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Transcript

With Great Power #304... 22 Panels with James Gaspero & Amber Akin · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

0:02
Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody. Welcome back to 22 panels, where my guests tonight are Jimmy Gasparo and Amber Aiken. Jimmy, as well as being the host of the comic book Yetis,
0:22
Jimmy Gaspero: Cryptic Creator Cool.
0:24
Tad Eggleston: Creator Corner, see? See? I told you I'd blow it, even remind myself. I'm looking at the CCC podcast, I'm like, dude, you gotta do that to me. Even when I Google it and go to your website, you don't have it spelled out, I gotta remember an acronym. What are you, a teacher? I'm a teacher.
0:44
Tad Eggleston: Always using acronyms, and like…
0:49
Tad Eggleston: And I don't know what half of them mean.
0:51
Jimmy Gaspero: The first… I think…
0:53
Jimmy Gaspero: I think, like, the first, like, I don't know, 50 episodes I recorded, like, I did a bit where I would just complain about the name, because Byron came up with the name.
1:04
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeti, and, you know, cryptid, and he liked the alliterative nature of it, and he came up with it, it was his idea to start the podcast, I just came along for the ride.
1:13
Jimmy Gaspero: And it was just… it's just… it's just so much to say. It was, you know, Comic Book Yeti's Cryptic Creator Corner. I mean, I must have practiced it a million times until it flowed off the tongue.
1:25
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:26
Jimmy Gaspero: But, yeah, we're… well, we're.
1:27
Tad Eggleston: This is why I came up with Nice and Simple.
1:30
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, 22 paddles, it's…
1:32
Tad Eggleston: Great.
1:35
Jimmy Gaspero: It really is, it's like, that's… bam, got it. Yeah. But now we're over, like, 400 episodes of the podcast, so we're… we're stuck. We can't… we can't change the name now.
1:47
Tad Eggleston: No, I understand.
1:49
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, every time I think about even changing format, I go, But there's…
1:56
Tad Eggleston: I record way too much. I don't even like to talk about how many episodes there are now. There shouldn't be this many episodes. I've been at it for less than 5 years, but there… there are…
2:08
Tad Eggleston: I have more episodes than you. A lot more episodes than you.
2:12
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, I mean, you do, though… we… I mean, we just do interviews, though. Like, you also do other stuff, like, you're doing…
2:18
Tad Eggleston: That's probably true.
2:18
Jimmy Gaspero: other books, I mean, you know, so you're doing a lot of other things as well.
2:22
Tad Eggleston: So, yeah, we have our weekly, we have our book clubs, we have… I mean, this is, like, 304 on the interview front, so…
2:33
Jimmy Gaspero: Wow.
2:34
Tad Eggleston: to… I'm not short on the interviews.
2:38
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, no, you're not. You're not short on interviews either.
2:44
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, every once in a while, I mean, and Amber, we'll get to you, because I love artists, but I don't… I had David Harper on once, I've had John Santress on. I don't get to talk to the podcasters on air that often, so I have to spend a couple of minutes. Like, have you noticed that
3:02
Tad Eggleston: It's like a… a… a good thing, bad thing that, like, everybody in comics is more than happy to talk to you.
3:11
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, I mean, that is nice about it, but it's also, you know, I feel bad turning some people down.
3:19
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
3:20
Jimmy Gaspero: And I, you know, and then it's…
3:22
Tad Eggleston: Wait a minute, you turn people down? I haven't figured out how to do that yet.
3:26
Jimmy Gaspero: So, so I… yeah, I just… I just, I just, like, ignore the email, and then I'm, like, very apologetic when I… I finally get to it. I mean, I guess there is one email that I've pointedly ignored, just because…
3:41
Tad Eggleston: like…
3:42
Tad Eggleston: aside from the fact that the letter from the publicist looks like he used AI to write it, like…
3:50
Tad Eggleston: despite the fact that he's like, oh, I think I'll be a perfect Mitch, these would be perfect for your podcast, I looked at the cover and the name of their…
3:59
Tad Eggleston: the publishing company they made for themselves, and I'm like, you have never listened to an episode of 22 Panels.
4:10
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
4:11
Jimmy Gaspero: Oh, jeez.
4:12
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, I mean, it's… it's been great, like, I really love talking to creators, I love talking to.
4:18
Tad Eggleston: Interesting.
4:18
Jimmy Gaspero: artist, but, like, if… You know, it can snowball into.
4:24
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I think… I think I…
4:25
Jimmy Gaspero: Like, I… you know, you can…
4:27
Tad Eggleston: I've… Twice, like, just accidentally, because they all came at once, wound up with, like.
4:40
Jimmy Gaspero: a week with more than 10 episodes getting recorded. Oh my gosh, yeah.
4:45
Jimmy Gaspero: That's…
4:46
Jimmy Gaspero: I try and do that. That's like my guardrail. I try and restrict, like, when I can record, so it's just like, look, I don't… I don't have space to record, I don't have space in the… in the schedule. And, you know, we do, you know, crowdfunding stuff, too, and doing that dance of…
5:04
Tad Eggleston: See, I can…
5:05
Jimmy Gaspero: I can record it here, and I try and have to, you know, get it out
5:10
Jimmy Gaspero: during your campaign, and, you know… the only thing that… the only time I think we really, though, have, like.
5:17
Jimmy Gaspero: you know, said, like, it wasn't possible, because I don't like to turn people down. I like to try and help them out and get them on if I can. You know, but sometimes you'll have somebody reach out to you, and they'll be like, hey, do you have any space on the podcast?
5:29
Tad Eggleston: You know, my problem is I'm still reaching.
5:31
Jimmy Gaspero: March 1st.
5:32
Tad Eggleston: time, and, like, Four emails, and they'll all be interested in the same week, and it's like…
5:38
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah.
5:38
Tad Eggleston: Okay, I can do this.
5:41
Jimmy Gaspero: I have that too.
5:42
Jimmy Gaspero: you'll have somebody reach out, and they'll be like, I'll be great for the podcast, and it's March 1st, and it's like, oh, okay, when does your Kickstarter start? They're like, March 5th. It's like, well, that's…
5:53
Jimmy Gaspero: That's gonna be tough.
5:54
Tad Eggleston: Then I look at it, and I'm like, well, so,
5:59
Tad Eggleston: How long is it gonna run? I can be your… I can be your podcast for that last week. Right, right.
6:09
Jimmy Gaspero: We'll get you on during that… that Kickstarter slump. I do the same thing!
6:14
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
6:14
Jimmy Gaspero: I like… I try… I mean, I like it. I like trying to… I like talking to people, I like trying to help people, you know?
6:20
Tad Eggleston: I, I mean, my, my, my, like, and this happened to me this week, and, and, and…
6:25
Tad Eggleston: I don't think I'm gonna wind up with them all together, but, like, what really…
6:31
Tad Eggleston: is a love-hate thing for me, is, like, when multiple friends of mine
6:36
Tad Eggleston: like, the people who have gone beyond just being guests, they're people that I text with and whatever, suddenly drop all of their Kickstarters at the same time, and it's like, wait a minute.
6:48
Tad Eggleston: First of all, I have to pay for 5 Kickstarters now.
6:52
Tad Eggleston: But now I also have these 5 people that I want to squeeze in!
6:58
Tad Eggleston: And then next!
7:00
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I feel… I feel your pain. It's, I, I get it.
7:05
Tad Eggleston: But it's surreal. It's a blast. I'll be asking you a question near the end about that, because… because I now have two.
7:17
Tad Eggleston: must ask questions, but let's… let's introduce Amber a little bit better. Amber Aiken is the… is the artist for this wonderful book that you wrote called Penny and the Yeti, and
7:33
Tad Eggleston: I never know what to expect when I'm picking up a…
7:42
Tad Eggleston: like, children's children's comic, rather than middle grade YA. I guess this start… this leans a little bit towards middle grade, but it's also…
7:53
Tad Eggleston: You know, paper cuts…
7:54
Tad Eggleston: And the fact that this paper cuts makes me have a higher expectation, because they're pretty good at curating what they do.
8:03
Tad Eggleston: I'm trying to figure out the best way to say this, where it sounds like the compliment that it is. I'm autistic, I'm not always good with words.
8:12
Tad Eggleston: Makes podcasting perfect for me, right?
8:15
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah. Yeah, nailed it.
8:20
Jimmy Gaspero: Boom.
8:22
Tad Eggleston: like… I often laugh when I compare, like, original Brothers Grin Brim to Disney Fight.
8:33
Tad Eggleston: Brothers Grimm, because there was a… there was a time when…
8:39
Tad Eggleston: Our fairy tales, our children's stories, were supposed to, like.
8:43
Tad Eggleston: teach our kids about stuff. And not necessarily easy stuff. And not necessarily pleasant stuff.
8:52
Tad Eggleston: And somewhere along the lines, we… as a society, at least in the United States, we've gotten away from that. It's like, oh, you can't let your kids experience things because…
9:06
Tad Eggleston: it will… cause them… something?
9:11
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I remember I was the young parent on the playground, and the one that was in favor of allowing the kids to have risk
9:19
Tad Eggleston: you know, to do risk-taking behavior. So, like, a conversation that I'd have
9:25
Tad Eggleston: altogether too often with that… that mom that was 20 years older than me, going, why the hell are you letting your kid swing around? That's not… they're gonna hurt themselves. Like, I turn to them and I go.
9:37
Tad Eggleston: Do you want your kids to learn about risks for the first time when they're behind the wheel of a car, or is it maybe better to skin a knee from time to time?
9:48
Tad Eggleston: So what I love about this book… Is it's painful at times.
9:54
Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, really painful at times.
9:58
Tad Eggleston: like… I had to set it down and pick it up again.
10:02
Tad Eggleston: Multiple times. Overall, it's still funny, it's still heartwarming, it's not at all inappropriate for the age…
10:12
Tad Eggleston: Group that it's going to, but it's not like everything is perfect when you're 4.
10:19
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah.
10:21
Jimmy Gaspero: Thank you, I appreciate… I appreciate you, you know, saying that. You know, that's something we worked hard for, to make the family come across as authentic and…
10:30
Jimmy Gaspero: Amber and I have talked many times in the creation of this that we think kids are more perceptible than people give them credit for, we think kids are more intuitive than people give them credit for, we think…
10:42
Jimmy Gaspero: Kids should have a little bit more…
10:45
Jimmy Gaspero: agency in some things than people give them credit for, or allow them… them to have. Yeah, I have two, you know, I have two kids, there's a real-life Penny, who is my youngest daughter, and… I mean, my journey as a parent, like, I…
11:00
Jimmy Gaspero: you know, I… definitely, there were times where I remember how I grew up.
11:05
Jimmy Gaspero: And then, you do have a desire to, like, not want your kids to be hurt, like, at all. And then, I remember conversations I would have with my wife, and she's like, you gotta let them be kids. And I'm like, yeah, I know, I know. She goes, what were you like as a kid? And I'm like, oh, a monster!
11:27
Jimmy Gaspero: I used to, I used to get a… we… we… I grew up Catholic. My mom would tell stories that I… I used to, like.
