Latest / 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast / With Great Power #280... 22 Panels with Léonie Bischoff

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With Great Power #280... 22 Panels with Léonie Bischoff · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

0:01
Tad Eggleston: Good morning, everybody. Actually, it's even afternoon for me, and it's, it's, it's evening for Leone. Leone Bischoff in… in Brussels, right?
0:13
leo: That's right.
0:13
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, one of my… I discovered your work after CXC, not this last year, but way back in…
0:21
Tad Eggleston: 2024, and I fell in love.
0:23
Tad Eggleston: Like, Anistonin and the Great Turkey Walk are both fantastic, but then I started doing something that I'd never done before, which is, like, really tracking down
0:34
Tad Eggleston: untranslated things, that I can't read the words, because I… I love your art style, I love how you adapt to…
0:42
Tad Eggleston: your works, your expressive storytelling is just fantastic, so I'm so happy.
0:48
Tad Eggleston: To get… to talk to you about it. Thank you. So, how are you?
0:51
leo: I'm super happy to be here talking with you. We had such a nice conversation at that very loud night. Yep.
1:02
Tad Eggleston: We met at karaoke at Cartoon Crossroads, and somehow had a good conversation, even with the karaoke going on around us, but, like, that's Saturday night, and you flew out early Sunday afternoon and had a panel right before that, so that was really the only conversation we got to have.
1:21
leo: Well, thanks to you, we stayed in touch, and now I'm happy to be…
1:25
Tad Eggleston: I'll do my best.
1:27
leo: Yeah.
1:28
Tad Eggleston: I'm worried for a minute, though, because you got all busy, and I assumed that you were busy, and I'm like, am I annoying her? Did she decide that I'm just some bum that is, like, sending her too many emails, and I'm supposed to take the message to just stop?
1:41
leo: No, no, I know that I have a bad tendency of being quickly overwhelmed. I do work a lot, but also I'm not the best at planning and managing my time. So for a time.
1:54
Tad Eggleston: I know no cartoonist like that.
1:56
leo: No, I don't know.
1:57
Tad Eggleston: I know, no.
1:58
leo: cartoons.
1:59
Tad Eggleston: like that.
2:02
Tad Eggleston: Dripping sarcasm.
2:04
leo: I know.
2:05
Tad Eggleston: We're an audio podcast, so I had to make certain the listeners knew. Dripping sarcasm.
2:11
leo: cases, yeah. No, I'm glad you did. I'm glad you didn't get discouraged by my, weeks of delay before answering emails.
2:21
Tad Eggleston: Yo!
2:22
leo: Yeah, it's just how are you?
2:24
Tad Eggleston: Well, among other things, I'd wind up circling back to your work or something and go, oh, I'm just gonna shoot her a message, see what happens. She hasn't told me to go away yet. I'm autistic, I'm allowed to say, I just don't know.
2:37
leo: Yeah, and I'm getting better at actually telling people to go away when I really don't want to talk to them, so…
2:43
Tad Eggleston: Right.
2:44
leo: Here we.
2:45
Tad Eggleston: I mean, which is also a very valuable tool to have, because… Yes.
2:49
leo: Yes. Like…
2:50
Tad Eggleston: Sometimes the people that you want to go away are just, like…
2:55
Tad Eggleston: Rude and aggressive and whatnot, and, like, they do know that you're trying to tell them to go away, and they don't care. But sometimes they're people like me who honestly just don't read any of the subtext.
3:07
leo: Yeah, and I'm much more aware than before about the many ways people's minds work, and so… Right.
3:15
leo: And also, I'm much more, comfortable now at setting my own boundaries, especially professionally, so…
3:23
Tad Eggleston: It's hard, though, isn't it?
3:25
leo: It's very hard, especially when you are in a field like comic books, where you're supposed to want exposure, you're supposed to want people to talk about you, to offer you a job, offer you…
3:38
leo: Platforms to, to show your work and talk about it, and somehow you feel like you can't say no to an opportunity like that.
3:49
leo: Right. And it's hard to know when it's,
3:52
leo: Yeah, when you need to take this opportunity, when you feel like it, or when you just feel the pressure to do it.
3:58
leo: And I've been doing this work for more than 15 years now, and so I'm learning, but I would say that 10 first years, I would just accept anything anyone would propose to me professionally, and burn myself out trying to do everything and answer to everyone. Yeah.
4:18
Tad Eggleston: No, I'm so happy that you've both gotten to a place professionally where you can do that, because that's always the balance, too. Like…
4:27
Tad Eggleston: Starving artist definitely applies to lots of cartoonists.
4:31
leo: Absolutely. I've been there.
4:34
Tad Eggleston: I was just talking to Paul Pope, and he was telling us about his days living in a lamp factory in Montreal.
4:40
leo: Oh, whoa.
4:41
leo: And I mean, he's pro-pope.
4:44
Tad Eggleston: Right, exactly. Now, he's Paul Pope, but in 1996, 97, he wasn't Paul Pope yet. Sure.
4:56
Tad Eggleston: But, so, yeah, I actually…
5:00
Tad Eggleston: since I know that I'll get deep into your books, I want to ask you about something that I came across a while ago that is just among the coolest things I have ever seen, and I wish so much.
5:13
Tad Eggleston: that there was something like this in America. Tell me about the comic book trail, and your…
5:20
leo: your… The copybook trail?
5:23
Tad Eggleston: I am look… you know, I don't know if it's… if it's a bad translation, but… but there…
5:31
Tad Eggleston: You, you drew, or not drew, painted, like, a house.
5:37
leo: Oh, yeah, yeah.
5:38
Tad Eggleston: Brussels.
5:39
leo: Absolutely, okay.
5:40
Tad Eggleston: It says, the latest mural in the comic book trail of Brussels.
5:44
leo: I had never heard how they would have translated that. Okay. Yes, yes, it is a thing in Brussels. It was originally only drawings, of famous, classic Belgian characters.
5:59
leo: And there's a lot of weird architecture stuff in Brussels. Houses have been taken down, nothing has been rebuilt, so there's a lot of, blind walls, no windows, no nothing.
6:17
leo: And so, the city has decided to ask artists, comic book artists, to…
6:24
leo: make drawings to be painted on these walls, and I have had the chance to have one of my drawings made especially for this opportunity. They have changed a little bit the formula since the origin. I think they started it in the 1990s, I guess?
6:43
leo: Taking drawings from comic books from way back, like Tintin, all the classics. But now, they prefer to ask the contemporary artists to talk with the people who live in the neighborhood where the wall is gonna be painted.
7:02
leo: And to try to find, topics or themes that the people would like to see every day, because they are the one who's gonna walk there and…
7:12
Tad Eggleston: Right?
7:13
leo: So, with the people who came to meet me and talk, the main theme that was, that was coming up was nature. Because there are not a lot of trees, not a lot of green spaces in Brussels.
7:28
leo: And the weather is famously very grey, and the sky is very low.
7:34
leo: So I chose to, picture girls and women of different physical, very different from each other physically, who are building…
7:47
Tad Eggleston: I'm looking at it right now, it's…
7:48
leo: Oh, nice.
7:50
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. No.
7:51
leo: Building, a wood, treehouse, and .
7:55
Tad Eggleston: Double deckers.
7:56
leo: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
7:58
Tad Eggleston: I mean, this is a serious treehouse. Yes.
8:02
leo: Some of them are very skilled with building tree houses, other, planting, plants, in the ground, some… there's one that's reading, all, a lot of topics that the people who lived in this neighborhood wanted to see represented.
8:20
leo: And another important factor for me was to have women represented in, in public spaces, because in Brussels, it's still kind of a problem of, women are…
8:34
leo: going in the street from one point to one another, another point, from point A to point B, and they never stay long in the street, because,
8:46
leo: Some men will harass them, some men will make them feel uncomfortable, whereas men are allowed to just chill in the street, sit on walls, talk among themselves, and it's really something that I would like to see changing.
9:05
leo: And I would like to see more women, practicing sports where there are urban gyms and things like that. So it was important for me to have a group of women
9:15
leo: Having a good time together in the street.
9:19
Tad Eggleston: There are days when I wish that there was some way that the men that make women uncomfortable could be made to feel that discomfort, and I just don't know what it is.
9:30
leo: That kind of revenge fantasy, it's very…
9:32
Tad Eggleston: Right.
9:33
leo: Strong, yeah.
9:34
Tad Eggleston: You know, how do you…
9:36
leo: Just understand, yeah.
9:38
Tad Eggleston: Cause, cause, you know, they're all like, oh, well, you know.
9:43
leo: Yay.
9:43
Tad Eggleston: I was like, yeah, no, but, like… You are.
9:48
leo: The thing is, it's also the fact that it's… Every day, at some… Right.
9:53
Tad Eggleston: Right, it's a cumulative thing. You might be… you might think your whistle, no big deal, but your whistle, plus his whistle, plus his whistle, plus his whistle, plus the whistle you're gonna use tomorrow, and the whistle he's gonna do tomorrow, and the…
10:10
leo: Yes, yes, it's cumulative microtraumas or microaggressions.
10:16
Tad Eggleston: This is one of the beauties, though, of noise-canceling headphones. Noise-canceling headphones are…
10:21
leo: Yes, yes.
10:22
leo: But I'm, I'm, yes.
