Latest / 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast / With Great Power #303... 22 Panels with Dennis Hopeless

Transcript

With Great Power #303... 22 Panels with Dennis Hopeless · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

0:02
Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody! Welcome back to 22 Panels. My guest tonight is Dennis Hopeless.
0:09
Tad Eggleston: Author of the, the, the just-released Just brutal, right?
0:15
Dennis Hopeless: Yes.
0:16
Tad Eggleston: I just… I suddenly… when I said just released, and had that just there, I suddenly… suddenly went, wait a minute, am I about to say just again?
0:25
Tad Eggleston: Yes, I'm just… just brutal. I loved the first issue, I loved the first three issues, but our audience hasn't read the first three issues. Hopefully, many of them have read the first issue.
0:38
Tad Eggleston: You wanna give me the front counter pitch?
0:41
Tad Eggleston: Before I accidentally spoil anything.
0:43
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, for sure. This is not my pitch, I have to give credit to Dan, who is the sales guy at Ignition. He said it's like…
0:53
Dennis Hopeless: The Mitchells meet… the Mitchells versus the Machines meets Masters of the Universe, which is a perfect, succinct elevator pitch for it.
1:01
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
1:02
Dennis Hopeless: But yeah, it's basically a normal suburban family, has a secret revealed that forces them to have to deal with the evil forces of Skeletor.
1:11
Tad Eggleston: Okay, I like it. Yeah. Are you auditioning for the next time Tim Seeley's not the guy for Masters of the Universe, or just doing your own thing?
1:20
Dennis Hopeless: I would have taken that job at any point.
1:23
Tad Eggleston: Other cats.
1:24
Dennis Hopeless: Or Masters of the Universe, or if they ever do… I mean, I think they are doing Silverhawk stuff now, even.
1:28
Tad Eggleston: They are! In fact, there's a Silverhawk Thundercats crossover, I think.
1:32
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
1:33
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, it was, the perfect, like.
1:36
Dennis Hopeless: Preschool, kindergarten, first grade age when that stuff was hot, and so.
1:40
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
1:40
Dennis Hopeless: It seared into my frontal lobe, and it.
1:43
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:44
Tad Eggleston: You know, Box Brown wrote a book about that.
1:48
Dennis Hopeless: Really.
1:49
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, the He-Man effect. All about how it gets your frontal lobe. Yes.
1:56
Tad Eggleston: A comic. A comic book about that, I should make that.
1:59
Dennis Hopeless: Oh, cool, yeah, yeah.
2:00
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
2:02
Dennis Hopeless: But yeah, Kyle Strom and I are exactly the same age. He's a brilliant artist, and a local guy, and one of my best friends. He drew a twig, an image.
2:12
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
2:12
Dennis Hopeless: It was a big hit. And then, like, spread, you just pours stuff.
2:15
Dennis Hopeless: But…
2:17
Tad Eggleston: I talked to him at CTOE2 a couple years ago, I still haven't had him on. You should, yeah. I know, I keep meaning to, and I know that he listened to at least one episode, because he was one of the first people that ever responded
2:30
Tad Eggleston: To something we said Like, on social media.
2:36
Dennis Hopeless: Really.
2:36
Tad Eggleston: In a good way, you know, because I think I made a big deal out of…
2:42
Tad Eggleston: I try to only talk about stuff that I like. I don't need to… talk about…
2:49
Tad Eggleston: how bad something is, somebody else might like it, and besides, there's not enough time to talk about all the stuff I like, so why would I take time bashing something?
2:59
Dennis Hopeless: I 100% agree with that. Yeah, Kyle and I are the same age.
3:03
Dennis Hopeless: And… he has.
3:05
Tad Eggleston: Guessing you're right around my age, too, based on… on where you're…
3:10
Tad Eggleston: You had Thundercats and whatnot in your life.
3:13
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, probably.
3:14
Tad Eggleston: From 1980. Yeah, we were born in 81, so… Okay, yeah.
3:18
Dennis Hopeless: Yes, absolutely.
3:19
Tad Eggleston: Young's.
3:22
Dennis Hopeless: So, yeah, we always talked about how that stuff
3:25
Dennis Hopeless: Is so important to us, but when you go and rewatch it.
3:30
Dennis Hopeless: it… it… like, the experience is so disappointing, because it doesn't feel the same. And we did a… we actually did a podcast series that we never put out during COVID that was rewatching those old episodes and trying to figure out…
3:41
Dennis Hopeless: what… like, what was it about this that we loved so much? And I… I think what it comes down to is it's… it was imagination fuel. Like, there's just enough weird there that it seems like there's a lot going on, but they don't explain any of it. And so your little kid mind can just, like, fill in all those gaps.
3:59
Tad Eggleston: But also, you had the toys to fill in the gaps, because… because Reagan had changed the laws, and they could now… they could now make TV shows that were designed to sell toys!
4:11
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
4:12
Tad Eggleston: You were a mark.
4:14
Dennis Hopeless: I was, absolutely. But it's… and that's kind of where.
4:18
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, really, your parents are the mark. You were, like, the… you were like the fuel. You know, they set you on fire, and then your parents are like, I buy him LionO, or I hear him scream.
4:33
Tad Eggleston: Right.
4:33
Dennis Hopeless: Well, my parents were… my parents were poor, so I didn't… I didn't get a lot of our money. They got some. I had Snake Mountain, and I had a handful of toys, but most of my He-Man and Thundercats toys were purchased in college or since.
4:47
Tad Eggleston: Right.
4:47
Dennis Hopeless: I had my own money
4:49
Dennis Hopeless: But yeah, that's… that's kind of where Just Brutal came from, is like, how do I take…
4:53
Dennis Hopeless: The imagination fuel and, like, the weird, monstrous bad guys that are so fun that made these action figures that had such staying power, and put it into a story that isn't just me trying to grow up this child, you know, this childlike story.
5:07
Dennis Hopeless: Because I think a lot of the… a lot of times when people try to do their version of He-Man or their version of Thundercats, it's like…
5:14
Dennis Hopeless: how do I make this a little bit more adult, but keep it the same? And so.
5:17
Tad Eggleston: Right?
5:18
Dennis Hopeless: to just take that. Okay, that's the imagination fuel, that's the, like, magic system, sort of, of the…
5:24
Dennis Hopeless: story, but within that, tell a story that's very me, and it's, like, something I have to say about the world, and parenting, and…
5:32
Dennis Hopeless: Family and all that.
5:34
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, are we allowed to give away, like, the…
5:40
Tad Eggleston: The basic starting plot point in terms of how you grew it up.
5:43
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, for sure. Because I thought it was brilliant. Like, you took them and you had them be retired and start a family.
5:50
Tad Eggleston: You know, convinced that they'd won, and they didn't have to do this anymore, and went and started a family.
5:56
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
5:57
Tad Eggleston: Except… no.
5:59
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, and it's.
6:01
Dennis Hopeless: There's a lot… It's an interesting…
6:05
Dennis Hopeless: creative journey, because I came up with the… the retired Conan the Barbarian, or the retired He-Man part of it, so long ago, like, impossibly long ago. It was originally based on Brett Favre retiring and unretiring, which was, like, 2007?
6:20
Tad Eggleston: I vaguely remember that.
6:22
Dennis Hopeless: I had this idea.
6:23
Tad Eggleston: Back, back before he became, like, a pariah to me, yeah.
6:28
Dennis Hopeless: But I read this, it was a Bill Simmons article when he used to write for ESPN, he said.
6:33
Tad Eggleston: Right?
6:34
Dennis Hopeless: That his father was, like, a…
6:36
Dennis Hopeless: an educator who had gone on to be a principal, and then he was a superintendent of schools, or whatever, and he retired in his 70s, and it was devastating. And he was saying, like, watching my father deal with the emotion of going through retirement and never being able to do that anymore.
