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With Great Power #354... 22 Panels with Matt Wagner & Kelley Jones · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:02
  Tad Eggleston: Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels, and, returning are our Kelley Jones and Matt Wagner.
• 0:13
  Tad Eggleston: I don't even know how to introduce you guys. There's so many platitudes that I could put at your feet, so I'm just gonna say…
• 0:19
  Kelley Jones: to hear.
• 0:19
  Tad Eggleston: Dude's doing…
• 0:20
  Kelley Jones: I wanted…
• 0:20
  Tad Eggleston: You wanna hear them all?
• 0:21
  Matt Wagner: I mean, but… Focus on Dracula.
• 0:24
  Tad Eggleston: Great time for you to talk.
• 0:27
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm already gonna have to ask you about early in your career, just because, like, it popped up in my head.
• 0:32
  Tad Eggleston: earlier today, because we have a, what we call the Heroes of Bronze Book Club, and today we started reading,
• 0:40
  Tad Eggleston: Secret Wars and Crisis on Infinite Earths side by side.
• 0:46
  Tad Eggleston: But because we're doing that, we're also starting to flip through the comics that come out around that time. It's like, oh my god, like, everybody thinks of 86 being the year that comics change, but like…
• 0:55
  Tad Eggleston: There was a 2- or 3-year run into…
• 0:58
  Matt Wagner: Hmm.
• 0:58
  Kelley Jones: I'd agree.
• 0:59
  Tad Eggleston: 86, and you guys were both working then, so…
• 1:02
  Kelley Jones: Yes, we were.
• 1:03
  Tad Eggleston: after we talk Dracula, I might ask about that, but… but let's… let's… let's first say, Dracula, the Undead, Book 4, your final volume of your Dracula, is coming to Kickstarter soon.
• 1:18
  Tad Eggleston: Do you guys have.
• 1:19
  Matt Wagner: October 1st. October 1st.
• 1:20
  Tad Eggleston: October 1st!
• 1:21
  Matt Wagner: It's on Halloween, which is very, apropos.
• 1:24
  Tad Eggleston: Very apropos. So, October 1st, wrapping on Halloween, where did we leave? We left Dracula, Volume 3 was The Brides, right?
• 1:33
  Matt Wagner: Yep. No, that was Volume 2. Volume 3? That was Volume 2.
• 1:36
  Tad Eggleston: the count. Right, so… so Volume 2, he'd, he'd…
• 1:42
  Tad Eggleston: Should have re-read it, I didn't reread it, I'm so sorry.
• 1:46
  Tad Eggleston: He, he, he, remind me where, where we left.
• 1:50
  Tad Eggleston: our good count.
• 1:51
  Matt Wagner: Well, at the end of Book 3, it's basically the end of the novel. The structure for Book 3 is that it takes place the same time as the actual original Braum Stoker novel. Anybody that's read the novel knows that
• 2:04
  Matt Wagner: one of the frustrating aspects is, after that terrific opening at the castle where Jonathan Harker travels all the way from London to Transylvania, once…
• 2:13
  Matt Wagner: Count Dracula makes it back to England, he's offstage for pretty much the rest of the book. I mean, he makes a few very brief appearances, but other than that, he's kind of this sinister, unseen force.
• 2:26
  Matt Wagner: And, so our third volume shows you what he's doing when the, British heroes are, picking up his trail and starting to pursue him and starting to try and frustrate his plans.
• 2:39
  Matt Wagner: And so, Book 3 ends at the same time as the novel, which is, there's this exciting chase to the castle, Dracula's fleeing back to the castle.
• 2:49
  Matt Wagner: To replenish his power, the sun is on the verge of setting, which means he'll reattain all of his vampiric might.
• 2:56
  Matt Wagner: And the heroes are closing in, and they finally open his coffin and fall upon him with a kukri knife and a bowie knife.
• 3:04
  Matt Wagner: And, what's… Shocking about that, and doesn't make any goddamn sense, is…
• 3:10
  Matt Wagner: Van Helsing has outlined several times, and we've actually seen one instance of how you dispose of a vampire. Wooden stake through the heart.
• 3:18
  Matt Wagner: Decapitate the head, fill the mouth with communion wafers, burn the body if you can. And they don't… they don't do that at the end of the novel.
• 3:28
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, they're… they're… they're panicked, they're stressed, they're… they're not…
• 3:32
  Matt Wagner: Whatever, but the point is, they do this just as the sun is setting, and he, to their eyes, he crumbles into dust.
• 3:41
  Matt Wagner: Which they view as his destruction. But, one of his vampiric powers is that he can transform into a mist, and a mist and dust are pretty damn similar.
• 3:51
  Tad Eggleston: Pretty similar.
• 3:52
  Matt Wagner: So, so for Book 4, our presumption is that, no, he survived. He… the sun went down, he reattained his powers, he got the hell out of there. What does he do after that, is the whole question.
• 4:05
  Tad Eggleston: So we're in uncharted territory in Book 4.
• 4:08
  Matt Wagner: Yes, absolutely.
• 4:08
  Tad Eggleston: Is it… is it what he did immediately after that, or are you gonna take us through the next 200 years?
• 4:13
  Matt Wagner: Not 200 years, but it's not… it is kind of immediate after that, yeah.
• 4:18
  Tad Eggleston: Good.
• 4:19
  Matt Wagner: What he does, how he survives that attack, and, and,
• 4:24
  Matt Wagner: What he does, in response to that attack.
• 4:28
  Tad Eggleston: Right. I mean, I can't even…
• 4:33
  Tad Eggleston: I have enjoyed seeing your perspective on the other sides of… of…
• 4:41
  Tad Eggleston: the existing stories, the fleshing out of the history to feed into the story. So it's kind of cool to now… now get to look forward to seeing
• 4:55
  Tad Eggleston: a new ending. That this… this gets to be the Matt… Matt and Kelley…
• 4:59
  Kelley Jones: It's not a new ending.
• 5:01
  Tad Eggleston: Maybe it's not a new ending. Yeah. Okay, now you're messing with me.
• 5:10
  Tad Eggleston: Now you're messing with me, but I still like it.
• 5:13
  Kelley Jones: It's good messing. It will be as satisfying a read as you've had in any comic in your life, and that I can guarantee.
• 5:22
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, those are pretty big words, Kelley.
• 5:25
  Kelley Jones: They're… they are… really not.
• 5:28
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 5:29
  Kelley Jones: It's, it's when you get it, you'll go, this is the way comics should be. This.
• 5:34
  Kelley Jones: And that's due to math. That is due to math.
• 5:37
  Tad Eggleston: Let's do the math.
• 5:38
  Matt Wagner: But, you know, and after this long, after these three books, hundreds and hundreds of pages now, it was pretty important that we stick the landing, and I feel like we really do.
• 5:47
  Kelley Jones: All comics are based on story. Every comic is based on story. If the story's not there, it doesn't matter how great the art is. The story is here.
• 5:58
  Matt Wagner: Contrary to what.
• 5:58
  Kelley Jones: I said that time.
• 5:59
  Matt Wagner: Scarlett Knight have to say about it.
• 6:01
  Kelley Jones: I say that as a fan. No, I say that as a total fan. I'm… I've read comics.
• 6:05
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, no, I, I, I…
• 6:07
  Kelley Jones: Art is…
• 6:08
  Kelley Jones: secondary to me to the story, by far. If the story's great, it can be crayon stick figures by a 6th grader, but the story's gotta be there.
• 6:18
  Tad Eggleston: Right, I, I, I…
• 6:20
  Kelley Jones: It's the stories here.
• 6:21
  Tad Eggleston: I have lost.
• 6:22
  Matt Wagner: And ideally, ideally, the art and the story are in a fine harmony with.
• 6:26
  Tad Eggleston: Very much intertwined, yeah. Yeah, no, I have often maintained that while I… I understand not wanting to answer who's more important, the writer or the artist, if only because the artist does so much of the story.
• 6:41
  Kelley Jones: Yeah, I will… Honestly, it's the writer.
• 6:45
  Tad Eggleston: Well, that's very kind of you, Kelley.
• 6:47
  Kelley Jones: The only thing that's remembered are the great stories, and then the art.
• 6:51
  Matt Wagner: They, they do, they do have the… the stories have the resonance, for sure.
• 6:54
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 6:54
  Kelley Jones: That's how I am. I'm more a fan than a pro. I can tell you easily, it's the stories.
• 7:01
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. I just, I, like, I want to give the artists more credit for the stories, Kelley.
• 7:06
  Kelley Jones: Well, I appreciate that.
• 7:09
  Tad Eggleston: Kirby's a Kobe Water. You know, it's not as simple as, you know, it's hard to delineate the roles, but where I was going is I do agree that one of the reasons that writers
• 7:21
  Tad Eggleston: wind up getting a different level of credit, etc, is, like, the art can be beautiful as hell, and if it doesn't tell a story, it doesn't matter.
• 7:30
  Matt Wagner: It's empty. It's empty, yeah.
• 7:32
  Tad Eggleston: You brought up McFarlane. I say, like, you look at the first decade of image, and that was what took them
• 7:41
  Tad Eggleston: that was the lesson that they kind of had to learn. You know, they had a lot of beautiful art that didn't necessarily tell great stories, and when they started bringing in writers, too, and thinking more about stories.
• 7:54
  Tad Eggleston: Is when the company blew up.
• 7:57
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, obviously they blew up out of the gate, but… but that was the collector market, and it's weird.
• 8:03
  Matt Wagner: I was more referencing, you know, Todd had a very famous thing recently where he talked about how the art is the only thing that's important.
• 8:09
  Tad Eggleston: No.
• 8:11
  Tad Eggleston: I missed that.
• 8:11
  Matt Wagner: It's utterly ridiculous, you know, it's,
• 8:14
  Kelley Jones: I… I go back to… Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Shakespeare, Dickens.
• 8:21
  Kelley Jones: I… I don't care. They weren't drawn.
