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With Great Power #284... 22 Panels with James Sturm · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:02
  Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels, where tonight, not only do I have a guest, I have a very special guest host. My buddy Bob Sikoriak, decided, or agreed to guest host when I discovered that he'd worked with my guest, James Sturm.
• 0:20
  Tad Eggleston: on a Fantastic Four comic, and I went, oh, wait, you already know him!
• 0:26
  Tad Eggleston: let's get you involved! And Bob went, not only did I know him, I've known him for a long time! And I went, perfect! So, hi Bob, hi James, how is everybody this evening?
• 0:39
  James Sturm: I'm doing good, and it's really nice to see you again, Tad. We were on that baseball podcast, which was really fun, which was the first time I was,
• 0:47
  James Sturm: one of your many guests that night. And it's great, of course, to see Bob, and Bob, it's funny to hear, you know, yes, we worked on a Fantastic Four comic, but Bob was my thesis advisor when I was in grad school.
• 1:02
  Tad Eggleston: Wow.
• 1:02
  James Sturm: kind of my… I interned at Raw Magazine, and Bob was kind of like, I mean, my supervisor, right? You were the person that told me what to do and showed me how to use a stat camera, and so, Bob and I have been dear friends ever since.
• 1:18
  R. Sikoryak: Yeah, that was around 1990, I'm guessing, is that correct?
• 1:21
  James Sturm: Yeah.
• 1:22
  R. Sikoryak: 35 years. So James… James is… I've always checked, because I'm like, I'm not that much older than him. I think James is 11 months younger than me. Somehow I became… somehow I became the master.
• 1:35
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean…
• 1:36
  R. Sikoryak: 11 months more.
• 1:37
  Tad Eggleston: We're the precocious one.
• 1:41
  James Sturm: I was the shy one.
• 1:47
  Tad Eggleston: So, so yeah, actually, that, that leads perfectly. Where did you… I mean, if he's your thesis advisor, where did you go to school? What did you get? Because…
• 1:56
  James Sturm: I went to school… I'm gonna take it to Cartoon Studies from there. Yeah, I went to the School of Visual Arts, and and I was in this MFA program, MFA illustration program, that Marshall Erisman
• 2:08
  James Sturm: our dearly departed Marshall Harrisman,
• 2:14
  James Sturm: he, he ran and oversaw. And on the second year of the program, you get to get a thesis advisor, and I… I heard… I actually,
• 2:23
  James Sturm: One of the reasons I knew about the School of Visual Art to begin with was the ad that Jerry Moriarty, the cartoonist, did in the back of Raw Magazine, and I saw that.
• 2:34
  James Sturm: And that made me, like, look into, SVA, and I saw that Art taught there, but, you know, not any longer by the time I got there, because, you know, he was, like, you know, in between, you know, Mouse 1 had come out, and that had, you know, gone supernova, and he was, you know, struggling and working on the second part.
• 2:53
  James Sturm: But I was like, well, what programs do they have? And they had this MFA in illustration that sounded, you know, or MFA in visual narrative. And, so I took the program, and I tried to… and I got an internship at Raw Magazine, that was arranged through, Marshall.
• 3:10
  James Sturm: And that's where I met Bob, and I think what happened was I had a… you know, yes, Bob was a year older than me, and we were becoming friends, and I'd show up, once a week, I think it was, twice a week, once a week, at the offices of Raw, and
• 3:27
  James Sturm: I had a thesis of either the first semester, and he was kind of like… he wasn't very good, and I found myself every week sharing my work with Bob, and he always had, like, amazing, insightful comments, and really engaged, and very generous.
• 3:41
  Tad Eggleston: Wait a minute, this is a St. Bob? Oh, wait. St. Bob! Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 3:46
  Tad Eggleston: I have him back all the time.
• 3:47
  James Sturm: Oh, I'm on one of those podcasts,
• 3:51
  Tad Eggleston: Sometimes.
• 3:52
  James Sturm: I decided my actual thesis advisor wasn't as good as my kind of faux thesis advisor, so I said, Marshall, can I just switch Bob as my thesis advisor? I know he's kind of…
• 4:02
  James Sturm: you know, not as established or whatever in the publishing industry as this other person, and Marshall was like, sure.
• 4:09
  Tad Eggleston: So then, then it became official.
• 4:11
  James Sturm: So, anyway, that's,
• 4:12
  James Sturm: That's that story, but I learned so much, interning at Raw Magazine. It was a really highlight, amazing experience in my young cartooning career.
• 4:23
  R. Sikoryak: Well, me too. I mean, James, I was at Raw a couple years before you got there, and probably half the things I said were things that Art or Francoise had said to me that were insightful. I really learned… it was so great working with them.
• 4:37
  R. Sikoryak: And, anything I taught you there was literally stuff that they taught me how to do, in terms of putting the magazine out, and… because at that point, we were still putting out the issues.
• 4:47
  R. Sikoryak: the digest-sized issues that were coming out from Penguin Books right after the first mouse came out, and it was such a big success.
• 4:55
  R. Sikoryak: they revived RAW in this new format, it was a much bigger distribution, and that's around the same time that I started working with him, and that is Art and Francoise, working with them.
• 5:07
  R. Sikoryak: And, so I learned so much about production through them, and then, and then James, James came along, when we needed people, so it was great.
• 5:17
  James Sturm: Yeah, and I'll say that, like, I, I, I mean…
• 5:21
  James Sturm: I… yes, I learned production, and I remember you teaching me color separations on that very first, like, crazy cat, the Tiger T section, I remember working on that. And there was… and she, you know, the stat camera stuff, but I mean, you're, you know…
• 5:38
  James Sturm: it was your kind of, like, patience and eye and sensitivity to the medium. That's what I remember more than any production thing. And I also remember, like, going into that darkroom.
• 5:50
  James Sturm: and having to shoot stats of, the chapter of Mouse that was gonna be in that issue, and pulling out, you know, looking at the page, the original, and being like, whoa, this is amazing, and then, like, pulling out the page of Mouse from this, you know, a plastic sleeve and a binder, and then underneath was the previous draft.
• 6:09
  James Sturm: And then underneath there was a previous draft, and then, you know, and then another, sometimes, like, bunched up in that way. And it was just, like, a, you know, a master class in, you know, how to make a page, and…
• 6:22
  James Sturm: just all the work that went into it, and all the thinking that went into it, I was like, oh, okay, like, this is… this is how you do it. And I still use binders in my practice, and still, like, have adopted that in terms of doing the long-form comics.
• 6:37
  James Sturm: you mentioned Watership Down. I have a Watership Down binder of, like, all the thumbnails and, you know, things I can move around, the layers underneath it. So, yeah, that all, that was, like, ground zero of, like.
• 6:50
  James Sturm: Amazing cartaining education, right? There.
• 6:53
  Tad Eggleston: Well, like, as both an educator and an autistic person who likes to know how everything works, and this is something that I haven't gotten to talk about before, you then went and started a college. How does that work?
• 7:09
  James Sturm: Oh my god, yeah.
• 7:12
  James Sturm: I mean…
• 7:14
  R. Sikoryak: Just so… just so people know, this is… this is… this is skipping a few years in between.
• 7:19
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
• 7:20
  R. Sikoryak: James has had a ton of experiences in making comics, and in being an editor, and, you know, being published by Fanagraphics, being an editor at The Stranger in Seattle, which was a hip
• 7:33
  R. Sikoryak: Alternative weekly, when such things were hip, and weekly.
• 7:37
  R. Sikoryak: Right.
• 7:38
  Tad Eggleston: They're still hip, I just don't know if they're weakly.
• 7:40
  R. Sikoryak: Yeah, and
• 7:43
  R. Sikoryak: I remember when James was at Raw, he said something about wanting to be the Johnny Appleseed of comics. I don't know if you remember this, James, but this really…
• 7:51
  James Sturm: That's embarrassing, but… No, I mean, I guess maybe not. I mean, I did… I had that, that, that, that.
• 7:57
  R. Sikoryak: Zeal.
• 7:58
  James Sturm: Yeah, I was like… and I still am a comic zealot, like, I still… I honestly still like everything.
• 8:04
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and I love that, and I'm also an educator that, like…
• 8:07
  Tad Eggleston: wants better schools all over the place, and that might mean needing to start new ones, so I'm, like, really fascinated, not just by a comics school, but, like, how does one go about starting their own college?
• 8:22
  James Sturm: Well, Bob, I'm glad you kind of mentioned that, because, I had, like… okay, so I had this entrepreneurial experience, a couple, like, I was one of the original contributors to The Onion, so I was kind of, like, right there in the room when that was happening, and contributing, and, you know, working with some of the fellows who was putting that together.
• 8:41
  Tad Eggleston: description to The Onion.
• 8:43
  Tad Eggleston: still really want them to finish their purchase of InfoWars.
• 8:48
  Tad Eggleston: That would be awesome.
• 8:49
  James Sturm: Have you seen the new, there's a… actually, my… one of my former roommates and… and… and former, friend, I think she worked… she worked at The Onion as well, Christine Wentz, just,
• 9:00
  James Sturm: wrote, wrote a book. It's funny, because it's true.
• 9:05
  James Sturm: And it's an oral history, or not an oral, it's a, you know, it's a history of The Onion, but you talk to, like, a million people, and I learned so much about some of the people that were there when I was there, and then it's a really, really interesting story from how The Onion's changed, and how it worked, and how the media landscape has changed over the years.
• 9:25
  James Sturm: So, anyway, yeah, so I saw the onion get off the ground, I got…
• 9:29
  James Sturm: I started teaching at SCAD in Savannah in 1996, and at that point, it's funny, CCS just celebrated its 20th year, and I was there when SCAD was selling, selling, celebrating its 20th year.
• 9:45
  James Sturm: And I thought, I thought, God, they're pretty old, like, I couldn't, you know, and now here I am at CCS, 20 years in. But so… but I did, you know, being down there, the school did have a… not a newness, but the…
• 9:59
  James Sturm: you know, the founders were still very active. I knew, you know, I met with them and talked with them frequently, and the sequential art program down there was relatively new. So I got to… you know, that was my first full-time teaching stuff. I mean, I'd done workshops before.
• 10:17
  James Sturm: In all kinds of odd and various places.
• 10:20
  James Sturm: And, so I, you know, I got to, yeah, I got to see The Onion, I got to see SCAD, and then I helped start, you know, a weekly newspaper in Seattle before I went to SCAD, the, Seattle's The Stranger. And, you know, myself, Tim Keck.
• 10:34
  James Sturm: Matthew Cooke, Ann Savage, I mean, there's a whole crew of people
• 10:39
  James Sturm: Working there, getting that up and off the ground. So, you know, the idea of starting a school did not seem so absurd, and also grounded in kind of my cartooning practice. I'm very inspired by the 60s underground cartoonist movement, and
• 10:55
  James Sturm: You know, if you want to be a published comic, you go and, you know, steal a keycard from Kinko's and start printing comics, and you're a published cartoonist. So…
• 11:06
  James Sturm: you know, and I saw the SCAD people, and that wasn't so intimidating. Like, if they could do it, why couldn't I? And I'd started some things before. So,
• 11:16
  James Sturm: Yeah, and then you start talking about it, and suddenly, there was a lot of stars that kind of aligned.
• 11:22
  James Sturm: In White River Junction, Vermont at that time, and before… before I knew it, we were up and running. I mean, that's the… that's the short answer.