6:52
Dennis Hopeless: you can maybe understand how someone who's 40, who's only ever been good at one thing, isn't gonna wanna never do that thing again. Like, that would be a devastating thing to have to accept that for half of your life, the rest of your life.
7:04
Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's always something that I've… I've thought about.
7:09
Tad Eggleston: Definitely athletes.
7:11
Tad Eggleston: To a certain extent.
7:13
Tad Eggleston: Artists, because, you know, it seems like there are few exceptions to the rule when it comes to
7:25
Tad Eggleston: Being able to adapt enough to… to…
7:28
Tad Eggleston: To both keep their old fans with their new stuff, and…
7:34
Tad Eggleston: bring in new fans with stuff that meets them where they are. I mean, there… I think in writing, there's probably more exceptions than elsewhere, but, like, I remember when Tom Petty died, one of the
7:47
Tad Eggleston: One of the big deals in almost every…
7:55
Tad Eggleston: almost every, like, obituary for him was that his top-selling album was his ninth album, because almost every band… and mind you, he'd had platinum albums before. It wasn't like he hadn't sold anything, but almost everybody, their top-selling album is in their first three.
8:14
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
8:15
Tad Eggleston: There are so few people that it's…
8:20
Tad Eggleston: Even 8 years in, that they suddenly put out the thing that everybody wants.
8:25
Dennis Hopeless: Right, and even the bands that stay together and keep making music, they do concerts where they play hits from 40 years ago.
8:32
Dennis Hopeless: No one wants to hear what 70-year-old Mick Jagger… I mean, there are people that want to, but it's a lot smaller group of people… Right.
8:39
Tad Eggleston: I mean…
8:40
Dennis Hopeless: 70-year-old Nick Jagger.
8:41
Tad Eggleston: Like, I… I'm a rabid Pearl Jam fan, because…
8:47
Tad Eggleston: I very much feel like the band grew up with me, and whatever new album is actually tends to hit me right where I am, and that's just kind of a cool experience.
9:00
Tad Eggleston: But when I go to concerts, there are so many people that, like, judge the concert by how many songs…
9:06
Tad Eggleston: 10 verses of Vitology get played.
9:09
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
9:12
Dennis Hopeless: That would be really hard.
9:14
Tad Eggleston: And don't get me wrong, you know, I like Alive as much as anybody does, but, like, I kinda…
9:22
Tad Eggleston: I kind of wish that it wasn't…
9:26
Tad Eggleston: I love it when there's a show that's more late Pearl Jam heavy than early Pearl Jam heavy, but I also know I'm in a minority. Right. Even among rabid Pearl Jam fans.
9:39
Tad Eggleston: Right. Because, like… and that's… I mean, they… they are like that in part because they do evolve.
9:47
Tad Eggleston: The other side of the coin is like an Aerosmith that never evolved.
9:50
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
9:52
Tad Eggleston: Where it's like, oh, this one… this one, it goes on the Greatest Hits album, even though it's mostly like that other one, but we like it a little bit better, and the whole album's like…
10:02
Tad Eggleston: all the other ones, which is why I…
10:04
Tad Eggleston: I need the Greatest Hits album for the… Right. For the 8 songs that I like from the last 12 albums.
10:12
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, and I mean, I've seen that in my own career, like, I think…
10:17
Dennis Hopeless: I think that I'm lucky on some level that probably my biggest… like…
10:22
Dennis Hopeless: career achievement at Marvel was a book that mostly parents related to, and that other people.
10:27
Tad Eggleston: Right.
10:27
Dennis Hopeless: get, because…
10:30
Dennis Hopeless: like, I didn't have, like, a massive million-selling hit that I'm never gonna be able to achieve again. Like, I had this.
10:38
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
10:38
Dennis Hopeless: niche hit that was awesome, and I got to do forever, and was critically acclaimed, and people loved it.
10:43
Tad Eggleston: And it's amazing, I love it. We're talking about Spider-Woman, if anybody's…
10:47
Dennis Hopeless: Yes.
10:47
Tad Eggleston: not aware.
10:49
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, but my Spider-Wan was about me.
10:52
Dennis Hopeless: as a, like, a brand new parent, dealing with the way in which that completely remakes you as a human, and trying to figure out, like, where you exist in the world. And now, you know, whatever.
11:03
Tad Eggleston: That is definitely why I loved it.
11:05
Dennis Hopeless: 11 years later, I'm making a story about
11:08
Dennis Hopeless: what it is to be a more mature parent with kids that are growing up and realizing, I'm either going to not prepare them for the world as it is, or I'm at some point going to have to take a sledgehammer to their innocence, because the world is big and scary.
11:24
Tad Eggleston: Do you mean that you progressed as a parent in real life, and did so in your writing as well?
11:29
Tad Eggleston: That's crazy talk, Dennis. Crazy talk.
11:34
Dennis Hopeless: But it's fun, like, not… once I realized how accidentally autobiographical all my work is, it's fun to lean into it and really think about.
11:42
Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely! And in between, you know, you wrote about your, criminal parents.
11:47
Dennis Hopeless: Yes, yes, I did.
11:50
Tad Eggleston: I mean, we got the… we got the overwhelmed by new parenthood, looking back on my own parents and figuring out what I can learn from them. Didn't you… what was the… was it a vault book, or a…
12:06
Tad Eggleston: You had a… you had a horror book in there, too, didn't you?
12:08
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah.
12:09
Tad Eggleston: Which was… I don't know, the romance book?
12:14
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, it was about… it was basically about…
12:17
Tad Eggleston: Were you the monster in that one, or the human in that one?
12:20
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, no, I mean, it's basically about how relationships are always painful, and the world post-COVID was a terrifying place where you didn't…
12:30
Dennis Hopeless: really know what it was going to look like, and so how do you forge new relationships within this, where you know relationships are painful and dangerous, but you don't want to be alone forever? It… I didn't mean it to be that on the nose, but looking back at it, it's very much what I was going through at the time.
12:48
Tad Eggleston: You know, Tom King deals with his PTSD, you deal with, like, relationships and parenthood, it makes sense.
12:55
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, it's interesting, she's running the book about my parents, she's running on fumes. That one was very clearly about my parents. It was, like, my mom's…
13:04
Dennis Hopeless: Struggle in figuring out that
13:07
Dennis Hopeless: she was never going to be comfortable in a relationship with my father, and, like, what led to their divorce, and then I fictionalized it and made it a crime story, using my dad's.
13:17
Tad Eggleston: fictionalized. Yeah, I mean…
13:20
Dennis Hopeless: The plot was fiction. The setups and the things that
13:24
Dennis Hopeless: The situation, the life was not.
13:27
Tad Eggleston: Okay, as long as the statute of limitations is up.
13:30
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, no, yeah, well, my dad's been dead for 20 years, so…
13:33
Dennis Hopeless: Well, I wasn't talking about your dad, I was trying to keep your mom out of trouble. Oh, yes, my mother was very concerned about, like.
13:39
Tad Eggleston: about that.
13:40
Dennis Hopeless: Like, are you educating me in crimes in this thing? I'm like, well, crimes aren't real, for one thing. And secondly, yeah, it's been…
13:47
Tad Eggleston: Your dad didn't come off very nice in the book. If the statute of limitations wasn't up, and it led to his arrest, that might be good for everybody.
13:56
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, it's interesting, my uncle, came to a comic convention, who I hadn't seen in forever, my dad's brother, and told him my… he bought the book from me, and then proceeded to tell me how my dad was his hero. My dad was his older brother.
14:07
Dennis Hopeless: And I was like, maybe don't read the book. Like, I appreciate the support, but I'm not sure you're gonna love it. And then I realized he was never gonna read the book. Like, he didn't want a comic book, he bought it to be supportive, which was sweet of him.