• 8:24
  Kelley Jones: Their stories are phenomenal.
• 8:26
  Tad Eggleston: Well, but he eats…
• 8:27
  Kelley Jones: visualize, you can see it. If Matt wrote this, and he wouldn't, but if Matt wrote this prose, it'd be through-the-roof awesome. I measure my excitement just simply working with him.
• 8:39
  Kelley Jones: based on, I'm reading it, nothing's drawn yet.
• 8:43
  Kelley Jones: I know this is good. I've read too much. I've been involved in too much.
• 8:49
  Kelley Jones: So, it's not being.
• 8:50
  Tad Eggleston: But hopefully you can also see how you're gonna drop.
• 8:52
  Kelley Jones: It's not… it's just… the reality is…
• 8:56
  Kelley Jones: If it's… if the story's not there, I don't care about the art.
• 9:00
  Kelley Jones: I just don't.
• 9:02
  Kelley Jones: If the story's there, I'll reread it and reread it and re-read it.
• 9:07
  Tad Eggleston: Yep.
• 9:09
  Tad Eggleston: Nope.
• 9:10
  Kelley Jones: It's… that's… the collective… thing that Jung had always said was the story, and he's right.
• 9:18
  Tad Eggleston: So How much of the story has been done for how long?
• 9:24
  Tad Eggleston: with.
• 9:24
  Matt Wagner: Well, we work, we had Book 1 done before we launched the campaign, but then, ever since then, we do each succeeding volume in the year between the campaigns. So we are now working on Book 4, even though the campaign's getting ready to launch.
• 9:40
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 9:40
  Matt Wagner: off to the printer for a while yet, so…
• 9:42
  Tad Eggleston: So are you still writing it?
• 9:44
  Matt Wagner: Oh, no, no, no, no, I gave him the full script, I think just before New Year's.
• 9:50
  Tad Eggleston: That's what I meant. I was asking more Kelley, like, how long since you got to see.
• 9:57
  Kelley Jones: On the last… on the last…
• 9:59
  Kelley Jones: on the last day I inked page 3.
• 10:03
  Matt Wagner: Book 3.
• 10:04
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 10:04
  Kelley Jones: Book 3, for the one that's coming out now.
• 10:07
  Tad Eggleston: Well, Kelley's art is just so good, you do a book and a page.
• 10:10
  Kelley Jones: About 3 or 4 days later, I started Book 4.
• 10:15
  Tad Eggleston: So, I mean, you said that Matt's… Matt's work is… so, when you, when you got the final script.
• 10:23
  Kelley Jones: Well, I'd read it a few times.
• 10:24
  Tad Eggleston: Let's talk about the reef.
• 10:25
  Kelley Jones: And so it had already about halfway drawn itself.
• 10:30
  Kelley Jones: Okay. I mean, I just had to put it on paper. It's the physical now.
• 10:34
  Tad Eggleston: But I was asking, like, when you got it, and you read it the first time, how good is this volume?
• 10:40
  Kelley Jones: I… think that I measure anything that's an epic.
• 10:46
  Kelley Jones: On how well it finishes, how much it satisfies, and… It blew me away.
• 10:55
  Matt Wagner: We both agreed Book 4 is the most evil of all of them. It is, but…
• 11:00
  Kelley Jones: It felt to me in… in canon to Stoker's Dracula. Nothing's out of what… I feel… Stokers… world was.
• 11:16
  Kelley Jones: And it is incredibly filled with malice.
• 11:19
  Kelley Jones: And… that is the character. It was a perfect marriage of…
• 11:25
  Kelley Jones: Him as a vampire, and him as Vlad Tepesh himself.
• 11:30
  Kelley Jones: Nothing was different. It was now…
• 11:33
  Matt Wagner: Yeah, we're not redefining this character, we are hyper-defining it.
• 11:37
  Kelley Jones: No, and so when I read it, I just…
• 11:39
  Matt Wagner: focusing in more and telling the things that Aroni hinted at in the book, because there's lots of this where, you know,
• 11:48
  Matt Wagner: you'll get a little fragment of something about Dracula, and it's like, oh, why is that? You know? We're exploring all those. And of course, with this one, we go past the ending of the novel, so
• 12:00
  Matt Wagner: We are expanding in that regard, but at the same time, it's, it should feel… this last volume should feel very familiar, in many narrative ways.
• 12:12
  Kelley Jones: And I felt…
• 12:13
  Kelley Jones: when I read it, I'm not thinking, what do I have to do? How do I visualize? I don't do that. I just react to the emotion of it. And when I read it, I thought.
• 12:25
  Kelley Jones: if this were a film, or a novel, or whatever, it'd knock me out. So…
• 12:31
  Kelley Jones: my first thought is I have to keep up with this. It's in subsequent readings, then you start thinking, well, what… what… how do I do that? But…
• 12:41
  Kelley Jones: No, just as a story.
• 12:44
  Kelley Jones: this was a knockout. It's a knockout easily.
• 12:49
  Kelley Jones: It's one of the best things in comics, but just in general, as an entertainment, it's phenomenal.
• 12:57
  Tad Eggleston: So you guys have spent at least…
• 12:59
  Tad Eggleston: Four years when you're done, maybe five.
• 13:01
  Matt Wagner: Closer, closer to 5, yeah. I would say…
• 13:03
  Kelley Jones: Hey, when we first started talking about it, it was around 2020.
• 13:06
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 13:07
  Kelley Jones: And I… I know that because I was…
• 13:11
  Kelley Jones: All of my frustrations about how the medium was going in what you could do and what you couldn't.
• 13:18
  Kelley Jones: Matt satisfied that by just saying what he wanted to do, and I said, okay, I'm in.
• 13:24
  Kelley Jones: I, I want this.
• 13:27
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 13:27
  Matt Wagner: Yeah, but I will say that when I first told him, I approached him and said, you know, we had always kind of had this thing about wanting to work together, and I said, hey, dude, I think I really got it, what we should do.
• 13:37
  Kelley Jones: No.
• 13:37
  Matt Wagner: And when I told him Dracula, even he says, Dracula? What the hell are we gonna do with Dracula?
• 13:44
  Kelley Jones: Well, honestly, it's been.
• 13:46
  Matt Wagner: So overdone, you know?
• 13:47
  Kelley Jones: When he said… Matt, when you said what you wanted to do, I thought, Grendel, Mage, Batman. That was the three things I thought you would probably throw at me.
• 13:55
  Kelley Jones: And when you said Dracula, that's why I was surprised even more so, because I'm going, it's not your own stuff, it's not even Batman, it's this!
• 14:04
  Matt Wagner: Yes.
• 14:05
  Kelley Jones: And so much has been done, but within… Minutes of you telling me.
• 14:11
  Kelley Jones: what you wanted to do, I was all in.
• 14:14
  Kelley Jones: it was because I… It was all the things
• 14:21
  Kelley Jones: That you were… that you were doing. There were all the things that should have been asked for a hundred years.
• 14:28
  Matt Wagner: And we were both just lucky in that our mutual schedules just lined up. It was the right time for both of us, you know?
• 14:37
  Kelley Jones: I would have canceled shit if I was involved in it.
• 14:43
  Tad Eggleston: Well, that segues to the question I was leading to, though.
• 14:47
  Tad Eggleston: You've both done long runs on monthly comics, so this isn't the first time that you've spent.
• 14:53
  Kelley Jones: no.
• 14:53
  Tad Eggleston: 5-6 years doing one thing, but this is 5-6 years where…
• 14:57
  Kelley Jones: But I've never had this much fun.
• 15:00
  Tad Eggleston: Well, that… that's… that's part of the question, but this is… this is 5 or 6 years where you have something come out once a year, rather than once a month. Talk to me about the differences in how that schedule
• 15:14
  Tad Eggleston: Feels personally, how it affects the creative output, whatever.
• 15:21
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, because it's…
• 15:21
  Kelley Jones: it's a… it's a…
• 15:23
  Kelley Jones: It's as if I were doing a… okay, let's say it's for DC or something. It would be as if I was penciling and inking a six-issue miniseries.
• 15:31
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 15:32
  Kelley Jones: Right? It's 22 pages.
• 15:34
  Kelley Jones: times 2, because I got an income as well.
• 15:38
  Kelley Jones: So, that would be as if, like I said, so that's a lot of comics.
• 15:45
  Kelley Jones: In one comic.
• 15:46
  Kelley Jones: So, I'm busy the whole year making that deadline.
• 15:50
  Matt Wagner: And the big difference is we have to sit on it all year, you know? It's not, you know, with a monthly book, of course, you get to, expose your efforts and get the various feedbacks and reactions and such. No, with this, we have to sit on it for the full year, and then, finally, our readers get to see it, and we get the feedback.
• 16:09
  Kelley Jones: But I always feel.
• 16:10
  Matt Wagner: And that can be frustrating creatively.
• 16:12
  Kelley Jones: It's frustrating in only one regard, is that when you do this, you want feedback, and I have to restrict myself to just Matt and my wife.
• 16:20
  Matt Wagner: And through… up to.
• 16:22
  Kelley Jones: that point, but I know how good it is.
• 16:25
  Kelley Jones: now I can clearly say I know how good it is. And once that happens, then I can sit back and just enjoy that reaction, because I know people…
• 16:36
  Kelley Jones: A 120-page book is a big book.
• 16:39
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 16:39
  Kelley Jones: And to keep hearing people who are receiving it now saying.
• 16:42
  Kelley Jones: I meant to parse it out, but I'm eating… I'm reading it all up in one… one moment.
• 16:47
  Matt Wagner: Tad you have a little visitor there.
• 16:49
  Tad Eggleston: I do. Eddie has joined us.
• 16:51
  Kelley Jones: Yes.
• 16:52
  Tad Eggleston: He's a bit of a brat, so…
• 16:55
  Tad Eggleston: tries to take my microphone and run away, my apologies if I have to chase him.
• 17:01
  Kelley Jones: No, that's fine.