10:25
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm not actually recommending that strictly to women and whatnot. I was thinking more of myself and my sensory…
10:34
Tad Eggleston: overload issues, because I'm autistic, and I work in a big high school, and man, do I put the noise-canceling headphones on in the high school, because… or in the, like, during passing period, when there's, like, thousands of
10:47
Tad Eggleston: 14- to 18-year-olds all around me.
10:51
leo: a nightmare. Yeah, I'm very sensitive to noise also, and I do love my noise-canceling headphones, but when I'm in the streets, in the public transport, I have,
11:04
leo: I need to be aware of what's going on. It's a danger prevention. I don't feel safe… I feel even less safe if I can't hear what's happening around me, so I tend to have always one that's a little bit…
11:19
Tad Eggleston: one off.
11:20
leo: my hair, so I can hear what's happening, what's being said.
11:24
Tad Eggleston: Have you ever seen… I've got a couple of pairs that have, like, what's called a pass-through mode.
11:30
leo: I know that.
11:31
Tad Eggleston: things a little bit, but you can hear what's going on around you, but you're still also putting that outward message, I can't hear you.
11:40
leo: Yes, that's very good.
11:42
leo: I love the visual signal.
11:44
Tad Eggleston: Because that's one of the… that's one of the things I like about the big headphones, rather than just the little…
11:49
leo: Yes.
11:49
Tad Eggleston: earbuds. It's like, the big ones just shout at you. Don't talk to me.
11:54
leo: I don't want to talk, yeah. And, by the way, it's a code that we use at the studio where I work, because there are 9 of us, all working on comic books, and some of us are more…
12:09
leo: talkative than the others, and the universal signal is, if I have my headphones on, I don't want to be disturbed.
12:16
leo: unless there's an emergency, don't come talk to me. You can talk to me when I take them off, come to the kitchen to have a glass of water or something. And it works very well. It's a visual reminder that, no, this person is focused on her work.
12:31
leo: Let's not bother her. So, yeah.
12:33
Tad Eggleston: I heard about, like, an autistic conference that was put on, that they did something that I so wish that I could convince some Comic Cons to start doing, which is, everybody was given 3 badges.
12:49
leo: Yeah.
12:50
Tad Eggleston: One that was green.
12:52
Tad Eggleston: If it was… if you had your green badge on, it went, please, talk to me.
12:58
leo: And for that matter, it even specifically meant.
13:01
Tad Eggleston: I might be too shy to talk to you, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't talk to me.
13:06
leo: Oh, that's sweet.
13:07
Tad Eggleston: If… if they had their yellow badge on, it meant, don't talk to me unless you know me.
13:14
leo: Okay, great.
13:16
Tad Eggleston: And if they had their red badge on, it meant, please don't talk to me.
13:21
leo: That's amazing. Yeah, I do love this.
13:23
Tad Eggleston: So they were able to just have this visual representation for everybody.
13:29
leo: Oh, that's amazing. Yeah.
13:30
Tad Eggleston: And I'm like…
13:32
Tad Eggleston: Given the number of neurodiverse people I know in comics, I mean, seriously, like, I sometimes laugh that a Comic Con is really… it's like the one social thing that all neurodiverse people go and share together.
13:45
leo: I do… the more I get aware about neurodiversity, the more I start to think about all the people I know and love in the comics books industry, and I'm like, every one of us has something or other. Yeah.
13:59
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, more and more, and I haven't seen any scientists willing to put the numbers quite this large yet, but more and more, I think that neurotypical people are only actually about 40% of the population, and the reason
14:12
Tad Eggleston: that neurodiversity, autism spectrum, whatnot is looked at as, oh my god, is that it's huge. It's 60% of us. It's just that, like, those neurotypical people fall into two categories. Think in words, think in pictures, but they all think the same. Their brains are all wired the same. We fall into, like, a billion categories.
14:30
leo: Yeah, yeah.
14:31
leo: A lot of us…
14:33
leo: very early to mask, and so they don't realize… most of us don't realize, like, I think I'm some kind of ADHD something, I don't have a diagnostic.
14:46
Tad Eggleston: I got, I got mine.
14:47
leo: What else is like…
14:48
leo: had an idea about that until, like, 5 years ago, because I just thought I was a bit slow and a bit weird, so what? Right.
14:56
Tad Eggleston: Well, and if you can get away with being a bit slow and a bit weird, that… it doesn't matter. I mean, and that's part of the thing, is like…
15:05
Tad Eggleston: It would be great if we could get rid of the stigma of the diagnosis, because, like…
15:10
Tad Eggleston: it really just has to… I mean…
15:13
Tad Eggleston: I finally got my autism diagnosis last year. Yeah. And part of the reason I didn't get it until last year was that, like.
15:21
Tad Eggleston: the DSM didn't change in such a way that I would be considered autistic until I was in my 30s, but they don't really test adults, they only test kids. You know, so when I was young, under the DSM-3, I could talk, so I wasn't autistic.
15:37
leo: I was like…
15:38
Tad Eggleston: In high school, under the DSM-IV, I was smart, so I wasn't autistic.
15:45
Tad Eggleston: But the DSM-5 was the first one that actually had autistic people working on… and one of the things that they pushed hard for is, like, we can't penalize people for masking.
15:56
leo: Yeah.
15:58
Tad Eggleston: Masking is really tiring.
16:01
leo: Yes, yes.
16:02
Tad Eggleston: You know, and one of the reasons that I figured it out is, like, I had a health thing in…
16:08
Tad Eggleston: January.
16:10
Tad Eggleston: where I spent, like, a whole day in the ER, in part because almost every doctor wanted to treat me like a horse, even though none of the spec… like, the outward symptoms were saying one thing, but none of the tests that they were showing were…
16:26
Tad Eggleston: were actually backing that up, but they didn't want to go away from it, because this is… this is what the…
16:34
Tad Eggleston: When, if they'd known I was autistic, they could have started with, okay, he's a zebra, not a horse.
16:40
leo: I understand that, yeah.
16:42
Tad Eggleston: You know, because what they… and I don't blame them for doing some tests out of the gate, because they thought I was having a stroke. As it turns out, it was, like, about the opposite of stroke. My mind was going, like, 10,000 miles an hour, and I just couldn't get the words out
17:01
Tad Eggleston: at a… Which, the best way to describe it is actually autistic burnout.
17:08
leo: Okay.
17:09
Tad Eggleston: Which I didn't even know was a thing until my wife started doing research after this really scary day. Because none of the doctors came anywhere near that, because…
17:19
Tad Eggleston: It wasn't on their menu of things to look at.
17:22
leo: Yeah, yeah.
17:23
Tad Eggleston: And I don't blame them, because, like.
17:25
leo: So…
17:26
Tad Eggleston: Listen is really complicated and really hard.
17:29
leo: There's so much research, needed yet, yeah.
17:33
Tad Eggleston: But that's why, like, detailed medical records also matter, because, like, when you can check this off, or check that.
17:42
Tad Eggleston: It changes what you think of next.
17:44
leo: True.
17:45
Tad Eggleston: Wow.
17:46
Tad Eggleston: But, enough about me, let's talk about…
17:51
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I'm gonna bring it back to…
17:55
Tad Eggleston: Well, actually, I'll let you pick. Do you want to go kids or adults first? I got them both in front of me.
18:02
leo: I would say let's go with Anais first, because…
18:06
Tad Eggleston: Let's do it!
18:07
leo: It's Star Patreon's…
18:09
Tad Eggleston: It's so good, and I have so many, so many things to say and ask, but I always… I always like to start with…
18:17
Tad Eggleston: Give me the front counter pitch. You're working at a comic shop or a bookstore, and somebody comes in, and you think they'd like this book, how do you sell it to them?
18:27
leo: That's a good question. I'm not used to selling books.
18:32
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's essentially also the elevator pitch. You know, you can cheat and say, how'd you pitch it to your publisher?
18:39
leo: Yeah, well, by talking about the fact that it's a book about a woman who, despite being born almost a century ago.
18:52
leo: Through her life, has explored many, many of the themes that we find very relevant today, like the voices of people who are not the majority.
19:05
leo: And exploring, other forms of relationships. So, she was a woman who was… very,
19:15
leo: how would I say that? She was burning very, very bright inside, but she was not showing it.
19:23
leo: And she needed to find a way to show it artistically and personally.
19:29
leo: And she was born in a very Catholic household. She was… I'm sorry, this is not an elevator pitch. I'm taking way too much time already.
19:40
Tad Eggleston: No, you're doing fine.
19:41
Tad Eggleston: That's why I say front counter pitch. Front counter.
19:44
leo: pitch.
19:44
Tad Eggleston: You're allowed to go as long as you need.
19:46
leo: Yeah, yeah. For me, what matters the most is, that fire that burns in her, and that, she never lets,
19:59
leo: get extinguished.
20:01
leo: She has suffered, a lot of trauma in her childhood. She has suffered, from
20:09
leo: mental health issues, but fundamentally, she's someone who loves to love, and who loves to live with passion. And so she creates her life.
20:20
leo: to look and feel like, like a romance, or like a movie, or like a theater piece. And she's someone who's very inventive, and some have said that she was a
20:35
leo: A liar, a monstrous liar, and that nothing she ever wrote or said was true.
20:41
leo: And she did love to tell stories about her life, and to make up
20:48
leo: stories even before the event happened. She would plan
20:54
leo: the date she was going on, she would plan how she would dress in a certain way. She was really a creatix, in every, every second of her days.
21:08
leo: And that's something that I find fascinating.
21:11
leo: And it must have been exhausting, but I admire her a lot, and she has.
