Latest / 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast / With Great Power #278... 22 Panels with Tommi Parrish

Transcript

With Great Power #278... 22 Panels with Tommi Parrish · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

0:01
Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels. My guest tonight is Tommy Parrish, whose new book, The Past as a Grotesque Animal, is recently released from Phanographics Books. How's it going, Tommy?
0:17
tommi pg: Going great, yeah.
0:18
Tad Eggleston: I'm great.
0:19
tommi pg: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:20
Tad Eggleston: Now, I'm gonna start with the weird question, just because I happen to have read all 3 of your books.
0:26
tommi pg: Hmm…
0:27
Tad Eggleston: in, like, the last couple of days, and… and I'm used to seeing roughly the same author blurb at the end of it, rather than…
0:36
Tad Eggleston: Blurbs where people live in… Three different countries?
0:41
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, you know.
0:43
tommi pg: It's been a really big couple of years.
0:46
Tad Eggleston: So talk to me about your globetrotting.
0:50
tommi pg: Ugh! Well, I am from Melbourne, which is where I'm living at the moment, and I lived in Montreal in Canada for a few years. I followed a friend over there.
1:05
tommi pg: And then I followed a different friend to America, and I lived there for 6 years, and just moved back. Yeah, it's,
1:17
tommi pg: It was a lot. It's been a lot. The last little while.
1:22
Tad Eggleston: You chose a good time to move away from the United States? I'm just gonna say that. I'm gonna put that out there, you chose a very good time.
1:31
Tad Eggleston: And you're in Melbourne, which isn't… I'm trying to remember, it's Brisbane, right? That's the…
1:39
Tad Eggleston: We have a regular… contributor.
1:46
Tad Eggleston: she's part of the Love & Rockets Book Club, and she describes that area as the MAGA country of Australia. So you're in Melbourne, so not.
1:56
tommi pg: I'm in marketing.
1:56
Tad Eggleston: Not the most…
1:58
tommi pg: It happens, like… Kind of like Kip, and everyone moves here.
2:02
Tad Eggleston: Right, right, right. No, she's frustrated that it's become kind of the way it is around her, because, you know, she's an El Salvadoran refugee in Australia.
2:14
tommi pg: What is she doing living in Brisbane?
2:16
Tad Eggleston: I think she's actually on the coast now. She's been there… I mean, she's a refugee from, like, the El Salvadoran Civil War in the early 80s, so she's been in Australia for…
2:29
Tad Eggleston: Almost as long as I've been alive.
2:32
tommi pg: Yeah, right.
2:33
Tad Eggleston: You know, she went as a refugee, and she stayed, and now she's a…
2:39
Tad Eggleston: a storyboard artist, and splits her time between Australia and Malta, because her, her, her wife…
2:47
Tad Eggleston: is from Malta, so they have places in both Australia and Malta.
2:52
tommi pg: Shit, what about us?
2:53
Tad Eggleston: I know, I mean… and she was doing comics in Australia with Eddie Campbell, so, like…
3:04
Tad Eggleston: I found Maria because she wrote a letter to Love & Rockets. It was published in issue, I think, 16, and had just enough identifying… A, it was a cool enough letter that I'm like, oh, wow, this is cool.
3:18
Tad Eggleston: But had just enough identifying information and talked about how she was gonna have a comic coming out soon, that I'm like, oh, I wanna see if I can go find her comic. And I didn't find her comic, but I found her.
3:30
tommi pg: So I went…
3:32
Tad Eggleston: We try to do all sorts of things around comics. I'm gonna see if somebody who had a letter published in Love & Rockets wants to come talk about comics.
3:42
tommi pg: Hell yeah.
3:42
Tad Eggleston: And bless her heart, she did, and enjoyed it enough that she became part of the Love & Rockets Book Club, so she's now been on the show, like…
3:52
Tad Eggleston: 60 times?
3:55
tommi pg: whoa, I mean, that's probably why she's killing it.
3:58
tommi pg: just reaching out and meeting people. It's the secret.
4:02
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, maybe. You don't meet a lot of people. I mean, this is where I say, Tommy, I love that you came here, but if you were hoping to expand your audience, well, say, hi Mom, hi Brother Adam, hi John, hi Britt. Those are the four people who might…
4:19
Tad Eggleston: might go… well, my mom might get it for a library, so, I mean, that could explain to your audience a little bit.
4:25
tommi pg: It's an…
4:26
Tad Eggleston: Iowa, so we'll see if she can get it through the board.
4:31
Tad Eggleston: So they have ordered some interesting books for her library that she's recommended because of this podcast, so… cross your fingers.
4:39
Tad Eggleston: And give us the front counter pitch for… for the past as a grotesque animal.
4:44
tommi pg: Like, you want the… you want the elevator pitch for it?
4:47
Tad Eggleston: I mean, if you want to do the elevator pitch, but I think most people sell comic books over a counter, not in elevators. Oh, true, true, true, true. Well… That's why I call it a front counter pitch, you know, when you're at the comic shop, and you're like, oh.
5:01
Tad Eggleston: You will like this book, let me put it in your hands.
5:04
tommi pg: Let me check.
5:05
Tad Eggleston: I'll tell you about it.
5:06
tommi pg: Okay, okay, I like it.
5:08
Tad Eggleston: Because that's a secret… that's a secret sales trick, if you put it in your… in their hands before you start building it up.
5:16
tommi pg: Whoa.
5:17
Tad Eggleston: They're even more likely to buy it. Because they get to look at the pictures.
5:21
Tad Eggleston: And they get to feel it.
5:23
tommi pg: They're already holding it, they might as well buy it.
5:25
Tad Eggleston: Do they have to start worrying about where to put it back? I mean, I try to be the guy that if it seems like they don't want it, I'll say, hey, I can put that back for you.
5:34
Tad Eggleston: There's a subtle, like, it's in my hands.
5:38
Tad Eggleston: He's making me excited about it.
5:41
Tad Eggleston: And I'm looking at the pictures, and I can feel it.
5:45
tommi pg: Alright, counterpitch. Well, it's a compilation of, like, 15 years of work, basically. It…
5:54
Tad Eggleston: Wait a minute, are you… are you… I mean, two things here that I… I was told weren't true about comics. First, that they take years, and second, that their work…
6:05
Tad Eggleston: I'm being absolutely facetious here.
6:10
tommi pg: Yeah, I mean, this is my favorite…
6:12
Tad Eggleston: These are really hard work that take a lot of time.
6:15
tommi pg: They take a lot of time!
6:17
Tad Eggleston: Let me make that clear.
6:19
tommi pg: I mean…
6:20
tommi pg: That being said, they… there were quite a few that were so poorly scanned when I was, like, 20. They didn't make it in there. Like, quite a lot, actually.
6:32
tommi pg: But for the most part, it's just, like, a ton of stuff that I made before I was published, when I was still working on how to make comics, yeah, that, like, Fanographics have been wanting to put together for a long time.
6:47
tommi pg: And so, yeah, I don't know, I feel weird about it. I feel very much like I make the work.
6:54
tommi pg: And the making process is the point of it, and then I want to move on and do something else.
7:01
tommi pg: And not talk about it, you know?