• 17:02
  Tad Eggleston: I had to switch to the headset microphone, because he kept knocking down the table set.
• 17:09
  Tad Eggleston: Only, mind you, when I was using it. Like, if I didn't record anything for a week, it would stay completely upright on the desk.
• 17:17
  Kelley Jones: Nope, that's fine.
• 17:18
  Tad Eggleston: But when you sit down.
• 17:21
  Kelley Jones: Run my house.
• 17:22
  Matt Wagner: I was just saying, Kelly and I are both cat folk as well, so…
• 17:24
  Kelley Jones: Yeah, they run my house.
• 17:26
  Tad Eggleston: Exactly.
• 17:27
  Kelley Jones: I have to shut the door, or I will be assailed by 11 of them.
• 17:30
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, we've only got 4 right now, but we do an ad in the Santos Sisters comic, and when we're trying to figure out how to change it up for the most recent episode.
• 17:44
  Tad Eggleston: My wife added the other 3 cats in, because Eddie's been in the ad forever, and we just changed it to 22 Panels to, you know, now with more cats.
• 17:55
  Matt Wagner: Always a good thing.
• 17:57
  Kelley Jones: Always.
• 17:57
  Tad Eggleston: So… But, how did…
• 18:02
  Tad Eggleston: Kelly in particular, like, how does it change your work routine to… I mean, you've got the same amount of work, but…
• 18:10
  Tad Eggleston: But you have one large deadline. Do you split it up into smaller deadlines for yourself?
• 18:16
  Kelley Jones: Oh, you… I pencil it all, and then I ink it all.
• 18:20
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 18:21
  Matt Wagner: And he sends it to me in, usually, weekly, so about.
• 18:24
  Kelley Jones: Yeah, I sent in whatever.
• 18:25
  Matt Wagner: segment, yeah.
• 18:26
  Kelley Jones: But I like to, matt writes… Clearly.
• 18:32
  Kelley Jones: the whole thing in this very epic form, but he… he writes in chunks, in scenes, in sequences. So I like to… if a sequence is 5 or 6 pages, fine. If it's 12 pages, fine. But they're in sequences, and I like to stay in that, because it's very… the emotion's there.
• 18:52
  Kelley Jones: So I don't… I don't really,
• 18:55
  Kelley Jones: want to send him something until I, in general, get that sequence done.
• 19:01
  Kelley Jones: And then… and then I can move on to the next sequence, because it is… math stuff is very emotional to me. When I read it. It is just sheer emotion.
• 19:12
  Kelley Jones: And… that's Perfect Comics.
• 19:16
  Kelley Jones: Comics should be that way. Any entertainment, actually.
• 19:19
  Kelley Jones: But comics in general should be that way.
• 19:23
  Kelley Jones: Since it's a singular Entertainment, you're by yourself, it's in your head, you hear the voices, you… whatever.
• 19:32
  Kelley Jones: So, I wanna keep that… creatively the same way when I'm doing it.
• 19:39
  Kelley Jones: I think it does add something. That's as about as artsy-fartsy as I get.
• 19:44
  Kelley Jones: But I do think it works, because I'm looking at the results thinking, this is looking pretty good.
• 19:51
  Kelley Jones: Matt… writes in a way that's very visceral.
• 19:57
  Kelley Jones: But he's, I mean, on this enormous scale. What I love about Matt is he's… he's…
• 20:06
  Kelley Jones: when he puts it down, it's there. He's not one of those perfectionist guys who's gotta go on and on, explain every little… it's there.
• 20:14
  Kelley Jones: And… I get frustrated with the people who… who do… I mean… He gets it to me.
• 20:24
  Kelley Jones: And it works better.
• 20:26
  Kelley Jones: And when that happens, I feel it improves my art. Probably because of that.
• 20:32
  Kelley Jones: It's… it's.
• 20:34
  Matt Wagner: Well, because then you're able to bring a lot to the table. Yes. You're able to…
• 20:38
  Kelley Jones: And Mitch McC.
• 20:39
  Matt Wagner: It makes it truly collaborative, you know? It does. He's talking about the fact that my scripts have the action part, the descriptive part, usually just very short and sweet, you know? I'll get into some details here and there, but I mainly just kind of describe what's going on, and what our…
• 20:56
  Kelley Jones: what… it's the dialogue. And I'll read, and he'll say this, this, this, here's where we are, this is what's going on. But the dialogue is pitch perfect.
• 21:05
  Kelley Jones: And when they're speaking, I hear their voices. When they're speaking, I see the action.
• 21:10
  Kelley Jones: When they're speaking, I know who they are.
• 21:14
  Kelley Jones: Because…
• 21:16
  Kelley Jones: I haven't really been with a writer who can write women as well as Matt, and not in some kind of, modernistic way, just how women are.
• 21:27
  Kelley Jones: how he writes… Just how people are.
• 21:31
  Kelley Jones: is, I know these people, even if they're a hundred…
• 21:35
  Kelley Jones: 30 years removed from me. I know them. So once you have that, They start the…
• 21:42
  Kelley Jones: it just happens. There's no res… I don't have to do anything. I can see them. The only research I have to do is what kind of clothing they're wearing, or what kind of the architect… that kind of stuff.
• 21:53
  Matt Wagner: Yeah, yeah.
• 21:54
  Kelley Jones: The hard part's the people, not the other stuff. The other stuff's easy.
• 21:58
  Kelley Jones: So when I have the people, Dracula in particular.
• 22:04
  Kelley Jones: I believe it.
• 22:05
  Kelley Jones: And once you believe it, he's there.
• 22:09
  Matt Wagner: And I love writing his voice, both when he, both when he's speaking and in his captioned narration, because of course, that's something we bring to this iteration of the character as well. The original novel is epistolary, meaning it's all journals and letters.
• 22:24
  Matt Wagner: and, such…
• 22:26
  Matt Wagner: But the voice that's missing is Dracula, you don't get his point of view, which, of course, you know, is endemic to the sort of novel it was at the time, but but in our version, he's the narrator as well, so I get to address his voice on two different stages, basically, you know, what's…
• 22:42
  Matt Wagner: What he's, what he's commenting and narrating, and then how he speaks as well.
• 22:46
  Kelley Jones: And Matt's voice for him is what allows for me to show how awful he is visually.
• 22:53
  Kelley Jones: There's… that… it really is. I… when you hear that, you know, okay, he would… he does not care what we think.
• 23:01
  Matt Wagner: Yes.
• 23:03
  Kelley Jones: He does not care, and so I separate myself from the audience in that sense, and then I just show who he is, because I want people to see that.
• 23:11
  Kelley Jones: I, I do want… for me, it's, horrifying. Personally. I will read this and go, Jesus Christ!
• 23:20
  Matt Wagner: But…
• 23:20
  Kelley Jones: when I do it, and I see it…
• 23:22
  Matt Wagner: He's a real prick.
• 23:23
  Kelley Jones: Oh, the satisfaction!
• 23:26
  Kelley Jones: of seeing a finished page where he's done… or sequence, actually, where he's done what he's on. There's been a couple of scenes…
• 23:34
  Kelley Jones: in each of the volumes where I go, that's just…
• 23:37
  Kelley Jones: Unbelievably good. And I know Matt's not doing that to shock anyone, that's the character. It shocks you, but that's the character.
• 23:45
  Kelley Jones: And that's what makes this Dracula different than any other.
• 23:49
  Kelley Jones: version of him I've seen.
• 23:52
  Matt Wagner: Yeah, you know, I mean, the tendency in almost all of the films is to romanticize the character. You know, since he's the title character, they want to at least have him, you know, have some kind of redemption in his persona, you know, and it's usually…
• 24:07
  Matt Wagner: Expressed romantically towards one of the females in the, storylines.
• 24:12
  Matt Wagner: But that is… that is not there in the book. He is not romantically linked to any of those women. The two main characters are Lucy and Nina, and in so many various film versions, he's…
• 24:25
  Matt Wagner: you know, in love with one of them, or even considers one of them the reincarnation of his, his long-dead wife. Again, none of this is in the book. He preys on Lucy because she's…
• 24:35
  Matt Wagner: The first woman he encounters after the Demeter, the ship carrying his…
• 24:40
  Matt Wagner: 50 crates of Transylvania earth to England, shipwrecks on the northeast coast of England. She's the first woman he meets, he preys on her. And later, once he realizes he has this, group of enemies that are, that are aware of his presence and are…
• 24:55
  Matt Wagner: Pursuing him and seeking to frustrate his schemes, he preys on Mina to weaponize her against, against his enemies. So, no romance. He is…
• 25:04
  Matt Wagner: He is not that kind of character.
• 25:06
  Kelley Jones: I… I see him as first wanting blood, maybe sex, the rest is… he is in charge.
• 25:13
  Matt Wagner: Power, yeah.
• 25:14
  Kelley Jones: Yeah, pure power.
• 25:17
  Tad Eggleston: So, she said…
• 25:18
  Kelley Jones: He doesn't care about… they are simply a means to his end.
• 25:24
  Tad Eggleston: You said that the voices come through. I just, because I'm a nerd, I gotta ask, like, what does Dracula sound like in your head when you're reading Matt's script?
• 25:33
  Matt Wagner: Oh, when he's reading the nice script, okay.
• 25:35
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, Matt can tell me what he sounds like in his head next, but Kelley's gotta tell me first.
• 25:39
  Kelley Jones: I see him as… when he speaks.
• 25:46
  Kelley Jones: It's imperial, no matter who he's talking to.
• 25:51
  Matt Wagner: Yeah.
• 25:51
  Kelley Jones: And… and it doesn't matter if it's the lowest person in his…
• 25:57
  Kelley Jones: Realm, or the… his right arm.
• 26:01
  Kelley Jones: They're the same to him.
• 26:04
  Matt Wagner: Yeah, one of the, for the first, campaign, we produced, a commercial, and we had, we hired a voice actor to read most of the dialogue from page 1, which is all in Dracula's voice, and it's our introduction to him.