21:17
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, she strikes me as a little neurodivergent, so…
21:21
leo: Oops.
21:22
Tad Eggleston: It might have actually been less exhausting than it might have been, because she was not holding it in.
21:28
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. She just let herself go.
21:30
leo: I think she had been holding it in for…
21:33
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yes, for her childhood.
21:35
leo: of her life? The childhood?
21:37
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, definitely before she got married, she was completely.
21:40
leo: Yeah.
21:40
Tad Eggleston: holding it in. We don't see as much of that in the book, but we can see the flashback, that it's like, we can see each moment where she's like.
21:49
Tad Eggleston: But why? Why am I deciding that I should or shouldn't do this?
21:54
Tad Eggleston: I mean, so you kind of answered my, my, my…
22:00
Tad Eggleston: My first big question, which is, is what… what…
22:04
Tad Eggleston: attracted you to Ana East, so I'll modify it a little bit. When did you discover her work? How did she come across your…
22:15
leo: It happened in several, pivotal moment, I would say. First, I was very young, I was babysitting, and I don't know if you're aware of her books, Delta Venus and the Little Birds.
22:31
leo: They are…
22:32
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm aware of them, but I haven't read them.
22:34
leo: Yeah, so that's, what they would call pornography at the time. It's,
22:41
leo: short pieces, that contain very disturbing, topics of, like, pedophilia, incest, but, very explicit and well-written, because she could very well write. And those works were,
22:59
leo: It was commission work that she did for an anonymous, very rich man.
23:04
leo: Originally, it was Henry Miller who had this job, and at some point, he got tired of it, and so he gave it to a nice.
23:12
leo: And she would write stories, very explicit, very disturbing.
23:18
leo: And it would pay very well. And those books are still today the most famous of her work, when they are not authentic at all to her. So I'm very frustrated that they are the most well-known.
23:31
leo: And as the most well-known, they are the most well-distributed, so it was my first encounter with her work, and I was very shocked and very intrigued, but also very scared that the parents,
23:45
leo: that I was babysitting for would come back, so I'll put it back in the… in the…
23:52
leo: bookshelf, and but the name stuck… got stuck in my mind. And a few years later, when I was a student, I was studying comic books in Brussels, I found a few of the diaries books.
24:07
leo: And I remembered the name, and there was a picture of her on the cover, and I was very intrigued, so I just picked them up, and
24:16
leo: And that's when I really fell in love with her, because those diaries were of the time period of which I speak in my comic books.
24:26
leo: It's the late 1920s, and she's about 26, 27 years old. She's very frustrated with her writing, with her creativity.
24:39
leo: She's recently married, she's recently moved to Paris, and she's a bit… she's… she's lost. She's lost, and she's unhappy, and her marriage is not going as well as she hoped. They are very… not very sexually compatible, her husband and her.
24:57
leo: And so, there's a lot of frustration in her. And I was kind of at the same point in my life at that time, very frustrated with my creativity,
25:08
leo: very frustrated also with my relationship with men and with male artists in general, and so I felt like I had found kind of a soulmate from a century ago.
25:21
leo: And also, she was very brave, much braver than me, in…
25:28
leo: daring to face her own desires. I think I did not dare at the time to look at my own desire, and she really helped me, to accept and to even…
25:41
leo: Cherish, my own imposes, and even my frustrations, and to see them as,
25:49
leo: more like an indication that something was not right for me, and that I needed to look for something else.
25:56
leo: So, I don't want to paint her as a model to be followed, because she definitely wasn't that, and she's full of, contradictions, and she was not necessarily happy. But for me, she was really, like, a switch, or,
26:14
leo: Do you call that a spark? A spark to…
26:16
Tad Eggleston: I mean.
26:17
leo: Not something new.
26:18
Tad Eggleston: what… what I definitely took away from the book, from her, from your portrayal of her,
26:26
Tad Eggleston: Was, you know, the message isn't to do…
26:32
Tad Eggleston: What she does, as much as to…
26:35
Tad Eggleston: Do it for the reasons she does it.
26:37
leo: Yes, that makes sense. I agree with that.
26:39
Tad Eggleston: big… because the… the… the… the… what I appreciated so much is, like,
26:49
Tad Eggleston: You know, she's looking at, really…
26:54
Tad Eggleston: what's the word I'm looking for? Societally frowned upon things, adultery, or even just women enjoying sex, rather than just
27:03
Tad Eggleston: being there.
27:04
Tad Eggleston: Because there, I mean, there's that scene later where, where, like, once she's learned, she, she flips it around with Hugh, and she's like, let's try it this way!
27:15
Tad Eggleston: you know, where she takes ownership for, okay, I love this man, and I also love that aspect, is like, wait a minute, I love this man.
27:26
Tad Eggleston: I'm not satisfied. It's not his fault.
27:31
Tad Eggleston: Cause, like, that's…
27:33
Tad Eggleston: That's another place that you see so many people get caught up, and you see so many relationships bogged down, or… because she's also, it's not my fault.
27:42
Tad Eggleston: It's not I've done something wrong, I just haven't found what I need. You know, she spends no time
27:51
Tad Eggleston: blaming people, at least in this portion that… I mean… and for that matter, when we see her mother, sometimes you see that the…
28:00
Tad Eggleston: the mirror of that. Everything is your father's fault, everything…
28:07
leo: Yeah, I'm… Her parents were both very negative figures in her life, even though she
28:14
leo: she was fascinated with her father. When you read her childhood diaries, you… you realize how obsessed she was with him, and how…
28:25
leo: She wanted him to come back. The parents had divorced, and he was a famous pianist and composer. She used to be an opera singer, but she gave it up to become a mother. And when they divorced and,
28:42
leo: Anais, her brothers, and her mother moved to New York. They were previously in Paris, Brussels, and Barcelona. She missed her father terribly, and she started to idealize him even more than she did.
28:58
leo: Right. And that's actually how the diaries begin for her. She was writing letters to her… to her father, and her mother wouldn't let her send the letters.
29:11
leo: So she collected the letters, and it slowly became a diary. She wouldn't even bother writing them as letters. She just wrote in a little notebook. So…
29:23
leo: Her story is, very much intricated with the love of men, even when it's unhealthy, even when it's,
29:35
leo: Yeah, but
29:38
leo: hard and, yeah, unhealthy. And so, she never hates men, and even though she can get very frustrated, and that's something that, I'm actually sad for her about, not that she doesn't hate men, but that she had no idea
29:58
leo: Like we have today, about…
30:01
leo: Feminism, and the fact that patriarchy is systemic, and that it was not her fault, it was not the fault specifically of the men she met.
30:12
leo: all of that was just playing roles into a system, and she really doesn't seem to see that at all. She…
30:21
Tad Eggleston: I mean, she seems to see that the roles are arbitrary, but she doesn't seem to realize that it's a…
30:30
leo: Or that it could be changed somehow, I don't know, there's something very fatalistic about her.
30:36
Tad Eggleston: Right. Regarding, gender roles, And she also embraces them very much, like, she…
30:44
leo: She's very attached to the idea of femininity, masculinity, which is a point on which I disagree with her, but it was also the time where she lived. And she is particularly very attached to
30:59
leo: Being perceived as very feminine, very pretty, very… Yeah.
31:05
Tad Eggleston: You know, and this is… this is where we get into, like, one of my autistic hyperfixations is on language, and the way it changes, and the way it… so, like, one of the things that… that… that I'll… I'll say out loud is, like.
31:23
Tad Eggleston: I don't know that we have…
31:26
Tad Eggleston: more bisexual people now than we ever did, we just have a word for it. I don't know that we have more trans people now than we ever did, we just have a word for it. Before there was a word, we had people who were deeply uncomfortable in their skin because they didn't have
31:44
Tad Eggleston: The skin that fit.
31:46
leo: Yeah, yeah.
31:48
Tad Eggleston: So…
31:50
Tad Eggleston: I mean, what I see a lot of… I mean, I haven't read a ton of her readings, or her writings, but what I see a lot of in your portrayal is a person who is acutely aware of the ways that her skin doesn't fit.
32:08
Tad Eggleston: And looks to, to make…
32:12
Tad Eggleston: To make a skin that fits better, but without really a toolbox to work from. So she's got to do a lot of guess and check.
32:21
Tad Eggleston: She can't go, oh, this person did that, I wonder if that's for me.
32:26
leo: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
32:27
Tad Eggleston: And I guess that the…
32:29
leo: people who did, experiment with that kind of stuff were very secretive about it. It was so dangerous. I mean, it's still dangerous now. People still.
32:39
Tad Eggleston: Right, it's… it's still… it's still frowned upon across the board, so many… You know… At the time.
32:47
leo: And I guess, especially for women, there are so many, cases of women who have spent their lives in mental institutes just because they once kissed the girl, and were caught in the act, and were declared crazy or hysterical, and were…
33:06
leo: yeah, locked for the rest of their lives, and there are so many archives about that. So yeah, she was right to lie and to be secretive about it, yeah.
33:17
Tad Eggleston: Nope.
33:18
leo: The Bible, strategy to be a liar.
33:22
Tad Eggleston: Another thing that I discovered…
33:24
Tad Eggleston: just in, like, some basic background reading, she wrote her diary in three languages. She wrote.
33:31
leo: Yeah.
33:32
Tad Eggleston: She wrote according to the language that fit most what she was trying to convey, and that… that's another thing to me that indicates that, like.
33:43
Tad Eggleston: It's so hard to find the right words that I'm gonna… I'm gonna go to the language that's best at the words I'm looking for.