11:35
Jimmy Gaspero: pull away from her in church, and, like, find another kid in another pew, and just hit him. Like, I was just a disaster!
11:45
Jimmy Gaspero: I, you know…
11:48
Jimmy Gaspero: got hurt all the time. My little brother, you know, my younger brother, Bobby, was the same way, and like… so there is a thing as a parent, like, you do have a desire to try and protect your kids. And then, you know, I think…
12:02
Jimmy Gaspero: Like, oh, well then am I doing my kids, you know, a disservice by doing that? And you have to let your kids
12:10
Jimmy Gaspero: figure things out on their own sometimes. Like, yeah, you know, you don't want them engaging in behavior that's too risky, but…
12:17
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, they do have to figure out what their boundaries are. They do have to figure out their own comfort level without me hovering over them like a true-to-life helicopter parent.
12:29
Jimmy Gaspero: You know, all that to say, though, we wanted the family to feel authentic. We wanted it to feel sometimes uncomfortable, but we didn't want it to be, you know, too scary for kids, but, we wanted there to be, you know, we wanted it to feel like a real family.
12:47
Tad Eggleston: Right, and, and like… I mean, the most… the most…
12:53
Tad Eggleston: Common things to work for in terms of more representation is…
12:59
Tad Eggleston: you know, minority groups and whatnot, but I remember as a kid that, like.
13:04
Tad Eggleston: I appreciated that the one thing that was true about Disney movies, even if they didn't, like, play it.
13:12
Tad Eggleston: As much, is that, like…
13:14
Tad Eggleston: How many of them had that nice two-parent household that everything worked the way it was supposed to?
13:20
Tad Eggleston: you know, for that matter, Lilo and Stitch came out when my kids were young, and I loved the fact that you had, like, the older sister raising, you know… they didn't get into the whole sad part, but, like, you had a very non-traditional family.
13:37
Tad Eggleston: because that…
13:38
Tad Eggleston: like, when you've got a media atmosphere… I grew up in Wheaton, Illinois, the Bible Belt of the Midwest, so if there was, like, any place that, like.
13:51
Tad Eggleston: Lots of your friends had…
13:54
Tad Eggleston: both of their parents and supposedly loved each other, and I mean, it was weird when my parents got divorced.
14:02
Tad Eggleston: I had, like, maybe 2 other friends.
14:05
Tad Eggleston: That, that, that had…
14:07
Tad Eggleston: So… so, like, seeing that… I mean, and these parents don't get divorced, or at least we don't know. I mean, that… that's the other thing. I mean, I'll try not to ruin much, but, like, you leave an open ending. You don't wrap it up. Yeah. Everything's better.
14:23
Tad Eggleston: Like, you have this story built around…
14:28
Tad Eggleston: The trauma that parents can completely accidentally inflict on their kids just because life is stressful, And…
14:42
Tad Eggleston: Parents don't suddenly stop being human when they have children.
14:49
Tad Eggleston: I mean, this is…
14:50
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, no, I mean, you nailed it. That's, I mean, that's it. That's the goal.
14:54
Tad Eggleston: such high school, you like, and one of the things I'll tell my students on a regular basis when they're frustrated about this or that is, like, you know your mom's human, too.
15:09
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah. And then…
15:11
Tad Eggleston: Does she have a bad day at work?
15:15
Jimmy Gaspero: No, I mean, you know, kids, teenagers, I think, you know, forget that.
15:20
Jimmy Gaspero: You know? Mom and dad are human, too. It's one of those things I think you realize…
15:24
Tad Eggleston: It's not even that they forget a thing.
15:26
Tad Eggleston: They're only starting to learn it.
15:28
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah.
15:29
Jimmy Gaspero: You know?
15:30
Jimmy Gaspero: I, I, I remember the older…
15:33
Jimmy Gaspero: the, like, the older I get, and looking back, and especially thinking about how old I was when I reached, like, you know, at a…
15:42
Tad Eggleston: At a certain… like, my parents age at a certain time, like, just thinking, like, oh, like.
15:48
Jimmy Gaspero: there's still a lot I don't know. And, like, I remember my, you know, thinking about my… how old I was when my parents had reached that age,
15:57
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah. I mean, but you nailed it, like, that's the book, that's what we tried to do, I'm glad, you know, you…
16:03
Tad Eggleston: Oh, you absolutely nailed it, and I picked up all of that.
16:06
Tad Eggleston: I love paper cuts for being willing to… I mean, because that's… that, like…
16:13
Tad Eggleston: That was what went through my head for the first half of this book, is like…
16:18
Tad Eggleston: This is so amazing, I can't believe that it's getting published. And then I went, oh yeah, it's Paper Cuts. Papercuts actually does good stuff.
16:26
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
16:27
Jimmy Gaspero: I really liked… Paper Cuts has been great. I mean, Paper Cuts has been great to us, and
16:33
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, that's been the great thing, that we were able to kind of tell that story, and…
16:37
Jimmy Gaspero: you know, I mean, I couldn't be happier, because it's all wrapped up also in, you know… Amber's art has been, like, tremendous.
16:47
Tad Eggleston: Perfect.
16:47
Jimmy Gaspero: This has just been a…
16:48
Jimmy Gaspero: dream collaboration. From the design of the characters, and the Yeti, and some of the layouts,
16:58
Jimmy Gaspero: It's been incredible to work with Amber and put this together.
17:03
Tad Eggleston: What?
17:03
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I've been gushing and talking way too much. I have that problem some days. So I'm gonna… I'm gonna try to kick it towards you guys for a second, and at first, tell me…
17:14
Tad Eggleston: Tell me the genesis of the story, but then get into…
17:18
Tad Eggleston: Like, how did the two of you pair up?
17:22
Tad Eggleston: And… and how did this story go from… I mean, obviously.
17:27
Tad Eggleston: It's named after your daughter, so I'm assuming that Amber didn't come to you and say, hey, Jimmy, I've got this story called Penny and the Yeti, you wanna write it for me?
17:36
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah.
17:37
Tad Eggleston: Possibly!
17:39
Tad Eggleston: So talk about how it went from this idea that you had…
17:43
Tad Eggleston: to… to… getting together with Amber, and then how it morphed, because, I mean, you talk to creators all the time, you know that, like, one of the beauties of comics is that it is a true collaborative process. Like, what you imagined, and what you started to get back.
18:01
Tad Eggleston: We're almost certainly different in the best possible of ways.
18:06
Jimmy Gaspero: I mean, yes. No, absolutely. Everything I thought, like, what the book could be when the pages started coming in.
18:14
Jimmy Gaspero: 1 billion times better than, like, anything I could have come up with. But… yeah, I have two kids, Charlotte and Penny, and…
18:26
Jimmy Gaspero: This started just because… I was putting Penny to bed.
18:31
Jimmy Gaspero: And I… I think it's real funny when you talk to kids like they are adults, so as I was putting her to bed, I was just like, so you got any… got any big plans for the summer? And she looks… she's like, she was 5 at the time, this was in 22. And she was 5, and she's like.
18:46
Jimmy Gaspero: No? Do you? And I'm like, no, I work, I gotta work, gotta go to work, you know, I don't have a summer like you do.
18:53
Jimmy Gaspero: And she said, you should… are you gonna write a story? Because they knew that I was trying to, like, write comics, and they knew that I did stuff for Comic Book Yeti. And I'm like, sure, I'll write a story, what should it be about? And she goes, what should be about a Yeti? And I said, well…
19:08
Jimmy Gaspero: if there's a Yeti in it, we also have to have Penny, so…
19:11
Jimmy Gaspero: She loves the diner near us, the Brandywine Diner, so we came up with this idea that Penny and the Yeti go to a diner, and some… you know, part of it is in the book. Yeti gets upset, kind of stops and cracks the diner, has to go outside, and Penny goes out to talk to Yeti, and it's about…
19:30
Jimmy Gaspero: you know, getting upset, having big feelings, and maybe finding a better way to respond to it. And we called it the Yeti and the Big Stop, and it was just a 4-page short.
19:39
Jimmy Gaspero: And,
19:41
Jimmy Gaspero: I, the first thing I ever had published was through Lifeline Comics, and I was paired with an artist, Beck Kubrick, and I reached out to Beck, because I thought Beck's style would be good for Yeti and the Big Stomp.
19:52
Jimmy Gaspero: And, Beck was busy, but Beck gave me the names and, like, of 3 individuals that Beck knew, and to look up their portfolios.
20:03
Jimmy Gaspero: And I think the first one I clicked on was Amber's. And as soon as I saw Amber's portfolio, I didn't even… I didn't think I… I don't even think I looked at the other two.
20:13
Jimmy Gaspero: I was just like, oh, this is it, this is gonna be great for Yeti and the big stomp, so I emailed Amber, and I'm like, Amber, do you wanna…
20:23
Jimmy Gaspero: Pick up our origin story from there.
20:25
Amber Akin: Yeah, sure. So one day, there's an email in my inbox. It had been a while since I'd drawn comics. It was still something I wanted to do, but I'd been burnt out for a hot minute. I was.
20:38
Tad Eggleston: burnt out, because it's hard… I mean, I get the teaching aid.
20:43
Amber Akin: Oh, yeah.
20:43
Tad Eggleston: because, as I remind my listeners on a regular basis, there's no money in it!
20:48
Amber Akin: That's also true.
20:51
Amber Akin: I… I had gone to art school and, like… Patreon, Substack, any way you can! The good stuff.
20:58
Amber Akin: Yeah, post-art school, I worked very hard for 4 years building my skills and my portfolio, and then the pandemic happened halfway through college, and it was… you know, it wasn't the best time to be, like, a young adult, entering the workforce, but I was told.
21:17
Tad Eggleston: That was when my… my… my daughter had her college graduation on Zoom, so I… my… I… I'm…
21:26
Tad Eggleston: I know all about that, and it being the time to…
21:29
Amber Akin: It wasn't great. I could have picked a better time to be 21. Next time around, I'll make better choices.
21:40
Amber Akin: But yeah, I had this email in my inbox from, Jimmy. I knew back through Twitter, we were social media mutuals.
21:51
Amber Akin: And I read Jimmy's proposal that was, like, a sweet 4-page comic co-written by his daughter. It had a sweet Yeti in it, it was quirky, it had personality. It was truly, like, the exact sort of thing I wanted to be trying, so it was…
22:07
Amber Akin: it was, like, serendipitous for me. I was like, yes, yes, yes, please let me draw this, I'm happy to do this.
22:13
Amber Akin: let's… let's make this happen. So I drew those four pages, sent them back to Jimmy, and then I thought that… that was that. That would be the last I saw of Yeti, until it wasn't.
22:27
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, so then it… I… that was…
22:32
Jimmy Gaspero: middle of 2022, when Penny and I first came up with, like, the idea for the four pages, and
22:40
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, I guess… I don't know exactly when we finished… when Amber, like, finished the comic.
22:48
Jimmy Gaspero: But I had shown Penny, and you put it out on, like, social media, just as, oh, look at this, here's just, like, a little short four-page comic, and
22:57
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, then, I guess the beginning of 24?
