were out of town.
• 1:00:34
  chris ryall: It's… it's weird, and it… so… which is what's also made me kind of feel a responsibility to…
• 1:00:40
  chris ryall: give back wherever I can, because, you know, like, we're getting to know and work with, you know, these foundational people that help build this business, so it's like, I either want to try to hire them or work with them when I can, or conversely, try to do the same for the next generation, and help other people find footing.
• 1:00:58
  Tad Eggleston: Zoe Thorogood.
• 1:01:00
  chris ryall: I mean, I think Zoe was pretty well on her way without, well, yeah.
• 1:01:06
  Tad Eggleston: Rain was still, like, her second big… Work.
• 1:01:12
  Tad Eggleston: And, like… The impending blindness of Billy, and I always forget the last name, because I'm bad with, like.
• 1:01:21
  Tad Eggleston: But you know the book. Everybody knows the book.
• 1:01:23
  chris ryall: Oh, yeah, of course.
• 1:01:24
  Tad Eggleston: That was incredibly well regarded.
• 1:01:26
  chris ryall: Yeah. It was… it didn't light up the sales charts.
• 1:01:30
  chris ryall: Right.
• 1:01:32
  Tad Eggleston: you know, there is an element where rain was her coming out party.
• 1:01:37
  chris ryall: I mean, I'd like to think so, and I certainly think that's what helped lead to Image publishing her next book, which was the one that sort of cemented her…
• 1:01:46
  Tad Eggleston: We're lonely at the center of the earth. We have had an entire…
• 1:01:51
  Tad Eggleston: Roundtable with Psychiatrists et al. to talk about that book, because it's…
• 1:01:57
  Tad Eggleston: Brilliant, both as a comic book and as just a piece of literature and… .
• 1:02:06
  chris ryall: On its surface, it shouldn't have worked, you know, because it's… it's like when somebody goes, I'm 23, and I'm doing an autobiographical story, you're like, you haven't even done anything yet. You know, like, how could you…
• 1:02:16
  Tad Eggleston: She acknowledges that, and that's part of what makes it work.
• 1:02:20
  chris ryall: And… but also, like, her understanding of the craft and, like, all the different parts of what makes comics so great, like, that book was just jaw-dropping, like, so impressive, so far above and beyond what I would have expected. And even then, like, even with the impending blindness, like.
• 1:02:36
  chris ryall: I already thought she was great, but that book was such a leap forward, it was…
• 1:02:40
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:02:40
  chris ryall: Yeah, she's another one that I think is not only fun to watch, but… well, the other thing I think I'm always really impressed by with her is
• 1:02:47
  chris ryall: she had all kinds of offers, you know, and probably more than any of us are aware of, to do Marvel and DC stuff, and be just another person doing another version of an existing character.
• 1:02:58
  chris ryall: But she was a fan of Hack Slash, so she went and did this great Hack Slash book, and so she's already at the point where she's just doing what she.
• 1:03:04
  Tad Eggleston: I love hacks.
• 1:03:05
  chris ryall: I know Tim Seeley, and that's still, hands down, my favorite hack slash. She didn't just go do a hack slash book, she, like…
• 1:03:12
  Tad Eggleston: Went and dropped the mic on a hack slash book.
• 1:03:16
  chris ryall: Yeah, so I'm impressed by that kind of thing, the people that have, sort of, the foresight to make such smart decisions when they're probably getting dangled bags of cash over here that… for stuff that maybe isn't what they want to do.
• 1:03:28
  Tad Eggleston: I was so excited when I saw her on the C2E2 guest list, because I haven't gotten to talk to her yet, and now I know where to find her at the end of March. And if I have to wait in line to say hello, I will wait in line to say hello.
• 1:03:42
  chris ryall: That show is the same weekend as WonderCon out here.
• 1:03:45
  Tad Eggleston: I know it.
• 1:03:45
  chris ryall: the same weekend, yeah.
• 1:03:47
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know, but it's really frustrating, because I actually have 4 panels at C2E2, including one that…
• 1:03:54
  Tad Eggleston: I might see how many different people I can get to show up and be a part of it, even though everybody says that panels with more than 5 people don't work. I think I have an idea for, essentially, a Celebration of Comics panel, and somehow they…
• 1:04:08
  chris ryall: Hmm.
• 1:04:08
  Tad Eggleston: approved it.
• 1:04:11
  Tad Eggleston: But all of my California plans where friends won't be traveling, because they're like, why would I get on a plane to cold Chicago when I can sleep in my own house and go to WonderCon?
