Latest / Book Flood Podcast / Encore Summer 2026: Ryan Estrada (E71)
Transcript
- Thomas Nixon: Welcome to the Book Flood Podcast. I am your host, Tom Nixon. My guest this week is graphic novelist Ryan Estrada. Ryan is a Freeman Award-winning Eisner-nominated artist, author, and adventurer. His books include Banned Book Club, No Rules Tonight, Good Old Fashioned Korean Spirit, Occulted, and the Student Ambassador series. He has made comics for Star Trek, Popeye, Flash Gordon, and Garfield. Welcome Ryan. Ryan Estrada: Thanks so much for having me. Thomas Nixon: Absolutely. I'm excited. I'm a big graphic novelist fan as anybody who listens to me can tell you for sure. So why don't we start a little bit. Tell me about your career trajectory. How did you get to this place with multiple books and everything that you do? Ryan Estrada: Well, I decided early on that I'd been... I figured, you know, I've been doing this long enough, making comics, it's time to go pro. That's when I was six years old. I was very lucky that I had parents who never told me like, yeah, that's not how it works, you can't get a job at six. They took me to library, I looked up books on how to send out pitch packets, and I started submitting to newspapers and comics at the age of six. And I kept going for a decade until one of them finally said, fine, fine, we'll hire you. When I was 16 years old, I did a weekly comic in our local newspaper. And I've just been going ever since then. ⁓ For decades, I made a lot of graphic novels of my own that no one ever read. I just kind of put them online. And it really kind of kicked off when Banned Book Club came out. ⁓ That is a book that ⁓ I collaborated with my wife who, unlike me, who wanted to make comics at six, my wife never wanted to make comics, never wanted to write. ⁓ Thought comics was a dorky thing that her husband did. And then one day we were walking up a mountain and she had just met some friends from college the day before and said, yeah, it reminded me of back when I was hunted down by the police for smuggling illegal books. And I'm like, wait, when you what? Back up. And she told me the story. I posted about it on social media and we were offered a book deal based on those posts. And they said, do you want to make a ⁓ book about the story? And I said, only if my wife is my co-author. And they said yes, and I was all excited. She said, I gotta write a book, that sounds hard. But working together, we made such a good team that ⁓ people, I mean, the book just hit at just the right time. People loved it, and ⁓ that kind of kicked off a series of ⁓ books, like as you mentioned, Good Old Fashioned Korean Spirit is the one that comes out October 7th, but I've done books for kids, for teens, for adults, for everybody. and I travel the world and make books so I'm very excited to be able to do that. Thomas Nixon: Excellent. So you mentioned good old fashioned Korean spirit and I know that's coming out next week, I believe you said. Tell us about it. Ryan Estrada: Yeah, so when I first came to Korea, my friends would invite me to this spooky old persimmon orchard. The population was four. There's four little old ladies that... I realize that is held at three fingers. It's 6 a.m. Four little old ladies that just had all these very old traditions where they basically brought us in to be ghostbusters. and they believed that they were ghosts and monsters that lived in their village and they needed our help to scare them away with instruments. A lot like K-pop demon hunters, but we were just a bunch of foreigners with drums and stuff that we didn't know how to play. And so we just played the Ghostbusters theme song. And so I took that setting, which is somewhere my wife had gone when she was in college, and... set a lot of the stories that we had collected about our college days in that place. And we made it about, ⁓ so we made it, since it's about ghosts, we made it, it up like a horror story, but instead of being afraid of actual ghosts, what they ended up being afraid of is each other because they're living in a society under a dictator that's kind of forcing people to fear one another. And it's about how they learn to accept these old traditions, accept one another. and come together to ⁓ get over their fears and help make their country a better place. Thomas Nixon: Sorry. ⁓ Now this one is also with your wife. Ryan Estrada: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's based on her college stories and her college friends in the band Book Club. Thomas Nixon: So what motivates you as a writer? What drives your stories? Where do they come from? Ryan Estrada: Yeah, so I mentioned early on that I was trying to get comics ⁓ made as a kid and the first comic I got published in the newspaper was about an orange cat