33:50
leo: Yeah.
33:52
leo: And how… how amazing it is to have 3 languages,
33:56
Tad Eggleston: to work with.
33:57
leo: Yeah, as in your toolbox. And what's funny, also, is that she had, an accent in every one of those three languages.
34:07
leo: she would not speak any of them perfectly. She always had… so she… it's like she belongs to no country, to no language. She's always fluid, always in transition from a state to another.
34:24
Tad Eggleston: Right.
34:25
leo: Yeah.
34:26
Tad Eggleston: Tell me about the process of putting the book together, because you made some really cool decisions, both technical and…
34:35
Tad Eggleston: Storytelling-wise, and also, I mean, you're taking…
34:40
Tad Eggleston: I assume, largely from her diaries, so… so, like, how… how did you choose…
34:47
Tad Eggleston: Portions? How much of the text were you taking directly versus…
34:52
leo: Rewriting, and then how…
34:54
Tad Eggleston: I mean, we'll definitely get to the magic pencils, because…
34:58
leo: Yeah.
34:58
Tad Eggleston: But there's also decisions, like, you have her mirror self.
35:05
leo: Yes, yes.
35:06
Tad Eggleston: on a regular basis. You've got this recurring ship motif.
35:11
Tad Eggleston: So yeah, just… just talk to me about… The process of the book.
35:17
leo: honestly, it was a very long process, because when I started thinking about making it into a book, it must have been around
35:28
leo: 2013, something like that. So, yeah, it took me almost 10 years. I was obviously working on other projects in the meantime, but…
35:39
leo: I read everything that I could find from her and about her, and I got extremely frustrated and even more determined to make a comic book about her when I read biographies written by other people.
35:54
leo: I felt like they didn't get her at all.
35:57
leo: Most of those biographies have been written in the 90s, and they are so judgmental, and so not aware, neither of feminism, or neurodiversity, or drama. They are just blaming her in a very…
36:16
leo: Judeo-Christian, traditional way, Shocking.
36:20
Tad Eggleston: It's shocking to me that Judeo-Christian society would decide to just blame the woman for everything that happened to her.
36:27
leo: for everything, and I… I mean.
36:29
Tad Eggleston: I mean, the…
36:31
leo: joke.
36:32
Tad Eggleston: I lived through the people who blamed Hillary for Bill infidelity.
36:38
leo: Yeah, I remember that too. I was young.
36:41
Tad Eggleston: And that was also one of the reasons that she couldn't possibly be as good of a president as…
36:48
Tad Eggleston: Donald fucking Trump was because, well, look at her husband. I'm like, wait a minute. Because of her husband!
36:58
leo: Yep.
36:58
leo: Well, no, let's just… the rapist, no problem.
37:02
leo: Yeah.
37:04
leo: Yeah, yeah, it's always the same. So, that got me even more, determined to make this book.
37:10
leo: Then I had to select, as you said, I wasn't, gonna do,
37:17
leo: full biography of her, because I think that in comic books form, it's my own unpopular opinion, books… comic books that tend to tell the whole story of a person have to go too fast, and they cannot linger on feelings and emotions and…
37:36
Tad Eggleston: I mean, unless you get lucky, like, there's a Josephine Baker biography.
37:40
leo: Yeah.
37:41
Tad Eggleston: book form that's, like, 600 pages.
37:43
leo: Oh, okay.
37:44
Tad Eggleston: So, like…
37:45
leo: I'm not thinking about the same one, maybe.
37:48
Tad Eggleston: Or maybe, maybe it's only 300 pages, but it's, it's, like, big, big.
37:52
leo: French authors, black and white.
37:54
Tad Eggleston: I think so.
37:56
leo: So I know what you mean, and I'm not a fan of…
37:59
Tad Eggleston: I… I don't…
38:00
leo: Love it, love it. We have a lot of, maybe 4 or 5 books about,
38:07
leo: women through history. They did Holland de Prouge, they did Quique de Montparnasse.
38:14
leo: And I… I… yeah, I think it… they have to go too fast, and…
38:20
leo: Anais Nin's work is so much about sensations and,
38:26
leo: Feelings, and trying to capture things that crawl under your skin, and capture the dream feeling, or the fire feeling, and…
38:38
leo: things that, I needed to be able to take time.
38:41
Tad Eggleston: No, it is 568 pages, the one by Ket and…
38:46
leo: Catalie.
38:47
Tad Eggleston: tell? Yeah.
38:49
leo: Yeah, yeah, it's the one I think I was thinking about.
38:52
leo: I have to admit, I didn't read the Josephine Baker one, I read the Kiki and the Olamp.
38:58
leo: And I was… not that moved.
39:01
leo: I mean, I learned things, but I didn't feel a lot of things.
39:05
Tad Eggleston: I wasn't completely disagreeing with you either, you know, because you're absolutely right. With any biography, even if it's
39:15
Tad Eggleston: it, like… I tend to like…
39:19
Tad Eggleston: even in prose biographies, when they focus harder on specific periods or specific events than trying to cover everything, because
39:32
Tad Eggleston: There's just too much to give it… depths.
39:35
leo: Yeah, yeah.
39:38
leo: So I needed to… To make choices, and…
39:42
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
39:43
leo: That was actually kind of…
39:45
leo: the easiest part, because the… that moment when she meets Henry and June Miller, they really do act like a spark to everything she has been building up to.
40:00
leo: and there's the atmosphere of the late 20s, Paris, all that, kind of romantic cliche of the artists of those, golden years. So, I knew that,
40:16
leo: at the basic level of the pleasure of drawing, I was gonna have a lot of fun drawing the costumes, the hair, the…
40:24
leo: yeah, the rooms they lived in, and, I loved that moment because, And…
40:34
leo: During that time space of maybe 4 or 5 years, she goes through so much change. She really kind of, it's like a chrysalid. It's like she was a caterpillar, and at the end, she is a butterfly who maybe is not ready to take flight yet, but she really goes through a lot of changes, and
40:58
leo: sometimes a lot of trauma. She kind of…
41:02
leo: Gets re-traumatized with the story with her father, and she has to work through a lot of
41:09
leo: Yeah, a lot of the trauma that she experienced during her life
41:15
leo: And so, for me, that was, giving me kind of a… a narrative arc. Yeah.
41:22
leo: Between that frustration and the fact that at the end of the book, is the time when she has published, self-published her first novel, and she feels like she's gonna keep writing forever, and she has less doubts about her qualities, both as a human being and as a creator.
41:43
leo: So, that was the choosing part.
41:46
leo: But then there was the how-to-tell part, and that was very hard to… at first, I guess I was trying to be too serious, and too… to be too exact on the date, who was there,
42:03
leo: to be too, academic, and I had to take certain liberties, like, I erased, or I didn't talk about certain people that were in her life at that time.
42:18
leo: Because they would have opened all other storylines, and I didn't want to lose focus.
42:24
leo: So I stayed with a few very important persons in her life.
42:31
leo: And, yeah, the double… That was the main thing for me, because when you read her.
42:38
leo: Most of her days, she's just sitting in her room, either reading or writing.
42:44
leo: And that's really not interesting to draw. It's like someone having a monologue in her head. She has no…
42:54
leo: interaction for most of her day. So I needed to find a way.
42:59
Tad Eggleston: Could be.
43:01
leo: Bless you.
43:02
leo: to…
43:03
Tad Eggleston: No.
43:05
leo: to, to give something interesting visually to happen when she's writing, when she's talking to herself like that. And she actually gave me, the answer very obviously. She talks about her diary, addressing it as my mirror, my double, my brother. So…
43:23
leo: It was, an easy idea to picture a… Kind of, inner self.
43:31
leo: And I chose to represent the double with a very big, flowing hair.
43:37
leo: it was an easy way for me to represent that it's the self that is not constrained by societal expectations. I know that women's hair at that time were really, really,
43:53
leo: How do you say that? It was very risky. Controlled. Yeah, controlled. You cannot go out, without a hat.
44:00
leo: Let alone with your hair down. So, that double with her great big hair, very wild, was an easy, metaphor for me. And visually,
44:14
leo: it reminded me of some of the paintings by Klimt or other people from that era, which I love, too, and I've loved since I was a teenager, and there's something very…
44:27
leo: Yeah, a bit cheesy, a bit teenagey about that, yeah, allegories, and, yeah, I love that. It came naturally to me, so I decided that it was the right thing to do.
44:41
leo: And yeah, you talked about the ship motif that comes… that's also very much in her writing. She's always referring to the sea, to boats or ships that she needs to take… to take her away, or that she needs to…
44:58
leo: to learn to steer, and she doesn't know how. She's been living for a time on a flat, flat boat Spanish, on the Seine in Paris.
45:11
leo: And she keeps dreaming about boats, and I really loved that image, too.
45:17
leo: And yeah, also the way that I chose to represent the more sensual or sexual parts of her story were very much inspired by the words she used.
45:29
leo: She uses a lot of vegetal and floral,
45:35
leo: Allegories to talk about desire and, intimate parts, and,
45:41
leo: Yeah, I really loved it, and it was,
45:45
leo: I thought it worked really well in having, pages that are sensual and, yeah…
45:57
leo: pleasurable to look at, but not overly pornographic, because I didn't want the book to be, under a blister and not a… I didn't want to restrict too much the public.
46:10
Tad Eggleston: Well, I think there's also… many of the…
46:15
Tad Eggleston: Sexual scenes have a certain surrealism to them.