• 26:21
  Matt Wagner: And he recorded a couple versions, and one was with the stereotypical Transylvanian accent, you know, he talks like this, you know.
• 26:27
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 26:28
  Matt Wagner: And, of course, that's not in the book either. That stems from Bela Lugosi, and the fact that Bell Lugosi was a Hungarian actor who spoke very little English when he got the role of Dracula on screen.
• 26:39
  Matt Wagner: So his, his speech was naturally, accented. In the book, more than once, Jonathan Harker comments that,
• 26:49
  Matt Wagner: there's…
• 26:51
  Matt Wagner: what he… I think he describes it as a hint of an accent, but that basically Dracula has worked really hard to be able to speak perfect English, because he wants to fit in when he goes to England. He does not want to stand out. He wants to be, he wants the, the power that, the anonymity will give him by fitting in.
• 27:10
  Matt Wagner: So, so we had the voice actor do it again. He was a British guy, and he just did it with his, standard British accent, and that… we thought that worked much better.
• 27:20
  Kelley Jones: And that's correct, because Christopher Lee, when he first did
• 27:23
  Kelley Jones: Dracula for Hammer said exactly what Matt's saying. He speaks perfect English.
• 27:28
  Matt Wagner: Yeah, yeah.
• 27:29
  Kelley Jones: Yeah, he learned to speak perfectly.
• 27:31
  Matt Wagner: Yeah, and to Kelley's point, you know, everything he says is presumptive.
• 27:35
  Kelley Jones: Yeah.
• 27:36
  Matt Wagner: You know, everything he says is like, you know, well, of course this is the way it's gonna handle, work out, because this is…
• 27:42
  Matt Wagner: You know, because I said so, I said so, goddammit, that's it.
• 27:46
  Kelley Jones: God made him the Prince of Wallachia.
• 27:49
  Kelley Jones: So… in his arrogance, he's God.
• 27:55
  Matt Wagner: And then Satan made him something else altogether.
• 27:57
  Kelley Jones: Yeah.
• 27:58
  Matt Wagner: So he's got… he's double loaded.
• 28:04
  Kelley Jones: It's double loaded.
• 28:09
  Tad Eggleston: Three-quarters of the way in, what's been the, best part?
• 28:14
  Tad Eggleston: And I'll let you guys define whether that means the scene…
• 28:18
  Matt Wagner: I think it's the seamlessness of our, of our working relationship and our creative endeavor. Agreed. We are both just so in sync and so on the same page with what this is and what it will be, and, you know, Kelley was, enthusing there about my scripts, you know, I… it's the same for me. When I get art from him, it's…
• 28:37
  Matt Wagner: better than I imagined. You know, I'm writing these scripts specifically to Kelley and what I think Kelley's strengths are, and holy shit, it comes back better than I… better than I could have hoped for. I mean, that's just…
• 28:48
  Matt Wagner: As a writer working with an artist, that is an absolute dream equation, you know?
• 28:53
  Kelley Jones: Well, I have… admired Matt since I started reading his stuff in the early 80s, just as a fanboy.
• 29:01
  Kelley Jones: just reading the comics. And I knew his sister-in-law before he knew his… his wife.
• 29:09
  Kelley Jones: And, I remember how much I liked it before all that, you know, and say that to her. And,
• 29:18
  Kelley Jones: So I always admired what he was doing. I thought it was completely original, and it was a…
• 29:25
  Kelley Jones: mix of mainstream and independent at the same time, and nobody was doing it as well as him. I still feel that way.
• 29:32
  Kelley Jones: It was like, everything you want from a mainstream, everything you want from the independent, none of it compromised.
• 29:39
  Kelley Jones: So, to be able to work with someone like that was…
• 29:45
  Kelley Jones: It was the best thing ever.
• 29:47
  Kelley Jones: And I didn't think I would get
• 29:49
  Kelley Jones: this. I thought… I had thought he would say, hey, I got a Grendel story, or I have a Batman thing, and I was ready for that. I didn't expect something wholly new from something I knew so well. This is the best thing I've been on, because I, one.
• 30:05
  Kelley Jones: matt brings actual literature and art to this.
• 30:10
  Kelley Jones: The other is, I love Dracula.
• 30:12
  Kelley Jones: I love this whole thing. I… I did not think I would get that.
• 30:18
  Kelley Jones: I never even thought of it that way. I just knew when I read it, I went…
• 30:23
  Kelley Jones: At a certain period in career.
• 30:25
  Kelley Jones: You're usually… you're judged on what you did early that everyone got to know you for.
• 30:30
  Kelley Jones: And…
• 30:31
  Kelley Jones: that is what you always have to live up to. I see people have a hard time with it. The beauty of this is, when you know you're doing your best stuff, your best work, your best stories at this side of your career.
• 30:44
  Kelley Jones: That's the joy.
• 30:45
  Matt Wagner: Yeah, I'm 100% with him on that.
• 30:48
  Tad Eggleston: It's so…
• 30:50
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, you both talked about working together being that important, but we're wrapping up this story. Are you keeping the band together? Do you have another idea?
• 31:01
  Matt Wagner: Oh, we will, yeah.
• 31:02
  Tad Eggleston: We don't, we don't.
• 31:03
  Matt Wagner: quite know what it is yet. And I will say,
• 31:07
  Matt Wagner: Book 4, if we end up deciding we want to do some more Dracula, we could.
• 31:12
  Tad Eggleston: That's insane.
• 31:12
  Matt Wagner: if that's where Book 4 and our association with Dracula ends, that's damn good.
• 31:17
  Tad Eggleston: Twisting.
• 31:17
  Matt Wagner: Well, so… It is.
• 31:19
  Kelley Jones: My wife is insisting I keep working with Matt.
• 31:23
  Kelley Jones: I'm serious. She hasn't seen me this happy over this long a period. From 2020 till now, she has not seen me this happy.
• 31:31
  Tad Eggleston: That's a… that's… that's the sort of thing that I love to hear, because…
• 31:36
  Matt Wagner: So, you know, again, the, Book 4 starts on October 1st and will wrap, on Halloween. The following year, in October, we will launch the campaign for the big fatty omnibus edition of all four volumes.
• 31:50
  Matt Wagner: And so that… this gives us.
• 31:52
  Tad Eggleston: A, that means you've got an excuse to come back again.
• 31:55
  Matt Wagner: Yes.
• 31:56
  Tad Eggleston: I've been kind of waiting for that.
• 31:58
  Matt Wagner: This gives us plenty of time to discuss, kind of, what our future is going to amount to creatively, you know, what does the future hold? I mean, yeah, it's… neither of us want to give up this working relationship in any fashion.
• 32:12
  Kelley Jones: No way, and… and yes, I don't mind a nice little vacation after this, because it has been 5 years.
• 32:19
  Matt Wagner: 5 and 10 tiers, 5 and 10 tiers, yep.
• 32:21
  Kelley Jones: So I don't mind if I told my wife.
• 32:24
  Kelley Jones: we're gonna go do something, but then I gotta go back to it. She's been insisting on it.
• 32:30
  Kelley Jones: Haha, good.
• 32:30
  Matt Wagner: This is…
• 32:31
  Tad Eggleston: Can I just… can I just toss out, like, Matt's an artist in his own right, so I think, I think you should write a story for him, even if it's not…
• 32:38
  Tad Eggleston: Epic, epic level, you know?
• 32:40
  Kelley Jones: No way.
• 32:48
  Kelley Jones: No, I know.
• 32:49
  Kelley Jones: In fact, I enjoy my place.
• 32:51
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 32:53
  Tad Eggleston: So that… both… both this period being good for you and harking back to… to where you…
• 33:01
  Tad Eggleston: Where you were, like I said earlier this morning, we started talking about
• 33:06
  Tad Eggleston: Secret Wars and… and Crisis Infinite Earths on our… Heroes and Bronze Book Club.
• 33:14
  Tad Eggleston: Which had me fall down a rabbit hole and just look week by week at the comics that came out from, like, 1983 through 1986, and realize that as much… as much as looking back, we see that era and think of
• 33:30
  Tad Eggleston: Think of Watchmen and Dark Knight as these big, huge turning points, like…
• 33:35
  Tad Eggleston: They might have been touchstones, but, like, going into that was… was…
• 33:42
  Tad Eggleston: just, I mean, it was just an incredibly transformative era in comics with interesting stuff going on. Matt, you were getting both… I didn't realize you got Grendel and Mage going at the same time at Kameko?
• 33:54
  Matt Wagner: Yeah.
• 33:56
  Tad Eggleston: That just blows my mind.
• 33:59
  Matt Wagner: Well, Grendel was a… Grendel was a backup feature in Mage, and, you know, truthfully, it was…
• 34:04
  Matt Wagner: It was a very, you know, I was young and very on fire creatively, and.
• 34:09
  Tad Eggleston: That's really great.
• 34:09
  Matt Wagner: to be able to exercise those two completely different narratives, you know?
• 34:14
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 34:14
  Matt Wagner: Stop and put on a different hat for the end of every issue, you know?
• 34:18
  Matt Wagner: Yeah, it was, it was a very fertile time for me, creatively, you know. And,
• 34:25
  Matt Wagner: I think, you know, you look around, you know, the Hernandez brothers were doing Love and Rockets, and Sim was really ramping up Cerebus, and it was, as you said, a very,
• 34:40
  Tad Eggleston: brittle time.
• 34:41
  Matt Wagner: A fertile time, an expansive time, you know? You were talking there about, Secret Wars and, Crisis, you know, those were enormous.
• 34:52
  Matt Wagner: publishing events.
• 34:55
  Tad Eggleston: Yep.
• 34:56
  Matt Wagner: And yet, at the same time, kind of my crowd?
• 34:58
  Matt Wagner: We weren't paying attention to that at all.
• 35:00
  Kelley Jones: No.