14:20
Dennis Hopeless: Oh.
14:20
Tad Eggleston: Right.
14:21
Dennis Hopeless: But… That book was, like, very…
14:26
Dennis Hopeless: clearly defined in what I wanted to do with it, and what I was trying to say. And then I gave it to a good friend of mine, Robbie Thompson, who's a comic book writer, and a TV showrunner and a…
14:37
Dennis Hopeless: one of the smartest people I know. And he got to the end of it, and he said, you know, at the end of this book.
14:44
Dennis Hopeless: it was clear to me that this is you processing your own divorce through the lens of your parents' divorce, and that's beautiful. And I thought, damn it! I finally was trying to make a book that wasn't about what I, like, my own personal emotions and life story, and yeah, he's probably right. It probably was.
15:05
Dennis Hopeless: Recising those demons.
15:06
Tad Eggleston: I don't think that… that…
15:12
Tad Eggleston: I don't think I've met a writer that ever writes something that's… not…
15:21
Tad Eggleston: driven by… I mean, even the absurdist writers, you know, when you talk to them, you'll discover, like.
15:30
Tad Eggleston: That the feelings are still things that they… they know about.
15:34
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
15:35
Tad Eggleston: You know… And often, like, they'll read the book and go.
15:39
Tad Eggleston: So that's what I was thinking about.
15:42
Dennis Hopeless: Right, yeah, yeah.
15:44
Tad Eggleston: That's what I was going through when I desperately needed to get out that heist story. That's what I was going through when I decided to write about Godzilla.
15:53
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
15:55
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it is.
15:56
Dennis Hopeless: My, my partner asked me.
15:58
Dennis Hopeless: when we were talking about the… the parent characters, Dex and Jan, in Just Brutal, like, is one of them your ex? Is one of them me? And I'm like, well, not really, and I started describing it, and she's like, oh, they're both you.
16:11
Dennis Hopeless: They're dueling parental instincts, arguing with each other about whether it's better to protect your kids or prepare them.
16:20
Dennis Hopeless: And it's like, yeah, that's probably true.
16:22
Tad Eggleston: Sounds about right. Sounds about right. And, like, Monsters are as good a… standin' for…
16:33
Tad Eggleston: MAGA and the Abyss, as I can think of.
16:38
Dennis Hopeless: When that's the thing, like, the fact that anybody is susceptible, like, when you have a powerful force that's trying to remake the world in his image.
16:45
Tad Eggleston: And…
16:46
Dennis Hopeless: something doesn't stand up against it, anything and anyone is susceptible of getting corrupted by that. Like, that's what's going on. It's… no, I'm not gonna say that, like, directly in the book, but yeah, that definitely… this, like.
17:00
Dennis Hopeless: this…
17:01
Dennis Hopeless: rot that is changing the world and making everything worse that people just ignore and go on about their daily lives because they feel powerless to stop it. Like, that was definitely in my head when I was doing that.
17:10
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, the.
17:12
Dennis Hopeless: Iowa, so it's okay that Iowa is being turned into whatever.
17:15
Tad Eggleston: The greatest trick the Republican Party ever pulled was convincing everybody that All politicians are bad.
17:23
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
17:26
Tad Eggleston: I mean, don't get me wrong, there are plenty of Democrats that I get frustrated with. I mean, like, that's part of the problem. There's just enough truth to it.
17:36
Tad Eggleston: To be able to run with it. But there's also, like, massive levels of degrees.
17:42
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
17:43
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it reminds us…
17:46
Dennis Hopeless: the argument that the billboards that you see in the Midwest about, like.
17:51
Dennis Hopeless: abortion and tying abortion to religion, aren't trying to change anyone's mind. They're trying to convince pro-life people that most other people disagree with them, so that they're more comfortable living in a world that's being pushed.
18:04
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
18:05
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
18:07
Tad Eggleston: I mean… I, I was, I was talking about this recently with somebody, like.
18:14
Tad Eggleston: When this news story started breaking about fake news, before fake news got co-opted to mean something else, when it was actually about fake news stories that were
18:26
Tad Eggleston: getting posted on Facebook to drive content, and how, like, they were set up in such a way that, like, the more… the more churn it caused, the more they'd put out articles on that topic.
18:40
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
18:41
Tad Eggleston: The two topics that got the most stories were… Right-wing nonsense.
18:47
Tad Eggleston: And Star Wars.
18:51
Tad Eggleston: And it was both about driving wedges.
18:54
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
18:55
Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean… But that's… that's the thing that… that, like, isn't… isn't understood enough.
19:02
Tad Eggleston: by a lot of people, is that, like, to a certain extent, Russia doesn't care
19:08
Tad Eggleston: And other players too, but Russia's been doing a lot of it. Russia doesn't care, like, what we think, they care that we don't agree with each other.
19:17
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
19:18
Dennis Hopeless: Right, because then we can't.
19:19
Tad Eggleston: Every… every wedge they can drive. Right.
19:23
Dennis Hopeless: And it's obvious. Like, if you talk to family members who are on the other side, they live in a different world. They see completely different information, and you can't convince them.
19:33
Dennis Hopeless: of anything else. Like, it's so effective. It's kind of terrifying that they just, like.
19:40
Dennis Hopeless: We perfected advertising and marketing, and then it was taken by the political sector and turned.
19:46
Tad Eggleston: Well, and don't forget, like, gutting education for 40 years before that, and gutting job protections, and gutting…
19:56
Tad Eggleston: The social safety net, so… so, like… Now we have a less… Less educated in… in…
20:06
Tad Eggleston: Any manner except towards the test.
20:09
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
20:11
Tad Eggleston: you know, we add as well. We probably read as well, or… I mean, we… there's been some… I work in education. There's been some slippage in the last…
20:20
Tad Eggleston: 5 years, maybe 6, but, like, a lot of it's overblown.
20:25
Tad Eggleston: Cause, like… We're down, like… 2% of our high.
20:34
Tad Eggleston: But our high was, like, 50% higher than in 1960? Correct.
20:40
Tad Eggleston: So it's like, our kids aren't doing as well as they were in 2000, they're still doing way better than the people who were complaining about them were doing when they were in high school.
20:53
Tad Eggleston: Not even close to…
20:57
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah. Like, heaven forbid we are.
20:59
Tad Eggleston: understand statistics.
21:01
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
21:02
Dennis Hopeless: My parents weren't readers, neither one of them. My dad read the Bible once a week, and he had a Mick Fleetwood, autobiography on his bedside table for 20 years that he never opened. And my mom will read a magazine every now and again, but she's not a reader, and my sister and I both were.
21:18
Dennis Hopeless: And… but my kids, because both of the adults, all of the adults they live with are readers, that's just what they do when quiet, like, they just read as a matter of fact.
21:26
Tad Eggleston: Of course.
21:27
Tad Eggleston: So…
21:28
Dennis Hopeless: Some of it is probably just there's so much other stuff to do that if your parents aren't modeling it, and you're not.
21:33
Tad Eggleston: Absolutely.
21:34
Dennis Hopeless: Have a time carved out, like, why… what would… it wouldn't occur to you to do?
21:38
Tad Eggleston: Right. I mean, it doesn't occur to you to read, but also, like, I mean, even as an educator, the one thing that has been gutted is the idea that we should…
21:48
Tad Eggleston: really analyze what we read?
21:52
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
21:52
Tad Eggleston: You know, one of the oldest problems of the education system, this isn't even something that's changed, is like.
21:59
Tad Eggleston: The way we test, the way we teach.
22:02
Tad Eggleston: tends towards one right answer. It tends towards memorization, rather than figure it out.
