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With Great Power #286... 22 Panels with Mike Kennedy · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:02
  Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels. My guest tonight is Mike Kennedy, the founder and publisher of Magnetic.
• 0:13
  Tad Eggleston: Press Comics? Hey, Mike, how's it going? Yeah. It's good.
• 0:19
  mike: I'm doing good, just getting ready for the holidays, and…
• 0:22
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 0:22
  mike: the g…
• 0:23
  Tad Eggleston: And you've got…
• 0:23
  mike: Oh, my plate.
• 0:24
  Tad Eggleston: You've got a Kickstarter going right now that looks amazingly cool.
• 0:29
  mike: Yeah.
• 0:30
  Tad Eggleston: squeal.
• 0:31
  mike: Yeah, and it's doing… it's doing really well, I…
• 0:35
  Tad Eggleston: 102,000?
• 0:38
  mike: Yeah.
• 0:38
  Tad Eggleston: $76?
• 0:40
  mike: I just put in 14.
• 0:42
  Tad Eggleston: Nice. As I figured out that I could order… One digital copy?
• 0:49
  mike: Yeah. It's a 7-book series, so it's a lot.
• 0:53
  Tad Eggleston: To… And under a lot of circumstances, I would have gone for all of them, but there were so…
• 1:01
  mike: Well, I mean, I would have taken the risk on this. This looks really good. But…
• 1:06
  Tad Eggleston: But there were sooo many good Kickstarters in October.
• 1:12
  mike: Yeah.
• 1:12
  Tad Eggleston: At the end of the month, when they all…
• 1:15
  Tad Eggleston: came out of my credit card, I went,
• 1:19
  Tad Eggleston: I have to slow down a little.
• 1:22
  mike: Well, it's…
• 1:22
  Tad Eggleston: Oh my goodness!
• 1:23
  mike: Because the first, you know, we do a lot of Kicksters. We probably do anywhere from, like, 8 to… I think the most we've done is, like, 12 in a year. I mean, it's… Right. It got a little crazy, but,
• 1:35
  mike: The beginning of the year kind of really started slow, and, you know, some of the campaigns, it didn't seem like there were a lot of people
• 1:44
  mike: like… Checking out that storefront, you know, and…
• 1:47
  Tad Eggleston: I think… I think there are a lot of people like me that… that… that go so heavy on Kickstarters at the end of the year. The beginning of the year, we're kind of like.
• 1:59
  Tad Eggleston: My New Year's resolution is to spend a little less… Pretty!
• 2:05
  mike: Yeah, exactly.
• 2:06
  mike: Well, that's the thing, is it seems like in the last 2 months, 3 months, you're right, there's, like, more campaigns, and they're bigger campaigns with, like, really cool-looking books.
• 2:17
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and it's where some of the heavy hitters come out, like, I'm not gonna say no to Terry Moore.
• 2:23
  mike: Yeah.
• 2:24
  mike: Yeah. Hardcover revised edition of his How to Draw? Yes! Yeah.
• 2:32
  mike: Yeah, and even, like, the, you know, bigger brands, like Dark Horse with their Star Wars manga, it's like.
• 2:38
  Tad Eggleston: Right?
• 2:38
  mike: That's a beautiful-looking book.
• 2:41
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Yeah. But, but, but, like…
• 2:44
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, sometimes with the bigger brands, I find it easier to hold back, because I know that they're gonna be distributed later. If not the… if not the pretty, pretty version.
• 2:56
  Tad Eggleston: A semi-pretty version.
• 2:59
  mike: Yeah, I mean, assuming that the production value's there at the basic level, the cool thing about Kickstarter for us is, you know, it's always an opportunity to do that special, you know, slipcase solution, the limited.
• 3:12
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and this one, I mean, like, even not having…
• 3:17
  Tad Eggleston: ever read it, or heard of it, or whatever. The, like, trunk edition is so pretty that, like…
• 3:26
  mike: Trying to do something unique there, just to…
• 3:29
  Tad Eggleston: Yes!
• 3:30
  mike: In this case, it's, like, it's got.
• 3:32
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 3:33
  mike: Clap, and it kind of… when you dip it on its side.
• 3:36
  mike: Soccer, and, you know.
• 3:38
  mike: I blocked a bunch of stretch goals for, like, stickers that you can, like, customize.
• 3:42
  Tad Eggleston: Wait a minute.
