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With Great Power #271... 22 Panels with Todd Mignola · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

0:01
Tad Eggleston: Alright, good evening, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels. My guest tonight is Todd Migniola. Is it Migniola? I don't actually know how to pronounce it. I've read your brother's comic books forever, and…
0:15
Tad Eggleston: I hear it pronounced all sorts of ways.
0:18
toddmignola: Well, yeah, and we've heard that pronounced all sorts of different ways our entire life. And if you just say it's a silent G, then you get Minola, which is terrible. It's Minniola.
0:31
Tad Eggleston: Mignola. So I came close.
0:34
toddmignola: Yes, very close. It's like filet mignon is, like.
0:37
Tad Eggleston: Okay, manual.
0:39
toddmignola: That's how my girlfriend remembered it.
0:42
Tad Eggleston: Okay, okay. So yeah, we have the brother of Mike Mignola, who is writing his second comic book with… is it Big Brother, Little brother?
0:53
toddmignola: He is my big brother.
0:55
Tad Eggleston: Big Brother.
0:56
toddmignola: Yeah, so Mike's the oldest, there's my brother Scott in the middle, and then there's… and then there's.
1:01
Tad Eggleston: Okay. So, let's start by… give us the pitch for this new story, The Crown, right?
1:09
toddmignola: Yeah, that's it. It's… it's subtitled, A Tale of Hell. It's a two-issue miniseries that…
1:20
toddmignola: deals with characters that haven't really been explored that much. Hellboy's dad… And…
1:30
toddmignola: his family, so his wife, his two kids, Lusk and…
1:38
toddmignola: what's the other guy's name? Gammon, who show up briefly in Hellboy in Hell, just for a few pages in a fight scene, but nothing… Mike never really,
1:51
toddmignola: thought to do anything with them, really. They were kind of just a gag, slightly based on my brother Scott and I. And…
2:03
toddmignola: I think being his brother, I saw an opportunity to do something with these characters,
2:11
toddmignola: pitched it to Mike, he liked it, and we just got on the phone and just started throwing ideas around, and came up with this.
2:20
toddmignola: medieval backstory for Hellboy's family that ended up Sort of incorporating… Some big issues that…
2:32
toddmignola: Mike had never really dealt with, in the 30 years or 35 years of doing the comic, so…
2:40
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it's definitely one of those epic universes at this point, and still fun, that as big as it is, it seems like he and the other people that are allowed to play in it are constantly finding
2:54
Tad Eggleston: New stones to turn over?
2:56
toddmignola: The nice thing is he left it loose enough that there was.
2:59
Tad Eggleston: Alright.
3:00
toddmignola: all this opportunity, but the one thing, you know, and Hellboy's arc is so long, so you can do Baby Hellboy and Hellboy Jr. and all these things, but…
3:14
toddmignola: nobody had really touched on the hell stuff, like, what…
3:18
toddmignola: I mean, we see his uncle repeatedly throughout the series, and him always sort of…
3:25
toddmignola: weaseling around with his snake, walk… keeping tabs on Hellboy. And we see the sort of…
3:32
toddmignola: explosive nature of the father from time to time, but…
3:37
toddmignola: Building a story that is really just a
3:43
toddmignola: It's just good fun of, like, these really fucked up family dynamics.
3:50
Tad Eggleston: Which hopefully aren't your family dynamics as well, because that would be…
3:55
toddmignola: No.
3:56
Tad Eggleston: No, no, we…
3:58
toddmignola: No, Mike doesn't really even… I mean, my brother Scott and I, when we first started writing it, Mike kept referring to Gammon and Lusk as Todd and Scott, and I just had to say, look, can we call them by their actual names? It's gonna be a lot easier for me.
4:19
toddmignola: So, so it sounds like…
4:22
Tad Eggleston: to a certain extent, this story came out of, like, I know these characters were based off of me, and I don't want to be a joke. I want more of a story.
4:30
toddmignola: Well, I didn't actually know they were based on me. I kind of just.
4:33
Tad Eggleston: Oh, okay.
4:34
toddmignola: And then Mike said, oh yeah, that's because you were like that when you were a kid. And Scott was like that when Scott was a kid. And he just…
4:44
toddmignola: I think he just always kind of wanted to play with that, so… Okay.
4:52
toddmignola: But like he said, in the press release for the thing.
4:57
toddmignola: he would have… he probably wouldn't have thought of it on his own, because he was kind of done, hadn't really thought of it. And…
5:07
toddmignola: I was looking to break into comics, and, you know, by virtue of my name, Hellboy seemed a good.
5:14
Tad Eggleston: Good stuff.
5:15
toddmignola: place to start. Yeah, absolutely.
5:17
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I mean, I'm all for a tiny bit of nepotism.
5:21
Tad Eggleston: You know, it's… You said also involved…
5:24
toddmignola: He didn't bring it to me, I brought…
5:26
Tad Eggleston: So…
5:29
toddmignola: Let's be clear. Oh, yeah.
5:33
toddmignola: I mean, the one thing we had done before, the short…
5:38
Tad Eggleston: the… I read that this morning, the, the, Exorcist of Vorsk.
5:44
toddmignola: Yeah, that was a bit of nepotism.
5:47
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
5:48
toddmignola: Because…
5:50
toddmignola: Mike was working on what he thought was gonna be a series of Russian folktales that he was gonna…
5:57
toddmignola: And our father had just died, and so me and both my brothers, we were in a hotel lobby after the funeral.
6:09
toddmignola: And Mike was feeling particularly generous, I think, at that point, because we'd gotten really close for a few days, just surrounding the funeral and stuff, and a little nostalgic. And he asked both my brother Scott and I if we'd be interested in…
6:25
toddmignola: maybe adapting a folktale for this series. And I kind of jumped on it right away, since I have the,
6:35
toddmignola: I have the same sort of folklore background that Mike has. Okay. I get it from more,
6:42
toddmignola: a scholarly perspective, whereas he's more interested in the stories, but I… we have the same library in terms of that. Okay. So I pulled my Russian folktales down, found one he liked. We wrote it first just as a regular Russian folktale, but that project never happened, so… Okay. When…
7:02
toddmignola: Dark Horse Presents wanted an 8-page Hellboy story.
7:07
toddmignola: Mike just dusted that off, and…
7:09
toddmignola: turn… it… I mean, Hellboy only appears, really, at the beginning and the end.
7:13
Tad Eggleston: Right.
7:14
toddmignola: And I had the last page on my wall.
7:19
Tad Eggleston: Nice.
7:20
toddmignola: Yeah, it was pretty nice.
7:21
Tad Eggleston: So what is your… what is your background?
7:25
toddmignola: My background's in prose.
7:27
toddmignola: So, I've been… I started as a screenwriter a bazillion years ago, moved into writing novels, that didn't get published.
7:38
toddmignola: And…
7:41
toddmignola: After spending a couple years on my last novel, that was supposed to be my commercial novel, nobody wanting it.
7:50
toddmignola: I did… I… I had all these stories that, either where there were screenplays that didn't get produced, or novels that didn't get published.
8:01
toddmignola: And I thought, They're all real visual.
8:07
toddmignola: And I had tried to write one of my screenplays as a novel, and it just didn't work, because it was so vaguely based.
8:13
toddmignola: And so… I think I had avoided, comics because it seemed like it was Mike's milieu, not mine.
8:22
Tad Eggleston: events.
8:23
toddmignola: Yeah, well, fuck it, let's give it a go.
8:25
Tad Eggleston: That sounds like a plan to me. You said… you said you came from folklore, from a scholarly perspective, though. Was that college, or have you taught? Yeah, I…
8:36
toddmignola: I, I mean, Mike and I have very different tastes in terms of literature and stuff. I mean, I'm more…
8:45
toddmignola: Based around…
8:48
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I've never met your brother, so I don't even know his taste, other than.
8:51
toddmignola: Well, I mean.
8:52
Tad Eggleston: Morale boy.
8:53
toddmignola: He loves horror, he loves vampires, he loves ghost stories, and I come more from a literary perspective, so literary fiction, and I have a master's degree in English literature, and all that stuff.
9:10
toddmignola: like, we have the same libraries, except he has more of the obscure tale stuff, and I have the deconstructing fairy tales and stuff.
9:21
toddmignola: Right.
9:22
Tad Eggleston: diamond.
9:22
toddmignola: But there's a lot of crossover.
9:25
Tad Eggleston: Hell yeah.
9:27
toddmignola: And so, it seemed like a good…
9:29
toddmignola: It was a good fit for that.
9:31
toddmignola: 8-pager.
9:33
Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
9:34
toddmignola: And, you know, we have the same sense of humor and stuff from growing up together, so…
9:39
toddmignola: We rarely butted heads working on the Crown.
9:44
Tad Eggleston: And the Crown is dealing with more of…
9:49
Tad Eggleston: Hellboy's family, his father, his siblings,
9:53
Tad Eggleston: did you… I mean, the Hellboy universe leans on literature and folk tales through and through. Is there anything in particular that you…
10:06
Tad Eggleston: Borrowed from, leaned on, stole from outright.
10:10
toddmignola: We did steal outright, but I'm not gonna tell you what that is.
10:13
Tad Eggleston: there.
10:14
toddmignola: From the beginning, we wanted it to have…
10:18
toddmignola: Shakespearean tone. Okay. That sort of… grand… Tragic.
10:27
toddmignola: But with… always with a… I mean, with Mike, there's always an undercurrent of humor, and he and I both share this.