22:11
Tad Eggleston: And that makes it even harder to, like, okay, we're not willing to teach about this because it'll upset people, and we're not willing to teach about this because it'll upset people, so remember this. Right. And there's never any…
22:24
Tad Eggleston: learning about… I mean…
22:28
Tad Eggleston: I remember how long educators were like, don't use Wikipedia, because it can be edited, and blah blah blah, it's not reliable, and I'm like…
22:36
Tad Eggleston: We actually played with it?
22:38
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
22:38
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it's not 100% reliable, but you can tell whether it's reliable.
22:43
Tad Eggleston: They call for citations. You can then click on those citations and make certain they're used properly.
22:50
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
22:51
Tad Eggleston: This is way better than a normal encyclopedia.
22:56
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, well, that's the thing, critical thinking is… the thing I'm most concerned about, like, I'm obviously concerned about…
23:02
Dennis Hopeless: What the job market even looks like going forward for me, let alone for my kids when they grow up.
23:07
Tad Eggleston: It's not good.
23:07
Dennis Hopeless: Live in late-stage capitalism, but…
23:10
Dennis Hopeless: I'm more concerned about, are they going to actually learn to be adults that use critical thinking? And how do I get that? And how expensive is that going to be by the time they get there? Because it's the one thing I think about college, is, like, they force you to think critically in order.
23:25
Tad Eggleston: Less and less.
23:27
Dennis Hopeless: Well, yeah, probably that's true.
23:29
Tad Eggleston: Unless… Because that's where they started attacking first.
23:34
Dennis Hopeless: Great.
23:35
Tad Eggleston: And as soon as you take money away from college or make it more expensive, the people… just read a terrifying book called Dark Money that, like, went through the history of the Koch Network and similar type
23:48
Tad Eggleston: people, and man, they're so… I knew they were insidious, and they're so much more insidious
23:55
Tad Eggleston: Then I realized. Stuff like, they actively lobbied to have funding cut from the University of, I think, Virginia, and when they were about to close their economics program, they swept in and paid for the economics program, but only if they taught it this way.
24:13
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
24:15
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, that's horrifying.
24:17
Tad Eggleston: It's like, I suddenly understand how we have people like Brett Kavanaugh now, and yet we still hear about the liberal colleges.
24:25
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
24:27
Tad Eggleston: Sorry, I'm on a rant. That's not as much interesting. It's way more fun to talk back and forth.
24:31
Dennis Hopeless: No, it's… yeah, I worry about all that stuff. I know. Because your kids are just starting high school?
24:38
Dennis Hopeless: No, they're… they'll… they're 5th graders, and I.
24:41
Tad Eggleston: Oh, okay, so there's…
24:43
Dennis Hopeless: Pardon this kid.
24:44
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, so they're… They're young enough that it's totally murky what it's gonna look like.
24:51
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
24:52
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, here's the thing. You play D&D with them, you have conversations with them. As much as anything, that's how critical thinking gets learned. It's great when they can hone it at school, too. There is the downside that you're ruining them for school, because if nobody else is acting… I mean…
25:08
Tad Eggleston: My grandfather taught me, rudimentary physics and calculus is part of
25:15
Tad Eggleston: making my Pinewood Derby car when I was in third grade.
25:19
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
25:20
Tad Eggleston: Because he was a physicist, and he drank a lot, so it didn't occur to him not to tell
25:27
Tad Eggleston: a third grader, the basic physics and calculus involved in making the… and I got it just well enough, so he ruined me for every math teacher going forward. Ruined me for half of my science teachers, because the stuff they're doing, I'm like, yeah, this. I remember in my physics class, like.
25:45
Tad Eggleston: near the end of the semester… first semester, when I… I barely had a D in the class, because I was so bored.
25:53
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
25:54
Tad Eggleston: The teacher came up to me with a thing.
25:58
Tad Eggleston: Where she was recommending me for the who's who of…
26:01
Tad Eggleston: high school science, whatever, and I'm like, why? And she's like, well, when I…
26:07
Tad Eggleston: filled out the forms, you still had an A+. I don't… I still don't understand what changed. I'm like, well, you started grading homework from the other side of the room.
26:16
Dennis Hopeless: Like, what do you mean? I'm like, I used to start my homework when you started grading.
26:21
Tad Eggleston: When you started in that corner, and I was the last person you got to, I had time to get it all done. Then you started grading from the front of my row. I had time to get one, maybe two problems done, rather than the whole thing. It's just like, you're kidding me, right? I'm like, no!
26:40
Tad Eggleston: But why don't you do it home? I've got more interesting things to do.
26:43
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
26:45
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, and that's the challenge.
26:48
Tad Eggleston: Challenge.
26:48
Dennis Hopeless: My kids, more than anything, is if they're interested, they throw themselves into it, and they do really well in school. Right.
26:56
Dennis Hopeless: When they get bored, you just… you can't make them do anything.
27:01
Tad Eggleston: Well, and that's not horrible.
27:03
Dennis Hopeless: No.
27:04
Tad Eggleston: I mean, there's actually, like, limited
27:08
Tad Eggleston: Limited value in being able to push yourself to things that you don't like.
27:14
Tad Eggleston: I mean, the only real value in that is if you assume that you're gonna get a job that you hate.
27:20
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, well, and every adult in their life is neurodivergent, so they… they were screwed from some street. Yeah, right.
27:30
Tad Eggleston: I have my autism diagnosis now, it's so great.
27:34
Dennis Hopeless: Once you see it, once you understand, like, oh, my brain doesn't work like they're expecting it to work, and therefore I'm not going to be able to just get up at the same time and do the same things every day without wanting to die.
27:48
Dennis Hopeless: So, I don'.
27:49
Tad Eggleston: So, somewhat.
27:50
Dennis Hopeless: Help to do that.
27:52
Tad Eggleston: My wife, since I got my diagnosis, and she's… she's self-diagnosed, hasn't got an actual diagnosis yet, so she enjoys it as well. But she's joined, like, every autism support
28:04
Tad Eggleston: Facebook group, whatever. She follows the memes, just to be able to make me laugh, or to whatever. And one of my favorites that she's ever seen me was,
28:17
Tad Eggleston: Fire was created by the neurodivergent person in the back of the cave banging rocks together to see what happened, while everybody else was out front talking about their hair and the weather.
28:35
Dennis Hopeless: Right?
28:36
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah… I…
28:39
Dennis Hopeless: I stopped drinking this past year, it's been 14 months, I guess. And I didn't drink a lot, I just had a problem, but I realized I was…
28:46
Dennis Hopeless: socially lubricating and self-medicating. Anytime I did drink, it was because I had an exhausting day and I wanted to turn the volume down, or I was trying to talk to people that wanted to talk about things I wasn't interested in. And it's been an interesting journey having to learn how to just be silent.
29:02
Dennis Hopeless: because I can't make myself engage in conversation I'm not interested in, and then I'm like.
29:07
Tad Eggleston: Awesome.
29:09
Dennis Hopeless: Sorry.
29:09
Tad Eggleston: You're also allowed to leave and or tell them that you're not interested.
29:14
Tad Eggleston: It is allowed.
29:15
Dennis Hopeless: That makes sense, yeah.
29:19
Tad Eggleston: That's been… that's been one of the things that I've had to learn, is like…
29:23
Tad Eggleston: I'm allowed to say, yeah, I don't care.
29:26
Dennis Hopeless: Right, that's good.
29:29
Dennis Hopeless: Because, yeah, I sit, and I'll just sit silently and think, well, I could say something there, but we've moved on from that. Like, there's a lot of me analyzing the conversation and trying to find my endpoint.
29:40
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah. Well, and then when you have the good thing, and you're looking for your endpoint, and then the conversation moves…
29:48
Tad Eggleston: But you still have your thing that you need to say now, because you came up with the right words, and you haven't said them yet, so they're just rattling around in your brain until you can get them out?