• 11:33
  Tad Eggleston: And that's the cool answer.
• 11:35
  Tad Eggleston: I'm sorry, I… I… like, I'm googling everything as you say it, because I… I knew that you'd done a ton, and you guys still just drop so many things that, like…
• 11:45
  Tad Eggleston: had flown… under my radar. I don't expect anybody to know anything about…
• 11:53
  James Sturm: anything that I do.
• 11:54
  R. Sikoryak: It's an ephemeral… I mean, we come from a tradition of ephemeral media, and I mean, now that…
• 12:01
  R. Sikoryak: now that things are… have spines, they last a little longer, but newspapers, comic books, these things come and go. You know, James' first series with Phantographics was a series of floppy comics, and, you know,
• 12:15
  R. Sikoryak: I forgot, I contributed to one of those.
• 12:18
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I haven't.
• 12:18
  R. Sikoryak: So, so we, you know…
• 12:20
  Tad Eggleston: all of those, but I've read, that was, you won't find them. No, they're not easy to find.
• 12:25
  James Sturm: You did a Bill C&C… I was, like, doing little parody pieces in the back for, like, as kind of filler if I had a few pages left, and…
• 12:33
  James Sturm: And I remember, I did one, a Kirby one, with a friend of mine from grad school, and then you did a Bill C. and Kevitz one, if I recall correctly.
• 12:43
  R. Sikoryak: That's right, that's right.
• 12:44
  James Sturm: Oh my god.
• 12:44
  R. Sikoryak: I thought that would be really funny.
• 12:47
  R. Sikoryak: So, anyway, the, yeah, this stuff comes and goes. I mean, it's so… you know, I worked in illustration for so many years, and…
• 12:55
  R. Sikoryak: you make… you make work for the moment, and then you move on, and you look back at it, and it doesn't always make sense, because it… the topicality is totally gone. So I'm sure, James, with the newspaper, The Onion, I mean, some of those jokes will still make sense. I love The Onion, but maybe jokes from 1990 won't land the same way now.
• 13:14
  James Sturm: Yeah, oh my gosh, no.
• 13:16
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, some of them become too.
• 13:18
  James Sturm: the same way anymore. Some of it for the best.
• 13:21
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, unfortunately, like… The Onion still has a couple of headlines that they have to keep using.
• 13:30
  R. Sikoryak: Sure.
• 13:32
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, so that's…
• 13:36
  Tad Eggleston: Wow. I mean, you've got me. You guys can probably, like, see the gears and the smoke coming out of my ears, because it's like, okay, now I don't know where to go, because… because my brain wants to go in a billion different directions. So, we're gonna go to baseball at least for a minute.
• 13:56
  R. Sikoryak: That was the natural choice, I thought, yeah. That's your… that's your specialty.
• 14:02
  James Sturm: That's your go-to.
• 14:03
  James Sturm: Exactly. Remind me, which team is your team?
• 14:07
  James Sturm: The New York Mets.
• 14:08
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, why are there so many comics people into the Mets? I mean, I guess you're from New York, and comics people are underdogs, so, like, it makes sense that there aren't as many Yankee fans, that sort of thing.
• 14:21
  Tad Eggleston: But I grew up listening to Ron Sano, and he hated the Mets so much that it's… it's hard for me to not hate them. I'm getting there!
• 14:32
  James Sturm: Well, when you're… when you're born in New York… I was born in New York City in, like, 65, and we moved to Rockland County later on, but when you're born…
• 14:43
  James Sturm: in, you know, in the New York area, and you become a sports fan, it's just like, I don't know if you choose or not, you're just either a Mets fan or a Yankee fan, a Jet fan, a Giant fan, Rangers, Islanders, the whole thing, and I'm… I mean, for better or for worse, I'm a Mets fan. This is an aside,
• 15:01
  James Sturm: Years ago,
• 15:03
  James Sturm: I met Herb Trimpey, the cartoonist, which you're both familiar with, of course, and he was an educator as well, and a baseball fan, and I remember him saying, like.
• 15:18
  James Sturm: you know, with the Mets, it just sounds like… like a New York baseball team that, you know, like, what are you doing today? I'm going to the Metses! You know, like, the Mets! You know? It has, like, that kind of Yiddish-y, Jewish-y name, and you know, maybe that has something to do with my attraction to the squad as well.
• 15:35
  James Sturm: And at the time, also, like, you know, there was just something about the Yankees with their pinstripes, and it felt like rooting for them was like rooting for IBM or something, you know?
• 15:44
  Tad Eggleston: Well, that, that is definitely, though, where… where… where I wanted to… to… Dude, you brought up… Jewish…
• 15:54
  Tad Eggleston: And that made me… where I was gonna take it was the Golem's Mighty Swing, because the Golem's Mighty Swing was actually my introduction to you, and it's… part of the…
• 16:02
  Tad Eggleston: Obviously, my draw was, it's a baseball book, and when you take baseball and comics, like, I'm gonna read it.
• 16:08
  Tad Eggleston: But it's also so much more than a baseball book. I was… I was rereading it today,
• 16:14
  Tad Eggleston: And I read the Jean Lewin Yang
• 16:20
  Tad Eggleston: Introduction, talking about how it was…
• 16:24
  Tad Eggleston: about so much more than just baseball. It was about America and the way
• 16:30
  Tad Eggleston: We would sell things, and, you know…
• 16:34
  Tad Eggleston: So talk to me about how that book came about, and what it means to you.
• 16:39
  Tad Eggleston: And I'm certain I'll come up with a better question as we go.
• 16:44
  James Sturm: Well, the book, for people who haven't read it, is about a barnstorming Jewish baseball team in the 1920s, and in order to, like… they have some,
• 16:56
  James Sturm: financial troubles, and to overcome them, despite some initial resistance, they decided to kind of, like, adopt this bit where they, promoter finds the costume of the golem that was worn in the 1920s German.
• 17:11
  James Sturm: film, and, and, and they, they, they put their, kind of, slugger in that, costume to, you know, promote the, the, you know, the mighty golem coming to town, and, and…
• 17:27
  James Sturm: The media… he plays the media, and the media amplifies these stereotypes that then…
• 17:33
  James Sturm: You know, result in consequences that you can imagine.
• 17:38
  James Sturm: So that, that, that's… Summary of the book, but to your question,
• 17:45
  James Sturm: what it means to me. I mean, it…
• 17:47
  James Sturm: I, I, I, it was part of, like, a trilogy of three stories. I did a book about, faith.
• 17:55
  James Sturm: called The Revival, which was, like, a 24-page comic, and then I did a, a book called, Hundreds of Feet Below Daylight, about, about.
• 18:06
  James Sturm: I guess the profane pursuit of material wealth in an Idaho mining town, and then, that was twice as long, and then the goal of the mining swing was twice as long as that, so I was kind of like…
• 18:18
  James Sturm: building my cartoony muscles, long-form narrative muscles as I went, trying to tell, like, what I saw, trying to understand, you know, this country of ours, you know, through these pieces of historical fiction. So, you know, what it…
• 18:35
  James Sturm: You know, you know what meant to me was just trying to figure out my place in the world, and… and kind of…
• 18:42
  James Sturm: what America is, and you know, there's questions of identity in the golem's mighty swing, you know, there's being an American, there's being an immigrant, there's the traditions that you bring, how do you adopt, how do you change,
• 18:57
  James Sturm: Should you change how much?
• 19:00
  James Sturm: You know, one of the things I've been thinking about a lot, my dad passed away a few years ago, and one aspect, design aspect of the book I always liked was, like, there's, like, a old-fashioned scorecard as the end papers in the book.
• 19:14
  James Sturm: And, and I got my dad to use his handwriting, you know, I had him fill it out. I told him, you know, I gave him a mock-up, and he wrote all that. So every time I look at that book, I think of my father, and seeing his handwriting, and it kind of gives me a kind of a warm…
• 19:30
  James Sturm: A warm feeling, of remembering him.
• 19:34
  James Sturm: But that book, yeah, that book, you know, it kind of, you know, put me on the map in some ways. It did very well, it was one of John Quarterly's first big graphic novel hits, I suppose, at the time, in 2001. And, yeah, like, it just kind of gave me confidence as a cartoonist, and…
• 19:54
  James Sturm: And I think from that, actually, I was on tour, and I'd always wanted to do a Fantastic Four story, because that's what I, you know, was my favorite comic growing up, and
• 20:06
  James Sturm: looping back into Bob here. So, you know, I was riding high on that, and I, you know, reached out to Marvel, and they saw the success of that book, and then we're just like, sure, you know, we'll do a
• 20:16
  James Sturm: Marvel… we'll let you play in the Fantastic Four sandbox.
• 20:20
  Tad Eggleston: I love it when I, like, don't even have to be here, because you're just rolling right into, like, my next round of questions.
• 20:30
  Tad Eggleston: So you reach… so that started with reaching out to Marvel,
• 20:35
  Tad Eggleston: My first quick question about it, because I reread Unstable Molecules today, and, and
• 20:43
  Tad Eggleston: I'm assuming that it's the fictional telling of the…
• 20:48
  Tad Eggleston: of the real-life influence on the Fantastic Four, or did I miss some piece of history that I…
• 20:54
  Tad Eggleston: Should've caught.
• 20:58
  James Sturm: It's interesting, like, I've always been attracted to, like, faux history.
• 21:02
  Tad Eggleston: guy.
• 21:02
  James Sturm: That's really changed, though, in the last… in the last few years. Like, I've had to rethink that a little bit. I don't know. I mean…
• 21:14
  R. Sikoryak: It's fun until it's not.
• 21:16
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Right.
• 21:17
  James Sturm: Exactly.
• 21:18
  Tad Eggleston: Right. So, so that, that, that's where…
• 21:23
  Tad Eggleston: I have to ask questions that, like, maybe the answers are supposed to be obvious, but, like, at the back of issue 1, it talked about
• 21:32
  Tad Eggleston: The… the second and third…
• 21:34
  Tad Eggleston: series would be covering different parts. Were there ever planned second and third series? Because by issue 4, like, it didn't feel like there was
• 21:45
  Tad Eggleston: Actually going anywhere, but that could be that they just told you they weren't doing the others, and you changed your ending.
• 21:51
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know, that's just my first question, is was there supposed to be more, or was that all part of the joke?
• 21:58
  James Sturm: It was all part of, I mean, it was all part of the joke.
• 22:03
  James Sturm: But, I have to say, over the, you know…
• 22:09
  James Sturm: whenever I've done any of my books, I… you know, the characters become alive, in a way, you know, in your brain, and you've…
• 22:14
  James Sturm: kind of breathe some life into them, and they go out in the world, and you know, I did a book Market Day, and I actually did a follow-up to Market Day. I mean, I didn't finish the book, but I worked hard for a couple years, and it didn't work out, but I even did a little, like.
• 22:32
  James Sturm: one-page follow-up, recently for some collector for the Golem's Mighty Swing of some of the characters years later. So I do, I do, I do think about that stuff, and even though, there were… I said it, you know, as part of the… the gag of the book, or the bit.
• 22:48
  James Sturm: that there would be two more volumes, I think one was called The Negative Zone, and one was called The Mad Thinkers, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah.
• 22:56
  Tad Eggleston: I think.
• 22:56
  James Sturm: other way around in terms of the order, because…
• 22:58
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 22:59
  James Sturm: Alright, you get a no prize.