• 3:43
  mike: And one of the stretch goals was, invisible kind of glow-in-the-dark elements. Postcards are coming up!
• 3:52
  mike: Yeah. Yeah, we might… I bet you we'll probably have those by Saturday.
• 3:57
  Tad Eggleston: We could have them by the end of this episode if we get lucky. I mean, we're not going out live, so it wouldn't be my fault if we.
• 4:05
  mike: We got a little extra time.
• 4:07
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 4:10
  Tad Eggleston: If you go over the line tomorrow, I can take credit for it.
• 4:15
  mike: Yes, I'll give you that credit, there you go. Well, we've had a… I mean, we've got a lot more plans, so…
• 4:21
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. So, so tell it, tell us about this book in… in… like, I could read stuff off, but I assume that you've actually gotten to read it and talk to people and… and whatnot. Tell us about… tell us about this book that looks…
• 4:34
  Tad Eggleston: One of the things I love about European comics Is… it's the one place…
• 4:42
  Tad Eggleston: Where there seem to be a lot of people that are okay showing worldwide influence.
• 4:50
  mike: So, so as much as this has…
• 4:54
  Tad Eggleston: this has a lot of manga in it, but I can also see Iron Giant in it. I can see…
• 5:02
  mike: some Kirby here and there, you know what I mean? Like… Yeah, I mean, it really is this mashup of, kind of, Western American comics and…
• 5:12
  Tad Eggleston: Eastern.
• 5:12
  mike: Clearly, yeah, the manga and anime, just, style to the character designs, but yet it still has a very thorough,
• 5:23
  mike: kind of European band designer flavor to it. It's… Right.
• 5:27
  Tad Eggleston: Well, as I look at the… and I haven't actually played the video, I'm a comic guy, so I often don't play the trailers, even just because.
• 5:35
  mike: Oh, yeah?
• 5:35
  Tad Eggleston: I'm a guy, yeah. I keep meet… I always mean to, because people have gotten really good at making comics trailers, right? But half the time when I see it, it's like.
• 5:44
  Tad Eggleston: on my phone, out somewhere, where I'm not gonna listen to it, and…
• 5:51
  Tad Eggleston: And then by the time I'm somewhere where I might play it, I forget. But as I'm looking at the still for this, I'm also seeing a Blackside influence.
• 5:59
  mike: Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's… it's that… European…
• 6:03
  mike: I don't know, it's kind of a European sexiness. Like, Fritzville is, you know, it's a… it's a late teen book. It has some sexy parts to it. I mean, you know, nothing…
• 6:14
  mike: Nothing mature or, you know, graphic, but, you know, that, you know, there'll be… it takes place in a college, and, you know, college… Okay.
• 6:23
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 6:24
  mike: They're up for everything, you know, partying and superheroes and stuff.
• 6:29
  Tad Eggleston: So what you're saying, R, but not NC17?
• 6:33
  mike: Yes, yes.
• 6:36
  Tad Eggleston: Or does the violence cross the NC-17 line?
• 6:41
  mike: Nope. Yeah, I mean, I think on that front, it's probably, you know, more like an X book. I mean, it's a lot like that kind of…
• 6:49
  Tad Eggleston: student pros. You said X when we were doing ratings, like an MPAA thing, I thought you were talking… Yes, yes, we should clarify! Yeah, sorry about that.
• 7:05
  mike: Not triple X, just X.
• 7:07
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, before NC17, there was just the normal X, like Last Tango in Paris X, Midnight Cowboy X.
• 7:15
  mike: I would still make it to theaters, I remember those.
• 7:18
  mike: Yeah.
• 7:20
  Tad Eggleston: I don't remember those, I've read about those.
• 7:23
  mike: I think they were just starting to phase that out when I got to that point where I was recognizing how the rating system works. I just reached that age, and it's like, oh no, now it's out of reach.
• 7:35
  Tad Eggleston: And then they reintroduced it with NC17 for Showgirls.
• 7:40
  mike: Yeah, and then went straight to video, practically, with everything else.
• 7:47
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I love this teddy bear. I keep interrupting you because I'm looking at pictures, so I'm gonna stop looking at pictures and let you finish pitching the book.