10:35
toddmignola: Aspect that taking comics too seriously…
10:40
toddmignola: makes for a tough read for both of us. So we're… we always want to poke holes in it a little bit. Right. And…
10:50
toddmignola: I think…
10:52
toddmignola: initially, Mike didn't want to draw it. At some point, he kind of toyed with wanting to draw it, because I think he was getting more excited about the story, but from the very, very beginning, we had both imagined Warwick Johnson Cadwell drawing it. I'd been working with Warwick
11:12
toddmignola: I'm trying to get a project of my own.
11:16
toddmignola: up and running, which wasn't working that well. And so he and I were in close contact already, and when the Crown came along.
11:29
toddmignola: I said… Mike, because Mike didn't want to draw it, I was like, well…
11:34
toddmignola: I can just shift Warwick from the project we were on onto this, and since they had worked together before on the Mr. Higgins vampire stuff.
11:46
Tad Eggleston: He was like.
11:47
toddmignola: Great, and Warwick was super excited, because he's a huge Hellboy fan, so…
11:55
Tad Eggleston: Like, you've got,
11:58
Tad Eggleston: background in screenwriting, which can be collaborative. I mean, you're eventually writing for a director and actors, but I know that most screenwriters don't actually wind up
12:11
Tad Eggleston: Collaborating with them until when and if it's purchased, and sometimes not even then. And prose writing is obviously relatively solitary. What's it like to work…
12:23
Tad Eggleston: As part of a team, because you've got
12:26
Tad Eggleston: Cadwell, or, yeah, Warwick Johnson, Cadwell, but… but it, I mean, comics is… it's more than that. I, I assume you've got… is it Dave Johnson on colors? He's normally…
12:36
toddmignola: No.
12:36
Tad Eggleston: What the hell?
12:37
toddmignola: Warwick is actually coloring it himself.
12:39
Tad Eggleston: Warwick's doing his own colors, but then it's Clem Robbins on letters. Yes. At least I assume, because…
12:44
toddmignola: No, it is. Most of them.
12:46
toddmignola: He does, yeah, yeah.
12:48
Tad Eggleston: So it's a team event that, you know, so A, what's that like for you? How does it differ from what you're used to? And then, like.
12:58
Tad Eggleston: What have you learned? What have you enjoyed?
13:01
Tad Eggleston: a thing.
13:02
toddmignola: I… it's very different from what I've done before. I mean, screenwriting had an aspect of that, but most of my stuff, or none of my stuff, got, produced. I did work with a director.
13:14
toddmignola: For a couple of years, trying to get a project off the ground, and that was great, you know, you get immediate feedback, which is lovely, because if you're writing a novel, you get feedback 3 years later, and then they're like, oh, you went off the rails at page 10. It's like.
13:32
toddmignola: Oh, no, that's terrible. For me, the greatest thing working with Warwick.
13:44
toddmignola: I mean… I can't draw, and
13:49
toddmignola: But if I could draw, I would want to draw like him.
13:53
toddmignola: And so, the fact that he was introduced to me by an editor I know,
14:00
toddmignola: and that he wanted to do both the project he and I were previously working on, and this one was just a thrill, because he's one of my favorite artists. And so…
14:11
toddmignola: It's the closest thing I can think of to how I would draw it if I could draw. And since I picture his art from the very beginning, I mean, the most satisfying thing about writing for comics is seeing the first pages come in.
14:26
toddmignola: And they're just… it's just a real thrill. And since comics doesn't pay particularly well, it's kind of…
14:35
Tad Eggleston: time, no.
14:36
toddmignola: No, it's the fridge.
14:38
toddmignola: Of… it's being able to…
14:43
toddmignola: interact with these different artists, because I'm working with two Spanish artists as well, on two different projects, and I just… I love their work so much, that when you see it come in.
14:56
toddmignola: And it doesn't… you know, with a film, it's not 3 years later or something. It's pretty immediate. You're like, oh.
15:06
toddmignola: I wouldn't say I would do it if they weren't paying me at all, but but that is…
15:15
toddmignola: the biggest joy, I think, in working in this field.
15:18
Tad Eggleston: What was the… the learning curve on comic scripting, because I know that there's not…
15:27
Tad Eggleston: unlike most screenwriting and whatnot, there's… there's really nowhere near a set form of how to write a script. It's generally… generally the artist and the writer kind of…
15:39
Tad Eggleston: feel their way until they know each other well enough, or if they're going through an editor, sometimes DC or Marvel have some expectations, but, like.
15:48
toddmignola: They, they do, I mean.
15:50
Tad Eggleston: Scripting can go everywhere from… Let's do a story about… Galactus Jack to…
15:59
toddmignola: Yeah, no.
16:00
Tad Eggleston: The Alan Moore, like…
16:02
toddmignola: Oh.
16:02
Tad Eggleston: all the minutiae already written out.
16:06
toddmignola: Yeah, I mean, it's very different than screenwriting in that you're thinking of it in chapters, in terms, rather than a large project.
16:20
toddmignola: what I… the first thing I did…
16:23
toddmignola: Well, when I… when I wrote the 8-pager with Mike,
16:30
toddmignola: He sent me a lot of information, like, about how he writes a script and stuff.
16:35
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
16:37
toddmignola: And so I kind of adhered to what… he was doing, which… which…
16:42
Tad Eggleston: That makes sense.
16:43
toddmignola: Because it was a… a complete story that worked fine. But when I decided to… pursue…
16:55
toddmignola: comic writing more seriously, I basically looked at the format that Dark Horse has on their website for…
17:05
toddmignola: And… and it was…
17:08
toddmignola: a lot more like an actual screenplay to me, so I didn't have to adapt
17:13
toddmignola: like, I have a template for writing a screenplay, and I just adapt for comics. And…
17:23
toddmignola: The weird thing… So you get…
17:24
Tad Eggleston: Are you giving, like, panels per page, or are you giving, like, story beats and letting…
17:33
Tad Eggleston: Warwick decide.
17:35
toddmignola: I leave the story beats… I mean, unless it's something that's, like, a panel that definitely needs
17:44
toddmignola: front and foremost on a page, I leave it to him, I trust him. Okay.
17:51
toddmignola: So, my strength as a writer has always been dialogue. Okay.
17:57
toddmignola: And…
17:59
toddmignola: So, that was my, you know, giving Warwick as little as humanly possible, and a lot of it takes place in a medieval castle in Hell, and he's…
18:12
toddmignola: a genius with that. He's done so much stuff like that, and his details and his,
18:20
toddmignola: perspectives are so odd that I never… unless I needed something very specific, I left it to him. And there was always a note in the script would be like.
18:31
toddmignola: unless you can do this in fewer panels, or you want to do it in more, so long as all the dialogue ends up in there, and… Right.
18:40
toddmignola: The, you know, the page turns are always important.
18:44
Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
18:45
toddmignola: Yeah, and that was huge, because you don't have anything like that as a screenwriter.
18:51
Tad Eggleston: And in fact, it's… I think it's one of the great advantages that comics have over film, is that you… you have moments of tension built into the format with the page turn.
19:03
toddmignola: Yeah, it's great.
19:04
Tad Eggleston: You don't have to come up with a way to create the tension, you just leave it at the end, and then
19:09
Tad Eggleston: To turn the page.
19:10
toddmignola: Yeah, that anticipation of…
19:13
toddmignola: And I grew up reading comics, but I never thought about that. It was just unconscious, and…
19:18
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I mean, one of the wonderful things about
19:22
Tad Eggleston: Hosting this podcast is over 4 years of talking to comics creators and preparing to talk to comics creators, like…
19:30
Tad Eggleston: the depth of my appreciation of why I love comics has.
19:35
toddmignola: It's just…
19:36
Tad Eggleston: exploded.
19:37
Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, I knew I loved comics even before I started, but, like, understanding those little things, like… Yeah. I mean, I've had Clem Robbins on the show a few times, and the things he does with his letters, in terms of just trying to stay invisible.
19:52
toddmignola: Yeah.
19:52
Tad Eggleston: The power that it can have.
19:54
Tad Eggleston: Well, that's one of the.
19:56
toddmignola: One of the reasons I love him as a letterer, because he.
19:58
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
19:58
toddmignola: It's not… he doesn't show off at all.
20:01
Tad Eggleston: Nope.
20:01
toddmignola: And.
20:02
Tad Eggleston: But even among the guys who show off, most of them show off…
20:07
Tad Eggleston: I mean, they pick the projects where it makes sense for them to show off, and they show off in ways that enhance the books, I mean…
20:13
toddmignola: Yeah, no, it's… I mean, I never appreciated that at all.
20:19
Tad Eggleston: No, I didn't either, and now they're among favorite people to talk to, because they're.
20:22
toddmignola: Oh, wow.
20:23
Tad Eggleston: that get to see the comics first.
20:25
Tad Eggleston: And they're aware that, like, nobody knows who they are, so they're mostly egoless. They just love to do those things that…
20:35
Tad Eggleston: are going to silently make a massive difference in your reading of the book, even though you have to, like, read it 5, 6, 7 times before you're like, oh, they changed the font when this guy was talking, and it made.
20:48
toddmignola: Nice.
20:48
Tad Eggleston: skin… bubble.
20:50
toddmignola: Yeah, or just the… a little waving to the word balloon or something.