23:00
Jimmy Gaspero: when Mad Cave had, like, their… they have their open submission portal, and I just really wanted to pitch something. I just wanted to kind of move, like, take the next step. I had been published in a few anthologies, but just a couple, and
23:15
Jimmy Gaspero: I thought, well, what could I do with this 4-page short? And I came up with the idea, like, a story I could build around a young girl and a Yeti, and I thought, oh, well, let's build this family around it.
23:27
Jimmy Gaspero: Let's put a family who's… Kind of in a bit of a crisis with these parents,
23:33
Jimmy Gaspero: And kind of started to build out those elements, and then I… I reached back out to Amber, and I said, hey, I'm just thinking about pitching this, I don't know if anything will come of it, but I'm gonna use the four pages we did, and here's the outline, and she's like… she said, sure, yeah, let's just see what happens.
23:49
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, and now it's 2 years later, and the book's about to come out. Yeah.
23:56
Tad Eggleston: That's… that all sounds about right. I mean, in some ways, that's fast.
24:01
Jimmy Gaspero: You know what, it feels… to me, I mean, it probably doesn't feel fast to Amber, because she had to draw and color all 116 pages, but it does kind of feel fast. Like, I can't…
24:13
Jimmy Gaspero: I don't know, I can't believe we're here on the cusp of the book coming out, to be honest with you.
24:17
Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, even for pros, though, it is sometimes. We were just talking to Alex DeCampi about reversal, and, like, she'd been kicking around and writing that for a decade before she had somebody that was willing to pay to have somebody draw it.
24:34
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, wow.
24:36
Tad Eggleston: Cause that's just… that's how things roll sometimes, is like… Yeah.
24:43
Tad Eggleston: I mean, how many, how many,
24:47
Tad Eggleston: How many rising star rock bands do you discover have actually been playing the bar scene for 15 years? They're not a newcomer. They finally got to quit the job at Walmart that they did between tours.
25:02
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, you're right, you're right.
25:05
Tad Eggleston: I mean, for that matter, I, like…
25:08
Tad Eggleston: one of the… you guys, I assume that Jimmy, at least… I mean, I've found that artists don't manage to read as many comics, so I hope that you don't take it poorly, Amber, if I make the assumption that Jimmy's read something and you may or may not have. Have you read… have either of you read Nate Powell's last book?
25:28
Tad Eggleston: The… his… his punk rock… .
25:36
Jimmy Gaspero: No, I don't think I have.
25:37
Tad Eggleston: Oh, it's so good. But, but, like, it's… it's…
25:45
Tad Eggleston: it's from his, his, like, actual… or it's… it's fictionalized from Fall Through is the name of it. Fictionalized from his actual punk rock days, and one of the things that made me laugh, and I'm like, this is the difference between comic book artists and struggling musicians, is like.
26:00
Tad Eggleston: They got a tour, so they literally had to quit their jobs so they could go on tour and hope that they could come back and get their minimum wage jobs back, or some other minimum wage job.
26:15
Tad Eggleston: Whereas comic book people just make another pot of coffee, and they work the day job, and then draw until midnight.
26:23
Jimmy Gaspero: Yep.
26:25
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah.
26:29
Jimmy Gaspero: I write… I write on the… I write on the weekends, because usually by the time I get home from work, I'm just, like, I'm gonna fall asleep, have just, like, a… because I like to write in my notebook, you know, just so I have, like, a spiral, the metal spiral design down my face from where I fell.
26:44
Tad Eggleston: Right.
26:45
Jimmy Gaspero: on the books. Okay.
26:48
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I know writers that, like.
26:51
Tad Eggleston: they're not proud of it, but they do, like, 80% of their writing on the phone, because their phone can go with them to Little League games. Their phone can go with them to this, that, and the other thing.
27:05
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, I… I… I can't do that. I… I can't… I… I just can't get used to typing that much on the phone, but,
27:15
Jimmy Gaspero: I remember I, I interviewed…
27:18
Jimmy Gaspero: the writer and artist that did, like, the graphic novel, Just Roll With It, which I really loved.
27:27
Jimmy Gaspero: And… about a young girl who's dealing with, like, OCD, and it's a fantastic story, fantastic graphic novel. But the writer of it wrote, like, it's over 200 pages, and he wrote the whole thing on his phone.
27:43
Jimmy Gaspero: I was like, I don't… I don't know…
27:46
Jimmy Gaspero: Like, how you did that. Like, can we… should we… can we start, like, a fund to get you at least a lap… at least, like, an iPad?
27:55
Amber Akin: That's amazing, I love that book.
27:57
Jimmy Gaspero: Oh yeah, me too!
27:59
Tad Eggleston: I only vaguely know it, but it just went on my list.
28:03
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, it's… it's so good. They did a follow-up, too,
28:07
Jimmy Gaspero: Which I'm gonna forget the name of, I think it has something in the title.
28:10
Tad Eggleston: Girl.
28:11
Jimmy Gaspero: Argo, yeah.
28:12
Tad Eggleston: and Lee Durfee Lavoie.
28:14
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, Lee… Lee wrote it on his phone.
28:18
Tad Eggleston: On his phone.
28:19
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, but it's a fantastic graphic novel. I mean, especially for young kids, kids dealing with any type of OCD or anxiety issues, even kids just starting a new school, starting the 6th grade. Beautiful graphic novel.
28:33
Tad Eggleston: Follow… follow-up is sink or Swim.
28:35
Jimmy Gaspero: Sink or swim. Yeah, that's really good, too.
28:38
Tad Eggleston: See, that's one of the few things that I do well in this whole podcast thing. I learned that the internet can tell me things.
28:50
Jimmy Gaspero: Ugh.
28:50
Tad Eggleston: Of course, sometimes it leads to dead space as I look things up. But thank you, Jimmy, you kept talking while I looked things up. That's the way it's supposed to work. If you ever want to co-host 22 panels, you're welcome.
29:02
Jimmy Gaspero: Alright, I may take you up on that.
29:08
Tad Eggleston: Amber, what was your favorite thing about the script? What did… what did you…
29:13
Amber Akin: When you got this story, I mean, you already knew the characters a little bit, but, like, to go from a 4-page to something…
29:22
Tad Eggleston: Bigger, and it looks… it sounds like he… he…
29:25
Tad Eggleston: He brought you in before it was a full script, but it was certainly… bigger by the time
29:32
Tad Eggleston: And, like, what… what attracted you? What made you go, oh yeah, we're doing this?
29:39
Amber Akin: Yeah, so I… I mean, I was already on board because there was a Yeti in it, but… that.
29:46
Amber Akin: I, you know, I believe that, you know, children, like we talked about earlier, they can handle difficult topics. There are children whose reality is, like, far more difficult, what
29:59
Amber Akin: Than what some of the characters in Penny and the Yeti even go through. And I… I believe books are…
30:07
Amber Akin: So valuable to sort of navigate these difficult conversations and, you know, see themselves in the world, feel less alone, feel represented, or even, give them the opportunity to empathize maybe with someone else's situation that they had no idea about before.
30:27
Amber Akin: So I… I was really happy to work on a book that had a lot of heart, that, you know, had… has a purpose,
30:37
Amber Akin: and talks about complicated things and situations that I hadn't really read many children's books that touched on, and I… I was really excited to be a part of it. I felt really lucky that I drew those original four pages.
30:55
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, how did you guys…
31:00
Tad Eggleston: work. So she was on board as soon as you were pitching.
31:04
Tad Eggleston: Did you start scripting?
31:08
Tad Eggleston: at what point did you start scripting? Did you script the whole thing before you sent it to her? Were you sending it to her in parts? Please tell me you didn't make or draw and redraw things, because you edited after you'd sent her the pages, because…
31:21
Jimmy Gaspero: No.
31:21
Tad Eggleston: You should know that it takes the artist much longer than it takes the writer.
31:25
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, yeah, so… so, a couple of things, I…
31:31
Jimmy Gaspero: I like to think that I'm not a pessimist, that I am… I'm a realist, I'm a practical person. As a… as an attorney, I think that I approach my job as, you know, I do plaintiff's work, and I…
31:47
Jimmy Gaspero: I feel like I approach my job as a very practical person. I say that, though, because I was convinced, even after paper cuts got in touch, that, like, there's a great chance that this is just not gonna happen.
31:59
Jimmy Gaspero: And I didn't do anything until… like, we had several conversations, and I really didn't do anything until, you know, we… it was agreed, like, contracts were signed, like, we're…
32:12
Jimmy Gaspero: Definitely doing the book.
32:17
Tad Eggleston: That makes sense.
32:18
Jimmy Gaspero: And so, once we did the.
32:20
Tad Eggleston: I mean, particularly as an attorney, you know that, like, none of it.
32:26
Jimmy Gaspero: none of it counts, until… Yeah, yeah, I, I…
32:30
Tad Eggleston: You know, that too. The only thing you can do is work your way out of the handshake agreement, not…
32:38
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah.
32:38
Tad Eggleston: not… Work your way out. You can write it, and they can read it and go, oh yeah, we're not… we're not doing this anymore.
32:44
Tad Eggleston: So once it was a…
32:46
Jimmy Gaspero: once contract was signed, and I'm like, oh, I guess we're definitely doing this, I mean, I,
32:54
Jimmy Gaspero: I told, you know, our editor, Stephanie Brooks, our first editor on it, we had two editors, Stephanie Brooks and then Teddy Leo, that Stephanie was like, oh, as soon as you get some of the script, start sending me pages. And I was like, yeah, I really don't… I don't have that yet, but I said.
33:09
Jimmy Gaspero: looking at the timetable of how long we thought we would have to make the book, you know, when we would fit on their schedule for release, I said, give me 3 months.
33:20
Jimmy Gaspero: And I took 3 months, and I wrote the whole first draft of the whole book.
33:24
Jimmy Gaspero: And I, I, I, then I… I sent it to Amber, I sent it to Stephanie.
33:30
Jimmy Gaspero: And then we… we started working on it in sections. And then once, you know, because that's how I kind of thought of the book, five sections, like, five single issues.
33:39
Jimmy Gaspero: That, you know, I thought there would be, like, a natural break there.
33:42
Jimmy Gaspero: And so that's kind of how I wrote it. And I… we did it in, like, a shared Google Doc, so, like, Amber could see the whole script, Amber could comment on it, and then…
33:52
Jimmy Gaspero: Stephanie would review it, and we'd go in and edit it. And once we locked a section of the script, that was it. We locked it, Section 1's locked, it goes to Amber, and…
34:02
Jimmy Gaspero: Amber starts… Amber starts working on it, and so then we eventually got the whole script locked, and then it was…
34:10
Jimmy Gaspero: just Amber's turn to draw and color it, which, you know… That's a lot.
34:17
Tad Eggleston: It was the next 35 years.
34:20
Amber Akin: That's what it felt like.
34:22
Jimmy Gaspero: There's, like, that scene in Interstellar where they come back after they're near the black hole, and the guy left on the ship is, like, 30 years older. But no, I thought Amber worked really fast. Like, I was… I was, like, shocked at how quickly some of the pages started coming in.
34:42
Jimmy Gaspero: You know, so it… it really… I was surprised,
34:49
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, and it was just… once the… there's a couple pages in particular that I thought, like, I think there were notes in the script that were just like, Amber, I'm thinking about this.