• 35:02
  Matt Wagner: We were doing our own thing, and we were looking at the people that were doing the sort of stuff that we did, you know, and
• 35:08
  Tad Eggleston: But at the time.
• 35:09
  Matt Wagner: We were aware of it, and we were aware of the effect it was having on the industry, and of course, you know, helped keep a lot of comic book shops in the red, in the black.
• 35:20
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, the black is better.
• 35:21
  Matt Wagner: Tony had eyes for the sort of shit that we were doing, you know, so…
• 35:24
  Tad Eggleston: Kelley, I noticed as I was going through, you were working… you were, I think, inking ROM and drawing Micronauts?
• 35:35
  Kelley Jones: I did one issue as, of Ram over Salbusemo.
• 35:39
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 35:39
  Kelley Jones: And I was doing.
• 35:41
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, then I just happened to choose the right one.
• 35:43
  Kelley Jones: Right, and, right, but what was going on was… During the very period
• 35:49
  Kelley Jones: Matt was talking about, I was leaving… I had done, Micronauts as an inker.
• 35:57
  Kelley Jones: And then they turned it over to me as a penciler. But then I was… when I was transition… what had happened was Marv Wolfman was desperate for me to do Teen Titans at that.
• 36:07
  Tad Eggleston: Oh.
• 36:07
  Kelley Jones: mid-80s.
• 36:08
  Kelley Jones: And there was a…
• 36:10
  Matt Wagner: I don't think you've ever told me this, that's cool.
• 36:11
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I didn't realize that.
• 36:12
  Kelley Jones: he was really after me to do that, and he was fighting with DC, who… and Len Ween, at the same time, was desperate for me to do Swamp Thing, so they started fighting over… I did not know this.
• 36:25
  Matt Wagner: Helen Marr fight. Awesome.
• 36:28
  Kelley Jones: They were going at it, and I had done one Teen Titans story, which was…
• 36:33
  Kelley Jones: But Mark, for whatever reason, loved it. And he said, this is the guy I want to take over.
• 36:38
  Kelley Jones: And… He really was fighting with the editor there.
• 36:43
  Kelley Jones: The editor said, well, I think he's more inclined to the kind of stuff that I do now, and she was fighting with him over it. Len then came in and wanted me to do Swamp Thing, because Riteson had quit. They were doing something, and he quit.
• 36:57
  Kelley Jones: And Paul Levitt said, If Bernie's not doing it, we're not doing it.
• 37:03
  Kelley Jones: And… in all of that, dan Juergens was to do Deadman.
• 37:11
  Kelley Jones: And he quit to do Nightwing, because there's far more money in doing Nightwing than there is Deadman.
• 37:17
  Kelley Jones: And so, she just sent me Deadman and said.
• 37:22
  Kelley Jones: That… Marvie's busy, Len, no. Len was already told no. And that actually worked out to be best.
• 37:30
  Kelley Jones: Because then I was left alone.
• 37:33
  Kelley Jones: And I got to do what I… all the people I admired…
• 37:37
  Matt Wagner: Thank God, dude, because if they… I think, you know, company pressure would have come down on you.
• 37:42
  Kelley Jones: Oh.
• 37:43
  Matt Wagner: On those larger titles to conform and.
• 37:45
  Kelley Jones: Oh, it was…
• 37:46
  Matt Wagner: It has to not be your individualistic self, you know.
• 37:48
  Kelley Jones: It's why I left Marvel.
• 37:50
  Kelley Jones: Because they weren't letting me do my other stuff.
• 37:53
  Kelley Jones: And I was begging to do these lesser things, to just… to do myself. But the people I admired were Matt and all the people you've just mentioned. That's what I was looking at.
• 38:05
  Kelley Jones: And… with Deadman, I was at the right headspace of being very angry at all this.
• 38:12
  Kelley Jones: So I just said, fuck it.
• 38:14
  Matt Wagner: Yeah, yeah, when Dead Man came out, it was like, you know, again, as I said, my crowd was kind of looking.
• 38:19
  Kelley Jones: And my…
• 38:19
  Matt Wagner: And we were all like, what the hell is this? What is this? DC's letting this guy do this?
• 38:25
  Kelley Jones: And they were done with such anger.
• 38:30
  Matt Wagner: It's like, I…
• 38:31
  Kelley Jones: You can fire me, it's okay.
• 38:35
  Kelley Jones: Because I've been through 6 years of list… you know, doing everything like you said, Matt, making everyone happy except me.
• 38:41
  Kelley Jones: And… and…
• 38:43
  Kelley Jones: There's a good thing when you're successful and not happy, because then you realize, are you an artist, or are you just here to make money?
• 38:50
  Matt Wagner: And it's a good thing that they… that you landed on a character that I think, up at that point, they kind of didn't give a damn about.
• 38:59
  Kelley Jones: They didn't give.
• 39:00
  Matt Wagner: They didn't see any potential for it, and they're just like, sure, let him do whatever he wants.
• 39:04
  Kelley Jones: Well, when you have the.
• 39:05
  Matt Wagner: And then, of course, your portrait of Dead Man was so indelible that it was like, oh, well, that's the way Dead Man.
• 39:11
  Kelley Jones: It was… it was great when they tell you, Matt.
• 39:14
  Kelley Jones: We're doing this simply to keep the copyright.
• 39:18
  Kelley Jones: It's not like we believe in this, we don't believe in you. None of that was said. It was, we gotta do this to keep the copyright. And then they went off to their big, like you said, the big ticket thing.
• 39:29
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, only in corporate comics, is that something that you like?
• 39:31
  Kelley Jones: And it really paid off for me, because when you're left alone and nobody cares, you're free.
• 39:40
  Kelley Jones: And then, all those years later, I'm free again.
• 39:44
  Kelley Jones: it's not a surprise that I'm in the same headspace that I was for that first year or two on… when I was doing Deadman, when nobody gave a shit.
• 39:55
  Kelley Jones: And when it did well, It was found money for a company.
• 39:59
  Kelley Jones: And once they have found money, they go, well, keep doing… didn't just keep being that way. They didn't want to upset the apple cart.
• 40:07
  Kelley Jones: And they let me do…
• 40:09
  Kelley Jones: Sandman and Batman and all that stuff kind of the way I wanted. Once I realized that, then I realized… it was one of those things that the people I wanted to be with, the people that I felt associated with.
• 40:23
  Kelley Jones: Had influenced me more than my general influences, and that was their spirit.
• 40:30
  Kelley Jones: And… and that stuck with me. And I always felt… maybe I was wrong, but I always felt those guys said, yeah, fine, if you don't like it, screw you. I'll just go off on my own, or fire me, or whatever. So I took that attitude.
• 40:44
  Kelley Jones: of… I was always compliant, I was always… the best part is, if you're gonna be an asshole, be on time.
• 40:51
  Kelley Jones: They couldn't complain about Goddammit, goddammit, well, here's 20 pages.
• 40:57
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 40:59
  Tad Eggleston: You know?
• 41:00
  Kelley Jones: he's changed.
• 41:00
  Tad Eggleston: That's just the perfect drop line for here. I might have to try to remember it to actually get it into promotional. If you're gonna be an asshole, be on time.
• 41:10
  Matt Wagner: Yeah, yeah.
• 41:12
  Matt Wagner: It is true, it is true indeed, yep.
• 41:15
  Kelley Jones: And that was my… that was my thing, was just be on time. It's why my wife tells me, keep working with Matt, you're happy. Because she went through all of this. And she would see me say, well, you seem…
• 41:28
  Kelley Jones: You know, happy about stuff when you're working, but when you deal with these people, you're not.
• 41:34
  Kelley Jones: And I would go, because they're not… I have to wait… every time, I'd have to wait for it to be printed, so they'd go, well, I guess you were right.
• 41:42
  Kelley Jones: Fans seem to like it. And I'm, like, going, how come you guys don't?
• 41:46
  Kelley Jones: Be the ones who get it.
• 41:49
  Kelley Jones: And then I would see all the stuff they would like, and I would go, well, I'm doing that too.
• 41:53
  Kelley Jones: But they put you in a position that you're one of the guys, and I said, I'm not one of the guys, because I could… the guys don't accept me as one of the guys.
• 42:04
  Kelley Jones: Which was okay, I got it, because.
• 42:07
  Matt Wagner: You're a geek, Kelley. Well, they would look at me.
• 42:10
  Kelley Jones: I would say, you don't know this, you don't know this, you don't know this, and it would be all the technical things of comics, and go, because I threw it all out.
• 42:19
  Kelley Jones: It was all holding me back. And the ideas were the number one thing. And the guys I admired.
• 42:25
  Kelley Jones: all the people Matt was just mentioning, and himself included, were idea guys.
• 42:31
  Kelley Jones: And I would go, wow, these ideas are great. How they got there was… Second.
• 42:37
  Kelley Jones: It was the ideas that stuck with me.
• 42:39
  Matt Wagner: Well, and this is a… I think this is a problem with contemporary corporate comics, is that…
• 42:44
  Matt Wagner: they're… in many ways, they're running on fumes, you know? These are characters that are really, really old. I always maintain that…
• 42:53
  Matt Wagner: Pretty much every pop culture character, narrative character, works best in the timeframe and the technology in which they were created.
• 43:01
  Matt Wagner: You know,
• 43:03
  Matt Wagner: Batman, wearing a costume to scare criminals and, and, you know, do the job that the police can't do, you know, that's very much of that time and place, the 30s and the early 40s, the aftermath of Prohibition and the creation of…
• 43:20
  Matt Wagner: the might of organized crime, and the police are outgunned, you know? The police are not outgunned nowadays. The police are as armed as the military is. That costume he wears is not to scare anybody, it is a paramilitary costume. It's armor, you know, so it's just not the same character anymore.
• 43:38
  Matt Wagner: I feel the same about James Bond. James Bond works best with the sexism and the racism and the Cold War paranoia, you know? The one I always like to point to is the shadow.