20:56
toddmignola: No, it was…
20:59
toddmignola: when… before we put press out, or Dark Horse put press out, they wanted one completed page, because some of them are in rough form, some of them are inked, but none of them had been colored yet. And so, we chose
21:16
toddmignola: Mike and Warwick and our editor, Katie and I, decided on one of the early pages, and…
21:26
toddmignola: colored it, and then they sent it to Clem, and Clem did the letters on it. And suddenly, it makes a huge difference, each one of those stages, from the roughs to the inks, and the color added so much, especially.
21:42
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
21:43
toddmignola: His stuff can look a little busy, but suddenly you can…
21:50
toddmignola: see all the clarity in all the panels, and then even Warwick had said, once they put the letters on A, he's like, now it looks like a comic to me.
21:58
Tad Eggleston: Right.
21:59
Tad Eggleston: Right?
22:04
Tad Eggleston: See, you're a guest that doesn't fall into any of my normal categories, so I have to think harder for questions.
22:10
toddmignola: Oh, no, I…
22:12
Tad Eggleston: I'll come up with good ones, I'm just… I'm just… I'm explaining why there's a pause here.
22:18
toddmignola: No, that's okay.
22:20
Tad Eggleston: What has been… what has been the…
22:26
Tad Eggleston: biggest, like, joyous surprise. Like, you've spent years writing, and you have the one 8-pager under your belt, but this is your first period of…
22:36
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I don't know when you started with your… your… your…
22:39
Tad Eggleston: unsold or unpublished projects, but this is your first period of working on writing comics, so it's the first period where you're seeing the ins and outs, you're…
22:49
Tad Eggleston: getting art back.
22:51
Tad Eggleston: whatnot. What's the thing that you had never realized was part of comics that, like, has happened that you just loved?
23:01
toddmignola: weirdly, I mean, I'm an introvert, but the thing I've really loved about comics is the community.
23:07
Tad Eggleston: There's a…
23:08
toddmignola: there's, Steve Liebert, who lives here in Portland, he started, for comics professionals, like, a monthly get-together at, Katie Pride's Book with Pictures. Right, Books with Pictures. So…
23:27
toddmignola: Just going and hobnobbing and… talking to James Asmus, or talking to Steve Lieber, or talking to Tyler.
23:37
Tad Eggleston: James is cool.
23:38
toddmignola: Yeah, James is such a sweetheart.
23:41
Tad Eggleston: I adored his, oh, why am I drawing a blank on the name of it? The Antifa Muppets.
23:49
toddmignola: Oh, yeah, survival Street? Is that what it is?
23:53
Tad Eggleston: Yes, Survival Street.
23:54
toddmignola: Yes.
23:55
Tad Eggleston: That was so good.
23:57
toddmignola: It's really good, and he's just… Both he and his writing partner are just, like.
24:02
Tad Eggleston: Right. The nicest guys in the world. Yeah.
24:05
toddmignola: I spent some time with him at C2E2 a couple years ago. Oh, yeah.
24:09
Tad Eggleston: It's really, really fun to talk to.
24:11
toddmignola: Yeah, but getting to meet these guys and…
24:15
toddmignola: they were all pretty egolous, which was… I mean, it's Portland, Oregon, so everybody's a little laid back here anyhow, but…
24:25
toddmignola: They were also…
24:28
toddmignola: welcoming, you know, and the first time I met… I went to one of these things, and I introduced myself, and I said, I'm Todd Mignoli. I saw, like, four people's heads turn just at the name, and I'm like, okay, it's gonna be like that.
24:46
toddmignola: But now they all know me, and are…
24:49
Tad Eggleston: Right?
24:50
toddmignola: really supportive. I remember talking to Mike Oming, At one of these things.
24:54
Tad Eggleston: Another really good guy.
24:56
toddmignola: Yeah, really nice guy.
24:59
Tad Eggleston: I gotta get out to Portland just because of the number of people that I talk to on this podcast on a semi-regular basis that I've become very friendly with, that live in Portland.
25:09
Tad Eggleston: It's absolutely insane.
25:11
toddmignola: It's a… I mean, it's… it's wild how many people are based out here, and Mike created Hellboy out here, when he was living here, and there…
25:22
toddmignola: I saw something about…
25:25
toddmignola: actually, Mike Oming had posted something about dropping off some artwork at a comic museum that they're going to be opening here.
25:32
Tad Eggleston: I know, Mark Russell's been working hard to get that.
25:36
toddmignola: Yeah.
25:36
Tad Eggleston: He's on the board.
25:38
toddmignola: Yeah, so that… that's exciting, and it makes.
25:41
Tad Eggleston: Yeah?
25:42
toddmignola: Absolute sense that it would be huge.
25:44
toddmignola: It's the same.
25:45
Tad Eggleston: They got a ways to go before they're gonna catch up to the Billie Ireland in Columbus, Ohio, of all.
25:50
toddmignola: Oh, yeah. I think it's probably gonna be pretty small.
25:55
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I don't imagine it will be for long, actually, because, I mean, the way most comic…
26:02
Tad Eggleston: Like, the two biggest collections of original comic art in…
26:07
Tad Eggleston: the United States that I know of are the Billy Ireland at Ohio State, and the collection at, Columbia University in New York.
26:18
Tad Eggleston: Oh.
26:19
Tad Eggleston: And both of them started with…
26:22
Tad Eggleston: at Ohio State, Milt Kniff, who did Terry and the Pirates, and Steve Canyon, etc, gave all of his papers to…
26:32
Tad Eggleston: the Billy… or to Ohio State, because it was his alma mater, and that gave them the kickoff. And then, of course, Bill Watterson was also
26:42
Tad Eggleston: an Ohio State alum, so they have all of Calvin and Hobbs.
26:47
toddmignola: Oh, no!
26:49
Tad Eggleston: And Jeff Smith is a Ohio State alum.
26:52
Tad Eggleston: So they have a significant amount of bone.
26:55
Tad Eggleston: And he… and he started up the… the convention that they have every year, Cartoon's Crossroads, so… so now…
27:03
Tad Eggleston: Now, other people donate stuff and that sort of thing because they had that start. Similarly, the collection at Columbia started up when Chris Claremont gave all of his papers.
27:14
toddmignola: Oh, wow.
27:15
Tad Eggleston: Columbia. So all it really takes is, like, that one person deciding that they want to get junk out of their house, and giving it to the Portland Museum.
27:25
toddmignola: Is this… Is it on display, or is it just in their…
27:29
Tad Eggleston: At the… I haven't gotten to go to Columbia yet to know exactly everything they do, but at the Billy Ireland, they have…
27:40
Tad Eggleston: a permanent display, they have two… exhibit rooms.
27:45
Tad Eggleston: And everything is available in the reading room if you ask for it.
27:50
toddmignola: Oh, wow.
27:51
Tad Eggleston: And if you're lucky enough, you get to get a backroom tour.
27:54
Tad Eggleston: Which they also do every hour, on the hour, during Cartoon's Crossroads Columbus.
28:00
toddmignola: Every year in August. That's great. That's great. I'd love to do that.
28:04
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, so, I mean, it's the con that I tell comics people to go to, whether they're tabling or not. In fact, to a certain extent, go if you're not tabling.
28:14
toddmignola: Oh, because you have more time to just go… Because you could just do stuff.
28:17
Tad Eggleston: Well, because here's the thing, it's also free.
28:20
Tad Eggleston: like, free to get in. It's spread out between Ohio State.
28:25
Tad Eggleston: The public library, the art school, and the art museum are where all of the events are. All of them are free.
28:32
Tad Eggleston: And because Ohio, or because Columbus is a football town, They have a massive amount Of rental properties available.
28:43
Tad Eggleston: And… and…
28:44
Tad Eggleston: The con is never as many people as come into town for an Ohio State football game, which means the rooms are cheap.
28:51
toddmignola: Oh, that's great. I hope they ask me there sometime. I will definitely…
28:56
Tad Eggleston: But whether you get asked or not, I'm saying, if you love comics, it's the one to go to, just because, you know…
29:04
toddmignola: Well, I mean, I'd love to see the Columbia stuff, too. I mean, now, my brother Mike just, just moved back to New York, so now I have somewhere to stay. Yeah.
29:15
Tad Eggleston: Karen Green is the curator in…
29:18
toddmignola: Oh!
29:19
Tad Eggleston: Columbia.
29:20
toddmignola: Oh, yeah, her name is really familiar to me, why?
29:22
Tad Eggleston: It's because she… I mean, she's one of the…
29:25
Tad Eggleston: one of the names in academia regarding comics. Okay. So you probably…
29:31
toddmignola: Yeah.
29:32
Tad Eggleston: I mean…
29:34
toddmignola: She has come across my…
29:38
Tad Eggleston: radar.
29:38
toddmignola: intersection of pathways. Yeah, the New York…
29:44
toddmignola: con is one I would really love to do.
29:47
Tad Eggleston: It's on my list, too, but that one costs money, so we'll see.
29:51
toddmignola: Yeah, that one costs money, and supposedly it's, it's, like a death trap. There's, like, the main floor and one exit.
30:02
toddmignola: And they overbook it every year, so…
30:06
Tad Eggleston: I mean, everybody loves it, so it's on my list. I also have friends in New York, so at least I wouldn't have to pay to, like, stay anywhere.
30:14
toddmignola: Yeah. That's how I feel about it, too.
30:16
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, I mean… and I think it's ReedPop, and ReedPop?
30:22
Tad Eggleston: ReadPop has good professional discounts, so I'm a teacher as well, so between the podcast and the teaching, like, I can sometimes get into cons for as little as $30 for the weekend, rather than the hundreds of dollars for the weekend. Oh, I know, that's such a nice thing.