• 7:54
  mike: Oh, it's just… Now, kind of like I mentioned, it's kind of X-Men New Mutants style. It's basically, it's about a university for wannabe heroes, and of course, you know, with all the social dynamics of college, you got…
• 8:09
  mike: you know, you got your cliques, and you got your bullies. The bullies tend to be kind of villainous, and you know, the do-gooder hero types, you know, feel…
• 8:21
  mike: Persecuted and, you know, have trouble, like, impressing anybody. So, you know, it's just that… that self-identity
• 8:32
  mike: human drama mixed with just a ton of, action. And even though it's… they call it a superhero school, it really isn't…
• 8:41
  mike: superheroes like we know them, like capes and tights. It's more… it's more like fantasy archetypes and…
• 8:49
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 8:49
  mike: There's a… there's a lot of… Kind of…
• 8:53
  mike: horror tropes and, and, and, and gothic,
• 8:57
  Tad Eggleston: I'm seeing werewolves.
• 8:59
  mike: Yeah.
• 8:59
  mike: Yep.
• 9:00
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, and even, you know, even like… Vampires…
• 9:03
  mike: Final Fonts is very good.
• 9:04
  Tad Eggleston: Though there is, there is a, very familiar silhouette here.
• 9:13
  Tad Eggleston: On, on one of the characters.
• 9:16
  Tad Eggleston: Here, I'll share my screen.
• 9:18
  mike: You know what I'm talking about.
• 9:19
  Tad Eggleston: bone.
• 9:26
  Tad Eggleston: Very familiar silhouette.
• 9:29
  mike: Yes.
• 9:32
  mike: That's another cool thing about the series is… is…
• 9:35
  mike: it's very pop culture reference. I mean, I think that.
• 9:40
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, for those of you listening at home, it reminds me most of the old man version that Frank Miller
• 9:50
  Tad Eggleston: Sure, in the 80s.
• 9:53
  Tad Eggleston: I feel like I'm gonna leave it at that. Anybody who can't figure out what I'm talking about from that, like…
• 9:59
  mike: Yeah, I mean, in the.
• 10:00
  Tad Eggleston: is probably my mother. Hi, Mom. Text me, I'll tell you.
• 10:06
  mike: Yeah, I mean, it turns out to be the werewolf, but I mean, in that introductory silhouette, it's like, I think it's intended to be kind of Batman-ish. I mean, there are.
• 10:14
  Tad Eggleston: You just gave it away.
• 10:16
  mike: Oh, sorry.
• 10:18
  mike: I mean, they will reference other, you know, popular heroes. I do love them.
• 10:22
  Tad Eggleston: The name is Wolf Shadow.
• 10:25
  mike: Yeah.
• 10:25
  Tad Eggleston: And when we're seeing the shadow version.
• 10:28
  mike: Yeah.
• 10:29
  Tad Eggleston: And he loves poetry?
• 10:32
  mike: Yeah, he's… he's a teddy bear.
• 10:35
  Tad Eggleston: I… yeah, I'm looking forward to reading this book.
• 10:39
  mike: Yeah, it's a great book. I'm in the middle of finishing
• 10:43
  mike: The translation of Volume 5 out of 7, so, and it, they're just… they're great.
• 10:49
  Tad Eggleston: So, do you speak?
• 10:51
  Tad Eggleston: Do you do the translations from French?
• 10:54
  mike: You know, just for the sake of time, I'll…
• 10:57
  mike: hire a translator, but then I will… everything we publish, I will do a localization pass.
• 11:04
  Tad Eggleston: Okay. Because a lot of times the translators will be…
• 11:06
  mike: very true to the rhythm. Right.
• 11:09
  Tad Eggleston: Right, right, right.
• 11:09
  mike: sound natural, it'll sound a little… maybe a little stiff and theatrical, so I just go there and make sure everything just… it sounds colloquial and, you know, natural and…
• 11:20
  Tad Eggleston: So are you just taking it from the translators, or do you speak French as well?
• 11:25
  mike: I don't speak very well. Given enough time, I can read pretty well. I mean, I can read well enough to, you know, evaluate and acquire these titles.
• 11:35
  Tad Eggleston: Gotcha.
• 11:35
  mike: Understand what we're acquiring, but, yeah, conversational… Not me.
• 11:40
  Tad Eggleston: No, I just… I'm fascinated by the translation process. We actually… I had, Matt Madden and Chris Cicada
• 11:49
  Tad Eggleston: On for a translator's roundtable.
• 11:53
  mike: Oh, wow.