• 1:04:22
  chris ryall: Yeah, it's a bummer, because they're both great shows, but so it goes.
• 1:04:26
  Tad Eggleston: Alright, last question. This is one of my favorite questions to ask, and it's been.
• 1:04:31
  chris ryall: Alright.
• 1:04:32
  Tad Eggleston: and, like, I think you're the 292nd interview episode we've had. Obviously, we've had some repeat ones, but… but I ask this one at every one, if not since the first, certainly since, like, the fifth or 6th.
• 1:04:46
  Tad Eggleston: Tell me something you love.
• 1:04:49
  Tad Eggleston: Preferably a comic, but we don't have rules. Preferably storytelling, but again, with the rules. But something that you love.
• 1:04:59
  Tad Eggleston: That not enough people around you have experienced, and you really, really want them to, because you need more people to talk about it with.
• 1:05:09
  chris ryall: Well, I mean, obviously, my easy answer is ROM, so I'm not going to take the easy answer.
• 1:05:13
  chris ryall: I mean, I'll put Rom down for you. No, no, I've probably talked to him.
• 1:05:19
  Tad Eggleston: You're allowed to have more than one.
• 1:05:21
  chris ryall: Yeah, yeah, god.
• 1:05:26
  chris ryall: What do I love about?
• 1:05:28
  Tad Eggleston: on the underrated.
• 1:05:30
  chris ryall: Yeah! Because I don't…
• 1:05:31
  Tad Eggleston: I want it to just be under… I mean, like, you can… Nate Powell actually wound up telling me, Jonathan Hickman's X-Men, which is not that nobody was reading X-Men, but not the…
• 1:05:44
  Tad Eggleston: group of indie creators that Nate Powell hangs out with.
• 1:05:48
  chris ryall: Yeah, sure.
• 1:05:50
  Tad Eggleston: Andrew Iden said his tomato garden. So, I mean, we allow.
• 1:05:54
  chris ryall: Oh, interesting.
• 1:05:57
  chris ryall: No, I want to keep… He's really proud of Spain.
• 1:06:00
  Tad Eggleston: I really want to… go to North Carolina this summer just to have one of Andrew Idaho.
• 1:06:06
  chris ryall: Ride his tractor with him, and yeah.
• 1:06:08
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Apparently, when I talked to Kelly Sue Deconyx, she said that she and Matt went out and spent some time with him, and he did. He took them around on his tractor.
• 1:06:18
  chris ryall: Oh, sure.
• 1:06:19
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, so that… I mean, I don't know if you know Andrew Ryden, but that wasn't a joke.
• 1:06:22
  chris ryall: Oh, I do, yeah.
• 1:06:23
  Tad Eggleston: You do know Andrew. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:06:26
  chris ryall: Yeah, we did, we did, we did march together back when.
• 1:06:29
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, you were part… that's right! You were part of March, too.
• 1:06:33
  Tad Eggleston: I'm sorry.
• 1:06:34
  Tad Eggleston: You've been around.
• 1:06:35
  chris ryall: No!
• 1:06:36
  Tad Eggleston: I forgot that you were part of March.
• 1:06:38
  chris ryall: No, I mean, that was another Chris, anyway, who kind of ran direct point on it, was Chris Staros. Right, right. But, yeah, I've got to know him well over the last decade-ish.
• 1:06:47
  Tad Eggleston: He's such a good guy.
• 1:06:48
  Tad Eggleston: Such a good guy.
• 1:06:50
  chris ryall: Yeah, but let me… let me think.
• 1:06:54
  chris ryall: It's funny, I'm like, can you tell I'm, like, scanning my bookshelf to see.
• 1:06:57
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I'm totally used to it. I'm surprised you haven't looked behind you, too.
• 1:07:01
  chris ryall: I just figured…
• 1:07:02
  Tad Eggleston: Those are the books that I can see. I had to assume that there were also books in front of you, because you were looking all…
• 1:07:10
  Tad Eggleston: It's the standard response when I ask this question, is people either start looking around them, or they run off screen and come back with something.