30:40
toddmignola: Last year, the Rose CityCon…
30:44
Tad Eggleston: which is in Portland. I went as…
30:48
toddmignola: just a flunky, you know, and introduced myself to some people. But then this last, I guess.
30:56
toddmignola: June, July, whatever it was when they had it here, I actually got a professional badge. So, yes, exactly. And it makes a huge difference, I mean, you know…
31:10
toddmignola: Getting in for the whole weekend for the less than the price.
31:16
Tad Eggleston: Price of a day.
31:17
toddmignola: Yes. Right. Yeah. Right.
31:19
Tad Eggleston: Which is why, I mean, and again, now they… like, one year, we got in for free, because there was one year that they considered podcasts press, and they give press passes for free. But then, after that, podcasts weren't press anymore.
31:35
toddmignola: Oh, bummer.
31:36
Tad Eggleston: But teachers are professionals. You don't actually have to be an industry professional. Like, teachers and librarians qualify as professionals.
31:45
toddmignola: Nice.
31:46
Tad Eggleston: So I've managed to get professional badges to my local Big con that way.
31:52
toddmignola: Which is which one?
31:53
Tad Eggleston: C2E2 in Chicago.
31:55
toddmignola: Okay.
31:56
Tad Eggleston: Which I think is the same… group that does…
32:01
Tad Eggleston: NYCC, and I don't remember if they do Rose City, I think they do Emerald City.
32:07
toddmignola: I imagine.
32:08
Tad Eggleston: I said that there are similar guidelines.
32:12
toddmignola: Yeah.
32:13
Tad Eggleston: But I just have to figure out how to get to the other ones.
32:16
toddmignola: Yeah, I think the next year will be… the next con season will be interesting for me, because the Crown is coming out in February, and it's the first thing I'll really have to show.
32:27
Tad Eggleston: Right. And…
32:31
toddmignola: So, you know, Emerald City's a 4-hour train ride from here, so… and that's… Right.
32:38
toddmignola: attracts a big crowd. So…
32:41
Tad Eggleston: Well, Rose City has a pretty good crowd, too, just because it's…
32:47
toddmignola: Comic Central.
32:48
Tad Eggleston: Right.
32:49
toddmignola: Yeah, I mean, Tony's near dark horse is huge.
32:51
Tad Eggleston: Right. That there aren't many bigger comic scenes than Portland. I mean, really, Portland, New York, and LA are the three biggest hubs.
33:02
toddmignola: Yeah.
33:03
Tad Eggleston: There's a surprising… there's a surprising group in Minneapolis?
33:07
toddmignola: Hmm.
33:08
Tad Eggleston: And Chicago-Milwaukee kind of has merged together as more of the Chicago people move up to Milwaukee, because the rent is cheaper.
33:18
toddmignola: Just as cold, but cheaper rent.
33:21
Tad Eggleston: Right, right, right. And they can see the cubs cheaper, but without the ivy.
33:30
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, so…
33:33
toddmignola: when I did… when I… when I applied for my professional badge at Rose City this year, one of the guys who was the head of
33:43
toddmignola: I guess, analyzing whether or not I was a real professional said, hey.
33:49
toddmignola: If you would like to do a panel sometime for the Crown.
33:53
toddmignola: And maybe your brother, too.
33:57
Tad Eggleston: That was…
33:58
toddmignola: That'd be great! And… so, with the crown out next year…
34:05
Tad Eggleston: I was very deliberately not that guy.
34:09
Tad Eggleston: when I responded to the, to the, to the…
34:12
Tad Eggleston: to the emails that I got from your PR people, I said, yeah, I'd love to talk to Mike Todd or Warwick.
34:23
Tad Eggleston: Any and all of them, and when they said Todd was doing it, I said, done, let's go.
34:28
toddmignola: Yeah, it's, it's interesting to be in a position where my name is in the press, because…
34:38
toddmignola: you know, I… I exist on…
34:41
toddmignola: the Hellboy Wikipedia, Hellipedia, or whatever it's.
34:46
Tad Eggleston: Right, right, right.
34:47
toddmignola: Because of.
34:48
Tad Eggleston: one story.
34:49
toddmignola: Yeah, one story, and so nobody really… and because it was in Dark Horse Processed, I mean, it got reprinted in all the Hellboy and Hell stuff, which is nice. Right, right.
35:00
toddmignola: But this one… We mess with Canon a little bit.
35:04
Tad Eggleston: Right?
35:05
toddmignola: And I got to… well, with Mike and Warwick, create a new character. Same.
35:14
toddmignola: I got den… I got the name… Azale's wife,
35:22
Tad Eggleston: this.
35:22
toddmignola: So…
35:24
toddmignola: They're gonna have to rewrite a bunch of stuff about Hellboy's Hell family now, because it's like, oh… Wait, you added stuff!
35:32
toddmignola: So… all the fans will… I mean…
35:37
toddmignola: I think because of that, and because…
35:41
toddmignola: this is dealing with stuff that… it touches on the right hand of doom, I mean, it touches on a lot of stuff.
35:49
toddmignola: and it does inform some of… Hellboy.
35:56
toddmignola: Okay. So, I think…
36:00
toddmignola: I don't think this is something the fans knew they wanted, but I think they're gonna want it.
36:05
Tad Eggleston: I hope so.
36:06
toddmignola: I mean…
36:06
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I… I don't… I don't think,
36:12
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I don't know too many, just because I…
36:18
Tad Eggleston: don't ha- I've only got one, like.
36:22
Tad Eggleston: rabid Hellboy fan in my circle.
36:25
Tad Eggleston: But I've got lots of… Whatever the space between casual and rabid is.
36:33
toddmignola: Does that make sense?
36:34
Tad Eggleston: Makes sense.
36:35
toddmignola: Yes, it does.
36:36
Tad Eggleston: The ones that have read more of it than they haven't, but don't have, like, the entire canon memorized.
36:42
toddmignola: No, I mean, I, I.
36:48
toddmignola: They probably know more about Hellboy than I do, I'm sure.
36:50
Tad Eggleston: Well, yeah. Well, but what I was gonna say is there have actually been a number of things in the last few years that have come out that the people that I'm around are kind of like,
37:02
Tad Eggleston: I wouldn't have thought about this in the Hellboy universe, like Hellboy in Love, or Giant Robot Hellboy, or whatnot.
37:09
Tad Eggleston: But I'll give it a shot. And then they went, This was really good!
37:13
toddmignola: Yeah, I mean, Giant Robo and Hellboy is particularly ridiculous, because it just came out of…
37:18
toddmignola: the daily illustrations Mike was doing during the pandemic, and it was just, like, goofing off.
37:25
Tad Eggleston: Some of the great comics and… or some of the great characters in comics history have come out of people goofing off.
37:32
toddmignola: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
37:34
Tad Eggleston: You know, one of the most popular saga characters was Fiona messing around, and Brian put him in the comic, and then he started having a story.
37:46
toddmignola: Well, I… I mean, there was a lot of that with Hellboy, you know.
37:50
Tad Eggleston: Right.
37:51
toddmignola: Like, I mean, you know, I remember when he first told me the idea for it.
37:58
toddmignola: I actually thought it was the dumbest title I'd ever heard.
38:04
toddmignola: And so did he, really, but I think he's gotten used to it.
38:07
Tad Eggleston: This is where I remind people that, like, it took how long for somebody to finally… we've had Batman, we've had Catwoman, Superman, Spider-Man. How long did it take somebody to name their book Dogman, and how many copies has he sold since then?
38:23
toddmignola: Yes, exactly. It's like, what else can I stick on? Man?
38:28
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but you'd think it would have been one of the early ones.
38:31
toddmignola: Yeah.
38:32
toddmignola: Well, I mean, the thing that makes Hellboy so ridiculous is the boy part.
38:36
Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
38:38
toddmignola: Yeah, I mean, here's this big lump of a guy, and Hellboy does make…
38:44
toddmignola: a brief appearance in The Crown.
38:48
Tad Eggleston: You mean other than on the cover here?
38:51
toddmignola: Yeah.
38:52
Tad Eggleston: Jeez.
38:53
toddmignola: It's just more a framing device than anything else.
38:57
Tad Eggleston: Well, that's one of the beauties of Hellboy, is that, I mean, like the 8-pager, where he was also the framing device. Hellboy can be a character, he can also be the Crypt Keeper.
39:09
toddmignola: Yeah, no, it's true. And it's kind of… You know, and…
39:15
Tad Eggleston: Because on one level, his world's supposed to be our world.
39:19
toddmignola: Right. And I would have been, I think… it would have been hard for me to write Hellboy's dialogue, I think. I think I would have just…
39:28
toddmignola: given that to Mike, whereas the other characters, because they hadn't been explored, really, not in a humanizing way,
39:38
toddmignola: I had a… I felt like I had a lot of leeway to write and flesh out their characters.
39:45
toddmignola: You know, Mike would nix stuff and say, too wordy, and I'm like, okay, that's the novelist in me. Don't, don't be.
39:54
Tad Eggleston: Stan Lee.
39:55
toddmignola: Don't be standing. And honestly, for me, the thing I like about comics…
40:01
toddmignola: And this goes back to when I was a screenwriter.
40:06
toddmignola: If you can do it in a visual.
40:10
toddmignola: you know, I kind of hate captions in a comic. I don't mind dialogue, but only if a caption is absolutely necessary.
40:21
toddmignola: You know, growing up in the 70s, comics were so overwritten, you know?
40:26
Tad Eggleston: Oh, God.