• 11:53
  Tad Eggleston: where we just talk translations. Yeah. Just because I, like, it can be such a delicate process. Yeah. And the localization can be really important, as can…
• 12:07
  Tad Eggleston: Having a real feel for…
• 12:14
  Tad Eggleston: The original localization, if that makes sense.
• 12:16
  mike: I mean, you want to make sure that every… that it's always true to the spirit, but maybe… I mean, just even structurally, the way that
• 12:26
  mike: some French dialogue is, is they… You know, they'll put…
• 12:31
  mike: second half of a sentence at the beginning, and it just won't sound right in English? Oh, no!
• 12:37
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah, no, you have it.
• 12:38
  mike: Swap the… swap the prices.
• 12:40
  Tad Eggleston: Part of good translation is, is, is…
• 12:44
  Tad Eggleston: understanding the grammar of the two languages, and that's one of the basic grammar things, but I just…
• 12:51
  Tad Eggleston: my favorite…
• 12:56
  Tad Eggleston: non-comic book, and possibly my favorite book, period, is… is The Little Prince. And when I was in high school.
• 13:04
  Tad Eggleston: the new translation came out, and this is… this is when I got to know the name of the original translator, Catherine Woods, because it became very important to me from that point on, and it… because… because it was billed as, oh, this is a more accurate translation, blah blah blah.
• 13:20
  mike: Yeah.
• 13:22
  Tad Eggleston: And so I bought it, literally, the day it came out.
• 13:25
  Tad Eggleston: And… I was barely 5 pages into it before I'm like.
• 13:30
  Tad Eggleston: The whimsy has been sucked out of this book.
• 13:35
  mike: Yeah, I mean…
• 13:37
  Tad Eggleston: Like, the poetry is gone. Sure, maybe it's still…
• 13:43
  mike: Technically.
• 13:44
  Tad Eggleston: We'll accurately.
• 13:45
  Tad Eggleston: But the other thing is, that's what I started, like, learning about, and it's like.
• 13:51
  Tad Eggleston: Exubery was bilingual. He wrote in French, but he knew English, so he had approved her translation, and not without knowing.
• 14:04
  mike: Celebrities, yeah, I mean…
• 14:06
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 14:07
  mike: allowing and agreeing with the liberties, because that's one thing that… from the beginning, Magnetic is always…
• 14:15
  mike: we've always tried to work directly with the writers and make sure that the writers are cool with this, like, you know, hey, is this… is this roughly what you meant? And, you know…
• 14:24
  mike: If that's not what they meant, then they'll explain it, and we'll try it again.
• 14:28
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 14:28
  mike: So, I mean, always getting the intention right, but…
• 14:31
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 14:32
  mike: I want to make sure that it's…
• 14:34
  mike: doesn't sound like a translation, because, I mean.
• 14:37
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 14:39
  mike: even though it's kind of become clear that Magnetic brings these French titles and Italian and Spanish titles over and translates them, that's kind of become our
• 14:49
  mike: part of our brand. We've never…
• 14:52
  mike: positioned ourselves as a translation publisher. We always want to make sure everything we bring over, if you're not familiar with the brand or magnetic.
• 15:02
  mike: This is just a cool-looking book that…
• 15:04
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Maybe it was, you know, maiden…
• 15:07
  mike: Portland or, you know, wherever. It's like…
• 15:09
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 15:09
  mike: I mean, if…
• 15:10
  mike: so many people just won't even bother looking at, you know, the names on the cover, and so they won't necessarily have to know that it's French, you know? It's just a really cool sci-fi book, or, you know, hero book.
• 15:22
  Tad Eggleston: Or a really cool book about dogs.
• 15:24
  mike: Yeah, exactly.
• 15:26
  Tad Eggleston: That's another Kickstarter that I did.
• 15:28
  Tad Eggleston: What was the name of that one? I don't… it was…
• 15:30
  mike: Toby?
• 15:31
  Tad Eggleston: My friend Toby.
• 15:32
  mike: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:33
  Tad Eggleston: Love that one.
• 15:35
  mike: Yeah, I've got a spot for anything animal. I mean, a lot of our earlier titles were kind of wildlife stories, and…
• 15:43
  mike: Yeah, I've got a soft spot for animal tails.
• 15:48
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I, I, I,
• 15:52
  Tad Eggleston: I not only have a soft sweat for animal tails.