7:04
Tad Eggleston: Well, okay, what do you want to talk about?
7:06
tommi pg: Well…
7:08
Tad Eggleston: If we're done talking about comics…
7:12
tommi pg: I've gotten good at talking about it.
7:14
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I did just talk baseball with Eric Stevenson.
7:17
tommi pg: Oh well, I don't know anything about any sport.
7:20
Tad Eggleston: Well…
7:21
tommi pg: Yeah.
7:22
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I will say that you don't have to know about sports to know about baseball. Baseball doesn't really count as a sport. I mean, I guess it kind of is, because people…
7:31
tommi pg: Brothers.
7:31
Tad Eggleston: Sometimes.
7:32
Tad Eggleston: But it's much more of a game.
7:35
tommi pg: Okay. Well, maybe I'll say I don't really know anything about any games.
7:40
tommi pg: Games or sports. But.
7:43
Tad Eggleston: Of course.
7:44
tommi pg: Too busy driving.
7:45
Tad Eggleston: Drawing. I see how it is.
7:47
tommi pg: Exactly, exactly.
7:49
Tad Eggleston: But you don't want to talk about that either. I mean, come on!
7:53
tommi pg: Tried to throw.
7:54
Tad Eggleston: a rope, Tommy!
7:56
tommi pg: I'm so happy to talk about it. Yeah, so it was, like, it's… it sort of documents the process of me working out how to make comics, and there's some really old ones in there that I'm really proud of, actually. And it's…
8:13
tommi pg: Yeah, I don't know, it's… I just… I just received the books, because it took forever to get them shipped over.
8:20
Tad Eggleston: International shipping?
8:23
Tad Eggleston: is a thing?
8:27
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
8:29
tommi pg: apparently tariffs are a whole thing now, which makes it… makes it more complicated. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
8:37
tommi pg: But, yeah, it's like a… it's a cool little, like, thing to… to own, and I got to have, like, a bunch of, like, photos of friends that I put in there as well.
8:48
tommi pg: Like, I wanted it to be a kind of, like, collage… situation.
8:54
tommi pg: Like, I've got some diary pages in there.
8:58
Tad Eggleston: I, I did, I did notice that. I…
9:00
tommi pg: Yeah.
9:01
Tad Eggleston: It, it, let… I think the question that's…
9:05
Tad Eggleston: Popping into my head as I'm flipping through it.
9:08
Tad Eggleston: I think every artist goes through this, but we don't always get to see it.
9:18
tommi pg: Hmm.
9:20
Tad Eggleston: I, I, I'm, I'm… I'm just flipping through pages, but particularly having read
9:26
Tad Eggleston: your two more recent graphic novels, I can see your style develop.
9:30
tommi pg: shut up.
9:31
Tad Eggleston: And I'm gonna bring this up specifically because…
9:34
Tad Eggleston: and I never know quite how to phrase this, because I don't mean it in at all, like, a negative way. You don't do traditionally pretty art.
9:47
Tad Eggleston: You have a very specific style that's not quite ugly, either. I mean, there are people who do ugly art. Our crumb's kind of the ugly art sometimes.
9:58
Tad Eggleston: So it's not quite… but you do a very specific style, you tend towards smaller heads, bigger bodies, androgynous,
10:08
Tad Eggleston: But one of the things that I'm seeing going through this book is you also have
10:18
Tad Eggleston: an accomplished classical art skill set. It's a choice to… it's a choice to draw this way. I mean, I've seen too often where people go, oh, like, they make cartoons because they can't… they can't make real art. And…
10:36
Tad Eggleston: And again, I'm flipping through, you… you have a couple still lives in here. You can make real art. So talk about the…
10:43
Tad Eggleston: The decision… particularly because you've developed a style that…
10:46
Tad Eggleston: that seems to be your style. I mean, I'm not gonna say that the next book couldn't wind up being… but you have two complete graphic novels, and I think about half of this is in a particular style, so you clearly developed that style. Talk about developing…
11:01
Tad Eggleston: The Tommy Parrish style.
11:03
tommi pg: I think it was… it was less a choice, and more… I'm just, like, always feeling around for, like, what type of drawing feels the best.
11:15
tommi pg: Yeah, it's kind of…
11:18
tommi pg: I guess the best way that I can describe it is, like, you know those kids' toys, and you've got, like, the… they're, like, made out of wood, and you've got, sort of, like, say, a wooden triangle, and you've got a hole that's the, like, that's the shape of the triangle, and then you put…
11:34
tommi pg: you, like, put it in its, like, place, and it, like, feels really good. It's just kind of like that. Like, I…
11:41
tommi pg: I did definitely…
11:42
Tad Eggleston: No, you're just reminding me of my son's first Christmas.
11:46
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Fisher-Price makes one of those.
11:49
Tad Eggleston: Where it's, like, a yellow bucket.
11:51
Tad Eggleston: With a blue top that has the four shapes, and you're supposed to put them in the right spots, and he took the square piece and tried to jam it into the star hole, and it wouldn't go, and it wouldn't go, so he took the top off and put it in and put the top back on.
12:10
tommi pg: Genius.
12:13
tommi pg: He's gonna go spot. He was like, he was like…
12:15
Tad Eggleston: One. No, he is. My son is a father now, and is going far. He's doing fantastic, but, like.
12:23
tommi pg: Oh, damn.
12:24
Tad Eggleston: I knew… I knew that I was in trouble when, like.
12:29
Tad Eggleston: at… let's see, he was a September baby, so this would have been his second Christmas, because he wasn't 3 months old when he did this. But at, like, 15 months old, he's like.
12:42
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I don't feel like manipulating, but I know another way to solve this problem.
12:48
tommi pg: Yeah, I mean, I never… I never got there. I was just like, well, I guess… I guess the triangle piece has to go on the triangle hole. So I feel like everything, every other type of art making just felt and continues to feel wrong. Like, in a way that's sort of…
13:05
tommi pg: Uncomfortable, and sort of…
13:08
tommi pg: And, like, yucky. It's like this, it's this funny sensory thing. I'm actually in the process of, like.
13:17
tommi pg: Seeing what it's like to make in, like, a really different way now.
13:22
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
13:22
tommi pg: And so, like, I'm going through a lot of, like,
13:27
tommi pg: Yeah, I'm trying to, I'm trying to sort of train myself to take the lid off and, like, put all the pieces in.
13:33
tommi pg: Which has been, yeah, it's been interesting, it's been fun.
13:36
tommi pg: Yeah, it's been humbling, actually.
13:41
Tad Eggleston: I love that word. Just because I don't think…
13:47
Tad Eggleston: I don't think enough people in the world think about it. I think a lot of cartoonists do. I think a lot of comic geeks think of…
13:57
Tad Eggleston: humbleness.
13:59
tommi pg: Yeah, I mean, I think it's.
14:00
Tad Eggleston: It's such a beautiful word, but it's…
14:02
tommi pg: It's not working.
14:03
Tad Eggleston: that you hear or not?
14:04
Tad Eggleston: It's like… So I'm just… I'm being struck by the language right now, I'm sorry.
14:08
tommi pg: It's like, no, no, it's like allowing yourself… you're allowing yourself to, like, make bad art, basically. And, like, something that I'm spending a lot of time doing at the moment is, like, edu… I'm, like, in education with teens, specifically.