40:26
toddmignola: You'd have so many asterisks leading you to a footnote, and you're like, you're killing me.
40:36
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, in the 50s, I'll forgive EC Comics for being overwritten, because essentially they didn't… they didn't write on paper, they had Al Feldstein writing the comic on…
40:48
Tad Eggleston: the Bristol Board, Really, actually, the directions for the artist.
40:54
toddmignola: Yeah, yeah.
40:55
Tad Eggleston: written down, which, okay, I guess.
40:58
toddmignola: Save.
40:58
Tad Eggleston: Money?
40:59
toddmignola: Honestly, the writing is so weird in the old 50s stuff, it's so clunky that I kind of.
41:06
Tad Eggleston: The dialogue is better.
41:08
toddmignola: The dialogue is fantastic!
41:11
Tad Eggleston: No, no, the secret to reading EC Comics is don't read the exhibition boxes, because those are actually just the instructions for the artist.
41:23
toddmignola: Well, because they often…
41:24
Tad Eggleston: You don't need them.
41:25
toddmignola: It's just telling you what's going on in the panel. Yes.
41:29
toddmignola: Right.
41:30
Tad Eggleston: So when I started to really appreciate EC Comics was when I would…
41:36
Tad Eggleston: I would read the dialogue and look at the pictures, and only read the exposition boxes if I didn't know what was going on.
41:43
toddmignola: Right.
41:44
Tad Eggleston: But again, it was because Bill Gaines wanted to save money, so he wouldn't have them type out the scripts. He just had them write it on the Bristol board.
41:54
toddmignola: Wow, I didn't know that, but kind of, it makes sense now, like.
41:58
Tad Eggleston: Thinking it.
41:59
toddmignola: some of these pages that I really love, and it's like, oh, yeah, that doesn't need to be there. And for me, too, and I, I was talking, to an artist about a project a couple weeks ago, Mike McCropolis, and,
42:16
toddmignola: we both were like… you know, I always like to tell artists this when I'm…
42:21
toddmignola: pitching a project to them. It's like, look.
42:25
toddmignola: I'm more interested in the pictures than the writing, in a lot of ways. I like to form the story, put in
42:33
toddmignola: just the right amount of dialogue, but too many captions, even too many word balloons, just get in the way of the art for me. I mean…
42:43
toddmignola: it's one of the reasons I love the Bon Dessonet stuff so much. I mean, they're… they're art books, and they're…
42:51
toddmignola: And it's why everybody, or a lot of people, wait for, you know, the trade paperback to come out, because it's like, it feels more like an art book. I'm not an issue-to-issue guy at all.
43:07
Tad Eggleston: So…
43:10
Tad Eggleston: We can transition a little bit here to ask you one of my really common questions for a first-time guest. Give me your comics biography. Not your bibliography, obviously, because we've already gone over your bibliography, but your biography. Talk to me about the comics…
43:26
Tad Eggleston: You read when you were a kid.
43:28
Tad Eggleston: Like, what… what role has comics played in your life to this point? Which books played that?
43:35
Tad Eggleston: you know, stuck out to you as ones that, like, oh, this is why I love the medium, or this is why I want to get into the medium. Obviously, you chose to start writing comics later, so it's gonna be different than I'm used to hearing, but, like, walk me through your journey with comics.
43:51
toddmignola: Well, it's interesting, because I… comics just… except through what Mike was doing.
43:59
toddmignola: completely fell out of my life for most of my adult life. I mean, we… my brothers and I, we…
44:08
toddmignola: we were Marvel guys. I don't think we had really any DC… and…
44:16
toddmignola: But we… in the same way we…
44:19
toddmignola: we collected everything in a very particular way. We collected music in the same way, like, my brother Scott.
44:27
toddmignola: would have Hall & Oates, and I would have Jethro Tull, and Mike would have Aerosmith, and… but we would share all that stuff, but it was like, Mike had these comics, he was a Fantastic Four guy, really all the Kirby stuff.
44:45
toddmignola: Scott was very Tomb of Dracula, and mine was a little more hodgepodge,
44:54
toddmignola: Spider-Man was huge for me, but these are, like, 70s Spider-Man. Right. And…
45:01
toddmignola: It's funny, like, I… Mike always paid attention to the art, of course.
45:06
toddmignola: I didn't really think about the art that much growing up.
45:10
toddmignola: And it's only now, like, I'll get on the Heritage Auction site and, like, look at the stuff that's up, and the stuff that…
45:18
toddmignola: has this tremendous pull for me, is I'm like, oh, I had that! Oh, I had that when I was a kid, and now I can look at it and see that either, oh, that was really ugly, or that was really beautiful and I didn't appreciate it at the time.
45:34
toddmignola: So…
45:35
Tad Eggleston: I've gone through a lot of that myself. I think those of us who tend to think in words and want to write sometimes miss the…
45:44
toddmignola: Yeah!
45:44
Tad Eggleston: The beauty of the page in front of us.
45:46
toddmignola: Yeah, and, like, just recently looking at the Gene Cole and Tomb of Dracula stuff, I mean.
45:53
toddmignola: who's an amazing artist. Amazing. And some of the, you know, the thing I like about looking at the heritage stuff is you see it before it's colored and printed, and or the IDW, like, artist editions and stuff.
46:08
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
46:09
toddmignola: really appreciate.
46:09
Tad Eggleston: Scott Dunbayer has done a great, great thing for the world of comics by introducing us to those.
46:17
toddmignola: Yeah, and I got real lucky, because, when Mike was planning on moving to New York,
46:25
toddmignola: IDW had given him a bunch of these things, he didn't want to move them all. So, like, he had the really huge Eisner spirit.
46:34
Tad Eggleston: Ho.
46:35
toddmignola: a smaller one, and he was like, well, I don't need them both.
46:40
toddmignola: I really want the smaller one. You wouldn't want the big one. And I'm like, yeah, I would.
46:44
Tad Eggleston: Yes, please.
46:47
Tad Eggleston: Yes, please.
46:48
toddmignola: Yeah, and he mailed it to me, which must have cost a fortune.
46:53
toddmignola: So… To get back to your question, I think when I…
47:01
toddmignola: when I got into my 20s, comics just fell out of my life, except peripherally through Mike. And so…
47:10
toddmignola: And I think he's a… wonderful artist, you know, and I think I can say that semi-unbiasedly.
47:20
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, if it makes you feel any better, it's a popular opinion.
47:24
toddmignola: Sorry.
47:25
Tad Eggleston: Whether you're biased or…
47:27
toddmignola: No, I've heard that. So, I think…
47:33
toddmignola: his art style, and the people he was really liking, and I would, you know, I would talk to him about comics and stuff, and he'd tell me about somebody.
47:45
toddmignola: That was forming what… I thought of as…
47:52
toddmignola: what was interesting in comics. I mean, I wasn't reading Marvel, I wasn't reading… I wasn't even paying attention to any of that stuff. You know, occasionally something would come by…
48:03
toddmignola: and, again, Mike's milieu, so I didn't really think about it that much.
48:13
toddmignola: but… I finished my… my last novel.
48:20
toddmignola: just at the beginning of the pandemic, or right in the middle of the pandemic, and one of my neighbors is Brendan Seifred, who did Witch Doctor, and so he was my sort of, like, walking buddy during the pandemic.
48:34
toddmignola: And we would… wander around, and he would talk comics, and the more he…
48:42
toddmignola: talked about it, I could feel…
48:45
toddmignola: that it was something I wanted to try.
48:50
toddmignola: because they're…
48:53
toddmignola: there were a bunch of stories that I had lingering that I was probably never gonna do anything with.
48:59
toddmignola: Whether they were screenplays from my… when I was in my 20s, to this… the most recent detective book I had written, I'm like, it actually would make a great graphic novel. And…
49:14
toddmignola: So… then I started,
49:20
toddmignola: thinking back to the comics that influenced me, the X-Men were also huge. Like, I had all the Claremont stuff when it came out,
49:30
toddmignola: But it all burned up, our house burned down.
49:33
Tad Eggleston: Oh, stop.
49:34
toddmignola: And, I mean, in some ways, well, it was bad, but…
49:44
toddmignola: like, so, I didn't even have…
49:47
toddmignola: I mean, my entire comics collection for my kid was at my dad's house. I wasn't living there anymore. But in a way, it was…
49:55
toddmignola: was I ever gonna open those boxes again? Now I wish I could, you know? Right. Partly because a lot of that stuff's worth some money.
50:07
Tad Eggleston: Well, that depends entirely on its condition.
50:12
toddmignola: They were all men.
50:13
toddmignola: Or…
50:14
Tad Eggleston: Everybody thinks they were all men. If you read them, they probably were.
50:19
toddmignola: No, no, this is the thing, I'm this way with books, too, like, people don't think I've read any of my books, because none of the spines are creased.
50:28
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
50:29
toddmignola: We…
50:30
Tad Eggleston: I just… I've been around comic shops enough that I've been there for the books that people are convinced are gonna be meant so much that they don't trust you. They send them out to get graded, and they're like…
50:43
Tad Eggleston: A 6.2.
50:44
toddmignola: Oh, I guarantee you, except I can't because there's no evidence that mine worked better than that. We were all a little anal when it came to shit like that.
50:55
Tad Eggleston: I believe you, because, like, the people who become creators tend to be anal, but…
51:01
Tad Eggleston: But… but, like, the number… the number of comics that… they're, like, an eight and a half before they even leave the store is.
51:08
toddmignola: So, no.
51:09
toddmignola: Yeah, yeah.