34:59
Jimmy Gaspero: what do you think?
35:02
Jimmy Gaspero: does that sound good? And, you know, I think, like, that's… that was the double-page library spread. I think I was just like, I really like libraries, can we maybe have them, like, do a DeLuca effect around the library? I don't know. Is that too much? Is that… don't yell at me if it's too much.
35:20
Amber Akin: I did!
35:21
Jimmy Gaspero: And then here…
35:21
Amber Akin: want to cry when I first read it.
35:25
Jimmy Gaspero: But Amber probably delivered… like, the… my two favorite pages, that… that library spread is, like, my favorite.
35:35
Amber Akin: Ended up being one of my favorites, too. Actually, it totally is my favorite.
35:41
Tad Eggleston: No, you know, I mean, I know… like…
35:47
Tad Eggleston: I think it was Ted Brant and Rofstein I was talking to that talked about how, like.
35:55
Tad Eggleston: I think… I think what Ted said was,
35:58
Tad Eggleston: I'm not gonna look back on my life and go, geez, I wish I'd spent less time on that page.
36:06
Amber Akin: Yep.
36:07
Tad Eggleston: But I am gonna look back and go, man, that's awesome.
36:15
Tad Eggleston: You know, the lost sleep only happens once.
36:20
Amber Akin: That's… I would do it all over again, in a heartbeat. Right, right.
36:24
Tad Eggleston: Now, now, like… Treads on Batman's boots, that was probably a little much.
36:31
Tad Eggleston: I think Jim Lee learned that one the hard way.
36:39
Tad Eggleston: What…
36:43
Tad Eggleston: As you were reading the script, what, was there any scene that, like, jumped out at you as…
36:50
Tad Eggleston: Oh, wow.
36:53
Tad Eggleston: That's so cool.
36:54
Tad Eggleston: I'm… I… I can't wait to… to draw this. I can't… can't wait to bring this to life.
37:01
Amber Akin: There were definitely a few. A lot of them were towards the end of the book. The library scene was definitely one, where when I first read the script, I was like, oh god, I hope I can pull that off, like…
37:11
Amber Akin: 80 pages into this book, I better be a better cartoonist than I am now. And then I had a lot of fun drawing it. I was very proud of the way it turned out. There was another similar scene towards the end of the book that takes place in, like, a busy kitchen.
37:27
Amber Akin: That I was also terrified to draw, but also really excited, because I knew it would be the sort of challenge that really paid off in the end, and that page also ended up being one of my favorites. And then…
37:39
Amber Akin: I was waiting the whole book to get to draw the scene where they play… they play pretend, and they go to a magical castle, spoiler alert, and I had the time of my life drawing fairies and unicorns, and…
37:53
Amber Akin: Other magical creatures? And rainbows?
37:57
Amber Akin: To really sell everyone on the book. There are magical creatures and rainbows.
38:02
Tad Eggleston: I mean, isn't that what we all look for in children's books? It's what I look for. I mean…
38:09
Tad Eggleston: That's how you're guaranteed to have your kids stay with you, is say, but there's a unicorn coming up.
38:17
Tad Eggleston: Or a dinosaur. Dinosaurs also will keep your kids staying with you.
38:22
Tad Eggleston: It's harder to do… really great…
38:30
Tad Eggleston: Non-gruesome things with… with dinosaurs, though.
38:37
Tad Eggleston: It says the guy who's… says the guy whose 5-year-old rooted for the dinosaurs while watching Jurassic Park with his grandfather.
38:49
Jimmy Gaspero: I like… that's… that's my kind of kid.
38:52
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, no, I think he was 6. This story comes up all the time, so my apologies to the listeners who've heard this many times, but you guys, I assume, don't listen to all the 22 Panels episodes. If you do, thank you very much, but, yeah, no, I think he was…
39:11
Tad Eggleston: Somewhere between 4 and 6, when he saw…
39:17
Tad Eggleston: the Matthew McConaughey, or not Matthew, Matthew, Broderick Godzilla for the first time.
39:24
Tad Eggleston: And at the end of that Godzilla, there's that scene in Madison Square Garden where there are all the Godzilla eggs hatching. Yeah. And they're, like, trying to kill them as they come out, or destroy the eggs before they hatch, that sort of thing. And my kid is screaming at the TV.
39:43
Tad Eggleston: You don't kill Godzilla. Godzilla eats you.
39:51
Amber Akin: True that.
39:53
Tad Eggleston: I'm like, wait a minute, you want the… you want Godzilla? He's like, yeah, Dad, it's the circle of life!
40:03
Jimmy Gaspero: Oh my gosh.
40:04
Tad Eggleston: Truly. Yeah.
40:06
Jimmy Gaspero: Like, he has that, like, on a t-shirt somewhere, right? You had… you had a t-shirt made with that… It's okay!
40:12
Tad Eggleston: Not yet, but my wife screen prints, so that might have to be his next…
40:17
Jimmy Gaspero: I mean…
40:18
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I have grandkids now, so that might have to be the Father's Day gift for him.
40:23
Jimmy Gaspero: That… I mean, that would…
40:25
Tad Eggleston: That would be great. Is the Godzilla eating somebody and just the circle of life?
40:32
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah.
40:33
Jimmy Gaspero: Oh, you don't kill Godzilla, Godzilla eats you.
40:36
Tad Eggleston: you. Yep.
40:38
Jimmy Gaspero: That's fantastic.
40:41
Tad Eggleston: And again, he just… he just… he was, like, literally…
40:45
Tad Eggleston: He got up off the couch, ran up the TV, and was screaming.
40:53
Jimmy Gaspero: Kids… kids are great.
40:57
Tad Eggleston: And I'm sitting there going, like, on one side, like, I'm all for not using automatic weapons to kill things, so, like.
41:06
Tad Eggleston: Great job! On the other hand, like…
41:09
Tad Eggleston: You're rooting against the people. Do I need to worry about something here?
41:18
Jimmy Gaspero: That is a little supervillainy, you know, rooting… rooting against humanity.
41:22
Tad Eggleston: You know, he went on to be a Anakin Skywalker, Darth Vader guy, and a Joker guy, and… Sensing a pattern. It wasn't until he had his own kids that he started to understand the value…
41:37
Tad Eggleston: Of, like, the good guys.
41:43
Jimmy Gaspero: Oh, man. I love that.
41:46
Tad Eggleston: Also, that's when I became smart again.
41:49
Jimmy Gaspero: That's true.
41:50
Tad Eggleston: I mean, Jimmy, because you're… you're… how old are your kids?
41:54
Jimmy Gaspero: 8 and 13.
41:55
Tad Eggleston: Okay, so one of them thinks you're dumb, and the other one's almost there.
42:00
Jimmy Gaspero: Right.
42:01
Jimmy Gaspero: 13-year-old Charlotte, who's 13. She… yeah.
42:06
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, you're dumb. You don't know anything.
42:09
Jimmy Gaspero: Nothing. Nothing at all.
42:11
Tad Eggleston: And you won't for at least… 6 or 7 more years.
42:16
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah. Yeah.
42:19
Tad Eggleston: I'm looking forward to it.
42:19
Jimmy Gaspero: to it.
42:20
Tad Eggleston: What will make you smart again?
42:22
Jimmy Gaspero: Yes.
42:24
Tad Eggleston: In a heartbeat, is when she has her own kids.
42:29
Tad Eggleston: I do not recommend having her do that as quickly as my son did.
42:34
Jimmy Gaspero: Oh, really? I got smart.
42:36
Tad Eggleston: younger than I wanted to get smart again.
42:39
Tad Eggleston: But I did, I got smart again. And then he became…
42:43
Tad Eggleston: better parent than me, way faster than I did, too, so, like…
42:49
Tad Eggleston: Every once in a while, it turns out that they did learn all of the lessons, even if they also did it by making all of the mistakes sooner.
43:00
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah…
43:01
Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's, this is actually…
43:04
Jimmy Gaspero: So another reason…
43:05
Tad Eggleston: Another reason why not being the helicopter… I mean, just full circle back to Penny and the Yeti, this is another reason why not being the helicopter parent is, like…
43:13
Tad Eggleston: Because, like, there will be a time when they decide that you're dumb. So if their only reason for not doing all sorts of things that are bad for them is because you told them not to, that's gonna be problematic.
43:29
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, I mean, you do want the kids to grow up and have their, you know, their own sense of what their limits are, and right and wrong, and not just because mom or dad stood over me and told me not to do it.
43:43
Tad Eggleston: And or scared the crap out of me if I did.
43:46
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Because that, I mean, the educator in me reminds myself, like…
43:50
Tad Eggleston: Every time, every time I hear somebody, well, you gotta make them, I'm like, how does that work again?
43:55
Tad Eggleston: Even if I manage to make them for, like, the time that they're in front of my eyes without somehow breaking any laws, like, the second they're not in front of my eyes, they will now be guaranteed to do this thing that you want me to make them not do.
44:16
Tad Eggleston: Which is one of the beauties of fiction. You get to experience things without experiencing them. Yeah.
44:30
Tad Eggleston: it's a real beauty for fiction that they're willing to pick up on their own, because, God, do kids have radars for, oh, you're trying to teach me this lesson.
44:39
Tad Eggleston: This is about, like, the best teaching of Catcher in the Rye that I've… I ever see are the ones that just talk about the political lessons and let them learn the lessons about being a teenager on their own.
44:53
Tad Eggleston: make them think that it's about something else, because it is about some of that stuff, too. But, like, as soon as you start telling them that they're supposed to learn anything from Holden Caulfield, they don't think he's cool anymore, they don't want to learn from him, they…
45:07
Tad Eggleston: This book is boring.
45:12
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, this is… like, Penny and the Yeti is the type of book that I could totally see…
45:18
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I know my grandkids are getting a copy.
45:21
Tad Eggleston: Cuz…
45:22
Jimmy Gaspero: Thank you.
45:24
Tad Eggleston: It's… it's… well, I mean, it's… it's the book that they'll pick up and read on their own.
45:29
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah.
45:30
Tad Eggleston: I mean, they'll let dad read it to them, they'll let granddaddy read it to him, but they'll also pick it up and want to read it on their own. Though, if there's a sequel, my son… my grandson is really into tornadoes. So if you wind up doing a sequel, if you could work a tornado in, that would be great.
45:46
Jimmy Gaspero: Okay.
45:47
Tad Eggleston: All right.
45:48
Jimmy Gaspero: Noted. I think… I think we could do that, so if there's a sequel,
45:53
Jimmy Gaspero: Gotta work in a tornado, so, alright, alright.
45:56
Amber Akin: Never drawn one before, I guess I'll put that on my list.
45:59
Tad Eggleston: Well, you know, he could teach you.
46:01
Tad Eggleston: At my daughter's wedding, he, he…
46:06
Tad Eggleston: He had a notebook, and he… he's 6.
46:11
Tad Eggleston: And he drew, like, 20 pages of tornadoes and wrote the facts that he had memorized about them on each page.
46:21
Amber Akin: Kids are such fantastic artists. I constantly find myself humbled by the cartooning abilities of, like, 8-year-olds. They're amazing.