• 43:48
  Matt Wagner: The shadow only works in a time and a place
• 43:52
  Matt Wagner: Where, A, every man on the street was wearing a hat.
• 43:57
  Matt Wagner: Because otherwise, you're like, hey, who's the… who's the goofball with the hat on, with the big hat?
• 44:03
  Matt Wagner: And he only works in a time and place when cities still had shadows, had shadowy areas. They don't anymore. Everything's lit up like a pinball machine.
• 44:14
  Matt Wagner: So,
• 44:16
  Tad Eggleston: In the rural areas now, Matt.
• 44:18
  Matt Wagner: Yeah, right, right. So these characters.
• 44:20
  Tad Eggleston: Here's the,
• 44:21
  Matt Wagner: These characters that they just keep, regurgitating over and over again, you know, eventually they're gonna run out of steam, you know?
• 44:28
  Kelley Jones: Yeah, he's right. I… I mean, you know.
• 44:31
  Matt Wagner: The success of the Absolute, Batman and the Absolute, you know, those are those characters kind of in name only. They have turned them into completely new characters, wearing the identities of these older characters, you know. And, you know, I mean, it's working for them, they're making money, but eventually that'll peter out too, you know.
• 44:48
  Kelley Jones: Well, it… yes, it's a more event. I've been…
• 44:53
  Kelley Jones: And to Matt's point, this latest Nightfall movie thing has been very successful, but they're going back to a style from 33 years ago when I did it.
• 45:03
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 45:05
  Kelley Jones: That's… that's what they're looking at, and the people doing it said, because your Batman was really frightening to… to… when they looked at stuff.
• 45:12
  Matt Wagner: And…
• 45:13
  Kelley Jones: everything was, to Matt's point, I was thinking.
• 45:16
  Kelley Jones: a frightening silhouette more than how he looks in a more realistic way. I didn't care about that. I was thinking expressionism.
• 45:25
  Kelley Jones: And now they're all complimenting that, and the reviews are great, and all this stuff, but not at the time I was doing it.
• 45:34
  Matt Wagner: Yeah, it's like…
• 45:35
  Kelley Jones: The time I was doing it, I was taking a beating, but over time.
• 45:39
  Kelley Jones: It works, and I wished I would have said what Matt just said, or has said. I was thinking of him in the 40s.
• 45:47
  Kelley Jones: Of when he was created.
• 45:49
  Matt Wagner: So, following up on Nightfall and the animated thing, I don't know if either of you have watched, Cape Crusader, the new,
• 45:55
  Kelley Jones: Yeah.
• 45:56
  Matt Wagner: Bruce, Tim,
• 45:57
  Tad Eggleston: Some of it.
• 45:57
  Matt Wagner: the 40s, and it, boy, it really works. It takes all its cues from pulp magazine literature, not from…
• 46:02
  Tad Eggleston: Right?
• 46:03
  Matt Wagner: Not from comic book, superhero tropes, and boy, it's really… you watch it, and you're like, this is where this character is meant to be, narratively, you know?
• 46:11
  Kelley Jones: it works.
• 46:12
  Matt Wagner: This is the world he lives in, you know?
• 46:14
  Kelley Jones: Yeah, and so you see these things where they take from another time.
• 46:18
  Kelley Jones: And it works. And I think it… I think it's to Matt's point. I was thinking 40s, obviously Tim is doing the 40s.
• 46:27
  Matt Wagner: Even down to the whole Superman thing of this, you know, the glasses.
• 46:30
  Kelley Jones: Yes, you know?
• 46:31
  Matt Wagner: My,
• 46:32
  Matt Wagner: people were not photographed all the time back in those days, you know? So, you know, my parents are of that generation… were of that generation, they're both past now, but prior to, like, 1960s, when all of a sudden everybody had a home camera, I have two photos of each of them over the scope of their entire lives up to then.
• 46:49
  Kelley Jones: Isn't that funny? I would say the same thing with mine. Yeah. I would say you have just a handful of things prior to the early.
• 46:56
  Matt Wagner: And you gotta figure, Superman wouldn't stick around to have his photo taken, so, of course, nobody's hardly ever gonna see him.
• 47:03
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean…
• 47:03
  Matt Wagner: That's the thing.
• 47:03
  Tad Eggleston: Think about… Think about how hard Peter Parker has to go to get photos of himself in the 60s.
• 47:10
  Matt Wagner: Yeah,
• 47:10
  Tad Eggleston: Yep. You know, I mean, I've always thought that kind of the biggest difficulty of corporate comics is that…
• 47:23
  Tad Eggleston: the best… audience…
• 47:27
  Tad Eggleston: and what any new Spider-Man, Batman tale, whatever, should be for is, for the most part, the person coming to it now.
• 47:36
  Tad Eggleston: Whereas the person who's paying for it is the person who wants it to be like it was when they were 11.
• 47:43
  Kelley Jones: Well, I think, I think what you find… I think, marvel found the answer and lost it.
• 47:52
  Kelley Jones: In the early part of when they were doing things, in that the eccentricities of comics to the normal audience was completely unknown.
• 48:02
  Kelley Jones: So they were buying into Jack Kirby, and Stan Lee, and Jim Starlin stuff. Without being anywhere connected to it, they were off the street.
• 48:12
  Kelley Jones: They were used to normal movies, comics were whatever they were to them, they didn't think twice of it, whatever the stereotypes were.
• 48:19
  Kelley Jones: And that's what made those things explode. It wasn't us as all fans, we're too small of an audience. Right. But Jack Kirby's weirdness, Starlin's cosmicness, Ditko's weirdness, none of… they didn't know that.
• 48:35
  Kelley Jones: They had no idea. The regular civilian audience had no clue. They were absolutely blown away by it.
• 48:42
  Kelley Jones: And that's what drew them into it.
• 48:44
  Matt Wagner: Yeah, I would say the same is true of the Golden Age heroes, you know, that they, they, they came, you know, they were very obviously an extension of the pulp heroes that had preceded them, but all of a sudden they were visualized in a way that we hadn't seen before, you know, aside from cover illustrations.
• 49:01
  Matt Wagner: But yeah, those were all bizarre, weird, eccentric characters, you know?
• 49:06
  Kelley Jones: Absolutely, and I find that people are fascinated by that.
• 49:12
  Kelley Jones: In not giving an inch, you gain everything, and I think you could easily see that with Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.
• 49:19
  Kelley Jones: Absolutely. Those are gigantic.
• 49:22
  Matt Wagner: Yeah, because he was a nutcase for coming up with that story, you know what I mean? Now, now it's just accepted that that sort of narrative is a…
• 49:29
  Kelley Jones: I… I… and Matt…
• 49:30
  Matt Wagner: He was, he was pulling… you know, I'm surprised he wasn't snorting something, you know
• 49:34
  Matt Wagner: How long is that a whole cloth, you know, I mean…
• 49:36
  Kelley Jones: Do you see how Oxford and Cambridge Dawns dealt with him during.
• 49:40
  Matt Wagner: Yeah, yeah.
• 49:41
  Kelley Jones: Like, you're an idiot, what the hell?
• 49:43
  Kelley Jones: embarrassed by it. And now, they have big things for him.
• 49:47
  Matt Wagner: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 49:48
  Kelley Jones: C.S. Lewis, too. Wow, they're amazing.
• 49:53
  Kelley Jones: it goes back even to M.R. James, they would poo-poo these guys who made their names with this stuff, and now they extole Tolkien, James, and Lewis.
• 50:05
  Matt Wagner: And, you know, this is true of any art form, you know.
• 50:07
  Kelley Jones: It is.
• 50:07
  Matt Wagner: Look at rock music was, you know, considered devil music, you know, rap and hip-hop were.
• 50:12
  Tad Eggleston: Wait a minute, it's not devil music?
• 50:13
  Matt Wagner: In all the best ways. Rap and hip-hop were equally vilified when they hit the scene, you know, it's,
• 50:22
  Matt Wagner: And the key is, those were all, genuine, they were authentic, you know? I don't get that from popular music today. I look at popular music today, and it's all so,
• 50:34
  Matt Wagner: so produced, you know? Everything is so,
• 50:38
  Tad Eggleston: The…
• 50:39
  Kelley Jones: Yo, when you…
• 50:39
  Tad Eggleston: The regular music then was, too. We just remember the good stuff.
• 50:43
  Kelley Jones: Well, popular…
• 50:44
  Matt Wagner: Yeah, yeah.
• 50:45
  Matt Wagner: Most of that faded away, you know.
• 50:47
  Kelley Jones: Great music.
• 50:49
  Kelley Jones: From our time, now we sound like old men, was… Guy writing it.
• 50:55
  Kelley Jones: a producer, they put it out. Now it's 27 people riding it.
• 51:00
  Matt Wagner: Yeah.
• 51:01
  Kelley Jones: producers, auto-tune, Nothing human, they pick.
• 51:06
  Matt Wagner: And it's what's still great about comics, too, is that, generally speaking, it's the effort of two creators, you know? Of course, there are other people on the team, there's usually a colorist and a letterer.
• 51:18
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I was about to say, don't… don't knock the colors.
• 51:21
  Matt Wagner: No, no, no, they're very important, they're very important,
• 51:25
  Kelley Jones: Hard to find.
• 51:26
  Matt Wagner: Asian, for sure.
• 51:27
  Tad Eggleston: Editors are sometimes really important, too.
• 51:30
  Matt Wagner: But, comics are generally, you know, to my mind, the best comics are not done by committee. And they are… they are the unfiltered… the unfiltered imaginations of one or two people let loose, you know.
• 51:43
  Kelley Jones: Because that's where the eccentricity is, and everything in comics that works is eccentric. Even if the people doing it go, I'm not eccentric, they are.
• 51:53
  Tad Eggleston: I think you can go beyond comics and say art.
• 51:57
  Matt Wagner: Yeah, sure, yes, absolutely, yes, yeah.