46:22
Tad Eggleston: you know, which I think brings out…
46:25
Tad Eggleston: the feeling more than being titillating, which I think was the point.
46:31
Tad Eggleston: And you did it in spades?
46:35
leo: Hmm.
46:39
leo: Yeah, because for her, she's very much,
46:45
leo: For her, sexuality is not just for pleasure, even though she has a lot of desire, and she looks for pleasure, but…
46:55
leo: She really also sees it as a way of expressing herself, of being communicating with her partner, and almost as sacred.
47:05
leo: She has an…
47:07
leo: A way of seeing it that's almost like a tantric sexuality, and she refers to the links between her sexuality and her creativity.
47:18
leo: And I don't think that she was aware of, like, the chakra system, where, I'm not very much into it, but I found it funny that, the…
47:29
leo: root chakra is very much creativity as well as sexuality, and she clearly made that link, and she knew that one would feed the other, and that she needed to develop both of them. She could not just develop one, she had to… it had to be on
47:49
leo: Parallel and intermingled trucks.
47:53
Tad Eggleston: Right.
47:57
Tad Eggleston: talk to me, just because, like, A, I'm so glad that I made a point of getting to the panel where you
48:05
Tad Eggleston: sketched.
48:07
Tad Eggleston: on camera, and I.
48:09
leo: Good to see you.
48:10
Tad Eggleston: you working with your magic pencil, and the way you would move across the page as the color changed is like, oh, it's blue now, so I'm gonna move up to this corner. Oh, it's yellow, so I'm over here now, and it, like, I'm just… I was trying to imagine how your brain was working
48:29
Tad Eggleston: For that, but then you also mentioned that when you were working on… on… on a East Nin, you had many pencils, so… so, like, if you were working on a blue area and you stopped being at blue on that pencil, you could switch to a different pencil that was added.
48:44
leo: Yeah.
48:44
Tad Eggleston: But talk… but talk about the magic pencil, and talk about how… how… how it affected how you worked on this book, because I'm pretty certain it tapped into…
48:54
leo: Yeah, absolutely.
48:55
Tad Eggleston: A different part of creativity.
48:57
leo: Yeah, it was… it was a big struggle for me to find the right technique for this album, because as you mentioned earlier, I do love to switch my tools and switch my technique.
49:09
leo: Depending on the book and the story I'm telling. For me, there really needs to be, a connection between the…
49:19
leo: The visual, yeah, the visual atmosphere and the atmosphere of the book.
49:26
leo: And so I was really struggling to find… I tried my usual gray pencils, I tried charcoal, I tried gouache, and nothing was really satisfying me. And those pencils, so they have the three…
49:42
leo: primary colors, so yellow, red, and blue.
49:47
Tad Eggleston: I actually bought a set for myself.
49:49
leo: Oh, you do?
49:51
Tad Eggleston: I am not nearly an artist, but they're in my backpack so that I can mess around with them.
49:58
leo: Yeah, and so I had them, and I would use them in festivals for book signings and stuff, and also for when I was traveling.
50:08
Tad Eggleston: I am so, so sad that they sold out of Ana East Nin at.
50:13
leo: Yeah.
50:14
Tad Eggleston: right before…
50:15
leo: I could…
50:15
Tad Eggleston: Buy it.
50:17
leo: I'm so sorry, but I'm sure we'll find a.
50:19
Tad Eggleston: One day. Trust me, I will beat, like, either the next time you're in the States, or the first time I manage.
50:25
leo: Did you leave the country? Yes. Yeah, if you come to Europe, we can… well.
50:33
Tad Eggleston: That would require a passport. I don't actually even have one. One day, I should get one. So that's step one.
50:41
leo: Yes.
50:43
Tad Eggleston: Step 1, passport. Step two, money.
50:46
leo: Yeah. Step 3, Europe.
50:48
Tad Eggleston: You know.
50:52
leo: So, yeah.
50:54
leo: The pencils. So yeah, I knew those pencils, but I had never tried to draw, comic books with them. I was just using them to sketch or book sign. And it's actually my boyfriend, who's also working at the same studio as I am.
51:13
leo: who suggested to me that I try them, because I love them so much. He knows that they are kind of my favorite tool, but just to play with, I never imagined working with.
51:23
leo: And so I tried, and it was…
51:25
leo: perfect, and it was so clear to me that this was the technique I needed, and so I contacted my publisher. I work with a Casterman, but with specifically a very, very fine editor.
51:39
leo: She's named Natalie, and we live in the same city, so we can see each other and work for real.
51:46
leo: And that changes everything. And I showed her the 3 or 4 pages that I had tried as a test, and she was so happy, and I saw on her face that, yes, that was the right thing to do. What I really love about it for Anais is that since the
52:06
leo: The color is always changing.
52:09
leo: It mirrors so much her own way of existing, where she's always having two thoughts or seven thoughts at the same time. She's always been,
52:21
leo: dragged in several directions at the same time, and she's so, yeah, multifaceted, and the pencil is exactly like that. So, for me, it was the perfect tool.
52:33
leo: And also, it allows me to not have to do any coloring, because the line themselves are full of colors.
52:43
leo: And so it allows a lot of,
52:48
leo: it's less heavy. There's a lot of white, you see the white of the paper a lot, and so it breathes, and you can…
52:58
leo: imagine the rest, and yeah, it's very much, aerial, and I love that.
53:05
Tad Eggleston: And it also makes the darkness that much more jarring.
53:10
leo: I've got.
53:11
Tad Eggleston: You know, it's, it's, it's…
53:13
Tad Eggleston: it's very meaningful anytime you've got, you know… Yeah, no, I could keep talking about this book forever, and I'm certain that I will…
53:23
Tad Eggleston: you know, it's on my short list of books to find somebody to book club with me, so we can talk about it. It's one of my favorite parts about this podcast. We have, I think, I think we've got 10 active book clubs going right now.
53:38
leo: That's amazing.
53:39
Tad Eggleston: Where we just have a mixture of creators, or just friends, like, that come, and we'll talk about Lovin' Rockets, or we'll talk about Heavy Metal Magazine, or we'll talk about…
53:50
leo: Oh, tomorrow night is a big event in Brussels about heavy metal?
53:55
Tad Eggleston: There's a huge, show, opening tomorrow.
54:00
leo: And I think there are, there are gonna be, some originals from, Mabuse Toye, so I'm going there. With the friend, the friend who arrives, later has some work that is being, shown.
54:16
Tad Eggleston: Take some pictures and send them to me.
54:18
leo: I will, I will.
54:19
Tad Eggleston: I've been so happy that… in fact, my issue 3 is supposed to be delivered today. Metal Erland has been republishing
54:31
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah. In the United States.
54:33
leo: I know.
54:33
Tad Eggleston: And that's made me very, very happy.
54:37
leo: Yeah, yes.
54:38
Tad Eggleston: Amazing.
54:39
Tad Eggleston: So, but I do want to talk a little bit about Great Turkey Walk before
54:45
Tad Eggleston: I have to go.
54:46
leo: Yeah, I love it too.
54:47
Tad Eggleston: And… and touch some on your… on your untranslated works. And we've got about 20 minutes, so we should… we should do that, if we're gonna do that. Yeah, we can take 30 if need this week. I understand, I just, I like to respect boundaries.
55:03
leo: Thank you. See, I'm not so good at respecting my own boundaries.
55:07
Tad Eggleston: Well, and like, that's where I try to be the friend that will at least remind me of your own… of your own boundaries. If you then choose to go over them anyway, I'm not gonna be the friend that says, no, you're not allowed to, but…
55:25
leo: No, it's good.
55:26
Tad Eggleston: And I hope I didn't cross a boundary by saying I'm a friend. I hope I'm a friend.
55:31
leo: No, no, no. I feel…
55:32
Tad Eggleston: I feel like we connected at that level.
55:34
leo: Yes.
55:35
Tad Eggleston: So… Yeah, tell me about Great Jerky Walk, because…
55:41
Tad Eggleston: Like, in some ways, it couldn't be further from Anna East Ninn.
55:47
Tad Eggleston: And in other ways, it has a lot of similarities.
55:51
Tad Eggleston: Really? In terms of the characters and the journeys they're on.
55:54
leo: Oh, yeah.
55:55
Tad Eggleston: So…
55:57
leo: Yeah.
55:58
Tad Eggleston: You know, I can see…
56:00
Tad Eggleston: I mean, you have… there are four main characters in Great Turkey Walk. You've got…
56:08
Tad Eggleston: And I'm so terrible at remembering names. You've got Simon, And you've got Mr. Peace?
56:14
leo: Yes. June?
56:15
Tad Eggleston: You've got Joe, and then you've got Lizzie, and they're all… Finding who they are.
56:22
leo: Yes.
56:23
Tad Eggleston: After different traumas, after different…
56:27
Tad Eggleston: But they're all at… as Anais is, they're all at that point in their life where…
56:35
leo: The life is not fitting anymore, yeah.
56:38
Tad Eggleston: Right. And they're deciding what does fit.
56:43
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah. And many of them are younger, so they could… they could have other points like that again, but… but there… there is definitely that… that…
56:53
Tad Eggleston: you know, Simon has this teacher who he loves, who… who… he's just not that good at school, say, hey, it's time for you to go find yourself. You're graduated now, at, what, 12?
57:08
Tad Eggleston: Which dates about when this book is. This is more of a Settling the West era book.