• 1:07:18
  chris ryall: Okay, no, here's one, here's one. And it's certainly not a new pick, but it was new to me, because I was, like, I was a Marvel kid, so I grew up reading comics that my older brother already had, and he only read Marvels, so I didn't get into DC until Crisis, you know, that… that was probably…
• 1:07:34
  chris ryall: I basically followed Wolfman and Perez from Marvel to DC. But I have no real strong knowledge of, like, DC's
• 1:07:43
  chris ryall: History beyond, sort of, the obvious stuff, or the reprint stuff, or…
• 1:07:47
  Tad Eggleston: you know, like…
• 1:07:48
  chris ryall: Denny O'Neill,
• 1:07:50
  chris ryall: Neil Adams, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, that kind of… like, the stuff that's been reprinted, I'm certainly aware of, but I don't know…
• 1:07:57
  chris ryall: I don't know the 60s, 70s DC at all, let alone the stuff before that. So, long way of getting to my answer, which is the art, and especially the covers of Nick Carty.
• 1:08:08
  chris ryall: Nick Cardi is amazing.
• 1:08:12
  chris ryall: And he's done these great covers for DC that, if you look at most of them, they completely look like modern, cool, like, sort of striking images with, like, not only great art, but amazing color, cool composition. Like, he was doing stuff where he was changing up the logos in an era where they often didn't allow that, like…
• 1:08:30
  chris ryall: I… I have a whole, one of my… one of the Spinner X slots is all Nick Cardi covers,
• 1:08:37
  chris ryall: and he was doing stuff like the Teen Titans covers, or Aquaman, like, not the biggest selling DC books, but I…
• 1:08:46
  chris ryall: I'm a total convert to his stuff,
• 1:08:49
  chris ryall: And I'd only really discovered over the last couple years, and I…
• 1:08:52
  chris ryall: So it's not really a recommendation of anything for anyone to go read, but certainly to look up. I feel like there needs to be
• 1:08:59
  chris ryall: a big Art of Nick Cardi book, because he seems like one of those guys that's kind of unsung, but has done just some of the cool stuff that,
• 1:09:07
  chris ryall: I just think it's kind of been forgotten about.
• 1:09:10
  Tad Eggleston: I feel like… I'm now searching for his blog.
• 1:09:16
  chris ryall: Okay, this probably isn't, this isn't great visual, but let me… if you'll bear with, alright.
• 1:09:28
  chris ryall: Alright, these were done… 50, 60 years ago, and… like… They're so great!
• 1:09:39
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:09:39
  chris ryall: And again, like, there's probably all kinds of people who are DC fans that are… that are going, yeah, yeah, we know, we know about Nick Carney, but…
• 1:09:46
  chris ryall: I didn't, and I… so I've just been, like, discovering these and grabbing them, because I'm just so taken by
• 1:09:52
  chris ryall: like, his use of color and composition, and I just…
• 1:09:55
  chris ryall: like, this kind of style feels like it could be a compelling cover today. Like, this is… this one, I think, is probably one of his more famous ones that people
• 1:10:04
  chris ryall: sort of showcase a lot, but I…
• 1:10:06
  chris ryall: I don't know, I'm just… Nick Cardi is my answer. There's probably others, but, like, I just… I can't get enough of this stuff, like, how good it is.
• 1:10:14
  Tad Eggleston: Dick Cardi is, is, is fantastic, and, and…
• 1:10:18
  Tad Eggleston: I'm… I'm frustrated that Clem Robbins… Yeah.
• 1:10:22
  Tad Eggleston: blog?
• 1:10:23
  chris ryall: colors.
• 1:10:23
  Tad Eggleston: Seems to be broken right now, because one of the last times… I had him on.
• 1:10:29
  Tad Eggleston: he wrote a two-part essay on Bob Haney and Nick Carty that was brilliant, that I was gonna send your direction, but it's… it's… currently you click on it, and it says we couldn't find the page you're looking for.
• 1:10:42
  Tad Eggleston: So, I might reach out to Clem and say, hey, do you still have that essay?
• 1:10:49
  chris ryall: I mean, Haney was another one who I've only been… recently been seeing through, like, his old Doom Patrol stuff. Again, I never was aware of that stuff back.
• 1:10:55
  Tad Eggleston: It wasn't either. Like, like, there, there are…
• 1:11:01
  Tad Eggleston: Three reasons that I love talking… well, four reasons that I love talking to letterers. The first is that they are absolutely among the unsung heroes in comics. I feel relatively confident in saying that I'm the comics podcast that's talked to the most different letterers. I think I'm up to five.
• 1:11:19
  Tad Eggleston: I've got at least 3 more on my list that I really would like to talk to. The second is they tend to be the first person who gets to see the comic in its finished form.
• 1:11:31
  Tad Eggleston: Sometimes it's the colorist, but more times than not, by the time when they put the words on, is when the page is done.