• 51:59
  Tad Eggleston: The reason there's the trope of starving artists is because so often…
• 52:03
  Kelley Jones: Well, they should be starving. Starving.
• 52:06
  Tad Eggleston: Genius is…
• 52:07
  Matt Wagner: Yeah, yeah.
• 52:08
  Tad Eggleston: No, I like people to eat. I like people to eat, Kelley.
• 52:12
  Matt Wagner: I agree.
• 52:13
  Kelley Jones: You know what, I totally disagree. If you can't do it, you don't eat. You have to suffer.
• 52:19
  Matt Wagner: You have to fight. You have to.
• 52:21
  Kelley Jones: go through it. If you can…
• 52:24
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know, I, I think, I, I, I think, I think you can fight for your, for your,
• 52:30
  Kelley Jones: Get a job, and do it when you're done. But you have to not make anyone else pay for it, so you get all the credit.
• 52:42
  Kelley Jones: And that way, they can't find another guy to replace you.
• 52:47
  Kelley Jones: You know, that way you know what it took to get there, so you fight for your rights.
• 52:51
  Tad Eggleston: But ask Van Gogh if that works, if they don't figure out you're cool until you day.
• 52:57
  Kelley Jones: brother who supported him.
• 52:58
  Tad Eggleston: That's true.
• 53:00
  Kelley Jones: His brother supported him. His brother was the one who fought for him.
• 53:04
  Tad Eggleston: Yep.
• 53:05
  Kelley Jones: Van Gogh in real life was a total prick to a lot of people.
• 53:08
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
• 53:09
  Matt Wagner: Absolutely. Oh, absolutely.
• 53:12
  Kelley Jones: He deserved everything that happened to him. I have no mercy on him. His brother suffered for him. His brother fought for him. His brother paid for his stuff. His brother gets the credit for him being where he's at. And then you can go.
• 53:26
  Tad Eggleston: Theo does.
• 53:27
  Kelley Jones: You can go to Gauguin, who everyone said was a prick. It was… family was a prick.
• 53:33
  Kelley Jones: His wife's family was a jerk to him. He wanted to stick and try to pay for everything and take care of the kids, and they kicked him out.
• 53:42
  Kelley Jones: And so, that's why he went to Fiji and did what he did and became famous. Now, I'm not into this, artists are special, we're not. You have to find.
• 53:52
  Tad Eggleston: I didn't say artists were special.
• 53:54
  Kelley Jones: Now, we suck. We suck as people. But the ones who make it…
• 53:59
  Kelley Jones: The ones who make it earned it.
• 54:01
  Kelley Jones: Because you're selfish to do it. You take away from your family, you take away from your friends, you take away.
• 54:09
  Matt Wagner: It is consumptive, that's.
• 54:10
  Kelley Jones: It is. David Lynch was right. To be a great artist, you have to be a selfish asshole.
• 54:15
  Matt Wagner: Yep.
• 54:16
  Kelley Jones: And there's truth to that.
• 54:18
  Kelley Jones: No one No one would put up.
• 54:21
  Kelley Jones: With a guy who's a banker who acted like an artist.
• 54:25
  Matt Wagner: Well, that's for sure, yes.
• 54:28
  Tad Eggleston: Well, unless they were the head banker.
• 54:31
  Kelley Jones: No, they wouldn't put up with the fucking CEO if he's a dick.
• 54:35
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, the billionaires seem to get away with an awful lot.
• 54:38
  Matt Wagner: They sure do, they sure do.
• 54:40
  Kelley Jones: You know what? Who else does? The people with two cents, too, because they don't pay taxes.
• 54:44
  Tad Eggleston: That's true. Alright.
• 54:46
  Kelley Jones: So, so, what it comes down to is that you have to do this because you can't do anything else.
• 54:53
  Matt Wagner: Can't do anything else, yeah.
• 54:55
  Kelley Jones: I don't want credit for that. I have lost… I lost a first marriage to it.
• 55:01
  Kelley Jones: And I deserved it.
• 55:02
  Kelley Jones: Alright? I got a second marriage where they understood it.
• 55:07
  Kelley Jones: And all of it is completely selfish. I always see myself as two people. The one… and that's why that second guy
• 55:15
  Kelley Jones: is the asshole, and my wife loves when that second guy's happy, so she says.
• 55:19
  Matt Wagner: Let's work with Matt. Keep working with Matt.
• 55:22
  Kelley Jones: Yeah, because I…
• 55:23
  Matt Wagner: I'm working with that other asshole. I know that.
• 55:25
  Kelley Jones: I know that about myself, and I knew…
• 55:28
  Kelley Jones: What happens is anyone who's an artist, Matt will agree that you know what you are when you're about 8 years old.
• 55:35
  Matt Wagner: Yeah, it's like coming out as gay.
• 55:39
  Kelley Jones: Yeah, yeah, it is…
• 55:40
  Matt Wagner: It's like, I always knew it!
• 55:42
  Kelley Jones: I knew it, and I knew what I was at about 8 years old. I had total identity. So I was immune to anything that happened to me from the rest of the world. If everyone was doing something stupid, I didn't care. I wanted to read comics, draw comics, make comics.
• 55:57
  Matt Wagner: My, my parents had a,
• 56:00
  Matt Wagner: student scrapbook thing, you know what I mean? That, you keep… the pages, you keep stuff from that year, and you put… you post your school photo in, and you record your height and weight and all that shit. And on the back of the grade school years, the back page had a little spot that said, what I want to be when I grow up.
• 56:20
  Matt Wagner: And one year I wrote Astronaut, and that was obviously 1967, when every kid wanted to be an astronaut.
• 56:25
  Kelley Jones: Yeah.
• 56:26
  Matt Wagner: Every other year, I wrote Comic Book Writer.
• 56:28
  Kelley Jones: Yep.
• 56:29
  Matt Wagner: Every… all of mine.
• 56:31
  Kelley Jones: My stuff from when I was a kid, and I've been going through this because my parents have passed away, and they let… they kept everything. Every single homework or school assignment, I have drawings all over it.
• 56:42
  Matt Wagner: Yeah.
• 56:43
  Kelley Jones: There are little… there are drawings all over it. Dinosaurs, superheroes, spaceships, it didn't matter. They're all over it.
• 56:51
  Kelley Jones: And… And the thing that's awful about it is, I know I can be awful about it.
• 56:57
  Kelley Jones: And I try not to be. I work really hard at not being a son of a bitch.
• 57:03
  Matt Wagner: So, I think what Kelley's saying is a little bit of Dracula in both of us.
• 57:06
  Kelley Jones: Oh, yeah!
• 57:08
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 57:09
  Kelley Jones: I… I am unforgiving to people who… who whine, because I'm… everyone I know who made it, or everyone I know who I admire, or everyone throughout history went through this, and…
• 57:21
  Tad Eggleston: I want to make it clear that I wasn't defending the whiners. I was saying, as a consumer, I want artists to eat, because that means I get more art.
• 57:30
  Matt Wagner: Great, they can continue, they can…
• 57:33
  Kelley Jones: You know what that means? The artist has to be productive, and keep a schedule, and be on time.
• 57:38
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 57:39
  Matt Wagner: Be an asshole, be on time.
• 57:41
  Kelley Jones: Beyond time.
• 57:42
  Tad Eggleston: Always feel…
• 57:43
  Kelley Jones: time. I think you guys should.
• 57:44
  Tad Eggleston: make stickers. That would sell really, really well. I could be an asshole, be on time.
• 57:50
  Kelley Jones: Probably one of the things that kept me from going more independent was I had the innate thing of being on time to the people at Marvel and early on at DC.
• 58:00
  Kelley Jones: that if they said 30 pages in 30 days, I had 30 pages in.
• 58:05
  Kelley Jones: Right? And they were always shocked by that.
• 58:07
  Kelley Jones: And I never said time off, I never said anything. I was very, very, very blue-collar in my artistic modes.
• 58:16
  Kelley Jones: Right? I… I… I can't tell you how many times friends would be livid with me. I didn't go bowling or to a movie with them, because I was working.
• 58:25
  Kelley Jones: And… and they couldn't understand it. And… and…
• 58:29
  Kelley Jones: when I got to the point.
• 58:30
  Kelley Jones: to where I was very frustrated in my career.
• 58:34
  Kelley Jones: It was because it was my fault for not saying I… this is who I am.
• 58:39
  Kelley Jones: I have this different view of it. And they were seeing my being on time as being one of the
• 58:45
  Kelley Jones: Machine guys.
• 58:47
  Kelley Jones: And I figured, God, if I'd have been an asshole, I would have… they would have been more…
• 58:53
  Kelley Jones: willing to let… okay, okay, we'll let you… we'll put you on some B-level book.
• 58:59
  Kelley Jones: You know? I…
• 59:01
  Matt Wagner: Which, ultimately, they did, and that worked out. Yes, they did.
• 59:04
  Kelley Jones: I left Marvel when they were offering me stuff like the Fantastic Four and Wolverine.
• 59:09
  Kelley Jones: Because I knew that they were completely controlled.
• 59:13
  Matt Wagner: Yeah, yeah.
• 59:14
  Kelley Jones: And so I left, and no one at DC knew I wanted to do Deadman. That just fell in my lap, and I took advantage of it. And I did it with each page being my, resignation letter. They'll hate this.
• 59:28
  Kelley Jones: hire me, you know? So I did it that way. And thankfully, the editor working on it
• 59:34
  Kelley Jones: loved everything I was doing. She just didn't feel like she needed to tell me. She thought, oh, that's who he is.
• 59:41
  Kelley Jones: So, I'm all ready to be angry at her after a couple of these jobs were turned in, and she says, I'm turn… I'm putting you on a prestige series.
• 59:50
  Kelley Jones: and high-level whatever. And you get to do whatever you want. But I didn't know that.
• 59:55
  Kelley Jones: I was all ready for her to yell at me, and I was ready to go to war.
• 59:59
  Kelley Jones: Sadly, because she was gonna pay for the 6 years prior.