57:15
leo: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
57:17
Tad Eggleston: You know, mr. Peace lost his family.
57:24
Tad Eggleston: And fell into a bottle.
57:26
Tad Eggleston: you know, Joe…
57:30
Tad Eggleston: If you… if you really read between the lines, lost her family probably because they were sold separately.
57:37
leo: Yeah. B.
57:37
Tad Eggleston: Because she says, I don't know if my mom's alive, but she's also an orphan, and it's like, so, like, if you're reading between the lines, that's, like, SO heavy, like…
57:49
leo: Yeah.
57:49
Tad Eggleston: Are you going to Freedom, or are you going to find Mom? Are you…
57:55
Tad Eggleston: And then, like, we find Lizzie right after she's buried her family.
58:00
leo: Yeah.
58:01
leo: Her story is terrible, too.
58:04
Tad Eggleston: Although, I mean, first of all, I love the character of Simon because he manages to keep… his superpower.
58:13
Tad Eggleston: is… Keeping a mostly positive attitude.
58:17
leo: Yes, yes, he's…
58:19
Tad Eggleston: In light of all of this. I mean, and they talk about everybody has the thing they're good at, and what he's really good at is…
58:26
Tad Eggleston: we decided we're doing this thing, we're gonna do this thing. It's why… it's why when he kind of falls for Lizzie and doesn't know how to handle that, and becomes all morose, and here I am, spoiling the book for readers, it's painful, because it's like, no, Simon, you're the one that just…
58:44
leo: Cure.
58:45
leo: Oh, yeah, the book is so sweet. I had, I had had the proposition from the publisher to read this book, by Kathleen Carr, and to see if I was interested in adapting it, and I've always dreamt of, drawing a Western genre book.
59:05
leo: It's really something that I enjoy as a reader, as a moviegoer, but there's so much problematic attitude in music westerns.
59:19
leo: I, I cannot, I'm not okay with that, and this book was exposed.
59:24
Tad Eggleston: Here's the… one of the things that I've noticed about European
59:29
Tad Eggleston: Western comics, or European comics set in the 20s, or whatnot, is they seem much more capable of saying the quiet part out loud, because they don't have the, oh, but America's always been great, so we can't talk about.
59:44
leo: Yeah. When they weren't.
59:48
leo: Yeah, that's for sure. I think we've all, here in Europe, grew up with, American movies, American music, and really a fascination for America. But also, maybe we are more critical, and we see…
1:00:06
Tad Eggleston: you're not criticizing your heritage, you're criticizing your media, and that's, I think, a different…
1:00:14
Tad Eggleston: I mean, there's those of us in America that are quite comfortable criticizing our heritage, but I think it's always harder to criticize…
1:00:22
Tad Eggleston: Something that you feel like is a part of you, rather than something that…
1:00:27
leo: It's external.
1:00:27
Tad Eggleston: Is something that's external in your… your…
1:00:30
leo: And we judge America, and when, like, you were always, like, 6 months or a year ahead of us. Like, a year ago, the US had banned a young English comic books writer.
1:00:46
leo: She came over there.
1:00:48
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
1:00:49
leo: The festival, and she was banned?
1:00:51
leo: And we were.
1:00:52
Tad Eggleston: Well, yeah, she can…
1:00:53
leo: I caught…
1:00:53
Tad Eggleston: She got caught in customs in Washington, because she'd actually been backpacking across the country, and so she'd spent all this time in America, but then she went into Canada, and when she.
1:01:06
leo: She tried to.
1:01:07
Tad Eggleston: come back.
1:01:08
leo: No.
1:01:09
Tad Eggleston: And they couldn't even just send her home. That pissed me off so much. I mean, like, bad enough that they didn't let her come back.
1:01:16
leo: Yeah, but they detained her.
1:01:18
Tad Eggleston: But the detaining her, rather than just putting her on a plane home, is the part that, like…
1:01:24
Tad Eggleston: I'm like, what?
1:01:27
leo: But then, so we laughed at the USA for being such… yeah. But then last week, a young, Italian.
1:01:35
Tad Eggleston: French?
1:01:36
leo: Or Italian, yeah.
1:01:37
Tad Eggleston: Italian, yeah.
1:01:39
leo: comic artist who was coming to France for a festival.
1:01:43
leo: got arrested at the airport, and could not step out of the airport, and was sent back because her arms is too disturbing to French people.
1:01:56
leo: and French states, so it's… yeah, well, we are turning… every country in Europe is turning fascist, too, so we love to judge the.
1:02:07
Tad Eggleston: I mean, thankfully, way slower, and with way more electoral resistance.
1:02:14
leo: Yeah, but, like, we've been here.
1:02:17
Tad Eggleston: But yes.
1:02:18
leo: for 3 days to protest our, current government. Right.
1:02:23
leo: he's taking stupid decision after stupid decision, and he's ruining everything, and yeah, it's out of control. So, I think we have this relationship with the USA, where we love to judge it, knowing it's, like, the last time we can laugh about it, because in 6 months, this is gonna happen here, too.
1:02:43
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, this is the problem with it being driven by big money. Big money doesn't actually have borders.
1:02:49
leo: Nope.
1:02:51
leo: So…
1:02:52
Tad Eggleston: Heh.
1:02:54
leo: So, what I loved about this…
1:02:57
Tad Eggleston: Rocky Walk.
1:02:57
leo: in particular is that it, utilizes every cliche of the Western genre, but turns it on its head, because it's seen by children, and with the
1:03:10
leo: common sense and innocence of children, they will ask, but why? That's so unfair! And then they will decide to do something different.
1:03:20
Tad Eggleston: Well, and that's where I was…
1:03:22
leo: the book.
1:03:22
Tad Eggleston: Not surprised when I discovered that the book itself isn't that old, it's, like, late 90s.
1:03:29
leo: Yeah, yeah.
1:03:29
Tad Eggleston: It's like, okay, now I understand how they could get away with writing a beloved children's book.
1:03:35
leo: Yes.
1:03:36
Tad Eggleston: That, like, examines that stuff.
1:03:40
leo: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:03:42
leo: just on a very light note, like, not incriminating for a whole nation, but the simple fact that, very, very early in the story, Simon
1:03:54
leo: understands that he's not going to be able to do everything himself, and I mean, it's very much one of the Western genre tropes, is that every man for himself, and Simon is the.
1:04:07
Tad Eggleston: Rugged individualism.
1:04:09
leo: Yeah, yeah. And Simon… Gets very early that, no, he's gonna need a teammate, he's gonna need…
1:04:17
leo: Maybe more people than that, but for starters, at least one partner.
1:04:22
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:04:24
leo: And he chooses the… the one who needs help, but who has,
1:04:30
leo: very much, he has a lot of skills, but as you said, Mr. Peace had, had,
1:04:38
leo: He's been mourning, and he…
1:04:42
leo: he has become addicted to alcohol, and so is a joke for everyone. Nobody trusts him anymore, and Simon decides to trust him. He gives him kind of a…
1:04:53
leo: Rehab.
1:04:55
leo: farmstead rehab, a little bit silent. It's not very.
1:05:01
Tad Eggleston: Rehab of the Trail.
1:05:02
leo: any form, but it's okay, I guess.
1:05:07
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it was… it was what was available at the time.
1:05:09
leo: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cold turkey, yeah.
1:05:14
leo: No pun intended, with the Great Turkey Walk.
1:05:18
leo: Actually, yeah, I guess one of the things that I loved, apart from the pleasure I had to draw this character, who are all very cute, and I had the pleasure of being able to go a little bit farther in the…
1:05:36
leo: exaggerating the expressions, making something that's a little more like a, yeah, children's book, like cartoons on TV, compared to my other works, where it was a little more serious.
1:05:49
leo: And the pleasure of drawing all the magnificent landscapes of the many states they cross.
1:05:57
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, magnificent until you've been walking through the same landscape for…
1:06:03
leo: For days and weeks, I guess.
1:06:04
Tad Eggleston: I mean, this just pops in my head. There's this, like, crazy Ironman bicycle ride.
1:06:11
leo: bicycle race that goes from Venice Beach, California, to Coney Island in New York, so it's, like, all the way across the United States.
1:06:19
Tad Eggleston: And the people who have done the race multiple times, to a man, say, nothing is harder than driving or riding through those plain states, where…
1:06:29
leo: Oh, yeah.
1:06:29
Tad Eggleston: it's the same. All you see is corn, and soybeans, and corn, and soybean. Like, they're, like, riding up the Rockies.
1:06:40
Tad Eggleston: Not nearly as hard as coming down and having, like, 4 days that look the same.
1:06:49
Tad Eggleston: You know, they say the biggest challenge of the race is not going crazy during that stretch.
1:06:57
leo: Wow. Yeah.
1:07:00
leo: I'm not surprised, yeah.
1:07:03
leo: Hmm.
1:07:03
Tad Eggleston: But, I mean, it's really beautiful when… when you just get to look at it once.
1:07:09
leo: a pretty picture, choose the most special point of view.
1:07:14
Tad Eggleston: Right. My wife is from South Dakota, so she lives right in the middle of, you know… so it's like, yeah, it's really beautiful until you spend 6 hours, and it all… you know, 6 hours driving, and it all looks the same.
1:07:26
leo: Yeah, yeah. It's the only, countryside state I've been in. I've… I've been to…
1:07:34
leo: interior South Dakota and Tobo, and I…
1:07:39
leo: I actually took a horse ride in the Badlands, and it's one of… Okay.