• 23:03
  James Sturm: So, so I, I actually have given some thought of how I would do that, at least for the second part, you know, which I actually got a little excited by, but, I don't quite see that happening, but Bob, stand by, just in case.
• 23:23
  R. Sikoryak: I'm ready.
• 23:26
  James Sturm: like…
• 23:30
  Tad Eggleston: I loved so… Much of the structure of the book, because not only did you…
• 23:41
  Tad Eggleston: tell a somewhat believable, oh, a neighbor could see this, and it could spawn this stuff. But you interspersed it with the comic book, but you also had each book
• 23:55
  Tad Eggleston: from a different primary narrator, except that I have to say primary narrator, because it's not like you didn't have the other characters, and sometimes even the other characters' thoughts.
• 24:08
  Tad Eggleston: In other books, it's just…
• 24:11
  Tad Eggleston: Mostly, this one is from Reed's point of view, and mostly… this one's from Sue, and mostly this one's from Johnny, and they crossed over, so, like…
• 24:25
  Tad Eggleston: I guess where I'm going is, like.
• 24:27
  Tad Eggleston: A, how much fun was planning that, and B, like, how did you go about planning that? Because it really feels like something that you would have had to have
• 24:35
  Tad Eggleston: Most of it pretty… you would have either had to have most of it planned out.
• 24:41
  Tad Eggleston: pretty specifically before you started, or you were ad-libbing all the way. And I don't see, like, much in between as likely.
• 24:51
  Tad Eggleston: If that makes sense.
• 24:53
  James Sturm: I mean, as I mentioned before, discovering that binder method, I mean, there are binders, and there are drafts of everything, and layouts and thumbnails of it all. So, you know, definitely more of a planner than the seat of a panter.
• 25:09
  James Sturm: So, yeah, I kind of planned it all out, and
• 25:14
  James Sturm: Each chapter was a narrator, different narrator, though the fourth one was a little more omniscient, if I'm…
• 25:20
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 25:21
  James Sturm: Not…
• 25:22
  James Sturm: memory serves me correctly, and Bob, I'd be curious, so one of the concepts of it, there's a comic book that young Johnny Sturm,
• 25:31
  James Sturm: is really into called Vapor Girl, and and I want it to be drawn in that faux style.
• 25:38
  James Sturm: And, and then plug those panels in, and
• 25:43
  James Sturm: And I have… Bob, over the years, has been incredibly, game for a lot of, a lot of various things. I mean, I think you've been in… I think the running count is 1,200 anthologies, 1,232, if I'm not mistaken, from the Wikipedia page? Hopefully. Hopefully, that's right.
• 26:01
  R. Sikoryak: That's right.
• 26:02
  Tad Eggleston: Is it that many?
• 26:03
  R. Sikoryak: No.
• 26:04
  Tad Eggleston: This is, this, this is…
• 26:05
  R. Sikoryak: I'm not that prolific, he's joking.
• 26:07
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 26:08
  R. Sikoryak: You probably have all my work. I'm not that prolific. But James is right, I am game for these things. I really like collaborating, and that's one thing about James' work that…
• 26:18
  R. Sikoryak: I feel like he comes back to. I mean, working at the… again, working at The Stranger, where he's art directing and coordinating all the cartoonists that are working there, you know, being at the school, where you're collaborative and making projects with the students, together, and and then his… several of his books are collaborations with artists, and one thing I just wanted to say about Unstable Molecules was.
• 26:44
  R. Sikoryak: maybe in some ways there was improvisation in the story, but… but as the writer, James also does breakdowns
• 26:52
  R. Sikoryak: I don't know if they're as tight as Harvey Kurtzman's, but if anyone knows Harvey Kurtzman's.
• 26:57
  R. Sikoryak: strategies and making comics, Harvey Kurtzman would lay out every page very tightly, and then hand that to the artist, and basically say, make it pretty and funny, and… but keep to the… keep to the template. Now, James is not as,
• 27:12
  R. Sikoryak: maniacal an editor as Kurtzman was, by any means, but certainly he thinks everything through, and you could make a solid
• 27:21
  R. Sikoryak: case for, the way that he did it. I think things tweaked a little bit as we worked, but I remember being very conscious of the 9-panel grid that James had set up, or at least the 9-panel structure, that James had set up, and I haven't seen breakdowns for…
• 27:38
  R. Sikoryak: watership down, but I felt I saw some of James in the… in the… not only in the storytelling, but even maybe in some of the drawing. I don't know if that's me hallucinating, because I've looked at James' work for so long, but… but James is a very,
• 27:52
  R. Sikoryak: Hands-on writer.
• 27:55
  R. Sikoryak: So, I would just… I just want to emphasize that. I think that's really important, because James has a lot of skills and does like to collaborate with people.
• 28:03
  James Sturm: Well, and also, like, for that… for that book, Bob, I mean, some of those, fantastic… some of those, like, Vapor Girl panels were, like, two panels that would be sit… would sit within the Guy Davis
• 28:13
  James Sturm: Guy Davis was the penciler of it, and a wonderful collaborator, and so Bob's panel would sometimes just be, like, you know, 4 panels within a page.
• 28:23
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 28:23
  James Sturm: a larger page. And yes, yeah, I, got to even hear my name in the same sentence as Harvey, in that capacity is a little, humbling and thrilling. But yes, I, I, I, you know, I don't know how to write comics without
• 28:42
  James Sturm: Drawing them, you know, or thumbnailing them.
• 28:45
  James Sturm: It seems like an impo… it would be an impossible task. I once,
• 28:50
  James Sturm: years ago, co-wrote, excuse me, Ghost wrote a graphic novel, and I needed money. And, I, you know, they wanted a script, and I was like, how do I even do that? And I literally had to, like, thumbnail it.
• 29:04
  James Sturm: And then just look at my thumbnails and, like, just describe it, you know, as I typed away.
• 29:15
  R. Sikoryak: Did you not show them the thumbnails? Or they didn't even want to see those?
• 29:20
  James Sturm: I don't think I did show them. Yeah. I just wanted to script.
• 29:23
  R. Sikoryak: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:23
  James Sturm: Yeah, but I was able to really, like, you know.
• 29:26
  James Sturm: I mean, describe that grid, describe medium shot.
• 29:30
  James Sturm: Yeah, the whole…
• 29:31
  R. Sikoryak: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:31
  Tad Eggleston: You'll have to tell me off-air what this book is, so I can go look at it.
• 29:36
  James Sturm: Yeah, it was fun to work with. The cartoonist did a great job.
• 29:39
  Tad Eggleston: Because I'm that kind of nerd. Yeah. So, so I, I can assume that this wasn't written Marvel-style. You didn't just, like, turn to Guy and Bob and say… No, not at all. This issue is…
• 29:50
  R. Sikoryak: Yeah, I want, I want it to be about Sue this time. Go, go, have fun, and…
• 29:54
  James Sturm: I jumped on the desk, and I…
• 29:56
  R. Sikoryak: Right. Why aren't you?
• 29:58
  James Sturm: Hey, almost knocked off my head.
• 30:02
  James Sturm: No, I don't think it was Marvel, and you know, it's funny, because, like, for a while, I think that was my…
• 30:07
  James Sturm: I mean, I've done little pieces of collaboration, or invited people to do a few pages in a book, but I don't…
• 30:13
  James Sturm: I did a co- yeah, some short, but that was definitely the most ambitious collaboration I ever worked on.
• 30:19
  James Sturm: Up until that time, And,
• 30:23
  James Sturm: You know, I really, I really enjoyed it. I feel like coming from a tradition of that underground cartoonist tradition, so many of the cartoonists that I admire and aspire to be, like, like, were such auteurs, and I didn't see tons of collaboration from them, so it… I kind of… I think I resisted it a little bit,
• 30:42
  James Sturm: And then, you know, at this point in my life, it's all, like, yes and. I have my…
• 30:46
  James Sturm: you know, my own stuff that I write and draw myself.
• 30:49
  Tad Eggleston: I love people like the two of you, who, like… aren't hardcore, like, cause…
• 30:57
  Tad Eggleston: I talk to so many people, and, like, I know so many people in comics that the only real comics are when they've only got one creator. And then so many other people in comics that are like.
• 31:07
  Tad Eggleston: the things that you get out of something where you've got these different hands make such beauty. And I'm like…
• 31:15
  James Sturm: there are great in both, and, like, I love it when people are…
• 31:19
  Tad Eggleston: Happy about that, rather than…
• 31:22
  James Sturm: Totally.
• 31:25
  James Sturm: I mean, when you're in a… I mean, comics as a medium, it's like…
• 31:28
  James Sturm: you know, they're greater than the sum of the parts, you know, they're… I mean, I don't know, I'm not the greatest artist, maybe I'm not the greatest writer or designer, but…
• 31:36
  Tad Eggleston: Everyone knows that.
• 31:37
  James Sturm: Hey, that's Bob with.
• 31:38
  Tad Eggleston: With the… with the artist, and… and…
• 31:41
  Tad Eggleston: writer… I don't know who we'll call the greatest writer, but you're, like, you're in the top 5 in all of those categories.
• 31:48
  James Sturm: Well, I, I, I, I… well, thank you, but I, I…
• 31:51
  Tad Eggleston: Sorry, I was just messing with… I didn't manage to deliver. I used to… I used to joke about… because Chicago's the second city, and I used to joke, yeah, but it's second in everything.
• 32:01
  Tad Eggleston: Like, better theater in New York, but then it's Chicago, you know? Better museums in DC, but then it's Chicago. Better restaurants in LA, but then it's Chicago.
• 32:12
  James Sturm: Well, I was just trying to think, comics is about things being greater than the sum of the parts, and…
• 32:17
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 32:17
  James Sturm: I think sometimes when you collaborate, like, 1 and 1 equals 7, you know?
• 32:21
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 32:22
  James Sturm: And, and that's what, you know, that's what you hope for on your, on your, on your…
• 32:26
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, my favorite thing to ask collaborators, because I love having teams on together to talk about the books they make, and one of my favorite things to ask is, like.
• 32:37
  Tad Eggleston: So, I'll ask the writer, or the artist, you know, what… what script page came to you? And he went, oh, this is amazing, and this is gonna be so much fun. And then I'll ask the writer, and which page came back to you, and you were like.
• 32:51
  Tad Eggleston: Oh my god, that's so much better than I thought it was gonna be.
• 32:56
  James Sturm: I love that too, and I feel when I collaborate, I have to figure out, am I…
• 33:01
  James Sturm: a session musician? Do I… do I want session musicians, or am I there to feed
• 33:07
  James Sturm: am I working with somebody whose instincts I trust even more than my own, so to speak? So, I… you know, collaborations is, like, I play, over the years, a lot of pickup basketball, and, you know, you're thrown to, you know, a lot of times you're on a team, and you're like, oh, what's this team gonna… you have to figure out really fast, like…
• 33:24
  James Sturm: Am I gonna be the guy who has to score? You know, if I'm the number one option, my team is in trouble. But if I'm, like, the third or fourth option, we're gonna be good. But you have to just figure out, are you the biggest guy? Are you gonna be rebounding? Defensive? Like, what's gonna happen? I feel like with cartooning.
• 33:42
  James Sturm: when I collaborate, there's something similar going on where you're just like, okay, you know, this person, doesn't need me for this, this, and this, but they might need me for this, you know? Or, or, or, you know, you play with somebody who's just like, just stay out of their way. Throw them the ball and stay out of their way. And sometimes that's…
• 34:00
  James Sturm: that's a successful collaboration, you know? You know, and other times, you're… you're setting them up a little bit more thoroughly, or you're, you know, actually kind of
• 34:11
  James Sturm: Picking them up and lifting them to the basket, every now and then.