14:26
Tad Eggleston: I'm a high school special ed teacher, so I appreciate that.
14:31
tommi pg: Oh, really? Hell yeah! Cool, cool, cool! Sounds like we're doing kind of similar stuff.
14:37
Tad Eggleston: Do you also have the kids that get really, really frustrated when there winds up being more than one step, and that one step didn't make it exactly… Yes. …exactly, perfectly what they wanted it to be?
14:51
tommi pg: Yep.
14:52
tommi pg: Exactly. And so I…
14:54
Tad Eggleston: I hear that so much, it's like, oh man!
14:56
Tad Eggleston: I'm like, yeah, no, like, you're… you're… you're… you're doing sampling. Sampling involves multiple samples. That means you… you… you… you will need to cut.
15:09
Tad Eggleston: More parts out of this song.
15:13
tommi pg: Yeah, there's a lot of, like, I did some, like.
15:16
tommi pg: you know, I do different things, like, every week, and I did sort of, like, zine folding, and there's a lot of, like, okay, now you need to do a… now you need to fold this, and I'll be like, oh, I need to fold another thing, like, it's very.
15:29
Tad Eggleston: Right.
15:30
tommi pg: Yeah. How to… You mean that…
15:32
Tad Eggleston: First fold wasn't enough?
15:35
tommi pg: I know, like, this is bullshit.
15:38
Tad Eggleston: Right.
15:40
Tad Eggleston: Oh.
15:41
tommi pg: Actually, they'd be more, they'd swear, and they'd walk away.
15:43
Tad Eggleston: If I had a nickel for every time I heard this is bullshit.
15:47
tommi pg: Yeah, yeah, yeah, right? You'd never have to work again.
15:52
tommi pg: But I'm, like, I'm, like, taking what I'm learning from that, and I'm, like, infusing it into my practice. I'm like, okay, so if, like, I'm trying to create an environment where these, like, teenagers are, like, letting themselves learn a new skill, like, why am I not… why am I not allowing myself to do that?
16:12
tommi pg: So yeah, it's been cool.
16:14
tommi pg: It's being slow.
16:16
tommi pg: I'm now looking forward to the next book, even if you don't even know what the next book is yet.
16:22
Tad Eggleston: And you might, you might not, but, like, the sec… the second I hear anybody's trying something new.
16:28
Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, all of my favorite bands, their new album tends to be my favorite because it's different, and everybody else hates them after their first album because it's different.
16:42
tommi pg: Yes, I mean…
16:44
tommi pg: I am… I am in the process of making the next book, but it's, like, really slow, because I'm, like, changing things up really intensely, and, like.
16:54
tommi pg: Yeah, it's not gonna be… I don't know, it's gonna be different, and maybe that'll be a flop, but I don't care.
17:02
Tad Eggleston: No, I mean, like… Experimentation is what brings greatness.
17:11
tommi pg: Mmm.
17:12
Tad Eggleston: Nobody ever did something great by doing the same thing again.
17:17
tommi pg: Yeah, I mean, it also…
17:20
Tad Eggleston: You can be very entertaining and very fun without taking risks. I don't want to say that, like, you can't have great art.
17:28
Tad Eggleston: Or at least, very good art, without risk.
17:30
tommi pg: Aging.
17:31
Tad Eggleston: I mean, particularly storytelling art. But, like, the great things…
17:36
Tad Eggleston: Had the potential to be terrible things.
17:39
tommi pg: Yeah, I mean, and they.
17:41
Tad Eggleston: Probably what?
17:41
tommi pg: In the beginning, you know?
17:45
tommi pg: Yeah, and I think, like, what you said is true, but, like, also, you know, you're the one making things, I'm the one making it, like, I want to be enjoying it, and…
17:59
Tad Eggleston: Also important.
18:01
tommi pg: Exactly! And, like, I don't know.
18:03
Tad Eggleston: I mean, everybody, you know, Bob Dylan has famously been on tour for, like, 40 years now.
18:09
Tad Eggleston: This is his never-ending tour. And there are lots of people who complain, because he's got all sorts of sing-along songs, except that you can almost never sing along to them at the shows, because he never plays the… like, you'll be halfway through blowing in the wind before you realize it's blowing in the wind.
18:26
tommi pg: because…
18:27
Tad Eggleston: He did something crazy with it tonight, right?
18:30
tommi pg: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
18:31
Tad Eggleston: But every once in a while, when he deigns to talk to, like.
18:37
Tad Eggleston: a reporter or whatnot, he'll say, I have fun.
18:42
Tad Eggleston: He won't even talk about it. He's like, I'll have fun. Why would I play it the same way? I've heard it that way before.
18:48
tommi pg: Yeah, probably, like, about a million times as well. Right.
18:51
Tad Eggleston: Hi! Yeah.
18:53
tommi pg: Yeah, I mean…
18:54
tommi pg: I've come to realize that some people can, but they have, like, a very particular brain. Like, some people can do exactly the same thing for…
19:03
Tad Eggleston: Ever. And sometimes you can even have a mixture of the two.
19:09
Tad Eggleston: Y-y-you know, like, my favorite band, if only because I feel like…
19:17
Tad Eggleston: not only is every new album different, every new album feels like it was made for me at the age I am when it comes out.
19:25
tommi pg: I feel…
19:26
Tad Eggleston: Like, I've really grown up with them.
19:28
tommi pg: is Pearl Jam.
19:30
Tad Eggleston: And I… their live shows are phenomenal.
19:35
Tad Eggleston: But one of the reasons they're phenomenal is that, like, if you're not really paying attention, they do play their songs the same. You can… you can…
19:44
Tad Eggleston: You can sing along to everything, blah blah blah.
19:46
tommi pg: But if you're.
19:47
Tad Eggleston: Paying attention, you start to see… that…
19:52
Tad Eggleston: They have all sorts of spots that are different every night.
19:58
tommi pg: It's crucial.
19:59
Tad Eggleston: Where they're always just noodling around, where they're messing… you know, yep, we play this song every other show, but… but this part of it is different every freaking time.
20:12
tommi pg: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, messing it up, as in, like, messing around with things, it's like the secret to sustainability.
20:18
Tad Eggleston: Sometimes messing it up is also… I mean, like, my favorite…
20:23
Tad Eggleston: My favorite live version of what's probably their most famous song, alive, is the night that they fucked it up.
20:31
tommi pg: Mmm,
20:34
Tad Eggleston: They… it was in, it was in… was it Lisbon? In 2000. I forget if it was… somewhere in Spain in 2000. They fuck it up!
20:42
Tad Eggleston: And, like, in the middle of the song, Eddie's going, yeah, we haven't played this song that many times before.
20:52
Tad Eggleston: We might have had a lot of hash last night.
20:57
Tad Eggleston: So much for being a professional rock band.
21:01
tommi pg: I mean, it's also human rights…
21:03
Tad Eggleston: Find their groove again.
21:05
tommi pg: Yeah!
21:06
Tad Eggleston: Kill it to end it.
21:08
Tad Eggleston: You know, it's like, okay, we realized we fucked up, so we're gonna mess around with the audience for a minute while we reset, and BAM!