• 15:57
  Tad Eggleston: I go both ways. I love anthropomorphic things, where, where, you know, your Usagi, Ojimbo, or whatever, your Black Sad, where they take…
• 16:10
  Tad Eggleston: The, the, the animals and, and…
• 16:14
  Tad Eggleston: make them more human, but I also… really love it.
• 16:20
  Tad Eggleston: when… They tell an animal story… Where the animals are.
• 16:29
  Tad Eggleston: Animals.
• 16:30
  mike: Yeah, well, that's, like, some of the first books we published were… are you familiar with the Love series?
• 16:36
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know if I am.
• 16:38
  mike: we published 5 of those, and basically it was, like, the first one was Love the Tiger, and it was…
• 16:45
  mike: The day in the life of a tiger.
• 16:49
  mike: and, you know, wasn't anthropomorphized or anything. It was just going to the jungle, dealing with lions and cobras and all kinds of stuff, and it was just…
• 16:58
  mike: you know, chasing a taper. The whole story was.
• 17:00
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 17:00
  mike: This tiger was just starving and just looking, trying to catch something to eat.
• 17:07
  mike: And .
• 17:09
  Tad Eggleston: all of the many… No, I'm looking at the cover right now. Yeah. So, I like Panthers more than I like Tigers, so I don't know what…
• 17:16
  mike: And they're in there.
• 17:17
  Tad Eggleston: discover.
• 17:17
  mike: Yeah.
• 17:18
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but it looks like he's losing right now. I don't think either one of them died, but whatever.
• 17:25
  mike: minimum, definitely.
• 17:29
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I had James Sturm on recently, and while he didn't do the art on it, because he'd done the writing, I got to… I read his… the adaptation of, Watership Down, and one of the things… one of the things that was really striking is, like.
• 17:49
  Tad Eggleston: Oh.
• 17:52
  Tad Eggleston: These rabbits are using rabbit facial expressions. Somehow…
• 17:57
  mike: Yeah.
• 17:58
  Tad Eggleston: I'm trying to remember the name of the artist right now, because, like.
• 18:02
  Tad Eggleston: I was blown away that, like, somehow, I know what they're feeling.
• 18:09
  Tad Eggleston: between… between the, the, the expressions that the artist is giving them and the dialogues, but the dialogue was… was sparse. Yeah. So it, it, like,
• 18:25
  Tad Eggleston: I hate it when the internet is slow. Joe Sutvins!
• 18:31
  Tad Eggleston: Visuals, we're doing some really heavy lifting in terms of, like.
• 18:36
  Tad Eggleston: you're feeling their sadness, or their excitement, or whatever, even though, no, it doesn't look like an anthropomorphized rabbit. It looks like a rabbit.
• 18:48
  mike: Well, and that's why I think, you know, we were so happy to publish the love series, because the artist, Frederico Bertolucci, he, I mean, he's fantastic. He can just.
• 18:58
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, I'm looking at these and already very, very interested.
• 19:04
  mike: Yeah, the story.
• 19:05
  Tad Eggleston: A fox one.
• 19:06
  mike: Yeah, the third one, The Lion, was nominated for a couple Eisners.
• 19:12
  Tad Eggleston: Oh my gosh.
• 19:12
  mike: That's a powerful story. I mean.
• 19:15
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, the Fox is sold out, though.
• 19:18
  Tad Eggleston: on our website. That makes me sad.
• 19:20
  mike: figure out… I'm not sure why our website is…
• 19:23
  Tad Eggleston: Well, your store is working.
• 19:25
  mike: Oh, is it? Okay.
• 19:27
  Tad Eggleston: Your store is working, just not your website.
• 19:31
  mike: Yeah.
• 19:33
  Tad Eggleston: But I have a thing… I have a thing for foxes because of the little prince, and the fox is the only one of those that's sold out right now.
• 19:40
  mike: The fox was… A great book. Yeah, we're looking at our reprinting plans for 2026.
• 19:46
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 19:48
  mike: But yeah, man.
• 19:49
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I suppose I could do the box set.
• 19:52
  mike: If there are any left, I would recommend that.
• 19:55
  Tad Eggleston: It does look like there are.
• 19:58
  mike: Yeah, they're all grade books. A dinosaur, and then the newest one is…
• 20:01
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I think that'd be my wife's type of thing, too, but we're so close to the holiday that it's gotta kind of be…
• 20:07
  mike: kind of be like, she decides. But I'll put it in the back of my head.