1:07:44
Tad Eggleston: Best memories in my life. Absolutely beautiful.
1:07:48
leo: Absolutely.
1:07:48
Tad Eggleston: Absolutely beautiful.
1:07:49
leo: Yeah.
1:07:50
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm not… I'm not actually trying to trash it as much as, like.
1:07:54
leo: No, no, it's just…
1:07:55
Tad Eggleston: There's a difference between how beautiful it is when you're visiting and being able to just spend time and enjoy it, and when you're trying to get through it, and there's no sense of movement.
1:08:05
leo: No, I know. We drove from, Chicago to…
1:08:11
leo: to, what was the name? Hill City, maybe? One that's close to the famous faces in the…
1:08:18
Tad Eggleston: Right, right, right. So I know most of that drive.
1:08:20
leo: Two days pride, right.
1:08:23
Tad Eggleston: So, so once you've got… once you got to, like, into Wisconsin, it became…
1:08:31
leo: just…
1:08:31
Tad Eggleston: Very…
1:08:32
leo: Definitely.
1:08:32
Tad Eggleston: Very repetitive.
1:08:34
Tad Eggleston: through most of Wisconsin, most, you know, because, you know, that's the southern part of Minnesota, so it's more plains and less lakes.
1:08:42
leo: Yeah.
1:08:42
Tad Eggleston: Right, until you… I mean, even once you…
1:08:46
Tad Eggleston: cross into South Dakota at that point, you're, like, 9 hours away from…
1:08:51
Tad Eggleston: the Black Hills. I mean, my wife always… because she lives on the… her family's from the Sioux Falls area, which is just over the Minnesota border. So, like, he'll tell people she's from South Dakota, and they'll immediately bring out up Mount Rushmore, and she's like, yeah, I lived, like, 9 hours from that.
1:09:12
leo: Yeah.
1:09:13
leo: Something else. We are not used to that kind of,
1:09:17
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:09:17
leo: Right here. I mean, you can cross Belgium in 2 hours, so, yeah.
1:09:22
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I mean, I'm told that, like, they… I mean…
1:09:28
Tad Eggleston: this is gonna make me out as the hopeless romantic that I can sometimes be, but my favorite…
1:09:37
Tad Eggleston: my favorite movies that are set in Europe are the… the Before Sunrise, Before Midnight. Oh yeah, I love them so much. After, yeah, I adore those movies.
1:09:49
Tad Eggleston: But also, they make me go, oh, wait, you can get one, like, train pass and just hop all over the place? That sounds so much fun, and like…
1:10:01
Tad Eggleston: Why didn't I do that in my 20s? And then I remembered, oh yeah, I had children in my 20s.
1:10:05
leo: Oh, you did?
1:10:07
Tad Eggleston: That's why I didn't do it in my 20s.
1:10:10
leo: That's true.
1:10:12
Tad Eggleston: I have grandchildren now, yeah.
1:10:15
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, yeah. My son took after me with the whole young parenthood thing.
1:10:23
Tad Eggleston: But then I go, but I could do it in my 40s, because I have grandchildren now.
1:10:29
leo: Yeah!
1:10:29
Tad Eggleston: And, and that means that… like… So, maybe one day…
1:10:36
leo: Yeah.
1:10:36
Tad Eggleston: I'll choose… I'll choose, like…
1:10:40
leo: fun.
1:10:40
Tad Eggleston: Like, con season, and just get the Euro Pass, and…
1:10:46
leo: Yes, you should. You should.
1:10:48
Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, I had somebody telling me that, like, I need to incorporate the podcast, because then I can write off
1:10:57
Tad Eggleston: going to cons as business expenses, and I'm like, but don't you have to make money to be able to have a business expense?
1:11:06
Tad Eggleston: So I need to talk to, like, the specific, you know, the people who know our tax codes better.
1:11:13
leo: Yeah.
1:11:16
Tad Eggleston: So, I mean, again, we're getting shorter on time. I wanna…
1:11:22
Tad Eggleston: I wanna talk a little bit about Hoodoo Darlin, but in… In… in two senses,
1:11:30
Tad Eggleston: First, at least among the ones that I came across, it's one of the longer works that you didn't adapt from anything else.
1:11:38
leo: Yes.
1:11:39
Tad Eggleston: So, so, like, like, like, the, the, the, the fallback etch? I don't, how, how do we pronounce that?
1:11:47
Tad Eggleston: Belpaca.
1:11:47
leo: God bless.
1:11:48
Tad Eggleston: Belbeck trilogy is adapted from novels? Great Turkey Walk is adapted from a children's book.
1:11:58
Tad Eggleston: Anna East Ninn is less adapted, but it's taken from her diaries and, you know…
1:12:05
leo: I didn't listen, sorry.
1:12:06
Tad Eggleston: So most of my question is, is talk about the difference between Writing your own stories, and…
1:12:15
leo: Yeah, for me.
1:12:16
Tad Eggleston: Adapting from other work.
1:12:18
leo: Yo.
1:12:19
leo: I don't work solo or not adapting that often, because I find it extremely difficult.
1:12:28
leo: I'm much more comfortable with the, like,
1:12:34
leo: In French, we call that mise-en-scene. It's like, like in, directing something, like, someone has written the story for you, but now you get to imagine how you're gonna tell it. I'm so much more comfortable with the how than with the story itself.
1:12:51
leo: And I, I always have,
1:12:55
leo: feelings that I want to explore, or themes, or images that are stuck in my head, and I want to imagine a story that would go
1:13:06
leo: around that image, or that theme, or that feeling, but I really do struggle to…
1:13:14
leo: find the right characters, to find the right storylines. I… it's like, when everything is possible, I really struggle to make choices, and I doubt myself constantly. So that's why…
1:13:27
leo: For… so far, I've only really written one book myself. Well, there are two. There was one before Hooded Ourling that was called Princess Suplex. It was… it was about…
1:13:41
Tad Eggleston: I've seen a lot of the art.
1:13:43
leo: Thank you, Bill. Yeah.
1:13:44
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I like it.
1:13:46
leo: Yeah, I like it too, but it was more like a short story, really short.
1:13:51
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:13:52
leo: read in, like, 5-6 minutes. It was like a song. It had the energy of a rock song.
1:13:58
Tad Eggleston: It does. That's a good way of putting it.
1:14:01
leo: That's how I tried to imagine it, with really, like.
1:14:04
Tad Eggleston: I mean…
1:14:06
Tad Eggleston: I would love.
1:14:06
leo: I'd love to see that, Anthony. Yeah.
1:14:09
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I would love to see that wind up in… in…
1:14:13
Tad Eggleston: an English language anthology, just because it…
1:14:16
leo: Yeah, that would be nice. It doesn't even exist in French anymore, it only exists in Italian.
1:14:22
Tad Eggleston: The pressure that…
1:14:24
leo: originally made it, has gone bankrupt and doesn't exist anymore, so…
1:14:31
Tad Eggleston: that you own the rights?
1:14:33
leo: Yes, I do, if you notice.
1:14:36
leo: I would be interested in… and I can do the translation and work on it with some really English-speaking people.
1:14:44
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
1:14:45
leo: That would be amazing!
1:14:47
Tad Eggleston: Well, I do actually… I've got to know some publishers, so, like…
1:14:52
leo: Really?
1:14:53
Tad Eggleston: I'll throw that in the back of my head. Yeah, no, because I'm the podcast that wants to talk to everybody. Like, there are lots of comics… and this is why not enough people listen to me, because I'm told that, like, the… the way to have a popular podcast is to be laser-focused on something that everybody will…
1:15:10
Tad Eggleston: oh, this is the podcast I want to listen to when I want to know about blank. Okay, okay. And for me, like, my laser focus is on all of comics.
1:15:21
leo: Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:15:23
Tad Eggleston: I haven't found a mangaka to talk to yet, but I want to.
1:15:27
leo: I've had letterers on the show, I've had colorists on the show. Oh, that's amazing.
1:15:32
Tad Eggleston: on the show, I've had editors on this show, I've had publishers on this show.
1:15:38
leo: I think that's great.
1:15:40
Tad Eggleston: You know, because it's, like, the whole thing that I care about, you know? I mean, I'm putting together panel proposals for the big Chicago convention, and, like, I'm hoping to have one where I have…
1:15:58
Tad Eggleston: you know, I've talked to a couple of my publisher friends, I've talked… I don't know them yet, but a friend of a friend is in distribution.
1:16:06
Tad Eggleston: And I know some comic shop owners, and I'd love to have, like, that discussion between, like, the comic shop owners and the publishers and the distributors about, like, we all love how comics get made, and I've got panel proposals that are about that too, but, like, how do they get to you?
1:16:26
leo: Yeah, that's serious.
1:16:27
Tad Eggleston: You struggle to put them into your hands.
1:16:31
leo: Yeah, yeah.
1:16:32
leo: I would be very interested to learn more about that. It's very mysterious.
1:16:37
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it is, but people are getting better at it, you know, and there are different routes in the United States. I mean, there are people who are doing quite well, like, exclusively crowdfunding their comics.
1:16:48
leo: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:16:50
Tad Eggleston: It all paid for in advance.
1:16:52
leo: Yep.
1:16:53
Tad Eggleston: And as… I mean, there are also people who fail miserably. They get all paid for in advance, and they don't deliver.
1:16:58
leo: Yeah, yeah.
1:16:59
Tad Eggleston: It's a really good way to destroy your reputation. But, if you get it all paid for in advance, and then you deliver, then people will do that with you again.