21:18
tommi pg: Mmm. I mean, I've got a theory that fucking it up, I didn't know if I could swear on this.
21:23
Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
21:24
tommi pg: Oh, amazing, because I love swearing.
21:25
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
21:25
tommi pg: I have a theory that, like, fucking it up, if you do it with intention, like, it just becomes part of the thing, you know? It, like, adds to the texture of the thing.
21:36
Tad Eggleston: And even if the intention isn't
21:40
Tad Eggleston: It can be intention after the fact, I guess is what I'm.
21:43
tommi pg: Yeah!
21:43
Tad Eggleston: If you go, rather than scrapping this page, rather than whiting this out, I'm gonna take this line that wasn't quite right, and I'm gonna make it right.
21:55
Tad Eggleston: by changing what I'm putting around it, rather than by… Changing the line.
22:01
Tad Eggleston: To put it back into comic terms.
22:04
tommi pg: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think it… I actually think it takes a lot of practice to have that much faith in yourself.
22:10
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm always in awe when I'm at cons and seeing people work just straight in ink.
22:16
Tad Eggleston: I know, it's fucked. And it's like…
22:19
tommi pg: Crazy.
22:23
Tad Eggleston: But being able to do these insane things, so…
22:30
Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna have you give counter pitches for your other books in a minute, but first, I'm gonna ask one of those questions that I ask a lot, because I feel like.
22:36
tommi pg: I think it's.
22:36
Tad Eggleston: That'd be a good question for you. Give me your comics biography. Not your comics bibliography, like I said, we'll get into that. Your comics biography. Start with…
22:46
Tad Eggleston: the earliest comics you remember reading, the ones that made you fall in love with comics, the ones that made you decide to be a cartoonist, give me names, give me artists, give me your experience through comics, what…
23:02
Tad Eggleston: What made this such a big part of your life?
23:05
tommi pg: Sure, let's see if I… hopefully I can remember the names. That's always fun.
23:10
Tad Eggleston: It's always a challenge.
23:12
tommi pg: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
23:13
Tad Eggleston: 10,000 copics down the road.
23:16
tommi pg: Yeah, totally. I got into them kind of late, actually, because I was… I always made art, but I didn't…
23:24
tommi pg: I didn't, like, connect it with making comics until I was in my, like, early 20s, and I'm 36 now. But did you…
23:32
Tad Eggleston: Did you read comics before that?
23:35
tommi pg: No.
23:36
tommi pg: No. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's the.
23:40
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it happens every once in a while, but… but… but wow!
23:44
tommi pg: That's where they're kind of weird, you know, because I don't have, like, a formal background with it.
23:50
tommi pg: Yeah, I remember tracing the, like, Wolverine comics when I was in primary school, but I got into comics through, like, Hot Potato, you know, Old Mate.
24:04
Tad Eggleston: Potato?
24:05
tommi pg: Yay, yeah, yeah.
24:06
Tad Eggleston: I don't actually know this one.
24:08
tommi pg: Da-da-da-da… I don't know… I'm typing it in.
24:18
tommi pg: You know what?
24:19
Tad Eggleston: natives.
24:21
tommi pg: I'm just gonna go into my room and look at my bloody bookcase. Is it Mark?
24:27
Tad Eggleston: Is it Mark Bell?
24:28
tommi pg: Yes! It's Mark Bell.
24:31
tommi pg: Yeah, so Mark, I got into comics…
24:33
Tad Eggleston: drawn a.
24:34
tommi pg: Quarterly.
24:35
tommi pg: Like, he was… he was, like, hugely, hugely influential,
24:43
tommi pg: and I made stuff that looked a lot like…
24:45
tommi pg: his stuff, or I tried to anyway, for a while. And then it led onto DashShore.
24:54
Tad Eggleston: Okay. Who's…
24:56
tommi pg: work I, like, absolutely adored for the longest time.
25:01
Tad Eggleston: Big fan of Dash Shaw.
25:03
tommi pg: You're a fan? Yeah.
25:04
Tad Eggleston: I am.
25:04
tommi pg: I haven't read so much of his, like, newer stuff. It's more like Bottomless Belly Button and things like this. Bottomless Belly Button is fantastic, but his last few books have been…
25:15
Tad Eggleston: New York Review of Books had a sale recently, so I finally managed to pick up some of his more recent ones that.
25:22
Tad Eggleston: just hadn't been as many… in as many of the shops that I was at, and like, yeah, they were good, and I can't remember their titles right now. I'd have to go find them on the shelf.
25:33
tommi pg: Yeah, I mean, I think the most recent one I've seen of his is in New School, which I really love.
25:39
Tad Eggleston: New school was good.
25:41
tommi pg: Yeah, I really loved…
25:43
Tad Eggleston: Which was the… oh, the… here's the one that I really loved, recently, was, of course, that's…
25:53
Tad Eggleston: Blurry.
25:56
tommi pg: What's the name of the book? I don't know about that one.
25:58
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it came out… Might have been either last… yeah, 2024.
26:05
Tad Eggleston: So, last year. Yeah, yeah.
26:08
tommi pg: Busy being. Yeah, I mean, I think he was the last person that I was, like, a super fan.
26:15
tommi pg: over, before I got, like, a little more jaded. Yeah. Why?
26:23
tommi pg: Yeah, I mean.
26:24
Tad Eggleston: Jaded!
26:25
tommi pg: Dated's, like, this is COVID.
26:27
Tad Eggleston: Is it jaded, or is it… now that you're in the scene, and the people that you were…
26:34
Tad Eggleston: super… super fans of are just friends.
26:38
tommi pg: Yeah, you're not as…
26:39
Tad Eggleston: much of a superfan, as much as you're a, oh, my buddy Dash made this comic.
26:46
tommi pg: Yeah, I mean, I don't really know Dash very well, but I definitely say that now I'm in the scene, I'm like, oh, that's just a guy.
26:54
tommi pg: Which I think is, like, a…
26:57
Tad Eggleston: I would…
26:58
tommi pg: He's using…
26:59
Tad Eggleston: I was using Dash as an example, but another one of the questions, and this is a later question, but I'll let you know about it so that, you know, you can think about it if you…
27:12
tommi pg: What is… I've been asking is, like.
27:15
Tad Eggleston: tell me, you know, in my 4 years of podcasting, I have become, like…
27:20
Tad Eggleston: Texting buzzies, go to the baseball game or dinner when they're in town, friends with people that… like…
27:30
Tad Eggleston: Young me would have gone, you're gonna know so-and-so? Yeah, whatever.
27:36
tommi pg: Yay, yeah, yeah.
27:38
Tad Eggleston: You know, I have all of these surreal life experiences on almost a daily basis, but some of them bigger ones,
27:48
Tad Eggleston: And I've discovered that that's true of everybody in comics. There's nobody I can ask this question of that won't… like, I've asked this of Eisner Hall of Famers, and they'll be like, oh, well, there was that time in the elevator with Will Eisner?
28:02
tommi pg: Yeah, because everyone's just a guy.
28:05
Tad Eggleston: Right?
28:08
tommi pg: Yeah, absolutely. It's like… you know, you can… I feel like meeting those people, I'm like, oh, you're… you have, like, this extra level of success. Right.