• 34:17
  James Sturm: All right, enough of that basketball metaphor. We've strayed from baseball. Bob, I did have one question for you, because I've been thinking about this a lot lately, is this word collaboration. And when you're doing work in other people's style, do you feel like you are collaborating with those people? And then, I was just also, and just part of that question is, I was just reading this interview with Charles Schultz.
• 34:42
  James Sturm: And they were asking about him, people copying him, and him copying other people.
• 34:47
  R. Sikoryak: Penny.
• 34:47
  James Sturm: you know, he doesn't really think of it as copying, he thinks of it as, like, you know, like, almost like discovering patterns of ideas, patterns of thinking, I think was.
• 34:57
  R. Sikoryak: This is her.
• 34:58
  James Sturm: And, I don't know, I'd just be curious what your thoughts on that, given… given you're, often, quote-unquote collaborating, or copying… copying, or patterns of thinking?
• 35:09
  R. Sikoryak: I love the patterns of Thinking quote. I haven't heard that before, I'd love to see that. I mean, I feel a little bit… it feels less like collaboration, because I have way more control than I would if I was actually collaborating with someone. But I certainly do like…
• 35:27
  R. Sikoryak: trying to get in their heads, but that might be more parasitic. I tend to talk about myself in very disparaging ways, but…
• 35:38
  R. Sikoryak: I actually, you know, I do… I do approach these things very, thoughtfully, and… and I try to be generous and sensitive to who the… who the person I'm parodying, but it's still… I'm kind of ripping them off. I feel like I still recognize that that is part of
• 35:55
  R. Sikoryak: you know, it comes out of the Mad Magazine tradition of, like, of copying, which is… which sounds less highfaluting than patterns of ideas, but I do love that conceit. I'm trying to think of a way that I might…
• 36:12
  R. Sikoryak: have a collaborative, feeling. I suppose if I'm doing a longer story with someone, then I am really trying to sort of understand how they would do it. So…
• 36:21
  R. Sikoryak: you know, I…
• 36:24
  R. Sikoryak: You know, it's funny, the people I'm thinking of were also collaborators. Some of the longer stories I did were, like, Dick Spring and Bill Finger Batman stories. So I'm not getting in one person's head, I'm sort of getting in the collective idea of what a Batman story is, for instance.
• 36:43
  R. Sikoryak: I'm losing my train of thought. This is a very interesting question, but since you're the focus of this conversation, maybe I should cut it off for now.
• 36:49
  Tad Eggleston: I like this question.
• 36:50
  R. Sikoryak: I love it, but I'll just go on too long.
• 36:54
  James Sturm: Well, maybe I'll be the guest host when you bring Bob on for an all-Bob session.
• 36:59
  Tad Eggleston: We can do that. I mean, when are you finishing up your,
• 37:04
  Tad Eggleston: Isn't your Declaration of Independence book coming soon?
• 37:10
  R. Sikoryak: It is delivered… I delivered it last night, so… I mean, I delivered the corrections last night, so…
• 37:17
  Tad Eggleston: So, yeah, we're gonna have to have another Bob episode soon. Well, I would love to talk to you about this, James, so…
• 37:24
  James Sturm: And maybe also, like, there'll be a sequel when that Declaration of Independence is rewritten.
• 37:31
  Tad Eggleston: It's a good example.
• 37:31
  James Sturm: regime, so you'll have a built-in SQL.
• 37:35
  Tad Eggleston: I mean.
• 37:36
  Tad Eggleston: taken a Sharpie to it yet? I mean, I heard that he had it brought to the White House.
• 37:41
  R. Sikoryak: Yes.
• 37:42
  R. Sikoryak: I'll wonder if he's read it yet, but… Another.
• 37:45
  Tad Eggleston: Can he read?
• 37:47
  R. Sikoryak: Yes, he can read.
• 37:48
  R. Sikoryak: That's… that's silly. The man can read.
• 37:52
  R. Sikoryak: He has terrible, terrible ideas, but he can read. I believe that he can read.
• 37:57
  Tad Eggleston: Reed at one point in his life. I don't know how good he is at now.
• 38:01
  R. Sikoryak: This is… this is even less of pertinence than the question about standards of thinking.
• 38:07
  James Sturm: So please, change the subject. Let's get back to me.
• 38:11
  Tad Eggleston: Back to you!
• 38:12
  James Sturm: Oh, jeez.
• 38:15
  Tad Eggleston: Talk to me about… the applied… Cartooning laboratory, is that right?
• 38:25
  James Sturm: Yeah, the Applied Cartoon Lab. So, as we mentioned, I helped start a cartooning college, the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont. And, you know, almost from the beginning.
• 38:40
  James Sturm: part of the curriculum involved, like, internships, externships, you know, community work that people could get credit for. We did projects with the local VA, and, you know, we did a lot of that stuff throughout the
• 39:00
  James Sturm: school's history. And then, and actually speaking, going back to our man, our president, in 2016, when he was elected, there was a lot of,
• 39:13
  James Sturm: I came across a study that most Americans didn't even know what the three branches of government was. So it was, like, some staggeringly high number, and there was, you know, it seems like the new commander-in-chief didn't know what the three branches of government was. So, I had a recently graduated student, Dan Knott, who's a fantastic cartoonist, and
• 39:36
  James Sturm: he, he had done a thesis project, he has a book called Hidden Systems, where he does… I love that book.
• 39:43
  James Sturm: Great book, and .
• 39:44
  Tad Eggleston: Again, Autism Brain. Like, that was, like, I was so excited when that book was announced, I'm like.
• 39:51
  Tad Eggleston: Hidden systems and how they work in comic book form?
• 39:55
  James Sturm: He's amazing, so…
• 39:57
  Tad Eggleston: You might have to put me in touch.
• 39:58
  James Sturm: I said, Dan, you know, I'm thinking about doing a book called, you know, This Is How Democracy Works. Do you wanna, do you wanna work on that as part of this, you know, this, this thing we're gonna be doing at the school? And
• 40:13
  James Sturm: Dan generously said yes, and, you know, we worked together with a few other cartoonists to, create that book.
• 40:22
  James Sturm: And, and, and from there, you know,
• 40:28
  James Sturm: So we created this graphic guide, but what I was… what I realized along the way, it's just not like creating this comic book, it's like, how do you distribute it? How do you get in the hands of people who will use it.
• 40:38
  James Sturm: And, so we started, you know, seeing the book as a way of bringing a lot of people together, you know, with different types of knowledge to create a book like that. We've done books about mental health, the healthcare system.
• 40:51
  Tad Eggleston: Cara bean?
• 40:52
  James Sturm: Literacy.
• 40:53
  Tad Eggleston: a guest?
• 40:55
  Tad Eggleston: to talk about the mental health book. That's how I found out.
• 40:58
  James Sturm: Caribbean, I guess?
• 41:00
  James Sturm: Oh, she, you know, Kara's amazing.
• 41:02
  Tad Eggleston: of Kara.
• 41:03
  James Sturm: Yeah, yeah, how can you not? What a talented, talented cartoonist, and just amazing individual.
• 41:07
  Tad Eggleston: I got to see her at CXC again this year.
• 41:11
  James Sturm: Yeah, so Kara… Kara was… helped, you know, worked with her on this graphic guide, and .
• 41:17
  Tad Eggleston: We should have been turned into a full graphic novel.
• 41:21
  James Sturm: Yeah. Well, she was already working on that, and I was like.
• 41:24
  Tad Eggleston: It was, like, a zine, and then a comic, and then a graphic novel. She showed me all of them. It was… yeah.
• 41:29
  James Sturm: Yeah.
• 41:31
  James Sturm: So anyway, we kind of think about these graphic novels, books, not just as, like, a comic book, but almost as, like, a catalyst to a larger public education campaign. So, you know, for example, with the Democracy comic, once we did it, we went to this,
• 41:50
  James Sturm: there's an organization in Chicago called the Mikvah Challenge, and they work with soul studies teachers throughout the country, to… for civics education, and they sponsor contests, and provide different types of curriculum for them, and
• 42:06
  James Sturm: So, you know, we were invited to their conference, where we were able to, like, present the book, and how we might… and get feedback on classroom presentations, and then Mikvah helped arrange a tour through, like, five Midwestern states.
• 42:21
  James Sturm: That I went with one of my grad students at the time, Coco Fox, who's another great cartoonist. And then, you know, from there, different school districts started using it, and we started finding other organizations.
• 42:33
  James Sturm: That might want to, kind of use it. So, each one of these graphic guides, we, we work with a foundation, an NGO, concerned citizens, and, you know, we create these comics and then kind of, kind of build this…
• 42:51
  James Sturm: Apparatus around it as part of that, yeah, as part of that campaign.
• 42:57
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no.
• 42:57
  James Sturm: And, so we,
• 43:00
  James Sturm: So that's kind of like the Applied Cartooning Lab. We have some other books and, you know, longer form works.
• 43:07
  James Sturm: In the pipeline… We were working.
• 43:10
  Tad Eggleston: No, it's… as an educator, it's another one of those things that I just adore. You didn't bring it up, but another one of the ones that I…
• 43:20
  Tad Eggleston: I find myself reading and rereading is how we read.
• 43:25
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Which really breaks down… Process of how our brains…
• 43:32
  James Sturm: Yeah, Daryl did a great job on that book, yeah.
• 43:36
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, so, so, like, this is… I've been meaning to, you know, I mean, I reached out to you for the first time for, I think, the first baseball roundtable, and then… then…
• 43:48
  Tad Eggleston: like, either forgot, or I think we…
• 43:51
  Tad Eggleston: we traded emails, like, once every 14 to 16 months after that, because, like, after Caribbean was on, I shot an email, and you're like, oh, I'm off to so-and-so, you gotta get back to me.
• 44:06
  Tad Eggleston: whenever, and I forgot, and… But it's cause they're so…
• 44:15
  Tad Eggleston: So much. I love what you do as an educator. I love… Yeah, it's just…
• 44:22
  Tad Eggleston: I feel like Chris Farley right now. Remember that time when you made that book? That was awesome. Yeah.
• 44:29
  James Sturm: That thing.
• 44:30
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 44:33
  Tad Eggleston: Let's talk for a minute about Watership Down, because I haven't got… I don't know if I've talked to anybody about…
• 44:41
  Tad Eggleston: adapting literature other than Bob, who… who… I mean, Bob, I love your adapting literature, but you're… you're generally…
• 44:49
  Tad Eggleston: condensing it as well. You're not doing the… Right. Your adaptations are a little bit different than water stripped down. What's it like to take
• 45:00
  Tad Eggleston: Take this thing that's already a beloved book.
• 45:03
  Tad Eggleston: And I think by the time you made it into a comic, it was already a well-regarded movie.
• 45:08
  James Sturm: Yeah, well, there was the 70s movie, and then there was the Netflix adaptation that maybe wasn't as well-regarded, but…
• 45:15
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I was thinking the 70s one.
• 45:17
  James Sturm: The 70s one, yeah, the 70 one holds up really well, I think I enjoyed that.
• 45:24
  James Sturm: Oh, that's one of the number one comments, though, that I do get when I'm out at signings, or such with Watership Down, is, I saw that 70s movie as a child, and it traumatized me.