• 1:00:04
  Kelley Jones: But that's why I have that attitude. I didn't… Matt… I am so envious of Matt. He went to the design schools, he was in Philadelphia, he was around other guys who did this, he knew all these people, and I was in rural nowhere, Northern California, where…
• 1:00:21
  Matt Wagner: People would…
• 1:00:23
  Kelley Jones: were riding horses and growing things, you know? And so I didn't have any connection to that kind of world. I admired it from a great distance.
• 1:00:33
  Kelley Jones: And… So I carried that through till now.
• 1:00:37
  Kelley Jones: It's why Dracula's the great joy of my life, because I finally got there. It took me 40 years to get to where Matt was in 1981.
• 1:00:48
  Matt Wagner: Hey, guys, this has been fun, but I'm noticing the time here, and I gotta, I gotta, pull the plug.
• 1:00:53
  Kelley Jones: What are you making for dinner?
• 1:00:55
  Matt Wagner: I think just stir-fry, but I gotta, I gotta go do a grocery run and a couple other things, so…
• 1:01:00
  Kelley Jones: Okay.
• 1:01:01
  Tad Eggleston: Well, then… then I won't get in closing questions, so I'll just say…
• 1:01:05
  Kelley Jones: I'll answer a closing question, I'll answer one.
• 1:01:08
  Tad Eggleston: Kelly, okay, because you guys were the ones that started one of these closing questions. I started asking for surreal experiences. Tell me something that you got to do.
• 1:01:18
  Kelley Jones: I'll answer your closing.
• 1:01:19
  Tad Eggleston: Damn.
• 1:01:20
  Matt Wagner: So, which… I'll do one, too. What was the closing question again?
• 1:01:24
  Tad Eggleston: You guys actually started this one last year. I've started asking people to share their, like, pinch-me experiences from their time in comics.
• 1:01:36
  Tad Eggleston: Like, what part of your life wouldn't have happened, wouldn't be part of your life, wouldn't be a story you had to tell if you weren't a comic guy?
• 1:01:45
  Tad Eggleston: You gave me, hanging out with… with… Quentin Tarantino last year.
• 1:01:54
  Tad Eggleston: Eisner at the Eisner Awards.
• 1:01:58
  Tad Eggleston: And then, of course, you know, tell me a book that you love that everybody should read.
• 1:02:04
  Matt Wagner: Well, okay, I'll leave… I'll leave Kelley for the other… the first question there, because I think those two I hit you with last year were kind of the answer to that question.
• 1:02:12
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, those were… those were ridiculous.
• 1:02:14
  Matt Wagner: So, the book that I just read and just loved recently, is called Between Two Fires.
• 1:02:21
  Matt Wagner: And this isn't a comic, it's a novel. It's a fantasy horror set in, 14th century France during the Black Plague.
• 1:02:31
  Matt Wagner: And it's just incredible. Talk about sticking the landing, it really sticks the landing. It's, it takes place on a huge cosmic scale, and also a very, down-to-earth human scale, and
• 1:02:45
  Matt Wagner: The horrific stuff is way creepy and funky, and
• 1:02:51
  Matt Wagner: And yet it's genuinely emotional, and like I said, really sticks its landing.
• 1:02:56
  Matt Wagner: Christopher Buhlmann. Buhlman, yeah.
• 1:03:00
  Tad Eggleston: Looks cool.
• 1:03:02
  Tad Eggleston: All right, well, Matt, I will let you go shopping.
• 1:03:05
  Matt Wagner: Yep, alright guys.
• 1:03:06
  Tad Eggleston: And it was so good, and hopefully we'll.
• 1:03:08
  Matt Wagner: Tad, good talking to you again, send us the links.
• 1:03:10
  Matt Wagner: Ready to go.
• 1:03:11
  Tad Eggleston: blessed, I will.
• 1:03:12
  Matt Wagner: Bye-bye.
• 1:03:13
  Tad Eggleston: Alright, Kelley, Surreal Experience and or reading recommended.
• 1:03:16
  Kelley Jones: Real experience, I'll split into two. One was…
• 1:03:21
  Kelley Jones: at a convention, I believe it was in Atlanta, I was…
• 1:03:27
  Kelley Jones: On the last bus out little tram thing from the show back to the, hotel.
• 1:03:34
  Kelley Jones: And I'd missed the earlier ones, and I got the last one, and it was just me in there, and just before the doors closed, Neil Adams comes in.
• 1:03:42
  Tad Eggleston: Nice.
• 1:03:43
  Kelley Jones: And he sits down, and he knew who I was.
• 1:03:46
  Kelley Jones: And he sat there and told me.
• 1:03:50
  Kelley Jones: how much he loved my take on Dead Man and my take on Batman.
• 1:03:55
  Tad Eggleston: Nice.
• 1:03:56
  Kelley Jones: He felt that, they were pure ideas. He thought they were brilliant. He spent the whole time talking to me. I couldn't get a word in edgewise. I couldn't even tell him how much I…
• 1:04:06
  Kelley Jones: Absolutely adored him.
• 1:04:08
  Kelley Jones: And how much his comics meant to me.
• 1:04:12
  Kelley Jones: And he just, at that level, to sit down and tell me.
• 1:04:17
  Kelley Jones: That he didn't talk about technique, he didn't talk about…
• 1:04:21
  Kelley Jones: how you… none of that. It was the pure idea of the thing, and it stuck with him, and he felt…
• 1:04:27
  Kelley Jones: that I was one of the definitive Batman artists of all time, along with him.
• 1:04:32
  Kelley Jones: Because, you know, that's Neil.
• 1:04:33
  Tad Eggleston: It's Neil. Yeah, and
• 1:04:36
  Kelley Jones: And what he thought I did with Deadman was absolute genius, and he wished he'd thought of it.
• 1:04:40
  Tad Eggleston: He was a big dead man guy, too.
• 1:04:42
  Kelley Jones: Yeah, well, he invented him. Yeah. So, and his look. There's… and all I could tell him was, Neil, there's no way to compete with you.
• 1:04:50
  Kelley Jones: So, you either look like a pale shadow, or you go in a different direction, and fingers crossed.
• 1:04:56
  Kelley Jones: The other was, bernie writes in calling me to ask me to finish Frankenstein form.
• 1:05:03
  Tad Eggleston: And that…
• 1:05:03
  Kelley Jones: And he had said, obviously, he didn't have to say it, but that Frankenstein had been…
• 1:05:10
  Kelley Jones: His lifelong passion.
• 1:05:12
  Kelley Jones: And when he knew he couldn't finish it, I was the only guy in the world that he felt could finish it. He had complete trust in me, and he just asked very politely if I'd do it, of course I would.
• 1:05:24
  Kelley Jones: In a perfect world, he'd have finished it.
• 1:05:28
  Kelley Jones: But those were the two truly great honors, because the 12-year-old in me.
• 1:05:36
  Kelley Jones: Would have never thought that would have happened.
• 1:05:39
  Kelley Jones: Ever.
• 1:05:40
  Kelley Jones: Thought that would have happened.
• 1:05:42
  Kelley Jones: As far as things I would read, I would say, Arthur Machin's…
• 1:05:48
  Kelley Jones: incredible, the great God Pan and the white people.
• 1:05:52
  Kelley Jones: which are… Probably the best… horror stories I've ever read.
• 1:05:58
  Kelley Jones: But beyond…
• 1:06:00
  Tad Eggleston: great God pen, and…
• 1:06:02
  Kelley Jones: And one called The White People. They're both kind of folk horror. He's a British writer from the 1890s.
• 1:06:09
  Kelley Jones: And the definition of evil in one is the greatest definition I've ever heard of evil, because it's nothing.
• 1:06:16
  Kelley Jones: I'll leave it to people if they read it. It's the best definition of evil ever, and it's nothing like what you think it is. It's not human.
• 1:06:25
  Kelley Jones: Both are tremendously written, though, though…
• 1:06:32
  Kelley Jones: The white people is written from the perspective of a 16-year-old girl.
• 1:06:37
  Kelley Jones: and… It is unbelievably good. Way ahead of its time.
• 1:06:43
  Kelley Jones: Stephen King, I think, calls them the best horror stories ever written, I agree with that.
• 1:06:48
  Kelley Jones: And The Great God Pan is,
• 1:06:55
  Kelley Jones: If you made it as a movie now, people would… freak out.
• 1:07:01
  Kelley Jones: They're that good. And those have been big influences.
• 1:07:04
  Kelley Jones: Second… secondary, though, they're equally as good as Algernon Blackwoods, the Willows, and the Windigo. I would rate those. And that's kind of in that same period.
• 1:07:18
  Kelley Jones: But those, I would say, I would recommend to anyone. They're easy to get. They're anthologized everywhere.
• 1:07:23
  Kelley Jones: But I would recommend to people, if they hadn't read those, they are in for an absolute treat. They're… they're kind of novella-sized, so you don't have to… you're not gonna be reading giant tomes. They're just novella-sized. All of… all four of those stories are novella-sized.
• 1:07:40
  Tad Eggleston: I love it. Well, thank you very, very much, Kelley.
• 1:07:46
  Tad Eggleston: for Matt Wagner as well, who's already well on his way to the grocery store.
• 1:07:52
  Kelley Jones: Yes, he is. Well, he's a great chef.
• 1:07:54
  Tad Eggleston: I think you guys talked about that last year.
• 1:07:57
  Kelley Jones: Let's see…
• 1:07:57
  Tad Eggleston: You can deepen.
• 1:07:58
  Kelley Jones: Bone a chicken. That's incredible.
• 1:08:00
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's a skill. That's a skill.
• 1:08:04
  Tad Eggleston: So, so, yeah, the Kickstarter for the fourth and final volume of Dracula, the Undead, book 4.
• 1:08:15
  Tad Eggleston: begins on October 1st and runs through Halloween. For Kelley Jones and Matt Wagner, this has been 22 Panels, and we will see you after the next page.