1:17:09
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, it sounds like you need your Ed Brubaker.
1:17:13
Tad Eggleston: I, I, like, in the United… and I don't know how many US comics you read, but Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips have been working together for, God, 25 years. I don't think Sean Phillips does anything without Ed Brubaker anymore.
1:17:28
leo: Okay.
1:17:29
Tad Eggleston: Writers… writers have a little more extra time, so Ed will still occasionally write for other people.
1:17:36
leo: But, like, Brubaker Phillips has been a team.
1:17:39
Tad Eggleston: through…
1:17:40
leo: Criminal, they've got a series called Criminal that's all crime stories, they've got another…
1:17:45
Tad Eggleston: centered around a character named Reckless that's also crime stories, but it's kind of different. They've done a handful of just graphic novel, like.
1:17:55
Tad Eggleston: one of their most poignant, like, single graphic novels is a story called Pulp.
1:18:01
Tad Eggleston: That wound up being about, like, a dime novelist who'd once been an outlaw.
1:18:09
Tad Eggleston: But now he's, like…
1:18:11
Tad Eggleston: writing dime novels in, like, 40s New York, and winds up being involved in taking down
1:18:19
Tad Eggleston: like, or robbing from the American wound, you know, right… right before their big…
1:18:25
leo: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:18:26
Tad Eggleston: But all of that came out of, you know, Ed was like, Sean's done what I want to do forever, you know, so he asked him, what do you want to do for our next thing? And Sean's like, I've always wanted to draw a western. And Ed's like, this is the best I could manage to do. He gets to do the Western flashbacks.
1:18:44
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, I mean… My combo forever.
1:18:50
leo: Found my, yeah, my partner…
1:18:53
Tad Eggleston: person you click with, where…
1:18:55
leo: Yep.
1:18:56
Tad Eggleston: That sounds… that sounds like what you're.
1:18:57
leo: I'm right now working… my new project, is, I'm working with my boyfriend, who has so many great ideas, and he hasn't, he doesn't have the time to draw them all himself.
1:19:11
Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's how Elsa Chartier started out, and then…
1:19:16
Tad Eggleston: And she still does work with Pyrrhic, but I think he was too slow, so she wound up…
1:19:21
Tad Eggleston: Working with all of the top writers in America. She cold-called them all.
1:19:28
Tad Eggleston: She's like, hey, Matt Fraction, I want to do a book with you.
1:19:31
Tad Eggleston: Hey, Tom King, I want to do a book with you!
1:19:35
leo: Yeah.
1:19:36
leo: I would love to have so many ideas, but it's not the way my brain works. My brain works by fixating…
1:19:43
leo: For years on one topic, and getting completely immersed in it, so…
1:19:49
leo: So right now, we are, making a graphic novel about, do you know the history TV show Alone?
1:19:59
leo: Where people have to survive alone in the woods.
1:20:02
leo: I don't think I…
1:20:04
Tad Eggleston: do.
1:20:04
leo: camera crew, it's not, like, naked and afraid, they are really alone.
1:20:08
Tad Eggleston: No, no, no, I'm looking this up here.
1:20:11
leo: It's amazing.
1:20:12
leo: And Nikolai is my boyfriend, and I are obsessed with this show, and so we decided to make, kind of a homage to it.
1:20:25
Tad Eggleston: Okay. I…
1:20:27
leo: inventing… we keep basically the same rules with a little twist here and there, but it's all French-speaking people, so…
1:20:37
leo: From Quebec, from France, Belgium, Switzerland, Morocco, Congo.
1:20:43
leo: What else do we have? And it's gonna be set in Lapland, and through them, we explore, relationships between humans and nature, between humans…
1:20:56
Tad Eggleston: Cool.
1:20:56
leo: The cameras, the screens, how you…
1:21:00
leo: put yourself on screen? How do you…
1:21:03
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:21:04
leo: Picture yourself, and how do you react when confronted to the harsh reality.
1:21:11
Tad Eggleston: Because that's always the first problem with the reaction.
1:21:13
leo: I wouldn't.
1:21:13
Tad Eggleston: TV show is, like, it's no longer reality once they know they're being filmed.
1:21:19
leo: Yeah.
1:21:20
Tad Eggleston: And for that matter, as much as I get why people like survival shows, one of the reasons I've never gotten into them is, like…
1:21:27
Tad Eggleston: I sometimes, in my youth, occasionally did that type of camping, but, like…
1:21:33
Tad Eggleston: I did that type of camping, and I'm sitting there going, is it really Survivor if there's a camera crew there? They're not gonna let you die.
1:21:43
leo: Nope.
1:21:45
Tad Eggleston: The show would be over!
1:21:50
leo: And since we're not really doing a TV show, and there are no real humans involved, we can go farther than that.
1:21:56
Tad Eggleston: You can go… oh, yeah, no, no, absolutely. Yeah, that, no.
1:22:00
leo: Probably a lot of fun.
1:22:01
Tad Eggleston: You've got me hook, line, and sinker already, I can't wait to see this.
1:22:04
leo: It's gonna take a while, because I'm drawing it with watercolors, and I'm not used to that.
1:22:11
leo: So it's a new adventure.
1:22:13
Tad Eggleston: You, choosing another new medium, this is your thing.
1:22:20
leo: Yes.
1:22:20
Tad Eggleston: And I love it. I mean, that's… that's the other thing I'm gonna mention briefly, like.
1:22:26
leo: And then… I've.
1:22:28
Tad Eggleston: A lot of your work.
1:22:28
leo: work at this point.
1:22:30
leo: Yeah, I've got one question to ask after I make my…
1:22:33
Tad Eggleston: is that, like, the only artists that I know in the U.S. that I think is as diversified in the way they work, and, like…
1:22:45
Tad Eggleston: you can look at 3 books from him and not realize it's all the same artist, the way I… at this point, I know your style, I've spent a lot of time looking at it, but… but I could totally hand 3 books of yours to somebody separate times and not have them immediately go, oh, this is all…
1:23:04
Tad Eggleston: Only Alex Cormac comes to mind in the United States.
1:23:08
Tad Eggleston: That I feel that… that way about. And even so, I've started to notice that, like, he's got…
1:23:15
Tad Eggleston: a certain horror style, and he's got a certain act… you know, so, like, the more of his stuff I read, the more I'm like, well, I can peg that this book goes with that book, and this book goes with that book.
1:23:28
Tad Eggleston: But this is the question that I ask everybody, and I'm looking forward to asking it to you, because it's such a fun question. Tell me something you love.
1:23:37
Tad Eggleston: Preferably a comic, but we don't have rules. Preferably storytelling, but again, with the rules. But something that you love, that not enough people around you have also experienced, and you need them to, so that you have more people to talk about it with.
1:23:53
leo: Hmm. Oh, that's such a good question.
1:23:56
leo: Oh yeah, I know. It's…
1:23:59
leo: it's a band, but they also have a life… had, I would say, a lifestyle, and they made self-made movies about themselves, and they are called Rock Bitch.
1:24:12
Tad Eggleston: And they… Rock, bitch?
1:24:14
leo: Yeah, and they are witches, originally from England, and sometimes in the 90s, they moved to France, looking for more freedom of
1:24:28
Tad Eggleston: Oh, all one word, too. Okay.
1:24:30
leo: Oh, yeah, maybe… And so they, they rented an old, convent, an old, monastery?
1:24:40
leo: And they have…
1:24:40
Tad Eggleston: Wow.
1:24:41
leo: there, and they had very, very explicit shows where they would throw a golden condom in the crowd and go have sex with the one. Women or men who would pick it.
1:24:55
Tad Eggleston: And…
1:24:55
leo: There's a movie called This Is Ruppage that you only find on very, not recommendable sites?
1:25:06
Tad Eggleston: It's a documentary, but they filmed it themselves, and it contains very explicit scenes, so it's very hard to find in good quality. This is sad, as I look at their homepage, it, like.
1:25:18
Tad Eggleston: There is an official RockBitch Archives website, but it does have on it, before you ask, no, Rock Bitch will NOT be reforming and playing.
1:25:27
leo: No, I know. No, no.
1:25:29
Tad Eggleston: Although, as time goes by, there will be a long-awaited second album, and new DVD.
1:25:36
leo: And I think that now they live in a farm very secluded, somewhere in Scotland, if I… Okay.
1:25:44
leo: At least a big group of them, and they would, live, as a polyamorous group in a kind of community.
1:25:53
leo: And I'm absolutely fascinated by them, and
1:25:57
leo: nobody knows them. I don't even remember how I found out about them, but
1:26:02
leo: Yeah, they made a whole, storytelling about their lives, and…
1:26:09
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:26:09
leo: created characters to bring a new form of femininity in rock and roll. They are a bit old school, but I really love them.
1:26:23
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I am all over this. This will definitely be something I am exploring.
1:26:28
Tad Eggleston: This weekend.
1:26:29
leo: Good. I hope you enjoy it.
1:26:32
Tad Eggleston: I'm certain that I will,
1:26:34
Tad Eggleston: Leone, it has been a blast. Hopefully, we can… we can get slightly better at emailing back and forth, and you're welcome back. Anytime you want to talk about anything at all, we'll make it work.
1:26:48
leo: That's amazing.
1:26:49
Tad Eggleston: Just cause it's so much fun to talk.
1:26:52
leo: It was great, I had a great time.
1:26:54
Tad Eggleston: So, for 22 panels, this has been Leonie Bischoff, and we will see you after the next page.