who's too lazy to chase mice. ⁓ And that's because my only life experience from six years old was reading Garfield. I didn't do anything else but obsess about comics. And so I had nothing to say. But then once I started traveling, I was moving to new country every year for like a decade and meeting new people, having new experiences. going into new cultures and I realized there's so much more to the world than orange cats chasing, not being too lazy to chase mice. ⁓ And I, yeah, I've seen like, and so a lot of my comics are based on my own experiences. Some of them are nonfiction ⁓ about the dumb things I've done, like being thrown from moving train by the police, having to sleep on a park bench in a Japanese typhoon. ⁓ Thomas Nixon: What? I don't believe that's true. Ryan Estrada: ⁓ being nearly eaten by lions in the Masai Mara, I've done a lot of wild things. But a lot of them are also based on the people I've met. Like with my wife, ⁓ I made a book called The Culted that is my friend Amy Rose's true story of escaping UFO death cult. I just realized there's so many stories out there that I can either tell those stories or use those stories of things that have happened to me to create fiction of what could have happened if things had gone worse or what I wish had happened. so, ⁓ yeah, it's really the world and my experiences that I want to share and I want to make people as excited about the world as I am and excited about learning more about it as I am. Thomas Nixon: So you talk a lot about ⁓ living all over the world. ⁓ We share something in common long ago, probably before you were born, I suspect. But ⁓ I lived in Korea for a year, also lived in Japan for a couple of years. But ⁓ where do you live at in Korea? Ryan Estrada: I live in Busan, right where, if anybody's seen Black Panther, that bridge he drives across, that's right in my neighborhood. I was actually standing there when they filmed it. Thomas Nixon: Mm-hmm. Long ago when I was in the Navy, went to Busan a couple times actually. ⁓ But when ⁓ we lived there, myself, my wife, and my youngest, or my middle child, long story there, ⁓ lived in ⁓ Seoul. It's funny because of the song now, but in Gangnam. ⁓ Fascinating culture. So much to see and do. and such. ⁓ Hope to go back again sometime soon. Ryan Estrada: Yeah, I love living in Korea and I really love Busan. Everybody knows Seoul, but I love Busan because Busan kind of has little brother syndrome where it's jealous of all the attention Seoul gets. So they keep building new infrastructure and new cool things to ⁓ be the new cool city and it doesn't work. People only know Seoul, so they just keep building stuff and those that live there are like, great, keep it coming. We're enjoying it. Thomas Nixon: Mm-hmm. Right. I bet. it's what, Seoul is, a quarter of the population lives in Seoul, something like that. Ryan Estrada: Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, Busan's the second largest city. Thomas Nixon: What are you working on now? Ryan Estrada: Right now I have so many pitches out for what the next book is I'm working on like about ten different books because each one is supposedly about to To the deals about to be finalized and as soon as ones ⁓ Once finalized I'm ready to roll. But ⁓ the biggest one I'm working on is I've made a lot of books about Korea I want to make books about where my family comes from my grandfather's from Zacatecas Mexico And so I'm making ⁓ a book that takes place there ⁓ ⁓ about a auisotl, which is an ancient monster of Mexican legend that eats the eyes, teeth, and fingernails of its enemies. But in my book she's the hero and she's kind of nice. Does still eat eyes, teeth, and fingernails, but nice about it. Thomas Nixon: Well, now that's a book that people will have to read just to figure out how you make that plot twist. So how does being a world traveler relate to the books that you write? Ryan Estrada: Yeah. Everything I do is inspired by my travels. Like my Student Ambassador series, ⁓ which is a series of kids books ⁓ inspired by when I was a student ambassador in high school, ⁓ are all about places that I really traveled and a lot of places that I went that like... When I travel and things go wrong, I just make a comic about that because it's funny. I've done very dumb things but when I go traveling somewhere and things go right and I don't necessarily have a story but there's an amazing setting I take it and put it in that series where I use that setting to ⁓ build a fiction story in the real world that I'm so fascinated by or like with the case of the band book club series ⁓ I take real true stories that happened ⁓ everything I do is based on something that I experienced around the world and Again, I want to make people excited about it because I love seeing the