46:31
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
46:32
Jimmy Gaspero: Also, I love when kids, like, focus or fixate on a particular thing.
46:38
Jimmy Gaspero: My best friend.
46:40
Jimmy Gaspero: My best friend Cass, and his wife, Jill, their son, Johnny, who is… Johnny's, like, 17 now, but when… when Johnny was little.
46:52
Jimmy Gaspero: he got, like, and I mean, little, little, like, maybe 3 or 4, like, he could talk and all that, but I don't think he was even in school yet, and was, like, hyperfixated on volcanoes.
47:05
Jimmy Gaspero: And I mean, like, every time you came over and came in the house, it was like, hey, Jimmy, do you have, like, 5 minutes?
47:12
Jimmy Gaspero: So Johnny can talk to you about tornadoes. It was like he was… it was almost like, you know, one of those religions that, like, go door-to-door to talk to you. It was like, hi, Sarah, do you have 5 minutes that I can tell you about
47:25
Jimmy Gaspero: my lord and savior, Mount Vesuvius. And Johnny would just sit you down, and he would tell you all the volcano facts.
47:34
Tad Eggleston: Now, this, this is, this is very common among autistics,
47:39
Tad Eggleston: And, like, I'm autistic, my grandson's been…
47:43
Tad Eggleston: also diagnosed autistic. My son hasn't been tested, but would probably be diagnosed as autistic. You know, it runs in the family, so, like, I mean…
47:57
Tad Eggleston: Only if your friends are ever wondering why, oh, why can't he handle this soil… like, cause…
48:04
Tad Eggleston: The single hardest thing about particularly the type of autistics that get hyperfixated on learning tons of facts is they all… everybody's like, oh, they're so smart! And then when we fail at something, it's like, why aren't you putting in the effort? And it's like, it has nothing to do with effort. It has everything to do with the room was too loud, or too bright, or…
48:24
Jimmy Gaspero: Oh, yeah.
48:25
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
48:28
Tad Eggleston: Or, as soon as you started telling me that I was being lazy, I started plotting your demise, and I couldn't let go.
48:37
Tad Eggleston: And that's… and that prevented me from doing the math.
48:41
Tad Eggleston: I was doing math, it had to do with, like.
48:47
Tad Eggleston: some sort of Rube Goldberg-type device.
48:54
Tad Eggleston: I'm sorry, it's Friday.
48:58
Jimmy Gaspero: No, alright.
48:58
Tad Eggleston: This is where autistic teachers' brains are on Friday afternoon.
49:03
Amber Akin: I have feelings.
49:06
Jimmy Gaspero: We'll go with you with, you know, every conversation. I mean, as I think…
49:12
Jimmy Gaspero: Growing up, and especially being a parent now, and all the other, you know, the multitudes of
49:20
Jimmy Gaspero: parents and kids that I know, you know, it's just the… Facts of… of… being around…
49:30
Jimmy Gaspero: you know, every type of abled individual, and yeah, the hyperfixation, though, is something that, like, when the kids do it, is just wild.
49:42
Tad Eggleston: It's so wonderful. I love it.
49:44
Jimmy Gaspero: Oh, yeah.
49:45
Tad Eggleston: I love hyperfixation even Even in my old age. I mean, this podcast wouldn't exist without hyperfixation.
49:53
Tad Eggleston: You know, and I bring my hyperfixations together, you know? When I have, like.
50:01
Tad Eggleston: my baseball roundtables, or I shot a major, major, major… it was announced this week that a member of my favorite rock and roll band has a comic coming out at
50:15
Tad Eggleston: the end of the year from Z2, and I'm like, now I have an excuse to send out a… a press request to…
50:24
Tad Eggleston: To somebody that will almost certainly not read it, but I have to.
50:32
Tad Eggleston: But I'm rambling, and we're not talking enough about Penny and the Yeti, though I think we've hit on it enough that people will read it without, like…
50:41
Tad Eggleston: spoiling it, so I don't necessarily need to… to go… unless you guys want to say more things about it. Though I think… I think I'm gonna have to come up with an excuse to pair this with a couple of…
50:53
Tad Eggleston: other books…
50:55
Tad Eggleston: And I don't know which other books it's… like, this is a book that deserves that… that spoilery conversation at some point. Not before it comes out, but, like, expect to hear from me sometime down the road to say, hey!
51:09
Tad Eggleston: You wanna come, like, talk about the psychology? I don't know. I mean, again, I don't expect you to have listened to most of the episodes. There's a group in my area called Psychocomicology, where it's psychiatrists that actually use comics in their practice, and I push them from using mostly superhero comics to using stuff like this, too.
51:31
Tad Eggleston: So, so… Oh, that's awesome. I know, I know that there will be a psychocomicology talk about this book at some point. I can feel it. I, I, I would…
51:43
Jimmy Gaspero: I would love to come back. I would love.
51:45
Tad Eggleston: We'll come back and…
51:46
Jimmy Gaspero: once it's out, I'll… I'll get in the weeds with you. I'll, my… my… I mean, I'm a lawyer, but my bachelor's degree is in psychology, so I'll do my best.
51:56
Jimmy Gaspero: I'll do my best to hang.
51:58
Tad Eggleston: Have you noticed that, like, cool lawyers don't want to just be lawyers? You're the second lawyer I've had on recently who's writing a comic with mental health type stuff.
52:10
Tad Eggleston: embedded in it.
52:12
Jimmy Gaspero: Two of my favorite baseball writers are…
52:15
Tad Eggleston: are lapsed lawyers, both from Columbus, Ohio, ironically.
52:21
Jimmy Gaspero: Really?
52:23
Jimmy Gaspero: I think officially we're… I think officially they're… they're called recovering attorneys, is the term… the term that I've heard.
52:31
Tad Eggleston: One of them, I think that, that, that…
52:38
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, for the two of them, one of them, I think, recovering attorneys, hits it pretty well, and the other one, it feels more like the lapsed Catholic, like.
52:46
Jimmy Gaspero: applicable.
52:47
Tad Eggleston: He knows all this stuff. He knows all the stuff, you know, he probably maybe could, but his heart was never really in it, so when he really managed to get out, you know, one of them was, like.
52:59
Tad Eggleston: The high-powered… Litigator, defense litigator, whatever…
53:06
Jimmy Gaspero: Okay.
53:07
Tad Eggleston: That… that totally burned out.
53:09
Jimmy Gaspero: Oh, oh, yeah.
53:11
Tad Eggleston: And was so happy when NBC said, hey, you wanna make your blog our blog? He's like, wait a minute, you'll pay me?
53:22
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, there's a surprising number, though, like, I… I went through and was inter… you know, trying to interview…
53:30
Jimmy Gaspero: most of the folks that I knew that were attorneys and had, you know, done comics work in some capacity, you know, so, like, I… Emily Whitney.
53:41
Tad Eggleston: Charles.
53:42
Jimmy Gaspero: Charles, I haven't interviewed Charles Soule, but he's one.
53:45
Tad Eggleston: I haven't yet, either, but he's…
53:47
Tad Eggleston: He's still practicing, but I'm not 100%.
53:49
Jimmy Gaspero: Mark, guggenheim, then Eternal.
53:52
Tad Eggleston: That's right.
53:55
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, Emily Witten, I think the book that she wrote, The Underfoot, I think her co-creator on it is also an attorney.
54:06
Tad Eggleston: And.
54:07
Jimmy Gaspero: Marjorie Lou.
54:08
Tad Eggleston: I was about to say, isn't Marjorie Lou an attorney?
54:10
Jimmy Gaspero: Marjorie Liu's an attorney. Yeah. Oh, David Brewer. David Buer was an attorney. Yeah.
54:19
Amber Akin: the… the burnout attorney to comics pipeline. I had no idea, I feel like I'm learning a lot.
54:26
Tad Eggleston: I mean… Have you followed the Supreme Court lately?
54:33
Jimmy Gaspero: A little bit, little bit. They're up to some things. They're making the news. Yeah.
54:39
Tad Eggleston: But, there, there are, like… I think one of the reasons why there is…
54:48
Tad Eggleston: such a stereotype of the soulless attorney is… is that…
54:56
Tad Eggleston: A, they certainly do exist, and B, the majority of attorneys who don't fall into that category
55:04
Tad Eggleston: Have a really high burnout rate.
55:10
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, I mean, I don't… I don't think you're… I don't think you're wrong, but…
55:18
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, I'm out of… I was just having lunch with…
55:21
Jimmy Gaspero: my… my three, like, closest friends from… from law school, and they… I'm the one that they refer to as the quote-unquote real attorney, because I, like, go to court and stuff, but one… one is a corporate attorney for…
55:33
Jimmy Gaspero: like, NBC, or Comcast, whatever they're calling themselves now. One's a tax attorney in-house, one does, like, Medicaid compliance for an insurance company. I'm the only one that, like, goes to, you know, court and does that type of stuff, but…
55:48
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, it's… there is a high burnout rate.
55:53
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
55:54
Jimmy Gaspero: Well, it's just this…
55:55
Jimmy Gaspero: I mean, it's not like there are many jobs that aren't stressful in some capacity, but yeah, it's a… it's a stressful job.
56:04
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, but I…
56:05
Jimmy Gaspero: Comics is a lot of fun. I like comics better.
56:08
Tad Eggleston: Well, comics can be really stressful, too, but I think…
56:11
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah.
56:11
Tad Eggleston: I think when it comes to the law, people who got into it because of some sort of passion.
56:18
Tad Eggleston: So rarely can… can… Either make money or succeed at the driving part of their passion.
56:27
Tad Eggleston: And or they're like, oh, I'm broke and occasionally managing to take care of the little guy, and the guy that I hated in law school makes 10 times what I do.
56:43
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah.
56:43
Tad Eggleston: Ring over the little guy.
56:45
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah.
56:46
Jimmy Gaspero: I mean, I also know… I also know a lot of people that I… I mean, I've never worked for a big firm, I've always worked for a small firm doing some type of… like, I started out doing plaintiff's work and criminal defense in Philly, and then I went to Delaware, and I was doing trust and estate litigation, and now I'm.
57:02
Tad Eggleston: In Delaware? Really?
57:04
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, I'm in Delta.
57:05
Tad Eggleston: Isn't that where all the trusts have been? Yeah.
57:08
Jimmy Gaspero: It was, it was good work for a number of years, and then I,
57:12
Jimmy Gaspero: I… another firm asked me to join them and do plaintiff's work again. They were looking for somebody, and I love plaintiff's work. I love doing that. I didn't like criminal defense.
57:21
Jimmy Gaspero: I burn out pretty quick doing criminal defense, it wasn't… it wasn't… it wasn't for me, but I knew a couple of people who, right out of law school, they got
57:30
Jimmy Gaspero: big firm jobs, and they were making a lot more money than I was, but I remember one of them…
57:37
Jimmy Gaspero: they needed to be at the office and bill all the time. Like, to the point where they told the partner in charge that, like, I haven't been home to go grocery shopping
57:51
Jimmy Gaspero: And they hired somebody to… it was, like, before Instacart.
57:55
Tad Eggleston: Grocery shop for them.