• 20:13
  Tad Eggleston: But now I can look at your…
• 20:14
  mike: Yeah, they're really… I mean, even though some of the stories, you know…
• 20:17
  Tad Eggleston: Let's see as…
• 20:18
  mike: There's Circle of Life stuff going on, but…
• 20:22
  mike: you know, they're still pretty… I mean, it's nature, so I think.
• 20:25
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 20:26
  mike: even… Even kids in middle grade.
• 20:29
  mike: Especially the fox. The fox is very… Family friendly.
• 20:36
  mike: The other ones might be, you know, there might be a little, like a, you know, tiger taking down a gazelle, but, you know, that's nature.
• 20:46
  Tad Eggleston: That's what my, my kids used to tell me when we were watching, like, Godzilla.
• 20:52
  mike: Yeah.
• 20:54
  Tad Eggleston: Have you ever, you ever watch the Matthew Broderick Godzilla from, like, the mid-90s?
• 21:02
  mike: Oops.
• 21:03
  Tad Eggleston: Y-you know that scene where all the baby Godzillas are…
• 21:08
  Tad Eggleston: hatching in Madison Square Garden, and they're like, Machine-gunning them.
• 21:14
  mike: Yeah.
• 21:14
  Tad Eggleston: My kids were yelling at the screen.
• 21:17
  mike: Yeah.
• 21:18
  Tad Eggleston: Don't kill…
• 21:19
  mike: is…
• 21:19
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, no, that's not even what they were saying. They were saying, you don't kill Godzilla, Godzilla eats you.
• 21:30
  Tad Eggleston: And I'm like, wait a minute, you want Godzilla to eat the people? And they just turned to me, and like, deadpan, it's the circle of life, Dad. Yeah. And I'm like…
• 21:44
  Tad Eggleston: Cool, but…
• 21:45
  mike: Yeah.
• 21:47
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, seriously, like, my 4-year-old is screaming at the screen, you don't kill Godzilla!
• 21:58
  Tad Eggleston: Which would be understandable, but then, Godzilla eats you.
• 22:04
  mike: Right.
• 22:06
  mike: I mean, they're also rooted.
• 22:08
  Tad Eggleston: the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. So, I mean…
• 22:12
  mike: Yeah, well, then these books will probably just fall right in their wheelhouse.
• 22:17
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, they're growing up now, so with my son, I mean, that son has a son that age now, so…
• 22:27
  Tad Eggleston: And a daughter just a little younger, so it would be interesting to see if.
• 22:31
  mike: Yeah.
• 22:32
  Tad Eggleston: If his kids put him through that.
• 22:36
  Tad Eggleston: Talk to me about how you pick… Books to,
• 22:42
  Tad Eggleston: Publish, and do you kickstart everything first, or do you have a.
• 22:45
  mike: decision-making.
• 22:46
  Tad Eggleston: Process on that as well.
• 22:48
  mike: Yeah, we've done… I mean, we have done a lot of Kickstarters. I think we've done, like, 50 in the last 10 years. So, I mean, it's… it's… especially after the pandemic, it really became part of our…
• 22:59
  mike: business model. It's just, you know… we love retailers, but, I mean, there was, like, a period of…
• 23:06
  mike: Over 2 years where retail just… was not…
• 23:12
  mike: where people were ordering. They were… they could just go online, they go to Hexer, you know, and…
• 23:19
  mike: But yeah, I've been… since I started… publishing I guess, what?
• 23:27
  mike: 12 years ago, 14 years ago?
• 23:30
  Tad Eggleston: Wow.
• 23:30
  mike: I started going to this… there's a festival in France, in Anguillain.
• 23:38
  Tad Eggleston: The one that got canceled this year.
• 23:40
  mike: Yeah, exactly. I'm still… still got me…
• 23:43
  Tad Eggleston: We've been following it.
• 23:44
  mike: Yeah.
• 23:45
  Tad Eggleston: following it.
• 23:45
  mike: Yeah, and I just… I… the first time I went there, my eyes were just opened up to it, just.
• 23:51
  Tad Eggleston: All of us. I'm, lucky enough to call… call a, what's the audience prize winner?
• 24:03
  Tad Eggleston: One of my friends.