• 45:35
  Tad Eggleston: It's… I mean, it, it, it's, it's…
• 45:42
  Tad Eggleston: It's the type of book that I read it.
• 45:45
  Tad Eggleston: And, you know, kind of like reading Brothers Grimm and going, when did we stop trusting kids to deal with
• 45:54
  Tad Eggleston: Tough stuff.
• 45:56
  Tad Eggleston: There's so much classic… Children's or young adult literature.
• 46:02
  Tad Eggleston: That… Isn't completely sanitized and made easy, and, like…
• 46:10
  Tad Eggleston: I don't think that's a bad thing. I think… I think…
• 46:13
  Tad Eggleston: One of the great parts of fiction is to allow people to experience emotions and process things without necessarily having to
• 46:22
  Tad Eggleston: Live them.
• 46:25
  James Sturm: Or live them to a certain degree. I mean… Right. I mean, Maurice Sendak talks about that with, you know, where the wild things are.
• 46:32
  James Sturm: Maybe my all-time favorite children's book ever is, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig.
• 46:40
  Tad Eggleston: book.
• 46:40
  James Sturm: That book is… I mean, it's a gut punch.
• 46:43
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah?
• 46:44
  James Sturm: It's like dealing with the death.
• 46:45
  Tad Eggleston: But I read it over and over and over and over again.
• 46:49
  James Sturm: Ugh.
• 46:50
  James Sturm: Yeah, that book is, it's hard as a, you know, not to… I still tear up a little bit when I.
• 46:57
  Tad Eggleston: No.
• 46:58
  Tad Eggleston: So what's it like to, to, to take that on?
• 47:05
  James Sturm: You know, I feel, maybe because I was a little further in my career.
• 47:13
  James Sturm: it wasn't maybe as intimidating as it might have been if I would have gotten that job when I was in my 20s.
• 47:19
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 47:19
  James Sturm: Right? I felt like I had a pretty straightforward way to approach it.
• 47:28
  James Sturm: I… the thing I struggle most with is doing finished art, you know, and I didn't have to do that, and I had…
• 47:35
  James Sturm: this amazing art illustrator, Joe Sutfin, who was going to be, you know, who was so engaged in every part of the process, and
• 47:46
  James Sturm: it was a wonderful collaboration, I really enjoyed working with him. So,
• 47:51
  James Sturm: You know, I just… it was just, like, kind of one chapter at a time. I mean… I mean, the hard part's done in a way, like, he…
• 47:58
  James Sturm: created this amazing story. I mean, I should start out by saying,
• 48:03
  James Sturm: I… my parents had a copy of Watership Down in my house.
• 48:09
  James Sturm: And I tried reading it. I remember seeing it, You know, in junior high.
• 48:15
  James Sturm: This is, you know, in the…
• 48:17
  James Sturm: 70s, early 80s, and then maybe even high school in the early 80s for me, and I never got past the first 3 pages. Like, the cover was this old-fashioned.
• 48:26
  James Sturm: kind of a print or something. I didn't understand what the word watership down was, it just felt like, is it a spaceship? Like, what is going on here?
• 48:35
  James Sturm: the first three pages was a long description of a meadow. There were a lot of quotes by, you know, like, very heady quotes that started every chapter, and I just was like, no thank you, I'm going back to the X-Men, I'm going back to, you know, to my Avenger comics. And what's…
• 48:55
  James Sturm: funny is, like, and I think I talk a little bit about this in the afterword, is that, you know, it is the ultimate, like.
• 49:02
  James Sturm: superhero formation team comic. Like, you have this band of ragged outsiders, there's one character who's a psychic, one character who's, like, super strong, one character who's really smart, one who's super fast, and then, you know, one who's this, like, exceptional, courageous leader, and just, like, a villain that could rival Dr. Doom in terms of, like, how great he was.
• 49:27
  James Sturm: General Woundwort.
• 49:29
  James Sturm: And,
• 49:30
  James Sturm: So it's, like, a very thrilling, exciting story, so once I got, you know… and I love the nature writing in the book, too. I don't mean to dismiss that, but as, like, a, you know, as an 8th grader, 7th grader, it… I… for whatever reason, it didn't… I didn't connect with it. So I didn't even read the book until I had moved to Vermont in, like, the early 2000s.
• 49:49
  James Sturm: And then, you know, I read it and loved it.
• 49:52
  James Sturm: I read it to both my girls when they were growing up. I taught it at the Center for Cartoon Studies. We did a reading of it in one of my grad thesis classes.
• 50:03
  James Sturm: And,
• 50:05
  James Sturm: you know, so when my agent was like, you know, she calls from time to time, hey, I have a project, and she knows I'm plugged into a lot of cartoonists, whether they're visiting artists, or people I've worked with, or some of the students and alumni of the school. She said, you know.
• 50:20
  James Sturm: I just, you know, somebody's looking for somebody to do an adaptation of Watership Down. Do you have any recommendations?
• 50:29
  James Sturm: Like, yeah, me!
• 50:34
  James Sturm: So, you know, I had to… I had to,
• 50:36
  James Sturm: put together a proposal for the estate. I had to,
• 50:41
  James Sturm: kind of select three… three, different cartoonists to… for them to consider. Like, I just couldn't pick somebody. They were just like, you know, we'd like you to assemble 3 people to consider. And then, you know, I had several conversations with,
• 50:59
  James Sturm: The publisher, 10-speed Random House.
• 51:02
  James Sturm: And, in the estate, and, you know, they… -Oh.
• 51:08
  James Sturm: they chose me. So, and they chose, you know, Joe Sutvin, which was a brilliant, brilliant choice. And, you know, of course, I wasn't gonna suggest anybody who would be awesome, and,
• 51:25
  James Sturm: Anyway, so yeah, so we… so we got invited to go out to water, you know, go out to London and meet, Richard Adams' daughters, the estate, and and then we're like, they said, well, we're gonna take you on a tour.
• 51:36
  James Sturm: like a tour. And, I didn't realize that, like, that journey of the rabbits, like.
• 51:42
  James Sturm: every location there corresponds to a real place that Richard Adams, you know, knew as a boy, like, actual rivers, like, every, every piece, like, you know, from Nuthanger Farm to the railroad, you know, overpass to, even just, like, little…
• 52:00
  James Sturm: trails in the woods, so… You know, we, we literally…
• 52:05
  James Sturm: walked the path that the rabbits walked over the course of two very rainy days in England, and took a million photos.
• 52:13
  James Sturm: And, you know, I was on my hands and knees, you know, trying to get the rabbit's eye view.
• 52:18
  James Sturm: At one point, I think Joe dropped his phone in the river, was able to recover it and get it working again. But, you know, we really, you know, went up to Watership Down and, you know, saw where their Warren was, the tree that they were supposedly lived under, and…
• 52:36
  James Sturm: It really did feel like some, like, you know, doing the book felt… did feel like a historical reenactment, as opposed to, like, adopting a work of fiction.
• 52:46
  James Sturm: But the hard part is, you know, like, the hard part, like, it's an adventure story, and his scenes are so vivid, and so good, and where he starts, and where he stops. So there was a lot of, you know, a lot of the hard work was done, you know, and so it was about, kind of, you know.
• 53:04
  James Sturm: boiling some of this stuff down a little bit, trying to figure out, like, you know, I did the, paul Karasek, the, another RAW alum,
• 53:13
  Tad Eggleston: Another 22 Panels guest. There you go.
• 53:15
  James Sturm: Yeah, well, will Paul.
• 53:18
  R. Sikoryak: Another Kurtzman acolyte, too.
• 53:20
  James Sturm: Another Kurtzmannacle, yeah, so definitely Paul and I are, are, you know, you know, grew in similar soil, out of similar soil.
• 53:29
  Tad Eggleston: Now, you've got me, like, thinking of my next roundtable, because…
• 53:35
  James Sturm: Oh, it hasn'.
• 53:36
  Tad Eggleston: as a kitchen is a big Kurtzman guy, too, so I'll have to bring, like, the four of you together to just talk Kurtzman, because…
• 53:43
  James Sturm: Well, anyway, just to finish that thought, Pat.
• 53:46
  Tad Eggleston: Sorry.
• 53:47
  James Sturm: No, no, no, no, that's fine. So, Paul, you know, he did one of the great… worked on one of the great adaptations, in comics, history, City of Glass. Yep.
• 53:56
  Tad Eggleston: New York Stories. I have it right over there. That's what I… that's what I talk to him about.
• 54:00
  James Sturm: And he, you know, his, kind of, you know, I knew that, you know, my… this adaptation was X amount of pages, and I knew that, you know, the original was X amount of pages, and I did the math, so each chapter had to be X amount of pages, and then I thought, well, if I get rid of this chapter, well, I'll have more room for something that I want to…
• 54:20
  James Sturm: you know, need more real estate for. So then it becomes, like, a little bit of a horse trade, like, an interior horse trading thing, and and you just kind of, just, you know.
• 54:31
  James Sturm: one panel at a time, one chapter at a time, and it's broken down really well. I mean, there were some…
• 54:37
  James Sturm: Parts that, yeah, that had to be combined, and, you know, like any… going from one medium to another, you're always going to be making.
• 54:46
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean.
• 54:47
  James Sturm: choices.
• 54:47
  Tad Eggleston: We did way, way back, I think during the first year.
• 54:53
  Tad Eggleston: of 22 panels, we did a roundtable where we talked parker across mediums.
• 55:01
  Tad Eggleston: And to prepare for that, I literally took…
• 55:06
  Tad Eggleston: The first Parker novel, and the first Darwin Cook.
• 55:09
  Tad Eggleston: And read them page by page, highlighting all of the… and I… and I realized that…
• 55:15
  Tad Eggleston: and I don't know… I haven't re-read Watership Down, so it could be different. I realized that, in some ways.
• 55:22
  Tad Eggleston: Darwin's job…
• 55:25
  Tad Eggleston: wasn't as hard as I expected, because he was able to use almost all of the dialogue, and oftentimes what…
• 55:36
  Tad Eggleston: Richard Star… Donald Westlake would take…
• 55:40
  Tad Eggleston: Like, 3 or 5 pages describing…
• 55:43
  Tad Eggleston: He could get done in a page.
• 55:46
  Tad Eggleston: Because it was action. I mean, even with Westlake's…
• 55:51
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, particularly as Richard… as… as… yeah, as Richard Stark, he was…
• 55:56
  Tad Eggleston: Very economical with his words, but even with that, like…
• 56:04
  Tad Eggleston: an action sequence that Darwin could do in 6 panels might take 5 pages.
• 56:09
  Tad Eggleston: You know.
• 56:11
  Tad Eggleston: And it didn't make sense to make them…
• 56:14
  Tad Eggleston: big splash pages. They worked better as, you know, because it wasn't necessarily, you know, might be a safe-cracking thing, or, you know, at the beginning of that novel, there's a whole section where, like.
• 56:30
  Tad Eggleston: He's going around and opening bank accounts, and… And then… caching the… the…
• 56:40
  Tad Eggleston: the starter checks, and then buying stuff to pawn, you know, so he essentially is taking…
• 56:48
  Tad Eggleston: You know, no money, and turning it into cash on hand, and… and, like…
• 56:53
  Tad Eggleston: To describe that with words took 10 pages or so, and to do it really well in comics took, like.