28:20
tommi pg: But, and you know, there are always the people that have, like, actually gone into…
28:26
tommi pg: sort of Hollywood-adjacent things, but for the most part… Yeah, very occasionally.
28:32
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I sometimes… I mean, I mean, meeting Matt Madden was a big deal to me.
28:36
Tad Eggleston: I'm not always… I'm a weird guy. I don't… they don't always have to be, like, superstar successful for me to be, like, surreally want to meet them. Sometimes they can just have made things, and I'm like, oh my god, this is…
28:53
tommi pg: Yeah, it's special! I feel quite like that about, like, Julian Tamaki. Right.
28:59
tommi pg: Like, I hung out with, like, Charles Burns, and I managed.
29:02
Tad Eggleston: Oh!
29:03
tommi pg: like…
29:03
Tad Eggleston: Wow, I…
29:04
Tad Eggleston: I was at CXC this year, and I didn't manage to introduce myself to Charles Burns. I tried a couple of times, and didn't quite pull it off.
29:15
tommi pg: Yeah. Next time.
29:17
tommi pg: Next time, exactly. I really wanna… I really wanna make… I know friends of his! Nice.
29:26
Tad Eggleston: That's how I managed to introduce myself to Art Spiegelman last year, is I'm like.
29:31
tommi pg: My friend Bob said I could drop his name. Nice, nice, nice. Was he vaping?
29:39
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, of course he was!
29:40
tommi pg: Yeah, of course, of course.
29:43
tommi pg: I guess, like, another person that's a really big deal, I'm just looking at my bookcase now.
29:49
tommi pg: is, Olivia Schraulin, whose work I absolutely love.
29:55
Tad Eggleston: Do I… Oh.
29:59
tommi pg: Yeah.
29:59
Tad Eggleston: Olivier Schwart, yes.
30:01
tommi pg: Yeah.
30:01
Tad Eggleston: I, I actually,
30:04
Tad Eggleston: It's funny, because the Bob that I just mentioned is Bob Skoriak, who was the first person that told me about Olivier Schwartz.
30:13
tommi pg: On this podcast, like…
30:17
Tad Eggleston: God, 4 years ago? He was one of our first guests. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was one that had flown under my radar until… until Bob's like, oh, I've really been a…
30:29
Tad Eggleston: as the answer to a question that I will ask later, he told me that he'd been just completely devouring everything that he could get his hands on.
30:38
Tad Eggleston: From a lady.
30:38
tommi pg: Yeah, his stuff is amazing, and he's just a total weirdo.
30:44
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Weirdos in comics?
30:46
tommi pg: That's crazy. Really?
30:48
Tad Eggleston: Really?
30:50
Tad Eggleston: I've never met any weirdos in comics.
30:54
tommi pg: I wonder if it's a bit different for the European cartoonists, though. It's just, I don't know, it seems like a really different landscape.
31:00
Tad Eggleston: does. Among other things, I think.
31:06
Tad Eggleston: They're somehow both more appreciated and not as well paid, but they don't need to be as well paid because they have healthcare and college paid for.
31:17
tommi pg: Yes, and so many grants.
31:20
Tad Eggleston: Right! Yeah, yeah.
31:22
tommi pg: So many grams.
31:23
Tad Eggleston: Because it's like, some of the European comic people I know work almost exclusively on American comics because they pay way better.
31:32
tommi pg: Yep.
31:35
Tad Eggleston: Why?
31:36
tommi pg: I mean…
31:37
Tad Eggleston: It's clear that, by and large.
31:40
Tad Eggleston: France and Belgium in particular, appreciate their comic artists a lot more than we do.
31:47
Tad Eggleston: Doesn't seem like anybody's like, oh, you read comics? What, you didn't get out of kindergarten?
31:56
tommi pg: Speaking of working with teenagers, that's certainly what they think about comics.
32:01
Tad Eggleston: It is and it isn't, though, because my wife is an art teacher.
32:06
Tad Eggleston: Middle school. And so, she will start off her classes by asking, Tell me… Your favorite blank.
32:16
tommi pg: And I remember one day she came home, and she's like, I was so disappointed, I asked them all what their favorite comic was, and they were like, we don't read comics.
32:26
Tad Eggleston: But then the next day, she came home, and she's like, you'll never believe what happened when I asked them what their favorite book was.
32:34
Tad Eggleston: And I'm like, no, what happened? Like, are they… are they into something crazy? Like, like…
32:39
Tad Eggleston: you know, Catcher in the Rye, you know, some amazing book that you're amazed that a… it's like, no, half of them listed something by Raina Telgemeyer.
32:50
tommi pg: And I went, I thought you didn't like comics. And they're like, that's a comic? And I'm like, yeah… And they're like.
32:57
Tad Eggleston: Oh, we just thought it was a book.
33:04
Tad Eggleston: So, so, like, to a certain extent.
33:08
Tad Eggleston: to the kids, at least in the United States, if you say comics, they think floppy superheroes.
33:16
tommi pg: Mmm,
33:18
Tad Eggleston: So you don't make comics, you make books.
33:22
tommi pg: Okay, well, that's good to know. I'll tell… I'll make sure that I tell people that I… I mean, I usually just say that I make books, but it definitely has, like, a different, like, gravity, doesn't it?
33:32
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I do actually… the kid didn't believe me when he picked it out.
33:38
Tad Eggleston: there was a kid who picked out Linda Berry's Thousand… what, 1 Thousand Demons?
33:45
Tad Eggleston: for his free reading book in an English class that I was involved in, and I said, you can pick that out, but if you think you're picking it out because it's an easier read, and you're not gonna have to do as much, you're out of your mind.
33:58
Tad Eggleston: And I have read it, so you're not gonna skate by.
34:03
Tad Eggleston: And I don't think he believed me that I'd read it… until he was working on the paper, and I'm like, so, what's this book around? Oh, it's about, demons? I'm like.
34:14
Tad Eggleston: Try again.
34:19
tommi pg: Okay, let's wait!
34:21
Tad Eggleston: shit.
34:22
tommi pg: It's great that they're in schools, because I feel like if there's… I'm gonna walk away from my bookshelf now.
34:26
Tad Eggleston: Come on.
34:27
tommi pg: Because I feel.
34:28
Tad Eggleston: I love it when… I love it when I get to have the walk-and-talk interviews. And Nesenti did that with me, too.
34:33
tommi pg: Like, I feel like if there's any book that's gonna make someone, like, excited about learning, it's gonna be something by Linda Barry.
34:41
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
34:42
Tad Eggleston: Linda Berry is… She's on my bucket list.
34:46
Tad Eggleston: Or my white whale list, or… and she's in Wisconsin, so, like, I'm close.
34:53
Tad Eggleston: I gotta… I gotta reach out to Linda Berry.
34:56
tommi pg: This is a big deal, she just won a Big Dale award.
34:59
Tad Eggleston: Did she? Which one did she win?
35:01
tommi pg: The MacArthur Genius Award.
35:02
Tad Eggleston: Did she?
35:04
tommi pg: You good?
35:05
Tad Eggleston: I missed that!
35:07
tommi pg: Which is fucking cool.