30:01
Dennis Hopeless: Yes.
30:02
Tad Eggleston: Sometimes I wind up having to, like, send a text message to my wife saying, so, so-and-so was saying this, and so-and-so was saying this, and I wanted to say this, but I couldn't get it in.
30:12
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, I have, 3 elementary school-aged children here that get furious with one another anytime there's a family conversation for that exact reason.
30:21
Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, it's worth working out rules. Like, a rule that I recently came up with that I haven't been able to implement enough places, because frankly, we've got so much family history and whatnot that…
30:37
Tad Eggleston: We follow our…
30:38
Tad Eggleston: And sometimes we just don't talk to each other, because we live far away, but, like, I came across it accidentally, and somebody else actually did it, but I went, oh, this is why this worked. When you're having the argument, or the heated conversation, or just… I mean.
30:53
Tad Eggleston: half the time, one person thinks it's a discussion, and one person thinks it's an argument, which is the first problem, right? But…
31:02
Tad Eggleston: You can end the discussion, or you can have the last word. You can't do both.
31:07
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
31:09
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah.
31:11
Tad Eggleston: If you want to choose not to respond, and to say.
31:16
Tad Eggleston: I don't want to talk about this anymore. That's fine. What you can't do is throw a grenade and then say, I don't want to talk about this anymore.
31:25
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
31:26
Tad Eggleston: That's just not fair!
31:28
Dennis Hopeless: Yes.
31:29
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, the kids struggle with that. They really want to get that last word in. And I just… I'll just get in the middle and be like, we're gonna all stop talking, because it's not…
31:37
Tad Eggleston: Drives, it's
31:39
Tad Eggleston: sometimes it's really hard, though, because, like, I mean, particularly because, again, like, so often, like, how the people viewing the conversation…
31:50
Tad Eggleston: or the people's view of the conversation, like, the number of times I don't realize that somebody thought we were fighting.
31:55
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
31:56
Tad Eggleston: Until they're done, I'm like, I thought we were just having a conversation.
31:59
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
32:00
Tad Eggleston: I thought we were exchanging information and views, kind of making arguments and trying to shape each other's views, but not in a way that, like, I was gonna be heartbroken if you didn't
32:12
Tad Eggleston: see things my way, and much more in a way where I was hoping that you would either convince me that you were right, or at least give me enough information that I…
32:22
Tad Eggleston: had a more enhanced view of whatever we're talking about. I don't have these conversations with the intent to
32:32
Tad Eggleston: keep my same opinion. The whole idea is to have at least a slightly different opinion at the end of it.
32:39
Tad Eggleston: for me.
32:41
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, I mean, that's how a conversation should work. It rarely does, though.
32:44
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, apparently, like, most neurotypical people, or as… this is another one that my wife sent me, she, she sent me one where an autistic
32:54
Tad Eggleston: well, I think the mom's neurodivergent too, but she was talking about her autistic son.
33:00
Tad Eggleston: Who had called,
33:02
Tad Eggleston: neurotypical people, neurodifficult people in the car ride to school that morning, and she decided, and I think I'm gonna use that from now on. I'm like, yes! I love it!
33:13
Tad Eggleston: neurodivergent and neurodifficult. Perfect.
33:17
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah.
33:18
Tad Eggleston: Because among other things, like, one of the hardest things for me in life… is, like… I don't…
33:26
Tad Eggleston: I'm not good at my intonation. I'm not good at my volume.
33:31
Dennis Hopeless: Right, not either.
33:32
Tad Eggleston: And… and they don't… they… they… they often have absolutely nothing to do with my words. Right. You know, it's as… it's… it's as likely that, like… because I also almost always have 3 thoughts going in my head at a time. So, like…
33:49
Tad Eggleston: I'm… pissed off at Donald Trump.
33:52
Tad Eggleston: But you think I don't like the pizza.
33:55
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
34:00
Tad Eggleston: So, like, I'm blown away at when you lay it out for them, how many even neurotypical people, when you say, like, how about this crazy idea? We say what we mean, and we mean what we say, and, like, we don't worry about phrasing it in any way other than, like.
34:19
Tad Eggleston: To mean what we say.
34:21
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
34:22
Tad Eggleston: And they're like, oh God, if the world was that easy. And I'm like, why don't we just make it that easy?
34:32
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah.
34:33
Dennis Hopeless: I…
34:35
Dennis Hopeless: struggle… I mean, it's because of how I was raised, it's pretty easy to find the root cause of this.
34:39
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
34:40
Dennis Hopeless: But I am hypervigilant of other people's tone and mood and energy, because I was always terrified of getting in trouble as a child, because it would be, you know, there's a rage cycle that would go on.
34:52
Tad Eggleston: Yep.
34:52
Dennis Hopeless: And so… I find myself
34:56
Dennis Hopeless: attempting to appease other people when they may not even be thinking about me at all, but I'm getting bad energy from them, and I'm.
35:05
Tad Eggleston: And certainly not looking for appeasement.
35:07
Dennis Hopeless: Right. But I'm… I'm just, like…
35:10
Dennis Hopeless: I'm starting to realize that that's unfair. Like, I'm not allowing other people to have emotions without me trying to put the fire out, and it's a parenting challenge for me, too, because.
35:19
Tad Eggleston: That's a good way to put it.
35:20
Dennis Hopeless: oceans.
35:21
Tad Eggleston: I think even most people look at that as it's unfair to them personally to always have to be putting out the fire, but you're right, it's also unfair to the person that's like, oh, no, don't be angry about that thing that it's completely reasonable to be angry about.
35:38
Dennis Hopeless: Right. When I realized that because of that, because that's my instinct, when my kids would bring me emotions from school, like, this thing happened, or whatever, I would always try to, like, reframe it so they're not upset anymore, and I realized, that's not fair. This thing happened, it upset you, it's okay to be upset, and we go through all of that.
35:53
Dennis Hopeless: And then… and then we have the talk about, like, let's look at it from the other person's side, or let's figure out what you can do in the future to, like, make sure that doesn't happen again, or that you're…
36:03
Tad Eggleston: Right.
36:03
Dennis Hopeless: More power in that situation. And it's been really helpful.
36:06
Dennis Hopeless: But also, me not trying to bottle up everyone's emotions all the time makes me have fewer emotional outbursts, because I'm not exhausted emotionally all the time. So it's been really nice.
36:17
Tad Eggleston: Now, how does that… because you're both parents and Jess Brutal.
36:22
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah.
36:24
Tad Eggleston: How does that, play out in your writing?
36:28
Tad Eggleston: Is one of them… is one of them more like… The person who's still learning.
36:35
Tad Eggleston: Things like that, and one of them more like the person that's got an, okay, my kids are allowed to be…
36:42
Tad Eggleston: They're allowed to be angry, they're lying. They're both wrong.
36:46
Dennis Hopeless: What they are is two people that have kids that are different than them.
36:50
Dennis Hopeless: in a way that is challenging, because they've chosen a specific path. Like, they're both very hard line, and like, this is the right way to do this thing, this is the right way to deal with it, but because they have a kid that's exactly like the opposite parent.
37:05
Dennis Hopeless: it makes it so that it doesn't… like, it's not working for either one of them. And the reality is they probably should have talked about it, right? Like, they probably should have figured.
37:14
Tad Eggleston: What!
37:14
Dennis Hopeless: A third path, or, like, come up with a plan together instead.
37:18
Tad Eggleston: To each other and or your kids?
37:21
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
37:22
Tad Eggleston: Crazy talk, Dennis. Crazy talk!
37:24
Tad Eggleston: This only works in comic books.
37:28
Tad Eggleston: Which is why people should read more comic books.