• 56:59
  Tad Eggleston: two pages of tighter panels. It's like…
• 57:03
  Tad Eggleston: So, I mean, how much of it wound up being the straight, oh, this… this chapter is 20 pages, I need to get it done in 4, and how often was it, like.
• 57:13
  Tad Eggleston: oh, this 20-page chapter's gonna be easy to do in 4, and this 5-page chapter, I kinda need 5 pages for.
• 57:23
  James Sturm: Or sometimes 10, you know, if it's all just, you know, like, you have to have… there's a lot of silent panels in the watership Downs, a lot of the storytelling is visual, and, you know, you want…
• 57:37
  James Sturm: you know, time… you know, for any kind of, like, action scenes, you need to choreograph that, obviously, and then also, sometimes you just want emotions to land, and you just need an extra beat of characters kind of just being with each other, or tending to one another. And one of the great aspects of
• 57:56
  James Sturm: Hazel, which is, like, one of my favorite characters of A Watership Down, is, you know, not the smartest, not, you know, the number two in everything, as he said, or something. Yeah. He's the Chicago of rabbits, no.
• 58:07
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 58:08
  James Sturm: So, Hazel, you know, the thing he… his kind of generosity will not leave any rabbits behind. Like, he is…
• 58:16
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 58:17
  James Sturm: really, empathetic and caring. And I try to always show him when he's talking to people, like, really leaning in, and when he's helping, Pippin with his paw, just, like, really, like.
• 58:30
  James Sturm: you know, physically touching and lingering on those panels a little bit to show that. And that takes a little extra space, but, yeah, so yeah, sometimes you can, you know, I didn't need, you know.
• 58:42
  James Sturm: three pages to describe the meadow, I could just show the meadow as I'm telling the story, right? Right. And then other times, you know, when they're escaping from, the FFRO Warren
• 58:52
  James Sturm: you know, it's like, there's thunder and rain and, like, you know, big, sweeping panoramas, like, I really wanted to have more real estate to kind of pump up the drama during those scenes. So, like I said, you're just kind of chapter to chapter, part to part, you're just trying to…
• 59:09
  James Sturm: you're making adjustments of, you know, what feels right, and then, you know, part of my process of kind of, like, thumbnailing it out, you know, allows me to kind of really experience the pacing as I'm, you know, kind of creating and kind of, you know.
• 59:23
  James Sturm: adjust accordingly.
• 59:25
  R. Sikoryak: I would say… can I jump in for a second? I just wanted to… I just wanted to mention, so…
• 59:30
  R. Sikoryak: the… there is, like, a lot of math in terms of making books like this, and, like, really sort of figuring out, kind of doing a lot of, academic structure and that sort of thing, but I was really moved by, the Watership Down graphic novel, and between
• 59:48
  R. Sikoryak: James talking about empathy, which really comes through, and the artwork, which is very,
• 59:56
  R. Sikoryak: very organic and very, tactile. It's… it's, it's… there's a lot of…
• 1:00:02
  R. Sikoryak: I was deeply moved by the book, and I think that it suggests two of James' strengths, which is to, like, really think critically about how to put comics together, but also not forget about the humanity of the characters, or the rabbit-ness of the characters.
• 1:00:17
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and, well, and both of you lead… lead…
• 1:00:20
  Tad Eggleston: to the question that I had next, which is, like.
• 1:00:25
  Tad Eggleston: The emotion really bleeds out of this book, so much so that, like.
• 1:00:32
  Tad Eggleston: When it suddenly struck me, probably… 100 pages in.
• 1:00:38
  Tad Eggleston: That the rabbits… were completely rabbits.
• 1:00:43
  Tad Eggleston: They weren't anthropomorphized in any way, shape, or form.
• 1:00:47
  Tad Eggleston: And I'm sitting there going, how are you bringing out… like, what… what was the secret sauce to make me feel everything that he's making me feel?
• 1:01:02
  Tad Eggleston: when, like…
• 1:01:03
  Tad Eggleston: it's not human expressions that I'm seeing. It's… it's, like, the most subtle… like, I couldn't even put my finger on it, you know? It was a mixture of text and
• 1:01:15
  Tad Eggleston: body position, and… So much of that is Joe Sutvin, too. I mean, I can't talk enough about…
• 1:01:23
  James Sturm: how, just masterful his drawings were. He took the time and sketched rabbits. He went to, like, a…
• 1:01:31
  James Sturm: a place for… I think a friend, or a friend of a friend who had, like, a rabbit recovery, you know, where they nursed rabbits back, and he just drew and drew. I mean, he…
• 1:01:44
  James Sturm: you know, there's, like, some Garth Williams to his work. I mean, he is literally… he's working on a Winnie the Pooh book that's, like.
• 1:01:52
  James Sturm: looks like… you know, Shepard himself drew it. Like, he is, like, one of the most,
• 1:02:00
  James Sturm: talented artists, illustrators out there, like, it's really fantastic. So a lot of that, does come from Joe. And I'll tell, just also, in deciding to do this book, I'll just tell one story about, you know, for me, it was all about the emotion in some ways. I…
• 1:02:20
  James Sturm: when I read that book to my daughter, Eva, I remember,
• 1:02:26
  James Sturm: getting to the end, spoiler alert, cover your ears, when Hazel passes, and getting so choked up that, like, I couldn't even keep reading. And I had read the book, like, several times at this point, but I… it still just floors me, the end of that book, and
• 1:02:44
  James Sturm: And I'm reading that, and my… my daughter, Eva, who, you know, wasn't feeling overly… she was really into the book, but she just… she went to a Waldorf school and was learning to read a little later, so she had, like, hadn't been reading, you know, like, when she started reading, it was like a light was flipped, but this was the first
• 1:03:02
  James Sturm: She, like, rolled her eyes and said, oh, dad, you know, you sentimental fool, and grabbed the book, and then read the ending to me. And that was, like, the first time I'd seen her read out loud.
• 1:03:13
  James Sturm: And, I just was like, oh my god, this is… this is… this is… this is cra… this is so, memorable. I will not forget this. And, so I have a lot of… I have a lot of memories, of that book, and, you know,
• 1:03:28
  James Sturm: you know, that's the trick, right? Like, these little letters on a page, and suddenly, like, you're really invested in these characters.
• 1:03:37
  James Sturm: you know, I mean, Richard Adams just really…
• 1:03:40
  James Sturm: created an amazing, amazing book, so, you know, I'm glad I didn't overthink it, because I would have been like…
• 1:03:47
  James Sturm: there's now… I mean, I was… there's a podcast of Just About Watership Down, and the guy's, like, doing every chapter
• 1:03:57
  James Sturm: He's dedicating an episode of the podcast to each chapter of the adaptation.
• 1:04:03
  James Sturm: Like, like, it's just, it's like over the top, the fandom, you know? I think the first one's like, should this be canon? Is this Watership canon? And the pros and cons, and
• 1:04:13
  James Sturm: it's, it's, people are really into it, but you can't think about all that stuff, right? Like, I'm not, as a cartoonist, Bob, you can relate to this too, it's like, it's not like,
• 1:04:24
  James Sturm: you know, James Stern's Watership Down, and, like, somehow I'm gonna take Richard Adams' book and put it into my, you know, my creative gravity is gonna force it, you know, to orbit around me. Like, I'm not that kind of cartoonist, I'm not, like, some…
• 1:04:37
  James Sturm: stylus, where you, you look up, you know, there's, well, whatever, Ben Katcher, you know, name the person who has, like, a really strong style. Whatever they do, it's gonna be…
• 1:04:47
  James Sturm: their book.
• 1:04:48
  R. Sikoryak: Right, right.
• 1:04:48
  James Sturm: Right?
• 1:04:49
  R. Sikoryak: Jack Kirby's 2001, which kind of…
• 1:04:52
  R. Sikoryak: It kind of takes it somewhere, it's like, it's not…
• 1:04:55
  R. Sikoryak: It's not Stanley Kubrick's anymore, it's not Arthur C. Clark's anymore.
• 1:05:00
  James Sturm: Right, right. So I always saw my job as a servant, in a way, or as, like, trying to…
• 1:05:08
  James Sturm: you know, I mean, I knew I was…
• 1:05:11
  James Sturm: blessed to be working with this amazing illustrator who could do some things that, like, were beyond most ordinary illustrators. So my… my job was to kind of get out of the way, like, really read, re-read. I, you know, as soon as I got the job, I actually, before I said yes, I…
• 1:05:28
  James Sturm: I could lay out the first part of the four parts, just to see if I could do it. Like, like, I was like, before I say yes to this, if this is, like…
• 1:05:37
  James Sturm: a nightmare.
• 1:05:39
  James Sturm: I'm not the right person, you know, to do it, you know? And, you don't… you'd rather not get in that situation, so I…
• 1:05:46
  James Sturm: did the layouts for the first part, and I was actually amazed by how…
• 1:05:51
  James Sturm: I won't say easy, but, like, it felt like, oh, this, this is gonna be fun. Like, this is gonna be good, because of the material I'm working with, and how he's already weighed it all out on the page. So, I felt, you know, I wasn't thinking about, you know, the things that might have worried me down the road,
• 1:06:11
  James Sturm: But, I just was like, you know, I'll just stay really true to Adam's vision as much as I can, and just, you know, just kind of try to stay out of the way.
• 1:06:20
  James Sturm: And that kind of was, was, was my approach.
• 1:06:26
  Tad Eggleston: It worked.
• 1:06:27
  Tad Eggleston: It works.
• 1:06:28
  James Sturm: Thank you.
• 1:06:29
  R. Sikoryak: I had one more question, related to this, which is, working with an estate, because…
• 1:06:37
  R. Sikoryak: often when I'm choosing a book to adapt, it's something that's already been adapted many times, and I know mine is one of many, and I can do whatever I want with it, because someone else will do their own version, which I think is kind of beautiful. It's like doing a cover song, it's like there's always going to be another cover. But when you're actually
• 1:06:56
  R. Sikoryak: asked by the estate, or have to get the estate's approval, did that… did you feel that hindered you? I mean, maybe it was helpful to have someone else there kind of watching your back and making sure you weren't going to go wrong. Did you… do you have any… did… was there pros and cons to that, experience?
• 1:07:14
  James Sturm: It's interesting, because, you know, Richard had signed some really bad contracts. So, the estate didn't have, like, a lot of control over a lot of the stuff that was being done.
• 1:07:25
  James Sturm: And and this was the first project that they did, in a sense, like, I… my understanding of it.
• 1:07:32
  James Sturm: And, so they were very invested in it.
• 1:07:35
  James Sturm: And, you know, people might not realize, but, like, Watership Down began by Richard
• 1:07:42
  James Sturm: reciting, you know, telling the story to the girls in the backseat of the car to help, you know, in the English, you know, help pass the time, and he would make this, these stories up about rabbits, and the girls were like, you should make a story out of that, Dad! So, I mean, that resonates with me, you know, as I was saying, reading it to my daughters, and
• 1:08:01
  James Sturm: So they were very invested in it, and you know…
• 1:08:06
  James Sturm: sometimes it was, you know, a little challenging, because I wanted to take some more liberties, and we'd have to work through that, but all in all, I mean…
• 1:08:15
  James Sturm: To have that resource, and have people that know that material so well, and can give you feedback about, like, you know, like, the name of that
• 1:08:26
  James Sturm: bird kahar, you know, like, Kahar!