• 1:11:39
  chris ryall: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:11:40
  Tad Eggleston: How do I love that.
• 1:11:41
  chris ryall: I think that was going for your microphone.
• 1:11:43
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:11:43
  Tad Eggleston: But then the… the other… the other big thing that I love is, is, like, some of the biggest comics geeks I know are letterers. They know so much about so many…
• 1:11:54
  Tad Eggleston: And because Clem's been at it forever, he knows about eras that…
• 1:12:00
  Tad Eggleston: I've never even thought about. It's like…
• 1:12:02
  chris ryall: It's like, if somebody mentions, if somebody mentions how much they like Gaspar Saladino's work, you're like, oh, that's somebody who really knows their comics.
• 1:12:10
  Tad Eggleston: That's somebody that I didn't know about until Clem Robbins, and Clem Robbins actually arranged for a big celebration at Gaspar at a con near the end of his life, where he also had, you know, he got Todd Klein to come out, he got Nate Pico's to come out, it was, like, all of the top letters of that era celebrating Gaspar, and I think, New York…
• 1:12:31
  chris ryall: Pretty much if there's a great logo, if there's an old logo that you love, like, Gaspar probably created it. But, like, my favorite part of the, there's the Alex Toth Super Friends Treasury Edition. The best part of that, that whole book is his lettering.
• 1:12:44
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:12:45
  chris ryall: you know, he has the process page in the back that's all just text, and it's gorgeous. Like, that lettering is just… it's a work of art on itself. So yeah, I'm with you, and again, it's those kind of things that I think make comics so special.
• 1:12:57
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, God. I mean, I…
• 1:12:59
  Tad Eggleston: one of the most fun conversations, and I hate that he's A so busy, and B in… in England, which makes it that much harder to set up a conversation with a busy person, because, you know, time differences, but I got to talk to Hassan Otzman El-How about.
• 1:13:16
  chris ryall: No.
• 1:13:17
  Tad Eggleston: Lettering, and all the things he does, and…
• 1:13:20
  chris ryall: That cover he… that cover he did that is all just word balloons and fonts and stuff is so great. He was actually the guy that was going to, I was gonna have him letter Megalopolis, but just schedules couldn't quite align, but I think he's amazing. In fact, he lettered my, the book that, I published under my imprint with Alex Pacadel and,
• 1:13:40
  Tad Eggleston: I love Allison.
• 1:13:40
  chris ryall: For wind guards.
• 1:13:42
  chris ryall: Yeah, so he and he and Kaspar Wingard did, All Against All.
• 1:13:46
  Tad Eggleston: I was about to say, you guys did… you were the editor on all… See, I didn't do my research as well as I should have, Chris. I was so…
• 1:13:55
  chris ryall: That was one of the early books I put out under my imprinted image, yeah.
• 1:13:58
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I was so, like… focused on Megalopolis, because…
• 1:14:04
  Tad Eggleston: A, it's really, really good. B, I feel…
• 1:14:10
  Tad Eggleston: unfortunately safe in saying that I'm in a minority shouting from the rooftops that it's really, really good.
• 1:14:21
  chris ryall: I am.
• 1:14:21
  Tad Eggleston: I apologize, it wound up… You fell victim to the fact that I'm in love with threes.
• 1:14:29
  Tad Eggleston: It was probably my fourth favorite graphic novel of last year, so… so that was the other reason I had to have you on, is… is I didn't list it as one of my favorite graphic novels of the year. It was THE last cut.
• 1:14:43
  chris ryall: Oh, man.
• 1:14:45
  Tad Eggleston: If you care, you lost out to Jesse Lonergan's drone.
• 1:14:50
  Tad Eggleston: Meredith McLaren's Meat Eaters.
• 1:14:55
  Tad Eggleston: And Christopher Cantwell and, Victor Santos', Kid Maroon.
• 1:15:03
  chris ryall: Yeah, how great is Victor, too?
• 1:15:04
  Tad Eggleston: Exactly. Exactly. And that… Kid Maroon is another book that I think I'm the only one screaming about, and it's for similar reasons. Like, you can read Kid Maroon and go, I don't know what they're doing here.
• 1:15:19
  Tad Eggleston: Is this supposed to be funny? But, like, if you start thinking about Kid Maroon, it is social commentary, satire.
• 1:15:28
  Tad Eggleston: humor on so many fucking levels, it's not even funny. It's just…
• 1:15:33
  chris ryall: I don't know it.
• 1:15:34
  Tad Eggleston: Brilliant.