51:12
Tad Eggleston: You know, cause just sitting on the shelf.
51:14
Tad Eggleston: can… can… You know, all it takes is little… like, a 9 comic is so pristine, it's not even…
51:23
Tad Eggleston: Bunny.
51:25
toddmignola: Yeah… Well, I'll never know, because I'm never going to collect comics again.
51:30
Tad Eggleston: Right.
51:30
toddmignola: It just takes up too much space. And, you know, the nice thing about comics these days is that everything gets collected.
51:41
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, everything's collected, everything's digital, so you've got lots of options for reading.
51:45
toddmignola: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So… did I answer your question?
51:52
Tad Eggleston: Kind of. You got back into it with Brandon Seifert, and I assume you read his Witch Doctor.
51:58
toddmignola: Oh, yeah.
51:59
Tad Eggleston: So, I mean, I'm assuming that as you decided that you wanted to write, you started…
52:07
Tad Eggleston: reading other things, though. I mean, you brought up Band-Aid Esnay earlier, so I would think that you.
52:12
toddmignola: Yeah!
52:13
Tad Eggleston: Maybe read some stuff there, I mean…
52:15
toddmignola: Yeah!
52:16
Tad Eggleston: Other than Mike's stuff, has anything, like, caught your attention? Anything influenced the way you think about comics?
52:24
Tad Eggleston: what can be done, can't be done. I mean, you brought up a couple of genres that you worked in writing novels or screenplays, if you sought out…
52:32
Tad Eggleston: in the comics world in those genres.
52:36
toddmignola: Not… that much. One thing that I, there was a quote from…
52:44
toddmignola: Or something I read about Michael Bendis once, where he… he was talking about what the stuff he reads, and he reads, like, a lot of, plays?
52:55
toddmignola: and he…
52:58
toddmignola: And you can see it in the way his characters talk. It's… it's very thoughtful. It's… I mean, I've always found that a lot of comics, the dialogue is disposable.
53:09
toddmignola: Whereas… theater and… I mean, there's really… I think there's only.
53:15
Tad Eggleston: I mean, that does tell me that you and I are reading different comics. Yeah. Because I know that there's a lot of comics where I feel like the dialogue is disposable, but…
53:25
Tad Eggleston: There are a lot of comics where it really, really isn't, too.
53:28
toddmignola: Yeah, well, I mean, the… it's such…
53:31
toddmignola: the learning curve when I started was so huge, because comics had not been a part of my life, that I spent 6 months
53:41
toddmignola: researching artists, and so I wasn't really reading comics, I was reading some comics, but really, like, weird, funky old stuff, like…
53:52
Tad Eggleston: Funky old stuff is half of my, like…
53:54
toddmignola: Excuse me.
53:55
Tad Eggleston: favorite stuff.
53:56
toddmignola: Yeah, yeah, me too. You know, I was reading Fletcher Hanks. Okay. So…
54:03
toddmignola: because I… I still think of… I think of comics as… as funny books. It's hard for me to take them totally seriously. Like, somebody like Alan Moore, while I think he's a very good writer.
54:18
toddmignola: there's… I find them humorless.
54:21
Tad Eggleston: Right.
54:22
toddmignola: that… If I'm gonna…
54:24
Tad Eggleston: This is… this is where I say that…
54:27
Tad Eggleston: A, go read Jack B. Quick. Alan Moore can do humor.
54:31
toddmignola: Oh.
54:32
Tad Eggleston: But, but B, you know, comics are a medium, just like… just like not all movies have humor.
54:39
toddmignola: Yeah, like, you can write comics without humor. Yeah.
54:43
Tad Eggleston: I wasn't even talk… I wasn't even talking about… Comic book movies.
54:49
toddmignola: Yeah. I was thinking…
54:50
Tad Eggleston: I was thinking, not a lot of people laugh at Schindler's List.
54:53
toddmignola: No, no, that was… no, that's a traumatic one. No, it's true, for me…
55:03
toddmignola: the artists I started looking at were, the BD artists, the European guys, because I remember
55:13
toddmignola: I lived in France for a couple of years, and I remember the way…
55:18
toddmignola: like, the big surprise of, like, going into a bookstore there, and the giant Bon Dessonet section, and they were… and I was…
55:28
Tad Eggleston: They consider it, what, the ninth art?
55:30
toddmignola: Yeah, something like that, and it's just like… and they were all hardbound, and they were all beautiful, and I was like, what the hell is going on?
55:39
Tad Eggleston: also comics.
55:40
toddmignola: Yeah. Yeah, and so…
55:46
toddmignola: like, I wasn't on Instagram or anything, as a novelist, it didn't make any sense, but as soon as I decided to…
55:55
toddmignola: dip into comics, I just started, friending. Like, All these artists…
56:02
Tad Eggleston: artist she could find.
56:04
toddmignola: Yeah, and so I got kicked off Instagram instantly, because I thought I was a robot, and then I found…
56:09
toddmignola: Instagram account back, and they did the same thing, and they did it again, and then I thought.
56:15
toddmignola: Okay, the next time you get back on, just take it easy, man. And I started looking at the artists who were friends with other artists, the French artists, and
56:28
toddmignola: And then some of the other writers started reaching out to me, which was nice. There's a wonderful…
56:36
toddmignola: Spanish artist named Rodrigo Vasquez. He's not known. He did a book called Hounds last year for Mad Cave.
56:48
toddmignola: Okay.
56:49
toddmignola: And he reached out to me, because of my name, I imagine, and said, hey, if you ever want to collaborate on something, and…
56:58
toddmignola: I asked him what kind of stuff he was interested in, and he told me, and two days later, I had a comic idea for him.
57:05
toddmignola: And he drew, like, 10 beautiful pages of it that we've been shopping around.
57:13
Tad Eggleston: Excellent. Sorry, I just got another text that I needed to respond to really quick.
57:19
toddmignola: That's fun.
57:19
Tad Eggleston: We're a lo-fi podcast. Hi, Mom. Hi, Adam. Hi, John. Hi, Britt. They're used to me.
57:33
Tad Eggleston: I do have more listeners than that. Those are just the ones that I know are listening, so say…
57:41
toddmignola: High for me, as well.
57:43
Tad Eggleston: So,
57:45
Tad Eggleston: I gotta ask one fanboy-ish question, just because, you know, you're the brother of a comic book superstar.
57:57
Tad Eggleston: I was talking to a couple of comic book superstars in my last podcast, and I asked them a variation on this.
58:06
Tad Eggleston: So I'm blown away.
58:10
Tad Eggleston: just in the four years that I've been podcasting, kind of the surreal nature that parts of my life have taken on as people that I read, or people that I thought I only knew… or that I only knew, like, through reputation or whatnot, have become people that I text or hang out with.
58:29
toddmignola: Right.
58:31
Tad Eggleston: Have you had any of that? I mean, your brother, obviously, is not only a comics royalty, but they've made, what, 3 Hellboy movies now, or is it 4? I can't keep track. 4.
58:44
toddmignola: particular corros, there was the… David Harbour one, and then there was, The Crooked Man.
58:51
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
58:52
Tad Eggleston: So my question is, can you think of any experience that you've…
58:58
Tad Eggleston: Have had that's strictly because of your…
59:04
Tad Eggleston: relation to the comic book world that just, like, when you think about it, is still kind of like, wow, I got to do that.
59:13
toddmignola: Yeah, and it would…
59:20
toddmignola: it would have been being put in touch with Warwick.
59:25
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
59:26
toddmignola: Because he's an artist I've long loved, and,
59:34
toddmignola: the editor, Shawna Gore, who lives here, she… I…
59:40
toddmignola: we had become sort of friends, and I ran this one idea by her, this… for the zombie comic. And I… she was like, well, who… who are you thinking of drawing it? And I said, well…
59:53
toddmignola: everything I think of, I think of Warwick Johnson-Cadwell drawing. And she's like, oh, I was just working on a project with him. Let me put you in touch with him. And within 2 days, he was on board this project?
1:00:10
toddmignola: I never even approached anyone else, and it was… and that I was a little starstruck because of that.
1:00:19
toddmignola: I thought it would be… I thought that would be the most difficult part. Finding an artist for books, I have found to be, well, really joyous.
1:00:31
toddmignola: A lot of my… First choices are available.
1:00:35
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Yeah.
1:00:37
toddmignola: And… And so for… and Warwick and I have become quite good friends, even though.
1:00:45
Tad Eggleston: Cool.
1:00:45
toddmignola: He's in the UK. Right. So, you know, I mean, that's been great, and it really set the tone for my interaction with artists on other projects. Right. Which has been really lovely.
1:01:03
Tad Eggleston: No,
1:01:06
Tad Eggleston: You'd be surprised how common that sort of story is, where some writer, and sometimes even, like, really well-known writers, will be talking to me about, you know, some book, and
1:01:17
Tad Eggleston: They told their editor, well, it'd be great if we could get somebody who'd do art like this really famous artist, and the editor goes, or we could just call that really famous artist.
1:01:28
toddmignola: Yeah, well, there was a project that… it was an old screenplay of mine, that I was thinking of turning into a graphic novel, and…
1:01:37
toddmignola: I know… Chris Robeson?
1:01:44
toddmignola: Because he's another one of the guys here, and I know him from the Hellboy stuff he's done, and I knew he had worked with Mike Allred on Ice Bundy, and I was like, do you think there's any possibility I could get in touch with Allred? He's like, yeah, I'll email him right now.
1:02:02
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:02:02
toddmignola: And I was like… and then Mike Allred was, like, emailing me back the next day, and I'm like, okay, well, that's really weird.