37:30
Dennis Hopeless: They should.
37:33
Dennis Hopeless: But yeah, there's a lot of love going on in Just Proof.
37:36
Tad Eggleston: There is.
37:37
Dennis Hopeless: Great parenting happening.
37:40
Tad Eggleston: There's…
37:42
Tad Eggleston: I mean, again, I've only read half of the six-issue series. I'm looking forward to reading the rest, but I'd say… I'd say that there's a lot of attempts at good parenting. Yes. And since, like, intent is… is, like, 80% of…
37:58
Tad Eggleston: How good of a parent you are.
38:00
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah.
38:03
Tad Eggleston: It's not strictly bad parenting, it's just not… quite there yet.
38:09
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, they're definitely trying.
38:12
Tad Eggleston: Right.
38:13
Dennis Hopeless: Considering they're 3,000-year-old barbarian warriors, like, they're doing great.
38:18
Tad Eggleston: Well, and who didn't bother to have kids for the first 2,980 years. Right. You know? So, I mean, they could be going through parenthood for, like, the
38:30
Tad Eggleston: the…
38:31
Tad Eggleston: What? The average lifespan's 100 years, so they could be going through parenting for, like, the 30th time, and they could be pros at it, but they chose not to.
38:41
Dennis Hopeless: Yes.
38:43
Tad Eggleston: Are the kids gonna wind up having…
38:46
Tad Eggleston: Powers or immortality or anything like that, or is that…
38:51
Dennis Hopeless: Trying to think of where you're at.
38:53
Dennis Hopeless: Well, I can't.
38:54
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean, we don't want to spoil it too much.
38:57
Dennis Hopeless: It's… it is an inversion…
39:00
Dennis Hopeless: And it's both an inversion and an exploration of the Chosen One story, right? Like, there's a reason… Right.
39:06
Dennis Hopeless: I'm promoting it that way on, it is…
39:11
Dennis Hopeless: And a normal person with normal aptitudes, whether they're really smart, really athletic, really whatever, would fail miserably if given a magic sword and told to save the world. Like, that's not a thing that a normal person would be able to tolerate and deal with.
39:28
Tad Eggleston: I'm now very sad. I wanted to save the world with my magic sword.
39:32
Dennis Hopeless: Rap.
39:34
Dennis Hopeless: And so I…
39:35
Tad Eggleston: Being the old fat guy doesn't make that work?
39:38
Dennis Hopeless: I mean, at this point, my knees can't save anything, so…
39:43
Dennis Hopeless: I'm glad there's no swords in my life. But yeah, I wanted to explore that, like.
39:48
Dennis Hopeless: But also, this is your responsibility. Like, on some level.
39:52
Dennis Hopeless: You're the only one who gets a shot at this, so even if.
39:55
Tad Eggleston: Right.
39:56
Dennis Hopeless: going to fail at it, it's worth the fight. And so there's… there's… we're exploring that trope, but also just this idea that, like, you… the fight
40:07
Dennis Hopeless: To save the world, or make the world the world you want to live in.
40:11
Dennis Hopeless: probably you're not gonna win in your lifetime, but if nobody ever fights it, the world just keeps getting worse, right? So, like, we're playing with that thematically, too. Like, it's worth.
40:20
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
40:21
Dennis Hopeless: the battle?
40:22
Dennis Hopeless: Even if you have to wear the scars. And I… I think that…
40:27
Dennis Hopeless: That's one of the things that's the most challenging about being a parent, is that, like.
40:31
Dennis Hopeless: I am better for the good parts of my life, but I'm more better because of the shitty things I've gone through.
40:38
Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
40:39
Dennis Hopeless: learning
40:40
Dennis Hopeless: In the darkest times and my biggest failures, and my kids aren't going to get to a place of wisdom by me protecting them from all of the things in the world that are going to be upsetting, right?
40:52
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, see, I was a… I was a really young parent.
40:56
Tad Eggleston: So, I got… So many dirty looks and or lectures.
41:02
Tad Eggleston: from helicopter moms for what I would allow my kids to do on the playground.
41:09
Tad Eggleston: Until I finally came up with the script where I said, look.
41:14
Tad Eggleston: Would you rather learn… have your kids learn about risk versus reward when the damage is a bruise, a scrape, or at worst, a broken arm? Or do you want their first risk versus reward experience to be behind the wheel of a car?
41:34
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
41:38
Tad Eggleston: That shut them up.
41:41
Tad Eggleston: But it took so long to come up with it, because it's like… I mean, I inherently knew…
41:47
Tad Eggleston: that I wasn't just being lazy and not running around saying, get down! No, get down right now! And, like, the more dangerous they got, the more likely I would be to say things like, you know, you're gonna fall, and it's gonna hurt, and I'm not gonna have any sympathy for you.
42:06
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
42:07
Tad Eggleston: Because that would drive them up the wall. When they'd fall, it would hurt, and they'd come running to me, like, just bawling, and I'd say.
42:14
Tad Eggleston: What did I say?
42:16
Tad Eggleston: That I was gonna fall, and what did I say would happen next? But it would hurt!
42:23
Tad Eggleston: Maybe we listen next time?
42:27
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, one of my good friends is a… well, he was a behavioral interventionalist, and he said that kids ignore… if you give them negative instructions, they will ignore it 100% of the time. You have to tell them something to do, not something not to do.
42:41
Tad Eggleston: Right.
42:42
Dennis Hopeless: You know, if they need them to stop, you need to give them some other thing to do.
42:45
Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
42:46
Dennis Hopeless: Which is the most difficult, because of how we were all raised. Like, we yelled at to stop the whole time I was a child.
42:53
Tad Eggleston: I mean, and I never fully got rid of the stop, but, like, I did figure out that it was, like, John and Ryan, take the damn fork out of the…
43:03
Tad Eggleston: Outlet, and let's play baseball!
43:06
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
43:09
Tad Eggleston: Let's go watch Jurassic Park!
43:12
Tad Eggleston: My kids are the only… well, probably not the only kids ever, but certainly the first kids I saw root for the dinosaurs.
43:20
Dennis Hopeless: Interesting part.
43:22
Dennis Hopeless: I mean, it's fair.
43:25
Dennis Hopeless: At least some of those characters deserve to be mauled by dinosaurs.
43:28
Tad Eggleston: Circle of life, Dad.
43:32
Tad Eggleston: Dinosaurs gotta eat!
43:34
Dennis Hopeless: Right?
43:38
Tad Eggleston: yeah. So just Brutal is fantastic. Anything else on the horizon?
43:45
Dennis Hopeless: Yes, finally. I… just brutal… Was a project that…
43:50
Dennis Hopeless: was dormant forever. Like, it almost went at Vertigo… 10 years ago, when Jamie.
43:56
Tad Eggleston: Oh, like, the original Time Vertigo.
43:59
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, and jamie was an editor, and then when… I'm good friends with Jeremy Hahn, and he, and Philip Sablick, and Jamie Rich, and
44:09
Dennis Hopeless: the other people that I don't know created Ignition, they, like, set up a meeting with me when they were in Kansas City, and I just assumed it was, like, them explaining this… explaining the company, and talking about what,
44:21
Dennis Hopeless: like, how to pitch. And it wasn't. It was Jamie being like, I've had this for a decade, if you want to do it, it's already greenlit. And so, it was… it just, like, came… it came back from the dead, because the other things that I was working on this year… I do… I basically do one book a year now, had stalled and weren't happening.
44:39
Dennis Hopeless: And now that Just Brutal is finishing up, I'm gonna do more stuff at Ignition, but then also those things have picked back up, so I have the print edition of She's Running on Fumes is gonna come out next year, so we're working.
44:52
Tad Eggleston: Who's putting that out?