world and experiencing more about it. Thomas Nixon: Hmm, me as well. So, ⁓ can you give us an example of something that went really wrong in your travels that you can share with a family show? Ryan Estrada: Yeah, let's see I mentioned a few of them at the start but Which one do want to tell? Yeah, so ⁓ I'll mention that when I... The one that really changed my life, as I mentioned, I slept on a park bench in a typhoon in Japan. So it was when I first came to Korea, and there was a thing you had to do back then called a visa run, where you would come on a tourist visa, they'd get you all your paperwork, then you'd go to Japan to get the visa. Now, my work did not want me to miss any... class so they sent me on a Korean holiday because there was no work that day didn't occur to them the Korean consulate closes on Korean holidays so I fly out to Japan I literally just graduated college I have no money I haven't been paid yet I haven't started working yet and I have just enough to survive for one night which doesn't turn out to be one night because the consulates closed I can't get a passport so I have to miss my flight and then ⁓ the next day ⁓ I find out that I've spent all my money and I don't even have enough to get the visa to leave so I have to sell the only item I brought with me which is the Gameboy I just bought for the trip and to get like literally just enough to have that and five dollars left over and then I'm like I rushed to the air I don't even get a bus I have to literally run to the airport and then find out that there's a typhoon and all the flights are cancelled and now I have literally no money The typhoon lasts like two days. All the flights are cancelled. And I try to sleep in the airport, but the airport closes at like 10pm. And they kick me out. It's in the middle of nowhere. I'm along that side of the highway. So I'm literally walking alongside the highway in a typhoon that's so bad, like trees are falling over, buildings are being destroyed. And eventually I'm looking for a place to sleep and I found a bunch of homeless people sleeping in the park. And I figured if they were a better place for me to sleep with no money, they would be there. So I must, I guess I gotta sleep here. And I grabbed a bench. Thomas Nixon: Yes. you Ryan Estrada: And I also, during this time walking around a typhoon, got the flu. So I'm lying there, like literally I just started traveling. My whole life I've been like sheltered, like in my house, making comics. I've never experienced anything like this. And I'm feeling so sorry for myself, drenched, trees are falling down around me. I'm like throwing up and I'm like, this is the worst moment of my life. Thomas Nixon: ⁓ no. Ryan Estrada: But then as I say that, this little black kitten comes up, lays on my chest, curls up and goes to sleep. And all of a sudden I started laughing, it just became so surreal. And I realized, wait a minute, this is the worst moment of my life, but I'm fine, I can survive this. So I don't need to worry, I don't need to worry so much. All these things I worried about just leaving my house, like if I can get through this situation, I can get through anything. And that literally changed my life. that happened ⁓ like... 25 years ago and I'm still telling that story today so I got something out of it and also whenever I go somewhere now and nothing goes wrong I'm like ⁓ that was disappointing I was hoping I was gonna get a story out of it Thomas Nixon: When you first went to Korea, were you teaching at a hagwon, a language school? Yeah. Ryan Estrada: Yeah. Yeah, I graduated from animation school the same year that the entire animation industry got laid off. And so I realized that like I'd gone to I'd spent so much money and time going for this job that didn't exist. What am I going to do? And I was complaining to a friend and instant messenger at like 2am. And she's like, did you about this thing in Korea where they right now they need teachers so badly, they'll buy you a plane ticket and have an apartment waiting for you and pay you a bunch of money to to talk English to kids who already speak it. And I'm like, no, but I'm going to do it. By 3 AM, I had a job. And then by 4 AM, I thought I should Google where Korea is. ⁓ But once I came out here and realized, comics has always been my love. I can do that wherever I want. I don't need to work for a big company. I don't need to spend decades building my way up. I can make a comic this afternoon and have people commenting on it by lunch time. And so I just started traveling the world making comics ⁓ and eventually I went full time doing that. Thomas Nixon: What's the technology like these days with making comics? mean, do you start from paper or are you on a computer somewhere or what? Ryan Estrada: Yeah, I'm