1:02:10
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, no, no, I, like, that's, that's where half of my surreal things are, too, is like…
1:02:17
Tad Eggleston: I either find an email address that might be right, and reach out to somebody, and then boom, they're getting back to me, or the handful of times where it's like…
1:02:28
Tad Eggleston: I finally feel close enough to somebody that I don't feel like I'm, like, oh, I'm using you to get to somebody else, and I'll say, is there any chance that you can put me in touch with… and they're like, oh yeah, sure, boom, boom, boom!
1:02:42
Tad Eggleston: Next thing I know.
1:02:44
toddmignola: Yeah, there was a… this fantastic French artist that I… he wasn't on social media at all.
1:02:52
toddmignola: So I had no way of getting in touch with him, and I'm not gonna use his name, because…
1:02:58
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
1:02:58
toddmignola: Of how this story is gonna go. And…
1:03:03
toddmignola: I just wrote on Facebook a post that was like, does anyone know so-and-so? I am having trouble getting in touch with him. And this other French artist, who was a Facebook friend of mine, said, oh, he's a really good friend of mine, this is his email address, but you might not want to work with him, because he's slow as fuck.
1:03:24
toddmignola: And I was like, thanks for the heads up!
1:03:27
Tad Eggleston: Well, no, no, see, I mean, that's…
1:03:31
Tad Eggleston: my good friend Shelly Bond once said that, like.
1:03:36
Tad Eggleston: It's important to have that sort of information, but not disqualifying, because you just plan around it.
1:03:42
toddmignola: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:03:45
Tad Eggleston: Y-you know, she had…
1:03:46
toddmignola: But it is a great heads-up, and I've talked to an artist recently, and he told me straight up, yeah, just so you know, I'm slow.
1:03:54
Tad Eggleston: Right. Well, no, no, she told a story that I won't get into the details, just because the, or all of the details, just because of some…
1:04:04
Tad Eggleston: news that's happened since she told this story. But she was working on a very prominent series, and she brought in a really good artist, and everybody thought that she was crazy, because she's like… they're like, you know that, like, he never makes his deadlines, that sort of thing.
1:04:21
Tad Eggleston: So she called him up before he was starting and said, okay, tell me honestly, how long does it take you to get this book
1:04:26
Tad Eggleston: Will it take you to get each issue done, and do it the way you want it to be?
1:04:32
Tad Eggleston: And he started to tell her, I can get it done in a month, na-na-na-na-na-
1:04:37
Tad Eggleston: How long to make it the way you want it to be?
1:04:40
Tad Eggleston: 6 or 7 weeks, she's like, okay, I'm gonna schedule 3 fill-in issues to give you elite time.
1:04:45
toddmignola: Oh, nice!
1:04:48
toddmignola: Yeah, I mean…
1:04:50
Tad Eggleston: You know, similarly, Tom King tells the story in his Batman run, the reason there was a series of…
1:04:56
Tad Eggleston: There was a series of one-shots.
1:05:01
Tad Eggleston: near the end, was because
1:05:05
Tad Eggleston: he wanted, you know, it was a week… it was a book that was coming out bi-weekly, so they'd been going back and forth on artists, but he had, like, a 12-issue stretch that he wanted to be one artist because of the story arc. So he did this… this story arc of one-shots, so it could be all fill-in artists, and it gave…
1:05:25
Tad Eggleston: The other artist, the lead time.
1:05:29
toddmignola: Oh, to do alternate.
1:05:30
Tad Eggleston: To be able… to be able to… to do, you know, because by the time his first… first of that stretch was printed, he was already drawing, like, the seventh.
1:05:40
toddmignola: Yeah, yeah.
1:05:41
Tad Eggleston: That's… yeah, I mean… So, so really, it's, it's… slow is not in and of itself bad, you just have to plan accordingly.
1:05:50
toddmignola: Yeah, I mean, I've known Arthur Adams since I was a kid, right.
1:05:55
toddmignola: And he's just notoriously slow, and has always been notoriously… and I ran into him at Rose City this last year, and he said something about, oh, yeah, I'm really behind. I'm like.
1:06:10
toddmignola: Have you ever been cut up? He's like, no.
1:06:13
Tad Eggleston: No.
1:06:16
Tad Eggleston: And then Kirby did 6 pages a day.
1:06:19
toddmignola: Yeah.
1:06:20
toddmignola: Well, this guy, this Spanish guy who I mentioned, Rodrigo Vasquez, I was putting a proposal together to send it to a comic company, and so I wrote most of the first issue, and…
1:06:38
toddmignola: Rodrigo and I decided that he would draw…
1:06:42
toddmignola: Either in roughs or fall,
1:06:45
toddmignola: A few of the pages for the proposal, so they would see what the book looked like.
1:06:50
toddmignola: And the next thing I know, he had drawn 10 pages.
1:06:55
toddmignola: Fully inked, and 3 of them in color.
1:07:00
toddmignola: And I'm like.
1:07:00
Tad Eggleston: Right?
1:07:01
toddmignola: Oh, man, you're not messing around. They did them fast, and they're… Right.
1:07:07
Tad Eggleston: There are a handful of guys like that, like,
1:07:10
Tad Eggleston: a guy that if you're looking at how crime books are done really well, Jacob Phillips, Sean's son,
1:07:19
Tad Eggleston: not only does That Texas Blood and a couple other books, but he does all the coloring on Criminal now, and at certain times, it's been like… seems like he's doing a book and a half a month and the coloring for his dad.
1:07:33
toddmignola: Oh my god. I mean, the…
1:07:37
toddmignola: Yeah, I don't… I don't know if Warwick bit off more than he could chew by agreeing to do the color, too.
1:07:45
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it…
1:07:46
Tad Eggleston: It all depends on how he works, because, I mean, lots of people, why they like to color themselves, particularly now in the…
1:07:55
Tad Eggleston: the… most of the art is done digitally era is… is they're already kind of coloring in their head as they go, so… so they get to make decisions in terms of what gets inked and what doesn't need to get inked, because they're actually going to define it with the color, and then not have to communicate it.
1:08:12
toddmignola: Yeah, and you can put in some shaping and stuff on the computer.
1:08:16
Tad Eggleston: Exactly.
1:08:17
toddmignola: Yeah, talking to Mike McCropolis the other day, and he was like.
1:08:22
toddmignola: We were trying to figure out…
1:08:25
toddmignola: You know, what we're gonna do with this,
1:08:28
toddmignola: this project, and he was like, well…
1:08:31
toddmignola: I would like to see it through to color, because it doesn't feel like my job is done until it's colored, because
1:08:39
toddmignola: Like you said, you know, they've already seen it colored in their head, and it must be really jarring to…
1:08:47
toddmignola: Then have somebody else color it, and you're like.
1:08:50
Tad Eggleston: Yep.
1:08:51
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it all depends on how in sync they are with the colorist, but I've definitely… I see almost a generational line. The people who did more work in pencil and ink.
1:09:07
Tad Eggleston: still use colorists, because their version of drawing a comic never involved the color, because they started in the four-color era, and even if they had the colors in their head, they weren't going to be able to make that on…
1:09:20
Tad Eggleston: Given the printing that was being done, etc. So, like, they focused on telling the stories in black and white, and color with somebody else.
1:09:29
toddmignola: Yeah, and Mike's a good… my brother Mike's a good example of that. I mean, not… he'd never be able to digitally color something, because he's, like, compudence.
1:09:40
toddmignola: But, he found such shorthand with,
1:09:45
toddmignola: Dave… Dave Stewart, you know? And, you know, I mean, he can't imagine anyone else coloring Bryce.
1:09:54
toddmignola: Right.
1:09:55
toddmignola: So…
1:09:56
Tad Eggleston: Whereas a lot of the kids have come up doing everything digitally, so their webcomics were already color. Yeah. You know, so to stop coloring would be just to change their routine.
1:10:06
toddmignola: Yeah.
1:10:06
Tad Eggleston: You know, I think that really is the biggest dividing line. Have they been coloring all their life, or was color…
1:10:14
Tad Eggleston: A pipe dream for them when they were starting.
1:10:16
toddmignola: Or not even a pipe dream. It's like, well, that's not… it's done when I ink it. Right. And…
1:10:24
toddmignola: I mean, it was interesting being at a lightbox convention a few years ago with my brother, and one of the artists there was the guy who had drawn…
1:10:36
toddmignola: radio Spaceman?
1:10:39
toddmignola: my weird little offshoot book. And, you know, a lot of the older guys, you know, they've got portfolios and pages for sale, but he had done everything digitally, so he didn't have any pages. And I thought, oh, that's so weird, you're missing out on a great opportunity for resale!
1:10:57
Tad Eggleston: I actually… I have a friend…
1:11:00
Tad Eggleston: Who does really loose pencils, like, super-duper loose pencils by hand before going digital. But then the pages that he looks at and goes, oh, these will sell, he will go back and tighten the pencils.
1:11:19
toddmignola: Oh, wow.
1:11:20
Tad Eggleston: So that he has something for sale.
1:11:23
toddmignola: Yeah, I mean, there's nothing better than, like.
1:11:26
Tad Eggleston: Because a lot of artists make almost as much money off of their original art.
1:11:31
Tad Eggleston: As they make doing the book.
1:11:32
toddmignola: Well, I mean, my brother…
1:11:35
toddmignola: has a gallery now. Yeah, your brother probably makes more money off of the ratio.
1:11:41
Tad Eggleston: Fuck it.