• 1:08:29
  James Sturm: Like, why… why they called the bird that, because that's the sound it makes. Or, like, there's the herdos, you know, which is, like, the vehicles, but it's, like, that's the sound of a car starting. And it's, like, just starting to piece those things together was, like, really, that was kind of thrilling.
• 1:08:48
  James Sturm: For sure. And then sometimes, like, when we disagreed, what was great is, like, what would Richard do? Like, let's go back. It's like, oh no, Richard actually said this. Like, here it is. Like, so I'm not taking a liberty. This is where… this is the text. And then sometimes, you know, they may…
• 1:09:03
  James Sturm: I… at one point, I…
• 1:09:05
  James Sturm: cut one of the Nuthanger scenes. I didn't want to go to Nuthanger Farm, but they really insist Fair.
• 1:09:15
  James Sturm: And, and I… oh, yeah, this is… this is good. Like, a lot, you know, so, like, there was a lot of back and forth.
• 1:09:22
  James Sturm: And, and I think where we landed is exactly where we needed to land. And they were incredibly supportive, and, you know, so… but it could be, I could underst… it's, yeah, it is,
• 1:09:37
  James Sturm: you know, one of the assignments we do at the cartoon school is they have to, like, sometimes… I don't know if they still do it, but in my classrooms, we did an… they had to adopt an Aesop's fable, you know, and it was like, you know, it's like, okay, Aesop, he's dead. He's not gonna… he's not gonna give you any shit. There's… there's no estate.
• 1:09:54
  James Sturm: So, it gets trickier when you're taking somebody's work that has an investment in it, and
• 1:10:00
  James Sturm: I remember Mark… was it Mark Schultz, the cartoonist?
• 1:10:05
  James Sturm: he was just talking about optioning his work, and he's like, he's like, I either want to have, like, Final Cut.
• 1:10:11
  James Sturm: be really involved, or have no involvement, like, you know? And, and .
• 1:10:15
  R. Sikoryak: I can…
• 1:10:16
  James Sturm: I could… I could kind of see that as well, you know, like, how that could… how that could play out, but…
• 1:10:21
  R. Sikoryak: Yeah, totally.
• 1:10:22
  James Sturm: So anyway, I hope that answers your question.
• 1:10:23
  Tad Eggleston: Reasonable to me.
• 1:10:26
  Tad Eggleston: Really quickly, before we wrap up, tell me a little about Adventures in Cartooning, because I… this is the other thing of yours that I hadn't really known about, but managed to go through about half of Create a World Today, and just found it…
• 1:10:47
  Tad Eggleston: adorable. Yeah.
• 1:10:49
  James Sturm: The first book, it's a series of books that I published with First Second, I think they first started coming out in 2010, and .
• 1:10:58
  James Sturm: Man, those books were a real joy to work on.
• 1:11:02
  James Sturm: They're kind of like adventure stories that are also, like, how to create comics. They're instructional stories, so they're kind of like a kid's version of understanding comics combined with those Ed Emberly how-to books.
• 1:11:15
  James Sturm: And, in that, basically, in my cartooning classes, going back to my SCAD days, and then into my CCS days.
• 1:11:23
  James Sturm: one of the assignments I would give is
• 1:11:26
  James Sturm: I would… I would have the students, their textbook would be Ed Emberly's Make a World, and if you're not familiar with that, Ed Emberly,
• 1:11:35
  James Sturm: is this children's book illustrator. He sold millions and millions of copies of these, like, instructional books where you take a square, you take a circle, you take a line, and it's a lion, or it's a, you know, it's a car.
• 1:11:46
  James Sturm: And he's got, you know, Ed Emberly's Book of Animals, Ed Emberly's Make a World, where he shows you all the different things you can populate a world. But it's basically like this, like, stick figure vocabulary and how to construct it.
• 1:11:56
  James Sturm: So, when I started teaching intro comics, there would always be the students who would, you know, be, you know, work, you know, like, doing the details on the molding of a building before they've even constructed their story, or maybe, yeah, they were leaning towards the illustration to save bad comics, or, or before they were understanding the
• 1:12:16
  James Sturm: the foundational, formal aspects of the medium. So, one of the assignments I would do is say, you know, take the Ed Emberly images, which are very simple, anybody can draw, evens the playing field for the people who have a lot of illustration.
• 1:12:29
  James Sturm: skills and people who have almost none, and create a story. You know, do an Aesop's Fable, or I'd suggest, like, a simple structure, like, you know, you're sleeping, something wakes you up, you get up, you deal with it, and you go back to bed.
• 1:12:42
  James Sturm: You know, but do that with the Ed Emberly
• 1:12:45
  James Sturm: you know, make a comic. So suddenly, it's kind of like thumbnailing a story, right? Because it's, like, practically stick figures. So I would do that in my classrooms, and then I thought, well, how do… you know, maybe I'll develop this into a book, and my very first, first book
• 1:13:00
  James Sturm: The first class of CCS, I had two students, Alexis Frederick Frost.
• 1:13:06
  James Sturm: And, Andrew Arnold, who,
• 1:13:09
  James Sturm: Bob, I think you were his thesis advisor? If I'm not… if I'm not mistaken?
• 1:13:13
  James Sturm: Bob snarling's head.
• 1:13:15
  R. Sikoryak: That's correct, yes, yes, absolutely.
• 1:13:17
  James Sturm: And Bob, excuse me, and Andrew's now, like, the, he has his own input. Right.
• 1:13:24
  James Sturm: Harper… HarperCollins, if I… if I'm… Harper Alley, it's called, a comics imprint.
• 1:13:29
  James Sturm: So, so those guys, Andrew and Alexis, where I collaborated on some projects together.
• 1:13:35
  James Sturm: we all played ping pong together, and I was like, hey, I'm thinking about this idea for taking that Emberly assignment and, like.
• 1:13:43
  James Sturm: kind of…
• 1:13:44
  James Sturm: doing an adventure story, but showing how comics work through the adventure story. So, we started, you know, sending, you know, like, little stick figure drafts back and forth.
• 1:13:54
  James Sturm: And, you know, eventually it became this book, and the first book did, like, you know, I think it, you know, maybe, I don't know what the numbers are in any of these things, really, but it probably was one of the better-selling projects, and then there was a couple other instructional ones, some… some…
• 1:14:10
  James Sturm: some adventures and cartooning books aimed at younger readers. But they were super fun to… they were really fun to work on, and again, it was like the weirdo collaborative thing with Andrew and Alexis.
• 1:14:24
  James Sturm: like, there was 3 of us, and like, we were all kind of writing and drawing, we knew Alexis would do the finished art.
• 1:14:30
  James Sturm: And, like, all… we were all, like, kind of finding our way through that, you know, I mean, literally sometimes drawing on, you know, napkins and, like, taking photos and saying, well, how about this for this part, you know? And kind of piecing it together. And what was fun about those books, too, is, like, you know, the… the… we wanted to encourage
• 1:14:48
  James Sturm: kids to, like, copy, because that's how you learn, by copying. Right.
• 1:14:53
  James Sturm: And sometimes…
• 1:14:54
  R. Sikoryak: Still a good idea. Career, Bob. Yeah.
• 1:14:57
  James Sturm: So, like, you know, there's a knight, and the knight has, like, a circle head, a triangle body, it's a stick figure, you know? There's, like, a horse that's, like, shaped… Edward is shaped like a jellybean. So, you know, so…
• 1:15:09
  James Sturm: it's been really nice. I mean, I've met people who are now… now they're in college, and they're like, I learned to read with, you know, Adventures and Cartooning books. We did a Christmas special, Adventures and Cartooning Christmas special, and I wrote, like, you know, there's, like, you could send a note to Santa, your comic to Santa. I still get letters. We still get letters from… from…
• 1:15:28
  James Sturm: kids who find that book and write to Santa.
• 1:15:32
  James Sturm: Or at least they get halfway to the North Pole, to Vermont.
• 1:15:38
  Tad Eggleston: So, I have to ask, just because you brought up McLeod, have you read… he and Raina Telgemeyer did Cartoonist Club this year, which is essentially the middle grade version.
• 1:15:51
  James Sturm: Oh, yeah, no, I read it. I actually wrote an… I wrote an essay for it for the New York Times, so if anybody wants to read my thought class, I can… I'll have to go…
• 1:15:59
  Tad Eggleston: I loved it. It's one of my favorite books of the year.
• 1:16:02
  James Sturm: Yeah, it was great. I thought it was great. I thought it was great. In talking about, like, combining the emotion and the formal, I mean,
• 1:16:11
  James Sturm: you know, like, those two really did something special together, and I really liked that book as well, yeah.
• 1:16:19
  Tad Eggleston: They're neat Well, now I have to pose the,
• 1:16:24
  Tad Eggleston: I now have two questions that I try to ask everybody.
• 1:16:28
  Tad Eggleston: The newer one that I feel like you're gonna have a great answer for.
• 1:16:33
  Tad Eggleston: I've been doing this podcast for 4 years now, and I feel like I've entered the Twilight Zone.
• 1:16:42
  Tad Eggleston: the number of people that I count as my friends, or have gotten to hang out with, or…
• 1:16:48
  Tad Eggleston: had cool experiences with that used to just be names on pages of things that I loved is just crazy. I mean, I was able to text Bob Sikoriak and say, hey, you worked with James Sturm, I'm having him on, do you want to come co-host?
• 1:17:04
  James Sturm: Well, this is, like, Bob, this is an excuse for us to hang out, really, you know?
• 1:17:07
  Tad Eggleston: Well, yeah, no, no.
• 1:17:08
  R. Sikoryak: I mean, that's how I saw it. And then suddenly I was co-host? What?
• 1:17:12
  Tad Eggleston: But what I mean… well, no, but I'm the fly on the wall getting to hang out with the two of you, and that's my surreal experience. But I've noticed that pretty much everybody in comics has similar surreal
• 1:17:27
  Tad Eggleston: Experiences, where they got to do that thing…
• 1:17:30
  Tad Eggleston: Or things, but I, you know, since hopefully you'll be back, you don't have to tell them all, but, like, that thing that you got to do that, like, 10-year-old James would go, oh my god, I'm gonna get to blank, that you never would have been able to do if you hadn't, like…
• 1:17:50
  James Sturm: Well, if you're asking for the 10-year-old… That's gonna get the world of comics.
• 1:17:53
  James Sturm: If you're asking about the 10-year-old James, probably doing the Fantastic Four… doing the Fantastic Four book. Because, you know, when I was 10, I wanted to be a… I didn't want to be a cartoonist, I wanted to be a Marvel cartoonist. Marvel cartoonist. Yeah, when I was 10, and the Fantastic Four was my favorite book, and
• 1:18:13
  James Sturm: my favorite comic, so the idea that, like, in some strange way I was able to do that was.
• 1:18:19
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it doesn't have to be 10, you know, half of mine, if I told my 30-year-old self that, hey, you're gonna do this, I would have gone, you're out of your mind.
• 1:18:30
  Tad Eggleston: It's weird how small the comics community is, and you don't realize it until you…
• 1:18:36
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I'll give you… I'll give you one more. One of the books…
• 1:18:40
  James Sturm: of cartoonists, that opened my brain to the possibilities of cartooning, and blew my mind when I came across his work.
• 1:18:48
  James Sturm: was the cartoonist Mark Allen Stametti, who did a book called McDoodle Street, and it was a series of weekly comics for the Village Voice, and they did a collection of that book, and in 1984, I was at the University of Wisconsin bookstore.