• 1:15:35
  chris ryall: to look that up.
• 1:15:36
  Tad Eggleston: It was supposed to be a 5-issue series at fault, it fell…
• 1:15:40
  Tad Eggleston: by the wayside, and then they finally brought it out as a graphic novel. It kind of…
• 1:15:45
  Tad Eggleston: It's one of the… it's one of the books that got… got really, kind of, jobbed by the Diamond Bankruptcy.
• 1:15:53
  chris ryall: Hmm.
• 1:15:54
  Tad Eggleston: Because it was just… it was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
• 1:15:59
  Tad Eggleston: And then it became a graphic novel rather than a miniseries, and…
• 1:16:03
  chris ryall: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:16:04
  Tad Eggleston: But.
• 1:16:05
  chris ryall: That's a great team, though.
• 1:16:07
  Tad Eggleston: Well, Chris even did, I mean, I remember he sent me the press release.
• 1:16:13
  Tad Eggleston: Probably a month before they put it out, even. Because he did it up like they were actually resurrecting an old…
• 1:16:20
  chris ryall: Hmm. News strip character?
• 1:16:23
  Tad Eggleston: So he wrote up, like, a newspaper-type press release to make it feel like…
• 1:16:29
  Tad Eggleston: And there's so many Easter eggs, even in the press release, where it's like, oh, I know where that… like, initially… I mean, even me, and Chris is a friend of mine, like, the first paragraph, I'm like, oh, is this another one of those cool, weird things that Chris knows about and I don't?
• 1:16:46
  Tad Eggleston: And it took me, like, till the second read.
• 1:16:50
  Tad Eggleston: To go, oh, the press release is also part of the joke.
• 1:16:55
  chris ryall: Oh, good. Nice.
• 1:16:57
  Tad Eggleston: So yeah, I can't recommend it enough. Kid Maroon from Vault Comics. But Megalopolis from Abrams, right? Did I get that right?
• 1:17:06
  chris ryall: Yes,
• 1:17:07
  Tad Eggleston: Abrams Comic Arts, people should read it. I actually also recommend the movie. I assume…
• 1:17:13
  Tad Eggleston: even if you don't recommend the movie, you're not willing to say so, but… but tell me off-air what you thought of the movie, because I'm…
• 1:17:19
  chris ryall: Oh, no, I'm happy to talk about the movie.
• 1:17:22
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 1:17:22
  chris ryall: I mean, it was one of the weirdest movies I've seen in years, and I… I love that…
• 1:17:27
  chris ryall: It's a movie that… that… was allowed to be as weird as it wanted to be, like, that…
• 1:17:32
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:17:33
  chris ryall: That he made the movie he wanted to make after all that time, you know?
• 1:17:36
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, it is the… it is the most expensive independent movie ever.
• 1:17:40
  chris ryall: There's that, but yeah, removing even the money that he no doubt lost on it, like, just the fact that he…
• 1:17:47
  Tad Eggleston: long-term, he doesn't. I think it's one of those movies…
• 1:17:51
  Tad Eggleston: That every year, there's gonna be more people that… that realize they like it.
• 1:17:57
  chris ryall: that's exactly what he wants. He wants it to be that and be a thing that people discover.
• 1:18:02
  Tad Eggleston: But I…
• 1:18:03
  chris ryall: like, I just love that it exists in a world where every… or so many different movies feel focus grouped to death, and…
• 1:18:10
  Tad Eggleston: Right. You know, sort of…
• 1:18:11
  chris ryall: I don't know, predictable and all that, and this was…
• 1:18:14
  chris ryall: this was just whatever he wanted it to be, with no other concerns other than making the art that he wanted to make.
• 1:18:21
  Tad Eggleston: A really cool… Fission.
• 1:18:25
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, like, we didn't get into the stuff on the book earlier, and I won't keep it for too much longer, but, like.
• 1:18:33
  Tad Eggleston: between the, you know, he clearly knows his Roman history. He clearly has been paying attention in the United States and the world for the last 50 years. He clearly knows his Shakespeare. He puts it all into this and weaves it together in a way
• 1:18:50
  Tad Eggleston: That, again, if you're not paying attention, can feel disjointed, and like, I get the reason why it's not as popular as it should be right yet. It doesn't allow you
• 1:19:03
  Tad Eggleston: to watch it passively. It requires
• 1:19:07
  Tad Eggleston: active interaction with it. It requires you to think about it. It might even require you to go.