57:57
Jimmy Gaspero: They hired somebody to grocery shop for them. I believe it. They were complaining to me, they were just like, they don't get it.
58:04
Tad Eggleston: I just want to do my… I just want to be out of the office to do my own grocery shopping.
58:10
Jimmy Gaspero: They did not last there much longer because… not because of them, like, they were just like, I don't want to live like this.
58:17
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, a friend of mine got a job like that out of
58:21
Tad Eggleston: law school, and I remember, like, she had… the swank Gold Coast Department in…
58:30
Tad Eggleston: Chicago, that she insisted that her best friend, who was a public school teacher, move in with her.
58:36
Tad Eggleston: And best friend's like, I can't afford… she's like, no, you're not paying rent. You're so I don't live alone, and somebody actually gets to appreciate this apartment. You'll see me maybe twice a week while you're awake.
58:52
Tad Eggleston: But I like this apartment, and I'm paying for this apartment, somebody should live in it!
59:00
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, yeah, ugh.
59:02
Tad Eggleston: I talked to her once, she was on a business trip in Boston, she'd been there for 6 days and hadn't left the hotel.
59:10
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, I don't… I couldn't do.
59:12
Tad Eggleston: Because the hotel had conference.
59:15
Jimmy Gaspero: sad.
59:16
Tad Eggleston: So, so all of the meetings were in the hotel. The client…
59:22
Jimmy Gaspero: I had another friend who was working for a big firm in Philly, and was so stressed out.
59:30
Jimmy Gaspero: that he was…
59:33
Jimmy Gaspero: You know how you've heard of people that sleepwalk, right? Like, we're all familiar with the concept of sleepwalk?
59:41
Tad Eggleston: Nope.
59:42
Jimmy Gaspero: He was so burnt out, and we're so stressed out, and so tired.
59:46
Jimmy Gaspero: He was, like, driving at night, and he would wake up in his car in places
59:53
Jimmy Gaspero: Not remembering how he got there.
59:57
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, that's… that's… that's… that's time to, look at your options.
1:00:04
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, yeah. So he's, he's, he's… has moved on, is much happier now, and no longer, you know, driving at night and not, not remembering,
1:00:16
Jimmy Gaspero: But yeah. It is…
1:00:19
Tad Eggleston: I have…
1:00:20
Jimmy Gaspero: A stressful profession.
1:00:22
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I have known a handful of people that have, like, gone into it knowing that they were gonna go through 5 years of hell, but… but…
1:00:29
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah.
1:00:30
Tad Eggleston: Also had that plan to essentially bank the money for that 5 years of hell, and…
1:00:36
Tad Eggleston: Walk away to either their own firm that did whatever the hell they wanted.
1:00:42
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah.
1:00:42
Tad Eggleston: Or… or away from the law entirely. But that just takes a ridiculous discipline.
1:00:48
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, I know people that have done the same thing. They were, like, out of law school, they're like, I'm gonna get this job, I know it's gonna suck for 7 years, but then I'm gonna go in-house somewhere, and it'll be less stressful, the money won't be as good, but they'll have suffered for that 7 years. And I mean, if that's what you wanna do.
1:01:07
Jimmy Gaspero: I can't even imagine. Not something I… not something I could have done, you know?
1:01:13
Tad Eggleston: I might have been able to do it if I… if I'd been able to navigate college to begin with, but I didn't know I was autistic then, so I was still believing that I was lazy and whatnot, rather than… and that turned into shame spirals, and…
1:01:28
Tad Eggleston: But .
1:01:29
Jimmy Gaspero: Oh.
1:01:30
Tad Eggleston: But then I… then I worked senior care for 10 years.
1:01:34
Tad Eggleston: And, like, you work dementia care, and you start to think a lot differently about right now.
1:01:43
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, I bet.
1:01:44
Tad Eggleston: You know, for that matter, every, like…
1:01:48
Tad Eggleston: I don't smoke anymore, but, like, at the time, I was… I was never a heavy smoker, but every time somebody gave me a hard time, I'm like, why? Well, you'll live, like, 10 years less, and I'm like,
1:01:59
Tad Eggleston: I spend all day around those 10 years. I don't know that I'm missing anything.
1:02:07
Tad Eggleston: You know, for that matter, there comes a certain point where being healthy is like a curse.
1:02:15
Jimmy Gaspero: Nothing…
1:02:16
Tad Eggleston: physically wrong with you?
1:02:18
Jimmy Gaspero: On the… on the dementia ward, yeah, I… I bet. I can't… I… I can't imagine, you know? I live with my grandmother, she went through that, and…
1:02:28
Jimmy Gaspero: I've handled nursing home stuff, and it's… Yeah! It's awful.
1:02:33
Tad Eggleston: I mean, like… I enjoyed the work because I was good at… at making it less awful.
1:02:43
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah.
1:02:44
Tad Eggleston: You know, but that's because I took that as my entire purpose.
1:02:48
Tad Eggleston: And then look at, okay, Nobody wants to be here. How can I make their day worthwhile?
1:02:54
Tad Eggleston: to them. Not to… like, I would have fights with, you know, cause… because that's the other thing, like… like, I did a lot of activity work, and, like, every nursing home, oh, you gotta make stuff so we can show off, and like…
1:03:07
Tad Eggleston: Most of these people didn't do arts and crafts when they were…
1:03:11
Tad Eggleston: all with it. You really think they wanna…
1:03:14
Tad Eggleston: to arts and crafts now? Well, then you should play bingo! And it's like, again…
1:03:20
Tad Eggleston: Like, how many 50-year-olds do you know who play bingo? Why do you think they're suddenly into it when they're 75?
1:03:29
Tad Eggleston: You know, I would do things like reading aloud, or finding good movies, and watching them have conversations, and like, oh, this looks bad, they're just sitting in their care, some of them are falling asleep, and it's like…
1:03:44
Tad Eggleston: Do you really want somebody making you stay awake all day when you're old and tired?
1:03:53
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, I mean, you probably, for some of them, like, you know, they didn't want to be in those types of activities. It's not like you were abandoning them, like, you're.
1:04:01
Tad Eggleston: No!
1:04:02
Jimmy Gaspero: You're trying to find a meaningful activity for.
1:04:04
Tad Eggleston: And I totally went out of my way to figure out what people like, so if I… I mean, I had one place that I worked where they did love bingo, so we played a lot of bingo.
1:04:13
Tad Eggleston: I had one place where I worked where there were a lot of people who liked doing a specific set of crafts, so we did a lot of them, you know? What I didn't do was go, oh, you must discover this thing that…
1:04:26
Tad Eggleston: you're like, your great joy for all of your life has been reading, and you can't see the book now? Well, I'm gonna read to you.
1:04:35
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, really good at reading out loud. It's a good skill to have.
1:04:39
Amber Akin: It is.
1:04:40
Tad Eggleston: Some people can do it well.
1:04:41
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, it is a good skill to have.
1:04:43
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:04:44
Jimmy Gaspero: I agree.
1:04:44
Tad Eggleston: But I was gonna wrap up a while ago and went down another rabbit hole, which is… which is why I… I sometimes need the co-hosts that I don't have tonight to, like, shut me up.
1:04:58
Tad Eggleston: And you guys are just way too polite and smiling and laughing at me, rather than… than… than…
1:05:03
Jimmy Gaspero: We're laughing, Tad. We're laughing with you.
1:05:06
Jimmy Gaspero: Okay.
1:05:07
Tad Eggleston: I love a good.
1:05:09
Amber Akin: tangent.
1:05:10
Tad Eggleston: cat. Okay.
1:05:11
Jimmy Gaspero: Fair enough. Look, I'm in a great mood. I got to be on another podcast.
1:05:16
Tad Eggleston: Somebody else's podcast.
1:05:18
Jimmy Gaspero: somebody else's podcast with a really fun host. I got to see Amber and talk with Amber, I got to talk about Penny and the Yeti, and tomorrow's my birthday, so I'm.
1:05:30
Tad Eggleston: Oh, wow! Well, happy birthday!
1:05:33
Amber Akin: Dang?
1:05:34
Tad Eggleston: My, my, my…
1:05:34
Jimmy Gaspero: Thank you.
1:05:36
Tad Eggleston: Mine's coming up in a couple of weeks, so I'm all about that. Alright. Well, happy early birthday to you, too. Thank you!
1:05:42
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah.
1:05:43
Tad Eggleston: I have two birthday… two comics-related birthday presents this year. The first is I decided to treat myself, and, like, every year we have a post-World Series Baseball and comics roundtable.
1:05:56
Tad Eggleston: This year, we're doing an opening day baseball and comics roundtable, because for the second time in Major League history, opening day and my birthday are the same day.
1:06:06
Tad Eggleston: So's my birthday present to myself, particularly because this year, my spring break and my wife's spring break don't line up. So, I am home, and she's at work.
1:06:18
Tad Eggleston: So lunch will be with my baseball and comics people, and somehow…
1:06:22
Jimmy Gaspero: Awesome!
1:06:23
Tad Eggleston: One of my favorite baseball writers is a massive comics fan, and many of my favorite comics people are big baseball people, so, like, this is
1:06:33
Tad Eggleston: every November, when we do the Baseball and Comics Roundtable, it was one of my favorite things, so it was… but then, I finally, got the courage to put up for… to do panels at C2E2 this year, and they approved 4 of them.
1:06:47
Tad Eggleston: So…
1:06:48
Jimmy Gaspero: That's fantastic!
1:06:50
Tad Eggleston: 27th through.
1:06:50
Jimmy Gaspero: That's fantastic!
1:06:52
Tad Eggleston: I've got one on the 27th, two on the 28th, and one on the 29th. The one on the 29th is the one that I cannot believe they approved. I am…
1:07:00
Tad Eggleston: both looking forward to it and scared shitless, because it's called Cool People Talking About Comics, and the proposal was, we're gonna project some short comics and or scenes from comics.
1:07:13
Tad Eggleston: read them aloud, and talk about them, and I'm gonna get as many of the professionals as I know that I can convince to come up to be a part of it.
1:07:23
Amber Akin: Right on.
1:07:24
Tad Eggleston: I know that you recommend, like, 4 or 5 people per panel. My intention is to blow that out of the water. I know we can't have more mics. We'll pass them around.
1:07:35
Jimmy Gaspero: No, that's fantastic!
1:07:37
Tad Eggleston: I think they're actually into it, because they scheduled it for just late enough on Sunday that I know that I'm gonna sell it to people as, like, you want to get away from your table just a little bit earlier, and then leave from the panel?
1:07:54
Tad Eggleston: I have the perfect, the perfect opportunity for you to call it a day at 2 o'clock on Sunday, rather than 4.
1:08:05
Tad Eggleston: That's true.
1:08:06
Jimmy Gaspero: Great.
1:08:07
Tad Eggleston: Alright, so, I have two, two required questions that I ask of everybody.
1:08:12
Tad Eggleston: One has been a required question forever, and… and one is more recent. It's… it's really this… this…
1:08:19
Tad Eggleston: since we entered what we call Season 5, we just call it a new season on every anniversary, we're in our fifth year of doing this, so it's Season 5.
1:08:28
Tad Eggleston: So the first one is, Tell me something you love.