44:53
Dennis Hopeless: Mad Cave?
44:54
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
44:55
Dennis Hopeless: That was originally… What?
44:57
Tad Eggleston: Mad Cape does some pretty awesome stuff. Yeah, yeah, I worked with them, during COVID on,
45:03
Dennis Hopeless: just a, like, a graphic novella thing, and then, I guess Comixology worked out a deal with them, and then at the same time, I was pitching this book, this middle grade book with Chris Grine around that I've been talking about forever, that we were gonna kickstart, and Mad Cave wants to do that, too, so…
45:20
Tad Eggleston: Maverick, off and all.
45:21
Tad Eggleston: Maverick is one of my favorite middle grade YA lines.
45:26
Tad Eggleston: Very well curated. You're in good hands over there.
45:30
Dennis Hopeless: Thanks.
45:31
Dennis Hopeless: So yeah, I've got that stuff going. I'm trying to… like, my day job is marketing, so I'm trying to actually market these things.
45:38
Tad Eggleston: Whoa.
45:39
Dennis Hopeless: Which is great, but exhausting. So I'm very… I find myself, busier than I've been since I stopped doing full-time comics.
45:48
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean…
45:49
Dennis Hopeless: at my day job.
45:50
Tad Eggleston: We're always free to talk to.
45:52
Tad Eggleston: And I don't know how good we are at marketing, though, because, like…
45:57
Tad Eggleston: I'm bad at marketing myself, so, like, if you want to plug the hell out of your podcast appearance is on my show. Maybe you can grow 22 panels. Got 800-some-odd episodes for people to get caught up on.
46:12
Dennis Hopeless: I absolutely will.
46:13
Tad Eggleston: People about them.
46:15
Dennis Hopeless: Because it's… I would much rather have a conversation with you and then chop up the best bits and make a reel out of it than to me have to hold a camera up in my face.
46:23
Tad Eggleston: Hey, I'm down with that. They,
46:25
Tad Eggleston: They did that with, I got to talk to the American Caper team. So I talked to Shelly Bond, Laszlo, and David Lapham, and they wound up…
46:34
Tad Eggleston: Cutting it up into, like, a minute.
46:36
Tad Eggleston: That didn't have any of me, but that was okay.
46:39
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
46:40
Tad Eggleston: Because they still plugged me. It's like, hey, here's the highlights from…
46:46
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, that's awesome. That's the best way to do it. I actually, in the internship that I did at my buddy's company when I realized I needed a job that wasn't
46:57
Dennis Hopeless: comics full-time after COVID. One of the things I did was produce his podcast, and I would… I would record them, and then I would chop up and make reels out of the podcast episodes, and that's sort of where I learned the skill and realized, like, oh, I could do this. It's pretty easy to get comic book podcast people to interview comic book creators.
47:17
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I'm all for having myself chopped up and whatnot, so, like, and I keep all the recordings, so, like, you let me know what you need.
47:27
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, yeah, just shoot me the raw file, that's awesome.
47:30
Dennis Hopeless: I will promote you and me at the same time.
47:32
Tad Eggleston: Exactly.
47:36
Tad Eggleston: But, yeah, so I now have two closing questions. We'll see if you remember the second one, because the one has been around forever, so you've been asked it twice before. But my new…
47:51
Tad Eggleston: Closing question.
47:55
Tad Eggleston: I'm in my fifth year of doing this podcast, and I… I, like, pinch myself regularly, because I feel like I've fallen in the Twilight Zone. You know, the number of people that used to be names on the pages of some of my favorite artifacts were now
48:12
Tad Eggleston: people that I talk to regularly, or some of them are even ones that, like.
48:19
Tad Eggleston: are friends, or good friends, or best friends, or… you know what I mean?
48:23
Dennis Hopeless: Great, yeah.
48:24
Tad Eggleston: The number of opportunities that I've wound up having, the most recently.
48:31
Tad Eggleston: I think you know about this, because we had to reschedule because of it. I had 2 cars break down in a week.
48:36
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, you told me.
48:38
Tad Eggleston: And we managed to buy two cars that Saturday. I mean, technically lease one and buy one, but…
48:44
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
48:45
Tad Eggleston: Because of a comic book connection.
48:48
Dennis Hopeless: That's amazing.
48:48
Tad Eggleston: If I didn't have this podcast, who knows if we'd both be in vehicles yet?
48:54
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
48:54
Tad Eggleston: And it would have been even less likely that it was, like, inside it, but it turned out that somebody I know, because of this podcast, is related to the manager of a Volkswagen dealership. And the owner of said Volkswagen dealership.
49:09
Dennis Hopeless: That's fantastic.
49:10
Tad Eggleston: And it's like, go talk to my brother!
49:12
Tad Eggleston: Right. Who came in off maternity leave.
49:16
Dennis Hopeless: Oh, wow.
49:17
Tad Eggleston: To spend 2 hours with us.
49:20
Tad Eggleston: And get us into two cars inside of what we can afford, and we're teachers, so that's not easy.
49:26
Dennis Hopeless: Right.
49:28
Tad Eggleston: So that's my new, like, crazy, surreal experience, but… but I found that, like, everybody in comics…
49:35
Tad Eggleston: Has stories like that.
49:37
Dennis Hopeless: For sure.
49:38
Tad Eggleston: So, tell me about… A surreal experience that you've had that never would have happened.
49:44
Tad Eggleston: If you weren't… Deeply involved in comics.
49:54
Dennis Hopeless: I mean… At this stage of life.
49:59
Dennis Hopeless: when it… like, I'm… I really understand that it's about my kids, right? Like, this stage of life is about being
50:06
Dennis Hopeless: There for my kids, and…
50:08
Dennis Hopeless: present and caring more about that than I am about my own self. I don't have a lot of time and energy outside of these four walls.
50:18
Tad Eggleston: Right?
50:19
Dennis Hopeless: And the people that keep me sane that I'm not really… that I don't live with.
50:23
Dennis Hopeless: all of them, many of whom live hundreds or thousands of miles away, are met through comic books. Like, the people whose brains work like mine, who I can talk to about TV shows without
50:35
Dennis Hopeless: them getting upset or losing interest in what I'm saying, and who can follow the thread of my brain that bounces all over hell when I'm talking.
50:43
Dennis Hopeless: All of them come from comic books, and I don't… I don't know… like, there are many people that I know from outside of that that I love.
50:50
Dennis Hopeless: But I don't… I think I have…
50:52
Dennis Hopeless: Any of those relationships without this.
50:55
Dennis Hopeless: And so, I think my… I don't know if it's surreal, but at 44, my sanity is because of my family, and then the people that I met through this.
51:04
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, I guess, because I have that similar thing, and I guess the part that's surreal to me about that aspect of comics and the number of people, is that I realize how many people my age…
51:19
Tad Eggleston: don't actually have a lot of friends, and are really bad at making new ones. Right. And I have made more friends in my 40s than I made in my teens, and I'm closer to them all, and I…
51:32
Tad Eggleston: Connect with them regularly, and they're all comics friends.
51:36
Tad Eggleston: Right.
51:38
Dennis Hopeless: Yep.
51:40
Tad Eggleston: I hear people insisting that it's impossible to make friends after, and I'm like, no, it's not.
51:46
Dennis Hopeless: You just have to… and that's the nice thing, I think, about… There's something that connects us.
51:52
Dennis Hopeless: In this hobby, like, being interested in this, and being interested in this enough to want to go and do the social things, or make the things, or, like, have a podcast. Like, if your energy level is that high, there's something similar about those sorts of people. I assume it's, like, being a theater kid. Like, theater kids all…
52:12
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Speak a different language than those of us that do that.