35:09
Tad Eggleston: Yeah!
35:10
tommi pg: Yeah.
35:12
tommi pg: She's so…
35:13
Tad Eggleston: That may…
35:13
tommi pg: You're welcome.
35:15
tommi pg: That makes sense, right? That makes sense.
35:17
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it not only makes sense, but, but, but… I mean…
35:22
Tad Eggleston: he's not thought of as a comic book guy, but, like, Ta-Nehisi Coates got a MacArthur
35:27
Tad Eggleston: Genius Award 2, and he wrote Captain America and Black Panther, so, like, makes two comic book people, at least, with MacArthur Genius Awards.
35:37
tommi pg: Fuck yeah.
35:39
tommi pg: Yeah, like, her work I've been looking at a lot while I've been, sort of, working out what the next step is, because she, you know, she's so…
35:48
tommi pg: Like, incredible at, like, like, shepherding…
35:52
tommi pg: People into, sort of, expanding their ideas out.
35:57
Tad Eggleston: Of what comics can be.
36:00
tommi pg: Yeah, exactly. What creativity can be.
36:03
Tad Eggleston: Right. Now, syllabus and making comics are both… Fantastic, fantastic, like…
36:11
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I mentioned before we started that a friend of mine just bought a comic shop.
36:16
Tad Eggleston: And, like…
36:17
tommi pg: Hmm, I agree.
36:17
Tad Eggleston: one of the things that we want to do in terms of outreach is, like, set up tables and have maker days, where we have people come in to do, like, mini-zines and whatnot, and I imagine having…
36:32
Tad Eggleston: Like, sections right next to each other that, like, one part of it is, like…
36:38
Tad Eggleston: Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics and Making Comics, and with Raina Telgo Minor, the new Cartoonist Club, which, if you're making comics with younger people, and you haven't read Cartoonist Club yet.
36:51
Tad Eggleston: Totally should.
36:52
tommi pg: I'm gonna look it up right now. The Cartoonist Club.
36:56
Tad Eggleston: It's Raina Telgemeyer and Scott McCloud working together on a middle-grade graphic novel, a…
37:05
tommi pg: Kids…
37:06
Tad Eggleston: making comics.
37:08
tommi pg: Cool!
37:09
Tad Eggleston: So imagine understanding comics as a Raina Telgemeyer graphic novel, and you pretty much have Cartoonist Club.
37:19
tommi pg: Oh, cool. And it's, like, informational? I just looked it up.
37:23
Tad Eggleston: It's… it's both.
37:25
tommi pg: Awesome. Cause…
37:27
Tad Eggleston: Because it's like the story about middle school kids, so it has the middle school stuff going on, and kind of the drama and whatnot, kind of like drama was about putting on a middle school play, right? It's about starting a club and being cartoonists together, but it's also got Scott McCloud providing the stuff on, like, they make the, you know, the classic
37:48
Tad Eggleston: I think him as McCloud Mini Comics, even though he's not the one that…
37:52
Tad Eggleston: came up with them initially, I'm certain, but in Understanding Comics, he talks about fold the… fold the…
37:58
Tad Eggleston: paper write, and you can have an 8-page comic. One page.
38:02
tommi pg: Yeah.
38:02
Tad Eggleston: Right, yeah.
38:03
Tad Eggleston: They show you how to make those in the…
38:06
tommi pg: I'm not… Thanks.
38:08
Tad Eggleston: They talk about how The quality of the art…
38:12
Tad Eggleston: isn't the most important thing. Because, like, there's one serious artist, and there… there are a couple kids that are just…
38:19
Tad Eggleston: All about, let's go!
38:22
Tad Eggleston: And, like, they spend an hour making their comics, and, like, the one is all frustrated because all she got done was a dragon's head, but it's, like, the best dragon's head ever. And the others, they got their whole comic done, but it's, like, stick figures.
38:36
Tad Eggleston: And she.
38:37
tommi pg: He's like…
38:38
Tad Eggleston: loving theirs, because they've got a story, and they're like, what are you talking about? Look at that!
38:45
tommi pg: Oh, well, I'll absolutely need the book.
38:47
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it's all about both making comics and about there not being rules to making comics.
38:53
tommi pg: Cool.
38:55
tommi pg: Hell yeah.
38:58
Tad Eggleston: We, we have,
39:00
Tad Eggleston: the guy who bought the comic shop's also a psychologist, and one of the book clubs we do is what we call the Joy, Resistance, Hope, and Survival Book Club and Support Group, once a month on 22 panels.
39:15
Tad Eggleston: And this was our last book, and, like…
39:19
Tad Eggleston: a couple of the psychologists almost rolled their eyes at me when I put my foot down and said we were finally doing it, because they're like, we're gonna read a kid's book? I'm like, yes we are. Yes, we are, and talk to me in a month.
39:32
Tad Eggleston: And it not only… not only did they love it, but, like, he's, like… that's when he realized that his daughter had been reading Raina Telgelmeyer, you know, his daughter's in her 20s now, but she'd been reading her since the beginning, so he, like, went raiding…
39:46
Tad Eggleston: the bookshelf, and how did I not know that these books were good? I bought them because it's like, I like comics, you're reading comics, great!
39:57
tommi pg: Also, what a special thing that you run! That sounds, like, beautiful.
40:02
Tad Eggleston: I do my best. We got a small audience, but we do cool stuff. One of these… they're all evergreen, so, you know, one day, people… actually, the most fun thing for me is, like, once a month, I will notice that we have a week with, like, 500 downloads, and if you go through, it's somebody downloaded
40:22
Tad Eggleston: like, 500 different episodes. Like, you look at it, and it's like, there's, like, 500 downloads from one location, and it's like, okay, somebody… somebody discovered us, liked us, and went through and grabbed every interview or roundtable that looked cool.
40:37
Tad Eggleston: all at once, and that just makes me feel happy. Really makes me happy when it's overseas, which is a chance, because you're in Australia, which means I'm gonna get an Australia bump.
40:46
Tad Eggleston: On this episode.
40:48
Tad Eggleston: I have noticed that that is always the way it works. When I talk to somebody wherever, I get a bump.
40:55
tommi pg: Well, I'll make sure I share it as well.
40:58
Tad Eggleston: I'm all for that. I'm all for that.
41:00
tommi pg: Yeah.
41:01
tommi pg: Speaking of sharing it and getting it out there, well, it's not really about this, but probably, like, another 10 or 15 minutes.
41:11
Tad Eggleston: Ugh.
41:11
tommi pg: before I need to run away.
41:13
Tad Eggleston: Oh, you gotta run away in 10 or 15 minutes.
41:15
Tad Eggleston: Well.
41:16
tommi pg: Are there specific things you wanted to talk about?
41:18
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I'm gonna ask you the most important question.
41:21
tommi pg: Okay.
41:22
Tad Eggleston: And then we'll see where it goes from there.
41:24
tommi pg: Okay.
41:24
Tad Eggleston: And that is, tell me something you love.
41:29
Tad Eggleston: Preferably a comic, but there aren't any rules.
41:32
Tad Eggleston: Preferably storytelling, but again, with the rules. But something that you love…
41:39
Tad Eggleston: That not enough people around you have experienced, and you want them to.