still old school. A lot of people use tablets to draw nowadays. I'm still drawing on paper. Then I scan and I color digitally. ⁓ But yeah, drawing for me is still an on paper kind of deal. Like I've bought the really expensive tablets. I've tried them and it just doesn't really feel like my art unless I'm doing it by hand. Thomas Nixon: Do you do many presentations for schools or libraries or that sort of thing either in Korea or elsewhere? Ryan Estrada: Yeah, for a long time since I was in Korea, I couldn't do that except for the occasional international school here. since a lot of things went to Zoom, all of a sudden I've started being able to travel the entire world. almost every night or every morning, I'm on Zoom talking to libraries, talking to book clubs, ⁓ talking to the banned book museum in Estonia. ⁓ And I get to travel around... ⁓ Korea and Japan doing talks in person. And I used to, ⁓ at least once a year, travel to the US to do some talks and we were supposed to be there right now, but ⁓ my wife and I decided now is maybe not the best time to bring my band of book writing Korean born wife into America. ⁓ Cause our book has been banned in three US states. I decided maybe now is not the time. Thomas Nixon: Hmm. I almost want to guess which three states, but I don't think I'd have to work that hard at it. Ryan Estrada: Yeah. Thomas Nixon: Is there a book or a series of books that ⁓ from your childhood that still resonates with you? Ryan Estrada: ⁓ I love the Bone series, ⁓ which is by Jeff Smith as far as graphic novels go. Just the way he built a story up over such a long time and had such amazing drawings, but like had that balance of like really simple cartoony characters and really detailed characters. And just, yeah, I still love that series. Thomas Nixon: ⁓ yeah. You talked about one of your books being banned. ⁓ Which one was that? Ryan Estrada: ⁓ Banned book club and occulted the the two that are literally about banned books ⁓ have both been banned in several states and ⁓ I I only found out about it because people are posting about the irony of banned book club being in the banned book club and Then I found out it's been a major target I tried to find out why and I emailed every time someone gets our book band I emailed them and ask why and every single time they say ⁓ I don't know I haven't read it Thomas Nixon: Oh, right. That's why most libraries have a policy about book challenges and these kind of things. And the first thing is like, you have to read the book. Before we're willing to talk to you, you have to read the book. Because so often, that's exactly the case is, well, it's about banned books. There must be something wrong with that. Did you read the book? Ryan Estrada: Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, mean, a lot of li... Every librarian would love to have a policy that they have to read the books, but the problem is the governments that their libraries are in, Pat, like in Florida right now, if one person complains about a book, the library or school has to remove it immediately or else they can be charged with a felony. And that person does not have to read the book, and they don't, I've learned. ⁓ When I flew out to Kentucky to speak, because often when our book is banned, I'll fly out and speak at the local school board meetings, I found out not only did not read the book, they don't read the whole title because they had, where I went, I found out they had confused Let's Talk About It, the Teen's Guide to Sex with Let's Talk About It, the Sesame Street Guide to Conflict Resolution because they didn't make it past the first four words of the title. Thomas Nixon: Yeah, the level of education in the US these days. So what are you reading now? Ryan Estrada: ⁓ Right now ⁓ I've been listening to a lot of audiobooks from, if people don't know about this, there is the Digital Library of Korea, let me try to get this right, something like the Digital Library of Korea Korean Translation and it is a free library that you can add the card into your Libby account and get any Korean book that's ever been translated into any language. So yeah, you can listen. listening to like Pachinko and ⁓ What else what else was there I'm forgetting the names of books now it's too early in the morning, but but yeah You I've been going through a lot of those to get more Korean literature knowledge Thomas Nixon: fascinating that all of that is available in your Libby account, Ryan Estrada: Mm-hmm. Thomas Nixon: Well, I want to thank you very much for being on the podcast. I'd like to remind our listeners and watchers to please like, subscribe, share wherever you can. Again, thank you, Ryan. I greatly appreciate you being on the podcast. Ryan Estrada: I really appreciate you having me. Thomas Nixon: Take care.