1:08:33
Tad Eggleston: Preferably a comic, but we don't really have rules.
1:08:37
Tad Eggleston: Preferably storytelling, but again, with the rules.
1:08:41
Tad Eggleston: But something that you love…
1:08:45
Tad Eggleston: But not enough people around you have experienced it, and you really would like them to, so you have more people to talk about it with.
1:08:55
Jimmy Gaspero: Oh.
1:08:57
Amber Akin: questioned.
1:08:58
Jimmy Gaspero: That is a good question. I mean, I can definitely keep it comics-related, because I… not… like, real people, when I say real people, like, people in my life, not many of them read the same
1:09:09
Jimmy Gaspero: comics as me, except for my brother, so anything I… but Bobby's the only one I have to talk to comics about, other than folks online.
1:09:21
Jimmy Gaspero: But… some of the comics that… one of… I'll put it this way, there,
1:09:30
Jimmy Gaspero: one of the comics, it's a Maverick comic that I loved, and it's gonna get a sequel, which I was very excited about, and I've been trying to get my oldest, Charlotte, to read it, because I really think she'll love it, and we can talk about it. But, I'm gonna forget the name of the artist, and I feel terrible, but the writer was Jeremy Whitley, and his.
1:09:49
Tad Eggleston: I was about to say, I know what you're about to say, because I just talked to Jeremy.
1:09:56
Jimmy Gaspero: Navigate.
1:09:57
Tad Eggleston: About his… I love that book.
1:10:00
Jimmy Gaspero: It's so good. It's so good.
1:10:01
Jimmy Gaspero: so good, so incredible, I loved it.
1:10:06
Jimmy Gaspero: I think they translated it into Spanish.
1:10:09
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, just put a copy in her room. Don't tell her to read it, just… just, like, drop it in her room.
1:10:15
Jimmy Gaspero: Every once in a while, I'll talk about a comic, and she'll…
1:10:18
Jimmy Gaspero: She'll overhear me, and then want to read it.
1:10:22
Jimmy Gaspero: And I love it when it happens, but it's like this weird thing that, like, I can't ever get too excited about it. Right.
1:10:29
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
1:10:30
Jimmy Gaspero: he's 13, and then, like, she won't read it, but, I did that.
1:10:34
Tad Eggleston: Oh, no.
1:10:35
Jimmy Gaspero: see Youngs.
1:10:36
Tad Eggleston: Keezy Young's Hello Sunshine, which maybe… might be a little too…
1:10:40
Jimmy Gaspero: old for 13, but I figured…
1:10:43
Tad Eggleston: She…
1:10:44
Jimmy Gaspero: mine.
1:10:46
Tad Eggleston: Not most 13-year-olds.
1:10:48
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, I looked it up, just so… Casio, Ribeo…
1:10:53
Tad Eggleston: narrow. You and I were doing the same thing. Yeah.
1:10:57
Jimmy Gaspero: But that is a comic that I just absolutely loved. So glad it's getting a sequel. Jeremy is a wonderful writer, the artwork in it is fantastic, Cassie's artwork in it, and yeah.
1:11:12
Jimmy Gaspero: I really want to figure out a way to get Charlotte to read it, because I just know she'll… she'll love it.
1:11:18
Tad Eggleston: Just accidentally have copies in every room.
1:11:24
Jimmy Gaspero: But yeah, that's my…
1:11:26
Tad Eggleston: The key is, you can't… I mean, I used to sell music, and what I tell people is, like, don't go, hey Jimmy, you gotta listen to this!
1:11:36
Jimmy Gaspero: Just…
1:11:36
Tad Eggleston: Play it.
1:11:38
Jimmy Gaspero: Just play it.
1:11:41
Jimmy Gaspero: How about you, Amber? What's your thing that you love?
1:11:44
Amber Akin: Oh, gosh,
1:11:46
Amber Akin: So, I think more people should be obsessed with Moomin the way that I'm obsessed with Moomin. I think everyone should read Tuvian Sen's comics, they should read her prose books, they should watch the Moomin cartoon, and then talk to me about it.
1:12:01
Amber Akin: Because she is, like, the cartoonist of all time to me.
1:12:07
Tad Eggleston: You know, I've been looking at it and have not read it yet, so, like…
1:12:16
Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna have to do this.
1:12:17
Amber Akin: You should, they're so…
1:12:19
Tad Eggleston: Drawn it, drawn in quarterly's been… been… And then the nice additions.
1:12:25
Amber Akin: Yes, they're putting out, like, beautiful hardcover editions of the Moomin, like, prose novels, too, and I'm waiting for them to get to Moomin Papa at Sea, because that's my… truly, maybe my favorite book of all time. I think it's a book everyone should read.
1:12:41
Amber Akin: But yeah, their… their collections of the Moomin comics are so good. They're so beautiful. I have them all.
1:12:49
Tad Eggleston: just… just went on my list. You actually, like…
1:12:54
Tad Eggleston: you did what not a lot of people managed to do, which is give me something that I haven't read yet. The even better is when you can manage to give me something that I haven't heard of.
1:13:05
Tad Eggleston: That, that's, that's always, like, a couple of… couple of returning guests, that, that's, like, their goal, is like, okay, gotta come up with something awesome.
1:13:15
Tad Eggleston: Mark Russell actually, like.
1:13:18
Tad Eggleston: Did it, but then tried to use the same one the next time he was on, because he forgot that he'd done it.
1:13:26
Tad Eggleston: Agreed.
1:13:27
Tad Eggleston: That's.
1:13:28
Jimmy Gaspero: rate.
1:13:29
Tad Eggleston: So, my, my, my newer required closing question, and, and like…
1:13:44
Tad Eggleston: I've been doing this for a little less than 5 years now. I mean, obviously, I've been around comics, but, like.
1:13:51
Tad Eggleston: I didn't know that the bar between
1:13:57
Tad Eggleston: being a fan and being part of the club was as simple as turning on record and then posting it to the internet.
1:14:05
Tad Eggleston: But it turns out that it is.
1:14:07
Tad Eggleston: So I've been…
1:14:11
Tad Eggleston: I still… I still won't call myself a comics professional. I don't make enough money, and my Patreons are family.
1:14:19
Tad Eggleston: The 10 bucks a month we pull in.
1:14:25
Tad Eggleston: But… But in my time in the comics community.
1:14:30
Tad Eggleston: I… I feel like I've fallen into it, like, the best possible Twilight Zone episode. Like, the… the number of surreal experiences that I have, the number of people who…
1:14:43
Tad Eggleston: Still feel like they should be…
1:14:48
Tad Eggleston: just names in my favorite books, rather than people that I…
1:14:54
Tad Eggleston: Trade texts about our families, or… Or… during baseball games, or… Whatever.
1:15:04
Tad Eggleston: Hell, I had two cars… two cars break down… well, they didn't break down in the span of a few days. One of them went from…
1:15:15
Tad Eggleston: The deer hit it, and the insurance company was gonna pay for it to, okay, we've looked a little bit more closely, and no, we're gonna…
1:15:25
Tad Eggleston: Hate it when the word is there and then gone.
1:15:29
Tad Eggleston: We're gonna total it.
1:15:33
Tad Eggleston: And the car that we were planning to replace in the summer anyway.
1:15:42
Tad Eggleston: We took to the mechanic to figure out how much longer we had.
1:15:45
Tad Eggleston: before we, like, needed to, needed to, and he was like, no days. You have no days before you… So we went from…
1:15:56
Tad Eggleston: Like, like… on Sunday, We had one car…
1:16:04
Tad Eggleston: That we thought we'd have 7 or 8 more years out of once it got fixed from…
1:16:11
Tad Eggleston: The deer having hit it, but we were expecting it to get fixed after the deer hit it.
1:16:17
Tad Eggleston: And one car that we knew we were… replacing… soon…
1:16:22
Tad Eggleston: But, like, not necessarily immediately soon, and… and… To… to no cars.
1:16:34
Tad Eggleston: And we both drive, like, 25 miles a day to work, so, like, no cars doesn't work.
1:16:40
Tad Eggleston: And because of somebody that I know, because of this podcast.
1:16:46
Tad Eggleston: Who has a brother, who manages…
1:16:51
Tad Eggleston: a VW dealership that their uncle owns.
1:16:58
Tad Eggleston: We got two cars in one afternoon, At a payment that we…
1:17:04
Tad Eggleston: Could just barely pull off on two teachers' salaries.
1:17:09
Tad Eggleston: never would have happened without comics. So, so, like, that's the…
1:17:13
Jimmy Gaspero: That's awesome.
1:17:14
Tad Eggleston: That's the realm of… there's your gamut of various surreal experiences, and here's what I want, is tell me something…
1:17:25
Tad Eggleston: Totally surreal.
1:17:27
Tad Eggleston: That never would have happened if you hadn't been part of… the comics community.
1:17:36
Tad Eggleston: That if you hadn't chosen to be a part of this.
1:17:41
Tad Eggleston: And again, it doesn't have to be as big as cars, and it doesn't have to be, like… it's completely okay if it's…
1:17:48
Tad Eggleston: somebody came up to me and told me they loved my book, or got my autograph, or… I mean, because those are…
1:17:55
Tad Eggleston: I remember the first time I got to sign a comic. It felt good, even though I wasn't asked to sign it, I was like.
1:18:01
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah.
1:18:02
Tad Eggleston: I have writing in American Nature Presents. I'm here at C2E2 with a friend of mine. I am going to grab a copy from
1:18:11
Tad Eggleston: Greg and fake, and I'm gonna walk it over to my friend's table, sign it in front of him, and hand it to him.
1:18:18
Jimmy Gaspero: Do you want to go first, Amber? Do you have something?
1:18:23
Amber Akin: I guess, like, the somethings haven't really happened yet, since this is… this is my first foray into, like, professional comics. It does still…
1:18:33
Tad Eggleston: So if… I should have asked more about your background. I forgot one of my other favorite questions, which is, give me your comics biography. We'll have to do that next time.
1:18:43
Tad Eggleston: Did you get to start out with, like, the…
1:18:47
Tad Eggleston: the published paper cuts book, or have you been doing, like, the indie comic scene?
1:18:53
Amber Akin: This is… this is, like, my first, like, real thing. I've, like, drawn comics, but not really… I haven't really printed any, or sold.
1:19:01
Tad Eggleston: You didn't even put them together at Kinko's and take them to the… to the library con.
1:19:05
Amber Akin: I made a couple comics when I was, like, in first grade.
1:19:09
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
1:19:10
Amber Akin: first grade teacher really entertained me and let me read them to the class, but since then, it's been… Love that. It hasn't been a lot.
1:19:17
Tad Eggleston: That's a pretty surreal experience, actually. That's cool.
1:19:20
Amber Akin: Crazy! I still… I'm… I'm having an event at one of my favorite places in the world, the Eric Carl Museum of Picture Book Art.
1:19:28
Tad Eggleston: Nice.
1:19:29
Amber Akin: even, like…
1:19:30
Jimmy Gaspero: 3 years ago, if someone told me that that was gonna happen, and I was gonna go sign books at the Carl, I would have been like, that's a cruel joke to play on me. Yeah. That's a messed up thing to dangle in front of me.