• 1:19:07
  James Sturm: And I came upon that book. I think it was probably printed a few years earlier, maybe. It was a collection. And I was kind of at a crossroads, and like, I mean, I didn't… I thought I'd…
• 1:19:18
  James Sturm: someday would… I wanted to do Marvel, but I realized, like, I just didn't have whatever facility, that specific facility that was needed to make Marvel comics. And also, at that point in my life, I was going to college and thinking, like, no, maybe there's more to the world than superheroes.
• 1:19:34
  James Sturm: And, I don't know, like, I was questioning my skills and my talents, and when I came across McDoodle Street, I was really blown away, like, just that, like, how fun and seat of the pants and inspiring and goofy, and just, like, like, it just was like, you can do this too! It was like…
• 1:19:53
  James Sturm: This is so cool, and it made me think that I could be a cartoonist.
• 1:19:58
  James Sturm: And I love that, that book so much. And, you know, fast forward years later, Mark…
• 1:20:06
  James Sturm: was a visiting artist at the Center for Cartoon Studies, and I got to show him around, and he gave an amazing presentation, and you know, I don't have a lot of original art, but my original McDoodle Street page is one of my prized possessions.
• 1:20:24
  Tad Eggleston: Did you tell him that story?
• 1:20:27
  James Sturm: Oh, yeah.
• 1:20:28
  James Sturm: Okay.
• 1:20:30
  Tad Eggleston: Alright, and my standard closing question,
• 1:20:35
  Tad Eggleston: Tell me something you love, preferably a comic, but we don't really have rules.
• 1:20:41
  Tad Eggleston: Preferably storytelling, but again, with the rules. But something that you love.
• 1:20:46
  Tad Eggleston: That not enough people around you have experienced, and you would like them to.
• 1:20:52
  Tad Eggleston: So you have more people to talk about it with.
• 1:20:57
  James Sturm: Ugh, that not a lot of people have seen. Boy, that's, like, 90%.
• 1:21:01
  Tad Eggleston: Again, again, around you is the key there, because, cause, like, I mean…
• 1:21:08
  Tad Eggleston: there's lots of ability to fudge. I think it was Nate Powell that decided to go with current X-Men, because he's in the indie crowd now, so when he became a Wednesday Warrior again, he didn't know any Wednesday Warriors, but he was really into Jonathan Hickman's X-Men.
• 1:21:26
  James Sturm: Yeah.
• 1:21:27
  Tad Eggleston: There's wiggle room. I decided I didn't want to do, like, the underrated or whatever, but I wanted to try to make people dig for something…
• 1:21:36
  Tad Eggleston: Weirder.
• 1:21:39
  James Sturm: Well, I'll… you know, here's a cartoonist that I've just been really fascinated by over the last…
• 1:21:45
  James Sturm: 10 years. And he doesn't have a huge body of work, but sizable. It's a New Yorker cartoonist, and if you could, like, you know, the love child of Charles Adams and William Steig, you would have Sam Cobain.
• 1:21:58
  James Sturm: And Sam Cobain, died young, car crash. He was so admired by his fellow cartoonists that, they did a memorial collection of his work that was, with an introduction by Charles Adams, and it was designed by Saul Steinberg.
• 1:22:16
  James Sturm: And…
• 1:22:18
  James Sturm: his cartooning, he's just, like, just a natural cartoonist, and one of the things I like about him is how he would,
• 1:22:26
  James Sturm: he would do variations on a theme, and, you know, some things didn't seem like it would be very funny, but because of all the variations that he would do on it, he would, like, coats out different kinds of humor. But there's a specific
• 1:22:41
  James Sturm: kind of trope that he did that kind of fascinates me. It's, I think my friend, the cartoonist Seth, my friend Seth.
• 1:22:51
  Tad Eggleston: Calls the don't darken my doorstep. That's the type of thing that I would find surreal, too. I mean, I guess you and Seth go far enough back that it's not as surreal, but, like, anytime I say my friend Dennis in the back of my head, I'm hearing kitchen, I'm like…
• 1:23:12
  James Sturm: Yeah, so anyway, Sam Cobain is, like, these Don't Darken My Door Strip comics I've been looking at for a while, and they're basically, an unwed mother who's bringing their child back home. They have nowhere else to go, and it's very, you know,
• 1:23:29
  James Sturm: you know, like, some Victorian melodrama. It's always snowing, they get to the doorstep, and the father won't let her in. He's just pointing and saying, you know, don't darken my doorstep. And it's oftentimes there's a mother in the background, either through the window or behind the father, and they're, like, kind of
• 1:23:48
  James Sturm: crying, you know, like, you know, like they can't bring their daughter into their house and their grandchild. And, I mean, they're… they're… I think of them as these, like, little snow globes of shame. And, and I'm, you know, I'm just, like, fascinated by them and what it says about…
• 1:24:03
  James Sturm: You know, the misogyny of the culture at the time, about, you know, wha…
• 1:24:09
  James Sturm: How… how we thought about…
• 1:24:11
  James Sturm: you know, the notions of divorce and unwed mothers and all the societal norms that were going on. They're just, like, I don't know, they just fascinate me. And, and, I think Sam Cobain, there's, like, he has two collections out, the one that I mentioned in an earlier one.
• 1:24:29
  James Sturm: But, I'm… if anybody wants to start a Sam Cobain fan club, I'm happy to be a charter member if it doesn't already exist.
• 1:24:38
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, we'll look into it.
• 1:24:40
  Tad Eggleston: Cause I'm all.
• 1:24:41
  James Sturm: Nice stuff like that.
• 1:24:42
  Tad Eggleston: that.
• 1:24:43
  Tad Eggleston: I mean… Because… Well, I, I, I…
• 1:24:48
  Tad Eggleston: I like to find new things. He was born in Gettysburg.
• 1:24:53
  R. Sikoryak: I have not seen any of the books. I've certainly seen his individual cartoons, but I've not seen a collection.
• 1:24:59
  R. Sikoryak: I should look him up.
• 1:25:00
  R. Sikoryak: Further.
• 1:25:03
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, that's…
• 1:25:04
  James Sturm: They're great.
• 1:25:04
  Tad Eggleston: for right now, too.
• 1:25:07
  R. Sikoryak: I love that this… the faces are great. His design… character design is really very.
• 1:25:13
  James Sturm: Yeah, one of the things he was also very famous for was, like.
• 1:25:17
  James Sturm: people imagining other people naked. So, like, and again…
• 1:25:23
  Tad Eggleston: That is where it comes up first.
• 1:25:25
  James Sturm: What was that?
• 1:25:26
  Tad Eggleston: When you Google him, the first that comes up is two men tipping their hats to each other and imagining each other's wives naked.
• 1:25:38
  James Sturm: There you go. He… I mean, I don't know how…
• 1:25:43
  James Sturm: I don't know how we would fly, but I mean, you could say that to almost every… most of those New Yorker cartoonists. I mean, they're… like I said, you know, the work kind of…
• 1:25:54
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, he literally…
• 1:25:55
  James Sturm: Autogeny is so embedded in the work itself.
• 1:25:58
  Tad Eggleston: It looks like he literally had a book in 1915 called Cobain's Naked Eye.
• 1:26:05
  James Sturm: Yes, that was his first… that was the… that was the first collection, and then, and the second one, I don't remember the name of it, but it's the one that Saul Steinberg… it was, like, the memorial book.
• 1:26:16
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:26:20
  R. Sikoryak: Good pick.
• 1:26:21
  James Sturm: Yeah.
• 1:26:22
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. See, I love it when people pick things that make me fall down rabbit holes immediately.
• 1:26:30
  R. Sikoryak: So…
• 1:26:31
  James Sturm: There you go.
• 1:26:32
  Tad Eggleston: Well done.
• 1:26:33
  James Sturm: Alright.
• 1:26:34
  Tad Eggleston: Bob's first one was, olivier Schwarn.
• 1:26:40
  R. Sikoryak: Oh, yeah.
• 1:26:41
  Tad Eggleston: Good choice, too. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:26:45
  R. Sikoryak: Still.
• 1:26:45
  Tad Eggleston: Underrated.
• 1:26:46
  Tad Eggleston: Not nearly as much as when you told me about them, though. I mean… Yeah. So,
• 1:26:55
  James Sturm: How many people do you have to tell before he's just appropriately? There's underrated, there's overrated.
• 1:26:59
  R. Sikoryak: Everyone.
• 1:27:00
  James Sturm: Is there… Everywhere.
• 1:27:02
  R. Sikoryak: Corporately rated? Like, like, is there an AP? Well, that's, that's one reason I said it, because it's actually the kind of thing, like, it's always true.
• 1:27:09
  R. Sikoryak: Any artist you name who's any good is underrated.
• 1:27:15
  James Sturm: Oh my god.
• 1:27:15
  R. Sikoryak: That's the nature of the nature of the universe. It's like Zeno's Paradox.
• 1:27:20
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:27:20
  James Sturm: Absolutely. I should have just said, underrated? Oh, Bob's a Koriak.
• 1:27:26
  Tad Eggleston: That's why I don't ask it as the underrated question. I want it to be more interesting than that. And I got rid of the rules, because occasionally you get something crazy, like, you know, a good movie, or Andrew Iden said his tomato garden.
• 1:27:44
  James Sturm: Yeah.
• 1:27:47
  James Sturm: And, you know, whenever… I'm always, you know, as I work through, you know, my own practice, there's always, like, a handful of cartoonists that are, like, touchstones for me, usually where I'm, you know, at that moment. And, and all of them, you know, I was thinking about Jules Pfeiffer, it's like…
• 1:28:03
  James Sturm: good lord. I mean, you know, the impact and his work, but, you know, is he… I mean, he's obviously gotten his share of accolades, but, you know, most people don't. You know, this is the… like you said, the nature of things. You know, they… people… people…
• 1:28:16
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, to a certain extent, unless… unless you're the Beatles.
• 1:28:21
  Tad Eggleston: almost any artist is really well… Yeah, well, okay, see, even.
• 1:28:26
  R. Sikoryak: Check them out. Check them out, James, I think you'll like them.
• 1:28:30
  James Sturm: Will, how do you spell that?
• 1:28:31
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, do you know Carol Tyler? She can tell you all about them.
• 1:28:37
  James Sturm: Oh, man.
• 1:28:42
  Tad Eggleston: Almost every artist, like, the people that know them.
• 1:28:48
  Tad Eggleston: can sing their praises out the wazoo, but there's always huge numbers of people that just… even huge numbers of people that would love them, who just…
• 1:28:57
  Tad Eggleston: That there… there's… there's too much great art, and not enough distribution, or hours in the day.
• 1:29:07
  Tad Eggleston: Take your pick, one or the other, to have people know them as well as they should.
• 1:29:14
  Tad Eggleston: But that's why I like to get your recommendations.
• 1:29:17
  James Sturm: Well, thanks for inviting, me on, Tad. Bob, thanks for showing up and co-hosting.
• 1:29:24
  R. Sikoryak: Yeah, that's what's.
• 1:29:24
  James Sturm: Great.
• 1:29:25
  R. Sikoryak: I enjoy.
• 1:29:26
  Tad Eggleston: Like I said, you know, since you're gonna be announcing a book soon, we'll have to have the two of you back and flip chairs. This has been a blast for,
• 1:29:36
  Tad Eggleston: My guest co-host, Bob Sikoriak, and James Stern, this has been 22 Panels, and we will see you after the next page.