1:11:42
toddmignola: Yeah, yeah, the sale on his pages, I mean, just the ones you look at on Heritage.
1:11:47
Tad Eggleston: Mike Oming showed off his Mike Mignola page the first time he was on it.
1:11:57
toddmignola: Yeah, I mean, I forget.
1:11:58
Tad Eggleston: I don't know if it was a page or a sketch he did for him, but he was very proud of it.
1:12:01
toddmignola: Yeah, I've got one of his paintings, which is nice.
1:12:05
toddmignola: You know, I might have to sell it for rent someday, but…
1:12:10
Tad Eggleston: Hopefully not. Hopefully not.
1:12:13
Tad Eggleston: Why not?
1:12:14
Tad Eggleston: Alright, so we're gonna, we're gonna do my, my favorite last question.
1:12:20
Tad Eggleston: Tell me something you love, preferably a comic, but we don't have rules.
1:12:25
Tad Eggleston: Preferably storytelling, but we don't have rules. But something that you love, that not enough people around you have experienced, and you would like them to, so you have more people to talk about it with.
1:12:40
toddmignola: That's really interesting. It's probably gonna be a… Movie.
1:12:45
Tad Eggleston: That's cool.
1:12:49
toddmignola: the people around me don't know it so much. I inflicted it on my girlfriend not too long ago. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
1:12:59
toddmignola: That's a great movie. It's a great movie, and it's the reason I became a writer.
1:13:04
Tad Eggleston: Okay. So you're a William Goldman fan?
1:13:07
toddmignola: I'm a big William Goldman fan, Adventures in the screen trade is beat to shit because it was my Bible when I was a screenwriter. Okay. And…
1:13:18
toddmignola: it was the first time I realized, because I saw it when I was a kid, but I was so young that I didn't understand that people actually wrote these things, that these just kind of came into existence, and my cousin…
1:13:33
toddmignola: hopefully he'll… he won't hear this, because I stole this book from him. He had, like, the published… it's like a little…
1:13:40
toddmignola: paperback.
1:13:42
toddmignola: of the screenplay to Butch Cassidy, and I found it, and I was just like.
1:13:48
toddmignola: wait, somebody wrote this? And it blew my mind. And I can quote that movie backwards and forwards.
1:14:00
Tad Eggleston: I can too. Yeah. I can too.
1:14:02
toddmignola: It's the movie I've seen the most.
1:14:05
Tad Eggleston: Probably not quite the most for me, because I grew up just the right age for Star Wars to be, like…
1:14:14
Tad Eggleston: I was 3 when Return of the Jedi came out, so, like… It was just…
1:14:19
toddmignola: It's coming.
1:14:19
Tad Eggleston: out on video and whatnot during the ages where I could watch it to death.
1:14:23
toddmignola: Yeah, I was the perfect age for the first movie.
1:14:28
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
1:14:29
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
1:14:30
Tad Eggleston: So you get it. Yeah.
1:14:33
Tad Eggleston: So, I do have to ask a follow-up to that, if you're a William Goldman fan, because this is something that I…
1:14:41
toddmignola: Magic.
1:14:43
Tad Eggleston: What?
1:14:44
Tad Eggleston: Magic. Magic. Magic.
1:14:48
toddmignola: I thought I could just, like, you know, anticipate the question.
1:14:51
Tad Eggleston: Huh?
1:14:53
Tad Eggleston: No? No, no. I don't think that works.
1:14:59
Tad Eggleston: Booker the movie for Princess Bride?
1:15:02
toddmignola: I'm a book guy.
1:15:04
Tad Eggleston: I lean towards the book.
1:15:06
toddmignola: I agree.
1:15:07
Tad Eggleston: I lean towards the book, as brilliant as the movie is.
1:15:10
toddmignola: Yeah. It was one of… it's one of those things where you read the book first, and…
1:15:16
toddmignola: You just pictured it totally different.
1:15:18
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I actually saw the movie first, but still, in reading the book.
1:15:25
Tad Eggleston: I just like the humor of making it the, you know… there's only so much that they were able to…
1:15:33
Tad Eggleston: To do in terms of making out the…
1:15:37
Tad Eggleston: that grandpa might be editing parts of the book. Yeah. Whereas in the book, the humor of… and then there's 50 pages of different wedding gowns she tried.
1:15:48
toddmignola: Yeah, and there's a… there's a moment where…
1:15:51
toddmignola: Goldman leaves something out of the story, and says, you can write to the publisher, and they'll send you that part. And I did, and they did.
1:16:01
Tad Eggleston: There's, like, 3 pages…
1:16:04
toddmignola: From the book that he had cut out, and they… they… they just sent a,
1:16:10
toddmignola: It's a copy of it.
1:16:13
Tad Eggleston: Worth reading? Should I go do it?
1:16:15
toddmignola: I don't know, I haven't read it in so long.
1:16:17
Tad Eggleston: Okay, fair enough.
1:16:19
toddmignola: I don't know if I… that's when the book came out, too.
1:16:21
Tad Eggleston: You're right, right, so who knows if they can do it now.
1:16:24
toddmignola: Yeah, yeah.
1:16:25
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:16:27
Tad Eggleston: And then… then I have to ask, just because it was one of the most wonderful things that came out of the pandemic, did you see the…
1:16:36
Tad Eggleston: the, like… YouTube pandemic Princess Bride remake.
1:16:42
toddmignola: Yo.
1:16:44
toddmignola: you should.
1:16:44
Tad Eggleston: Or didn't.
1:16:46
Tad Eggleston: No, I haven't seen that. Yeah, where, like, everybody was doing just scenes at home, and somebody cobbled them all together.
1:16:53
toddmignola: Oh, that's great.
1:16:55
Tad Eggleston: So it's like a who's who of everybody.
1:16:58
Tad Eggleston: Doing… doing scenes… scenes at home.
1:17:01
toddmignola: And then…
1:17:02
Tad Eggleston: Like, then they got cut together. I mean, like, yeah, it's…
1:17:07
Tad Eggleston: It's ridiculous. It's amazing. It's not quite as long as the movie, but close.
1:17:12
toddmignola: Okay, I will definitely check it out.
1:17:15
Tad Eggleston: People in their backyards, people in their living rooms.
1:17:18
toddmignola: Yeah, there was so much stuff like that during the pandemic, it was…
1:17:21
Tad Eggleston: Pretty.
1:17:22
toddmignola: Charming.
1:17:23
Tad Eggleston: It's nice when, it's nice when creative people find a way to work around whatever challenges they have.
1:17:33
toddmignola: Yeah.
1:17:34
Tad Eggleston: I mean, one of my favorite cartoonists, Matt Madden, who… who… I totally recommend his book with his wife,
1:17:46
Tad Eggleston: drawing words and writing pictures is literally their textbook to making comics. They teach
1:17:55
Tad Eggleston: Out in New York somewhere, or actually Philadelphia now. It's literally their textbook to writing comics.
1:18:01
toddmignola: Oh, that's cool.
1:18:03
Tad Eggleston: Matt… but Matt also did a book called, 99 Ways to Tell a Story, Exercise in Style.
1:18:10
Tad Eggleston: Which is built off of… some French-style manual.
1:18:16
Tad Eggleston: But, but it's… it's the same… One-page comic story.
1:18:21
Tad Eggleston: cold.
1:18:22
Tad Eggleston: 99 different ways.
1:18:24
toddmignola: That's fantastic.
1:18:26
Tad Eggleston: So, like, they're great just…
1:18:29
Tad Eggleston: But one of the things he does is he loves… he loves making comics with a constraint. So he chooses his constraint before he even starts…
1:18:40
Tad Eggleston: thinking about what the plot is. He's like, I'm not gonna do this, or it must be this.
1:18:46
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. So… yeah.
1:18:49
toddmignola: Check it out.
1:18:50
Tad Eggleston: You seem like the geeky type of guy that would enjoy his work.
1:18:54
toddmignola: Yeah, that's a great idea, I love shit like that.
1:18:56
Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, he's done poetry comics, he… his most recent book is actually a collection of different comics he's done with constraints called, Six Treasures of the Spiral.
1:19:09
Tad Eggleston: But one of the stories in there, the two main characters are traveling opposite directions in time.
1:19:17
Tad Eggleston: So there's actually only one panel where they're in the same… Place and time.
1:19:24
toddmignola: I almost wrote a story like that once.
1:19:27
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, so, so it's like, for the first half of the panel, like.
1:19:31
Tad Eggleston: One character knows all of the future, and the other character… and then in the back…
1:19:37
toddmignola: Easy, that's a great idea.
1:19:39
Tad Eggleston: So, yeah, I think you would… you would dig it. And I'm always happy to plug my buddy Matt's comics, because he does really, really fantastic stuff. So, Todd, it has been a pleasure. The book is
1:19:54
Tad Eggleston: The Crown, A Tale of Hell.
1:19:56
Tad Eggleston: with From Todd Mignola, Mike Mignola, and Warwick Johnson-Cadwell.
1:20:01
Tad Eggleston: coming out from Dark Horse Comics on February 11th, so you got time to order it still. Final order cutoff.
1:20:10
Tad Eggleston: isn't even… oh, it's January 5th, so lots of time to order it. People should get ahead of time.
1:20:16
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Get the orders in, that's important for comic shops. Yes. And, like, maybe I'll reach out again once it's done, and we'll do the spoilery talk.
1:20:28
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, I had a good time. Thank you for joining me for Todd Mignola. This has been 22 Panels, and we will see you after the next page.