41:44
Tad Eggleston: So that you have more people to talk about it with.
41:48
tommi pg: Whoa, that's a great question.
41:54
tommi pg: Let me think, let me think…
41:58
tommi pg: I really, really, really love the author Kaminari Machado. And…
42:06
tommi pg: I know in America, a lot of…
42:10
tommi pg: a lot of people know about her, I'm not too sure how many people know about her here.
42:15
tommi pg: Actually, no, Andrea Lawler.
42:17
tommi pg: No, no, I'm gonna change it.
42:19
Tad Eggleston: You can do both. You can do more than one.
42:22
Tad Eggleston: So, Carmen Ray Machado, is that what you said?
42:26
tommi pg: I'm in Maria Machado. She's a, like…
42:31
tommi pg: A queer author who does, sort of.
42:37
tommi pg: kind of weirdo types of writing, and just, like, I don't know, I've read her stuff a lot, and I always find it really, like, affecting, and…
42:49
Tad Eggleston: And she did a comic.
42:52
tommi pg: Did she do a comic? I didn't know that!
42:57
Tad Eggleston: part of Joe Hill's line at… at, DC.
43:05
tommi pg: Oh, wow.
43:06
Tad Eggleston: Low, low woods.
43:08
tommi pg: Whoa.
43:09
Tad Eggleston: Which I heard good things about, but I hadn't actually read, with Danny doing the art.
43:15
tommi pg: Oh, she's amazing.
43:17
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
43:17
tommi pg: She's done, like, a bunch of short stories, which is, like, an easier… like, an easier sort of, like, entry point.
43:28
tommi pg: And yeah, I highly, highly recommend people, like, look into her and look into the work that she's done.
43:34
Tad Eggleston: Okay, so Carmen Maria Machado, and you gave me another author there.
43:38
tommi pg: So, another author, another cartoonist, I'm gonna change my answer, is Naomi Sandler, who is a…
43:47
tommi pg: who lives in, the UK, and is, like, a textile… is a cartoonist, but also a printer.
43:56
Tad Eggleston: And, like, make stuff with textiles.
43:59
Tad Eggleston: They owe me what?
44:01
tommi pg: Leoma… Liomi Sandler.
44:06
Tad Eggleston: Sadler?
44:08
tommi pg: Yep.
44:09
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
44:11
Tad Eggleston: This isn't… see, I love it when people actually give me ones that I don't know as well, so I.
44:18
tommi pg: I love hosting.
44:19
Tad Eggleston: I am psyched to, to… I, I can definitely see some Linda Berry.
44:26
tommi pg: Hmm…
44:28
Tad Eggleston: Influence, just looking at some of her covers here.
44:33
tommi pg: Yeah, I did a… I did a residency with her in, with, Colorama in Berlin.
44:39
tommi pg: A couple of years ago, and it was really exciting to meet her, because I'm just… just a big fan!
44:46
Tad Eggleston: It's always fun to meet… it's fun to meet people that you're fans of, it's even cooler when, like.
44:52
Tad Eggleston: Y-y-you, like, hit it off, and you get to…
44:55
Tad Eggleston: just talk about stuff. Not just, like, comics and their stuff, but, like, when you find yourself sharing, like, stories about your kids and your pets.
45:05
Tad Eggleston: then you know that A they're human, and B, you're friends.
45:09
tommi pg: Yeah, I mean, she's definitely human. But, yeah, she… Well, and if she wasn't, that'd be okay, too. I'd love to meet an alien.
45:19
tommi pg: Yeah, to mix things up.
45:23
Tad Eggleston: I mean… There's gotta be one around here, and if there was, you know they'd be a cartoonist.
45:29
tommi pg: Yes, or an animator, maybe.
45:31
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, maybe. Possibly music theater.
45:35
tommi pg: Oh, God.
45:36
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
45:39
Tad Eggleston: That was actually the last podcast. There's an adaptation of Patrick McDonald's Mutts.
45:47
tommi pg: Oh!
45:48
Tad Eggleston: the story, The Gift of Nothing, was made into a stage play 10 years ago that's been put on again
45:54
Tad Eggleston: And Marin.
45:56
Tad Eggleston: Right now, so yeah, that's why that was in my head, you know, musical theater… Howard Chase.
46:01
tommi pg: I can also want.
46:04
Tad Eggleston: loves musical theater and calls musical theater and comics the two great American art forms. I emphasize great, because on the last episode, the playwright there pointed out that, oh, he's bastardizing, you know, there are five
46:18
Tad Eggleston: five Native American art forms, and it's banjo, jazz, musical theater, comics, and I forget what the other one was. I'm like, no, he didn't say Native American, he said, great. I don't necessarily agree with him that the other ones aren't great, but I don't… this is Howard Chaikin. I don't think it was an accident.
46:38
tommi pg: I'm, so I'm doing my master's at the moment,
46:43
tommi pg: Which is a whole weird thing, but there's, it's an art school that has…
46:50
tommi pg: Like, musical theater as one of its…
46:53
tommi pg: things that people go there for, and my god, the amount of confidence that those 20-year-olds have is, like, really extraordinary. My best. It's mind-blowing.
47:05
Tad Eggleston: My best friend has a master's in music theater.
47:10
Tad Eggleston: and…
47:11
tommi pg: No shit. Like…
47:15
Tad Eggleston: I don't think I saw her be truly vulnerable more than a couple of times before she was in her 30s.
47:22
tommi pg: Yep.
47:23
Tad Eggleston: And I was, like, her best friend. I was one of the few people that she would be vulnerable to.
47:28
tommi pg: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Does she just break into song randomly? Because these…
47:32
Tad Eggleston: Not as much now.
47:34
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, not as much now, but then, def… I mean, in high school, oh my god.
47:39
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. You should sing down the hallway.
47:42
tommi pg: Yeah, it's wild to watch, actually.
47:48
tommi pg: Yeah, so, yeah, I fuck with musical theater.
47:51
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. I mean, though,
47:54
Tad Eggleston: Howard made a good point, and I can't believe I'm saying the same thing on two podcasts. I should, like, remind myself not to repeat myself this quickly, but whatever. Both comics and musical theater
48:08
Tad Eggleston: are taking… Two other forms of art.
48:16
Tad Eggleston: And… and intertwining them in a… in a very base level, where you can't…
48:23
tommi pg: Mmm…
48:24
Tad Eggleston: fully understand And experience the story without experiencing both.
48:30
Tad Eggleston: Thou bein' good.
48:32
tommi pg: Whoa.
48:35
Tad Eggleston: Wait.
48:37
tommi pg: Explain that without being good at both.
48:40
Tad Eggleston: Well, like, music theater, like, good music theater, you gotta have good songs, you have good storytelling through the songs, but it's gotta be a good play. You've gotta have good acting, you've gotta have good stagecraft, you've gotta have good scenes that don't have songs.
48:55
tommi pg: Yes.
48:56
Tad Eggleston: Right, and with comics, Comics, you can get away a little bit with worse writing, sometimes…
49:04
tommi pg: But…
49:07
Tad Eggleston: Only if you don't consider that part of the…
49:11
Tad Eggleston: Only if you don't consider, like, layout part of the writing.