52:16
Dennis Hopeless: But yeah, I… it kept me sane through my divorce, it kept me… it keeps me… kept me sane through COVID, and it keeps me sane now when I just don't have a lot of time or bandwidth that I can.
52:26
Tad Eggleston: Right.
52:26
Dennis Hopeless: phone and call someone in Charlotte, or someone in New York, or, you know, someone in Los Angeles, who I never.
52:31
Tad Eggleston: Well, I'm always available, dude. Always available. I enjoy talking to you. We don't have to record every conversation.
52:39
Dennis Hopeless: I appreciate that. I'm a texter. That's the…
52:44
Dennis Hopeless: The most surprising thing that it has brought me
52:46
Dennis Hopeless: when I started would have been all of, you know, all of the Marvel books, and my success, and awards and things. Like, that stuff sounds cool, but I would give it all up if it meant I got to keep the friendships and relationships that I got out of it.
53:00
Tad Eggleston: Thankfully, you don't have to give it all up to keep the friendships, because they're kind of tied together a little bit. I mean, not that the friends would go away if you got stripped of your Eiseners, as long as you were stripped for good reasons. You didn't go to any islands in the early 2000s, did you?
53:16
Dennis Hopeless: I too…
53:17
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
53:18
Dennis Hopeless: Comic book famous works that way, but yeah, no.
53:21
Tad Eggleston: Nobody comic book famous.
53:23
Dennis Hopeless: I mean, unless it was Rob Liefeld or one of the image guys, I don't think so.
53:31
Tad Eggleston: Alright, now the standard closing question. Tell me something you love.
53:37
Tad Eggleston: Preferably a comic, but we don't have rules. Preferably storytelling, but again, with the rules. But something that you love.
53:43
Tad Eggleston: That you don't have enough people around you that have experienced it, and you need more of them too, so you have more people to talk about it with.
53:56
Dennis Hopeless: I love slow horses.
53:58
Dennis Hopeless: The.
53:59
Tad Eggleston: Book or the series?
54:00
Dennis Hopeless: Well, I'm sure the books are brilliant, but the.
54:02
Tad Eggleston: I've only read the first one, but it was really good.
54:04
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah. The TV show is my favorite thing. We burn through it way too quick every time there's a new season. Gary Oldman's work on that is some of the most compelling acting that I've ever seen in anything, and just the character work, the storytelling structure that…
54:22
Dennis Hopeless: everything about that show is incredible in the way that, like, Breaking Bad, or Mad Men, or early Game of Thrones was, and because it's a show that's kind of hard to explain on Apple TV, not enough people have seen it.
54:36
Tad Eggleston: They, it's been kind of on the periphery of my thing, and I'm still waiting for Cantwell's new
54:46
Tad Eggleston: series to finally be released. He's been done, like, filming it and all of that stuff for, like, a year now, but AMC hasn't dropped it. Right. I'm hearing sometime this year.
54:58
Tad Eggleston: But it means I've got… I've got time to kill.
55:02
Tad Eggleston: Slow Horses isn't a series that my wife will watch with me. We do comedies. The only kind of crime she likes is true crime. I don't understand how that works. It's like, if it's real, it's research, but if it's entertainment…
55:20
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, Whitney's like that in general, like, things that stress her out, she has to be in the right mood to watch them.
55:24
Tad Eggleston: Right.
55:25
Dennis Hopeless: Slow Horses, I got her on the train early on, and she's just as into it as I am now.
55:29
Tad Eggleston: Well, that's… that's… I think the chances… I mean, again, you know, I… I…
55:36
Tad Eggleston: I love my wife dearly, and I love all of the shows that she loves.
55:41
Tad Eggleston: And she does not love, like, 80% of the shows that I love, which makes it a pretty easy decision to just let her control the TV.
55:49
Dennis Hopeless: Right, sure.
55:51
Dennis Hopeless: But we've got a second one now, so sometimes, if I feel like it, I can just go watch on my own. Right.
55:58
Tad Eggleston: And for that matter, this year we have separate spring breaks.
56:02
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, so you'll get a little alone time.
56:04
Tad Eggleston: Every once in a while, it works out that way. Well, Dennis, it is always, always a pleasure. I look forward to talking again. I completely forgot!
56:13
Tad Eggleston: to, to, to, like, bring up, you worked with Bram Revel on this book, which… Yeah.
56:18
Tad Eggleston: Which means that it's, like.
56:21
Tad Eggleston: It's the third Bram Revel book that I know I've read. Who knows if I've read others, because I don't… I'm not as good at noticing the artist, but he did…
56:30
Tad Eggleston: a book with Ronald Wimberly about… A black airman?
56:36
Tad Eggleston: I think in the French… Air Force, trying to…
56:40
Tad Eggleston: remember the name of it, but I also just read in advance of… Mrs. Orwell.
56:49
Dennis Hopeless: That looks amazing.
56:51
Dennis Hopeless: It is amazing.
56:52
Tad Eggleston: It is amazing. And, like, I took a double-take when I saw his name, because I'm like… and then I had to remind myself, oh, no, graphic nov… or, like, original graphic novels have a much longer lead time, etc, blah blah blah.
57:05
Tad Eggleston: So he was done with this a while ago, and then could jump into… to Just Brutal.
57:10
Tad Eggleston: So… but it's also… you don't see a lot of artists that float back and forth, they do one or the other, so… so, I mean, is there any story behind that, or… or…
57:19
Dennis Hopeless: I just asked all of my smartest friends that have the best taste in art who I should.
57:23
Tad Eggleston: Oh, so… oh, you asked them, and they…
57:26
Dennis Hopeless: And two of them on the same day recommended Braum, so I was like…
57:30
Dennis Hopeless: I reached out, and they put in a good word, and he happened to have a slot open, because Just Brutal was actually originally gonna be Ty Walker, who I love to death, and we developed it back in the day, but his day job didn't allow… like, it just wasn't… couldn't make it work, and so he very…
57:48
Dennis Hopeless: Graciously and sweetly
57:50
Dennis Hopeless: signed all the rights back over to me so that I could make it happen, because it just wasn't gonna happen with us. And so, yeah, to go from having tight and not knowing was really, really terrifying, and now…
58:02
Dennis Hopeless: Brahma's just been amazing. Like, I can't…
58:04
Tad Eggleston: Well, and the name of the book that I was forgetting is now, Now Let Me Fly, A Portrait of Eugene Bullard.
58:10
Tad Eggleston: It's out already with, with Ron Wimberly, came out a couple years ago.
58:15
Tad Eggleston: And then, mrs. Orwell is out.
58:20
Tad Eggleston: Later this spring, or early summer?
58:23
Dennis Hopeless: I believe so, yeah.
58:24
Tad Eggleston: And, and, yeah, first second sent me a copy, and oh my god, is it good.
58:28
Tad Eggleston: It's… I mean, it's, like, outstandingly good.
58:31
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, I mean.
58:32
Tad Eggleston: Both the art and the writing, I recommend it heavily. You should give him a hard time, say, hey, send me a reader copy.
58:39
Dennis Hopeless: He just had his first baby.
58:42
Tad Eggleston: Oh, well, okay. Then wait at least a couple more weeks to give him a hard time.
58:47
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, I'll give them…
58:49
Tad Eggleston: Or, or, I mean, you could be… you could be, like, you could be… you could say, hey, I understand having first babies if, like, you need to wake me up in the middle of the night just because you got a,
59:01
Tad Eggleston: baby that's keeping you awake, and you need somebody to talk to. I'm here for you, man. But then the first time he makes that call, it's like, you know, I got up for you, I could really use…
59:12
Dennis Hopeless: Yeah, that's a good call.
59:15
Tad Eggleston: Good evening.
59:15
Tad Eggleston: Always a pleasure, Dennis, for 22 panels. This has been Dennis Hopeless. We will see you after the next page.