1:19:44
Jimmy Gaspero: For listeners, Amber will be there April 25th from 2 to 2.30, story time with Amber Aiken.
1:19:52
Amber Akin: See me?
1:19:52
Tad Eggleston: Really quick, just because my listeners are all over the world.
1:19:57
Tad Eggleston: Not more than a few of them in any given place over… all over the world, but they are all over the world. Where is the Eric Carter Museum?
1:20:05
Amber Akin: It is in Amherst, Massachusetts, not very far from the UMass Amherst College campus, so if you.
1:20:12
Tad Eggleston: You're all right.
1:20:13
Amber Akin: in the Western Mass area, come through, and I'll… I'll sign a book for you.
1:20:18
Tad Eggleston: It's crazy.
1:20:19
Jimmy Gaspero: I've told this story on my, on the Crypted Creator Corner, but your listeners haven't heard it, so…
1:20:30
Tad Eggleston: I mean, there might be a couple of my listeners that listen to your show more than my show.
1:20:34
Jimmy Gaspero: I… I don't know about that.
1:20:38
Jimmy Gaspero: This is my side.
1:20:40
Tad Eggleston: I'm hoping that you'll wind up bringing in listeners?
1:20:43
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, I hope so. But my story, my surreal story that happened because of comics is,
1:20:51
Jimmy Gaspero: It's more funny than dramatic, but it's just one of my favorite comics.
1:20:57
Jimmy Gaspero: comic-related stories. My brother and I, every year, we go to… I'm the oldest of three, so my brother Bobby is,
1:21:06
Jimmy Gaspero: Three years younger than me. And Bobby and I, for the past several years, have been going to Baltimore Comic-Con. And, we absolutely love it.
1:21:15
Tad Eggleston: I need to get to.
1:21:17
Jimmy Gaspero: It's fantastic, and, we went one year, and my brother is a HUGE
1:21:24
Jimmy Gaspero: Cullen Bunn fan. I mean, I love Cullen… I love Cullen's work as well. He's such a prolific comic book writer, I love a lot… you know, I love the stuff he writes.
1:21:34
Jimmy Gaspero: But he was gonna be at Baltimore one year, and my brother was very excited to meet him and get a bunch of stuff signed, and that was, like, one of the… one of the great things about having the podcast.
1:21:47
Jimmy Gaspero: And seeing creators, and getting stuff signed, and, you know, telling folks that we really care about the stuff that they write, and it's been an amazing experience, like…
1:21:56
Jimmy Gaspero: you know, my brother's also a big Greg Pock fan, so we got to meet Greg one year, and all that stuff. But this year, the goal was, out of all the stuff we had to get signed, and the people we wanted to meet, my brother was just number one on his list, Cullen Bunn, Cullen Bunn.
1:22:13
Jimmy Gaspero: So, when we got there, got in line, I… I said, I'm gonna go run to the bar across the street.
1:22:21
Jimmy Gaspero: From the convention center.
1:22:23
Jimmy Gaspero: And I'm gonna grab a beer. I said… I asked my brother if he wanted any, come with me, and, you know, maybe we could get somebody to hold our place in line, because we got there before it opened. He's like, no, just go ahead, you go. I said, fine, I'm just gonna go over and sit at the bar and grab a beer, and I'll be back.
1:22:38
Jimmy Gaspero: And I go and sit down at the bar, and I…
1:22:43
Jimmy Gaspero: start talking to some of the people at the bar, and I… I… I recognized the person to my left, and I was saying something to the bartender, I said, there's a lot of people around here, some of them are dressed in costume, what's going on? And they're like, oh, it's the…
1:22:58
Jimmy Gaspero: you know, Baltimore Comic-Con. I'm like, oh yeah, well, that's what I'm here for. I didn't realize, like, people dressed up, and I said, my brother's really excited to meet one particular person. And the guy sitting to my left turns, he goes, oh, who's your… I'm going to the convention too, who's your brother gonna… really excited to meet? And I said, Cullen Bunn!
1:23:16
Jimmy Gaspero: And I… because I thought it was him, and he puts his hand out, and he goes, I'm Cullen Bunn! So I… I shook his hand, and I talked to him, and I took a, you know, a selfie, I'm like, can I get a picture of us, and I'm like, I'm a big fan of your work, my brother is too, we can't wait to see you once it gets started and gets in there.
1:23:34
Jimmy Gaspero: And so then I finish my beer, I pay, I go back over, I get in line.
1:23:38
Jimmy Gaspero: We, we go, we get in when the door's open, we walk around, and then,
1:23:43
Jimmy Gaspero: I said, oh, hey, let's go, I think Cullen… the sign said Cullen Bunn was signing at, like, 1 o'clock at the Aftershock booth.
1:23:51
Jimmy Gaspero: And .
1:23:53
Tad Eggleston: The Aftershock booth.
1:23:56
Jimmy Gaspero: We walk… we walk over there and see him, and he's… there's a table and, like, a ton of books, you know, and… and as soon as we start to walk over, he stands up and he goes, Jimmy! My friend! Am I… the look… if I would have had a hidden camera to capture the look
1:24:16
Jimmy Gaspero: On my brother's face.
1:24:17
Jimmy Gaspero: that Cullen Bunn just acted like we were long-lost buddies. It was…
1:24:23
Jimmy Gaspero: Well, it's one of the things that I hope I remember for a long time.
1:24:29
Amber Akin: That's so cool.
1:24:31
Tad Eggleston: I totally get that, in part because of some of my actual friends, where, like, I'll bump into somebody at the con, and I'll be walking around with them, and they won't, like, realize that
1:24:44
Tad Eggleston: Because somehow, even some of my older… like, if I bump into an old acquaintance that, like, was a comic shop, you know, because I've worked at a couple of comic shops, and you get to know people in comic shops, so I'll bump into somebody that just knows me as the guy at the counter at the comic shop from before…
1:24:59
Tad Eggleston: I had the podcast, and we'll be walking around, and walking around, and I'll say, like, hey, Tom, how's it going? And they'll talk back to me, and, like, we'll keep walking, and they'll be like, that was Tom King! I'm like.
1:25:11
Tad Eggleston: Oh yeah, yeah, that's right, you don't… you don't know this part of my life!
1:25:19
Jimmy Gaspero: Ugh, that's funny.
1:25:20
Tad Eggleston: Well, you know, like, the psychiatrist that I was talking about, he threw his own con last year.
1:25:31
Tad Eggleston: And I think is planning to again this year, because now he owns two comic shops, too, because…
1:25:36
Tad Eggleston: Being a full-time psychologist, and the dean of a school of psychology, and… and…
1:25:43
Tad Eggleston: having his group that does psychological presentations at various Comic-Cons wasn't enough for him. He bought a couple of comic shops.
1:25:53
Jimmy Gaspero: Wow.
1:25:55
Tad Eggleston: Modern Age Comics in, Algonquin, Illinois.
1:25:58
Jimmy Gaspero: Oh, nice. Worked a plug-in, nice.
1:26:01
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, they're regulars on the show.
1:26:05
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, that's fantastic.
1:26:07
Tad Eggleston: But so, he was having me introduce him to people at… at…
1:26:13
Tad Eggleston: C2E2, and for the most part, I…
1:26:17
Tad Eggleston: you know, it was going up to booths, so when I forgot to, like, make it clear, clear who they were, he'd be able to look down at their comics and whatnot.
1:26:27
Tad Eggleston: you know, and then make the pitch about, I'm having my con here to raise money for these things, and to help local creators, etc. Would you be interested? But somebody that we bumped into
1:26:43
Tad Eggleston: just walking, you know, away from his booth, was Eddie Campbell, who I neglected to introduce as Eddie Campbell. I just said, oh, Edgar, meet my friend Eddie!
1:26:55
Tad Eggleston: Eddie, this is Edgar, he's doing… you know, and we traded the stuff, and talked for a few minutes, that sort of thing, and…
1:27:02
Tad Eggleston: And, like, as we're walking away, Edgar's like…
1:27:07
Tad Eggleston: I feel like I should know who that… who is? I'm like, that's Eddie Campbell. He's like, Eddie Campbell, Eddie Campbell. I'm like, oh, he drew from hell. He's like, Eddie Campbell!
1:27:23
Tad Eggleston: I'm like, oh, oh yeah, I guess, I guess…
1:27:27
Tad Eggleston: You know, I've been seeing him at, like, Eddie's one of the guys that I talked to a few times at Cake before I was even… because Eddie's in Chicago now.
1:27:36
Tad Eggleston: So, like, he does the… the… the IndyCon in Chicago.
1:27:42
Tad Eggleston: As well as the bigger con, and that sort of thing, so… I knew him from just…
1:27:48
Tad Eggleston: Talking to him in his booth at the small con.
1:27:51
Tad Eggleston: Before I even had him on the podcast, so… so, like, it didn't, didn't, like, click to me. Oh, wait! This is… Eddie Campbell!
1:28:05
Tad Eggleston: But, yeah, that's the cool thing about comics. Everybody…
1:28:09
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah.
1:28:10
Tad Eggleston: You know? It is?
1:28:11
Tad Eggleston: You know, I've heard from people who…
1:28:15
Jimmy Gaspero: Like, like, I had somebody tell me a story about losing an Eisner one year to Will Eisner.
1:28:23
Tad Eggleston: So he couldn't really… really complain too much. Yeah, can't complain too much.
1:28:28
Amber Akin: Also, that's, like, as cool as winning an Eisner to me.
1:28:33
Jimmy Gaspero: It's like, the one time I was nominated for an Eisner, I lost, but Will Eisner won in my category.
1:28:44
Jimmy Gaspero: Ugh.
1:28:44
Tad Eggleston: So, yeah, no, I can start… I can swap stories for too long, so I won't let myself go down that rabbit hole, at least on the air. Let me wrap up! For Jimmy Gasparo, for Amber Aiken, the book is…
1:29:02
Tad Eggleston: Penny and the Yeti, the final order cutoff is right around the corner. I know you emailed it to me earlier.
1:29:09
Jimmy Gaspero: Yeah, March 30th.
1:29:11
Tad Eggleston: March 30th, and it will be in stores on…
1:29:14
Jimmy Gaspero: April 21st.
1:29:16
Tad Eggleston: There you go. So, so you got about a,
1:29:18
Tad Eggleston: a month to tell your comic shop, I want Penny and the Yeti. Thankfully, it's a graphic novel, so it's less likely to… to… to get underprinted and be impossible to get if you don't forget
1:29:30
Tad Eggleston: Remember to tell your commerce shop. But really, really, because we'd like to see Jimmy and Amber make some actual money, tell your library that they should get.
1:29:39
Tad Eggleston: Penny and the Yeti, and or convince your kids' teachers that they need
1:29:45
Tad Eggleston: class copies of Penny and the Yeti. This is where the real money is made in kids' comics.
1:29:53
Amber Akin: We love the library.
1:29:55
Tad Eggleston: We love.
1:29:55
Jimmy Gaspero: the library.
1:29:57
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but yeah, for Jimmy Gasparo and Amber Aiken, this has been 22 Panels, and we will see you after the next page.