49:15
Tad Eggleston: You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.
49:19
Tad Eggleston: You know, so you have to have… you have to… you have to… to… to combine, like.
49:26
Tad Eggleston: prose-type storytelling with…
49:29
tommi pg: Mmm…
49:30
Tad Eggleston: real art skills to…
49:31
tommi pg: Yeah.
49:32
Tad Eggleston: To make this… this other thing that's better than either.
49:38
tommi pg: Yeah, right.
49:38
Tad Eggleston: It has a great potential to be better than either.
49:42
tommi pg: Oh, I love it.
49:43
Tad Eggleston: And interacts with the audience on multiple levels. I mean, because we interact with music so differently than we interact with words.
49:53
tommi pg: Yeah.
49:54
Tad Eggleston: Don't get me wrong, I love non-musical theater.
49:57
Tad Eggleston: Right.
49:59
Tad Eggleston: But there's a different feeling Even in musical theater, to the way you interact, To the non-music scene.
50:08
Tad Eggleston: the music scene. And then there's crazy things like How do you work sometimes…
50:15
Tad Eggleston: I mean, sometimes with music theater, you have a pit.
50:18
Tad Eggleston: You know, and you've got an orchestra there, sometimes with music theater, you've got piped-in
50:22
Tad Eggleston: Music to go along with the numbers. Every once in a while, it'll be a cappella.
50:27
Tad Eggleston: But, like, sometimes… It'll be… You have one of the characters play the music.
50:35
tommi pg: Yeah.
50:36
Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, this all came up because in…
50:39
Tad Eggleston: talking about mutts, you know, the theater guy that I brought to be part of the conversation so that I wouldn't feel like I didn't know what questions to ask.
50:49
Tad Eggleston: brought up that, like, one of the characters plays drums. He's like, I don't remember that in any of the comic strips, and the actor immediately laughed. He's like, yeah, that was really because we wanted to work as many of the instruments onto the stage as possible.
51:06
tommi pg: Mmm,
51:08
Tad Eggleston: It doesn't say anywhere that Frank DOESN'T play drums.
51:17
Tad Eggleston: And I think, you know, there are elements of that with… with… With comics, too, like, you…
51:26
Tad Eggleston: You're drawing pictures to tell a story, but sometimes you also…
51:31
Tad Eggleston: Fall in love with a picture, or want to draw something that you then… Tell the story around.
51:38
tommi pg: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Like, I feel like often I want to draw something, and so I'll try and…
51:46
tommi pg: I'll try and integrate it into, like… A, a narrative, somehow.
51:52
Tad Eggleston: Right, right. I mean, with cartoonists, the people who do both, that happens a ton, but even sometimes when I'm talking to teams, it'll be like, whole plot lines will change because of the way a page got drawn.
52:06
Tad Eggleston: It's like, I like that!
52:10
Tad Eggleston: I mean, not generally huge plotlines, but every once in a while, it's like, oh, no, no, this is way better than what I had.
52:17
tommi pg: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
52:18
tommi pg: You sound like a good teacher.
52:20
Tad Eggleston: We… we gotta play with this.
52:22
Tad Eggleston: You know, Tommy, thank you so much. It has been a… a blast. We will… we'll have to talk again when this next book comes out, or any time in between, whatever. It's actually pretty easy to set up a call with Australia, because you're 14 hours different, which means that either it's…
52:38
tommi pg: Something like that.
52:39
Tad Eggleston: Evening… no, it is. It is 14 hours different. It's… it's 11 a.m. for you right now, right?
52:46
tommi pg: No, it's 2PM.
52:50
Tad Eggleston: 2PM?
52:52
Tad Eggleston: Then it's not 14 hours different, because it's 9 o'clock for me, 6…
52:59
Tad Eggleston: Okay, whatever. It's enough different that your evening is my morning, my morning is your evening.
53:06
tommi pg: Exactly. Much easier than doing the transatlantic.
53:10
Tad Eggleston: Those are the hard… like, Paris? Hard. Tokyo? Brisbane? No problem.
53:19
tommi pg: Gorgeous. Yeah, I'm sorry, there are, like, you can find blocks of time where it's perfect. Like, your night, my morning, I guess it's afternoon, but yeah.
53:29
Tad Eggleston: But, okay, so it's 2PM… So that'd be 17 hours ahead of me.
53:36
tommi pg: 2PM on Friday.
53:37
Tad Eggleston: I just… I just… I'm 9 p.m. Thursday night.
53:42
Tad Eggleston: So, yeah.
53:44
Tad Eggleston: It's been…
53:45
tommi pg: Trust!
53:46
Tad Eggleston: Actually, wait a minute. If you have a moment, we forgot to do the front counter pitches for your other two books.
53:53
tommi pg: Oh, shit.
53:54
Tad Eggleston: And they're so good that if you can, It would be great.
53:59
tommi pg: Yeah, alright, let me think. So, the,
54:04
tommi pg: The line, how we told it, is about two old friends that, like, meet by accident, and they're sort of, like, unpacking each other's lives, and sort of, like, looking at… like, as they… they ended up kind of… they end up kind of walking around together, and you sort of, like, you slowly start to…
54:22
tommi pg: like, see the ways that they're entwined, the reasons that they stopped, like, hanging out, and there's a book within that book that's sort of, like, telling, like, a parallel story, which I got from,
54:36
tommi pg: Oh my god. Which I got from another comic that really famously does that, of which the name I can't remember right now.
54:44
Tad Eggleston: This is where I'll say the great line that some people say is from Shakespeare, and
54:48
Tad Eggleston: What might not be is, you know, good writers borrow liberally from other writers, and great.
54:54
tommi pg: Oh, yeah.
54:55
Tad Eggleston: Steal things outright.
54:57
tommi pg: Everything's… everything's for something, you know? Nothing's new, which is great.
55:02
Tad Eggleston: The last original thing was fire.
55:05
tommi pg: Exactly.
55:07
tommi pg: I don't know, I feel like the circle, the wheel was pretty original, but that was a while ago now as well.
55:12
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I mean, but was it because there were rocks?
55:17
tommi pg: Mmm, true, true.
55:20
tommi pg: And so, the… and men I trust…
55:25
tommi pg: what was that about? That's about a… a single mother and, like, someone that… like a… like a fan that meets her and sort of, like, becomes obsessed with her and gets kind of, like…
55:39
tommi pg: stalky about it and stuff, and it's, yeah, it's about the way that their, like, lives, like, become, like, entwined, and then sort of, like, get, like, torn apart.
55:50
tommi pg: I talk a lot about, like, class, and sexuality, and, like, parenthood. Not that I'm a parent, thank God.
56:05
Tad Eggleston: I would… in some ways, I'd love to say that you're not missing anything.
56:09
Tad Eggleston: But I kinda liked being a parent, which doesn't mean that I actually recommend it to anybody unless they, like.
56:16
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it's a weird thing. Yeah.
56:19
tommi pg: to me, but…
56:21
Tad Eggleston: That's okay.
56:21
tommi pg: I love it, I love it for other people, you know?
56:24
Tad Eggleston: Right, right. Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Tommy. For Tommy Parrish, this has been 22 Panels. We will see you after the next page.