• 1:19:15
  Tad Eggleston: You know, that name feels familiar. Let me go look at some stuff. Oh… You know…
• 1:19:25
  Tad Eggleston: But the more of that you do, the better it becomes.
• 1:19:29
  chris ryall: Yeah.
• 1:19:29
  Tad Eggleston: acting, like, as much as people have… I, I, I…
• 1:19:34
  Tad Eggleston: I've seen so many bad reviews of the acting, and I'm sitting there going, are we watching the same movie? This is brilliant!
• 1:19:43
  chris ryall: Yeah, it's funny, I think people get so used to things all feeling similar that when something doesn't, they don't know what to make of it, and I think that.
• 1:19:51
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:19:52
  chris ryall: That's what's great about it.
• 1:19:54
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and I think it was a double whammy, because…
• 1:20:00
  Tad Eggleston: because it's Coppola, they thought they knew what they were gonna get.
• 1:20:04
  chris ryall: Right.
• 1:20:06
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I just watched Begonia, and… and it has a lot of the…
• 1:20:12
  Tad Eggleston: Did you see that, too?
• 1:20:13
  chris ryall: Funny, I was just gonna compare it to that, actually, yeah.
• 1:20:15
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, yeah. But overall, it's gotten the reverse
• 1:20:21
  Tad Eggleston: reception. People are like, oh, that's cool and weird.
• 1:20:26
  chris ryall: Yeah. Rather than…
• 1:20:27
  Tad Eggleston: what are you trying to do? You know, I mean, Begonia has a 7.4 rating on IMDB, and Megalopolis has a 4-point something, and I'm sitting there going…
• 1:20:40
  Tad Eggleston: like, these movies actually feel really similar to me, and I don't…
• 1:20:44
  chris ryall: Yeah, that's a good.
• 1:20:45
  Tad Eggleston: Begonia is the better one.
• 1:20:47
  Tad Eggleston: Begonia's a great movie, I'm not saying that it's absolutely not the better one, but I don't know that it's, like, automatically the better one, and I certainly don't know that it's twice as good at doing it.
• 1:20:58
  chris ryall: Well, but it's funny, because I think Begonia was the more straightforward version of.
• 1:21:02
  Tad Eggleston: the kind of movies he makes, whereas Megalopolis was the opposite of that. It was… Well, and that's…
• 1:21:07
  chris ryall: the farthest afield from the straightforward movies that people want Coppola to make.
• 1:21:11
  Tad Eggleston: And that was actually the exact point I was gonna make, is that your… from… from Yorgos Lanthimos.
• 1:21:18
  chris ryall: Latimos, yeah.
• 1:21:19
  Tad Eggleston: Lanthimos. That's essentially what people expect. They expect a weird movie that they have to think about a little bit and whatnot. And, like.
• 1:21:28
  Tad Eggleston: Even Coppola's absolute best work, nobody would necessarily describe as a weird movie that you have to think about to get.
• 1:21:37
  chris ryall: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:21:39
  Tad Eggleston: You know, Apocalypse Now is brilliant, and there's things to think about it. The Godfather is brilliant. I'm actually somebody that says, like.
• 1:21:47
  Tad Eggleston: the biggest shame of The Godfather Part III is The Godfather, because if it wasn't called The Godfather Part III, people would talk about it as being a really, really good movie. The problem is, it's not nearly as good as Godfather Part 1 and Godfather Part 2.
• 1:22:02
  Tad Eggleston: Sure. You know? And I think that's what happened with this movie, is everybody had, like, this is what we expect from Coppola, and then it really, really, really wasn't. Which is why I'm really glad that I read your comic first, because…
• 1:22:17
  Tad Eggleston: It also changed what I was looking for from the movie.
• 1:22:20
  Tad Eggleston: It's like…
• 1:22:21
  chris ryall: Yeah, I love that.
• 1:22:22
  Tad Eggleston: This is a weird and awesome story, so I need to go into watching the movie from a really open standpoint.
• 1:22:32
  Tad Eggleston: And just try to watch it as its own thing, rather than… Francis Ford Coppola's magnum opus.
• 1:22:41
  chris ryall: Right, yeah, yeah.
• 1:22:42
  Tad Eggleston: Chris, it has been an absolute blast. We will definitely have to do this again, and like I said, we gotta get.
• 1:22:50
  chris ryall: I hope so.
• 1:22:51
  Tad Eggleston: dig into Daredevil sometime. So for 22 panels, this has been Chris Ryle, and we will see you after the next page.