• 24:06
  Tad Eggleston: Cuz, cuz, I hate it when…
• 24:12
  Tad Eggleston: When Leone Bischoff won the audience prize for Anna Sinn, and then…
• 24:19
  Tad Eggleston: The following year won the Youth Prize for the Great Turkey March.
• 24:25
  mike: Yeah.
• 24:25
  Tad Eggleston: So, yeah. I know Angelem. I haven't been there yet, but I want to.
• 24:29
  mike: You know, it's a fun show, and hopefully they'll get it back together in 2020.
• 24:32
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it sounds like it'll be back next year. Sounds like the town is planning some interesting stuff for this year, and it sounds like it'll be back next year.
• 24:41
  mike: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've been going… so it's been about 12 years, and every year, that's just my shopping trip. I'll just look for cool books, and you know, I…
• 24:52
  mike: and kind of the… I am the filter, like, the… whatever, the curator of, like, if I like it, then that's something we'll publish. Haven't really figured out, like, you know, is there a criteria checklist? It's just…
• 25:07
  mike: If it catches my eye, and the story.
• 25:09
  Tad Eggleston: Catches your eye.
• 25:10
  mike: Yeah, I mean, I like books with a unique art style. I mean, I think most of our artwork, there really isn't…
• 25:19
  Tad Eggleston: kind of a North American equivalent to a lot of that.
• 25:23
  mike: And they're, you know, they'll draw these things by hand, watercolors and colored pencils, and…
• 25:31
  mike: Mary, it's nice to see actual artwork.
• 25:36
  mike: You know, that you can actually hold in your hands, not just digital, so… But yeah, I mean…
• 25:42
  mike: I will admit, it'll probably be visual first, but, you know, the story's also gotta stick with you.
• 25:49
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 25:50
  mike: Yeah.
• 25:52
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, God.
• 25:53
  Tad Eggleston: See, this… the problem with the people who do visual first is sometimes when I'm talking to them, I fall down the visual rabbit holes.
• 26:02
  mike: Well, that's… that's a good first filter. It's like, what I'm…
• 26:05
  mike: Honestly, when I'm in France, and I'm just…
• 26:07
  mike: strolling through a bookstore, you know, I'm looking at pictures first. You know, I don't even know what the story is, but wow, that's a cool-looking cover.
• 26:16
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 26:17
  Tad Eggleston: Right. I mean, that's the way it has to be if it's not something… easily read.
• 26:24
  mike: Damn.
• 26:25
  Tad Eggleston: I gotta ask you about, and then we talked a little bit off-air about it, and it's currently sold out, so… so, like, unfortunately, people can only… can they still get it digitally on Amazon? I used to get it… I have… I have my digital copies as well. Mr. Invincible.
• 26:44
  mike: Yeah, so… Tell me, tell me how…
• 26:46
  Tad Eggleston: Wow, this one…
• 26:48
  mike: So I do think it might still be available digitally on Kindle, but…
• 26:53
  mike: yeah, we may be sold out physically.
• 26:56
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, physically, at least Local Hero is sold out. I haven't gotten to the other one yet.
• 27:04
  mike: And, you know, we had… we had books in stock, but then they all just got…
• 27:09
  mike: Lost in this diamond fiasco, so…
• 27:13
  mike: It's like, I don't think we'll ever get those. They might have…
• 27:17
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 27:17
  mike: Copies that we'll never see again, so…
• 27:20
  Tad Eggleston: But yeah, so as far as we're concerned, it's…
• 27:23
  mike: Sold out.
• 27:26
  Tad Eggleston: the Diamond Fiat, I mean, the thing that frustrates me most about
• 27:32
  Tad Eggleston: U.S. bankruptcy law, and, like, we won't get deep into it, but the fact that Diamond owed money to the banks that had loaned them money late.
• 27:43
  Tad Eggleston: superseded The consignment books that they had.
• 27:49
  mike: We know that they owed money to.
• 27:50
  Tad Eggleston: And it's like, it's like, wait a minute, wait a minute.
• 27:54
  Tad Eggleston: The money they owe to banks that probably shouldn't have lent them money.
• 28:01
  Tad Eggleston: Comes before the money they owe?
• 28:04
  mike: Yeah. To people's stock that they have in their warehouse, which they don't even have to give.
• 28:12
  Tad Eggleston: Beth luck!
• 28:13
  mike: I mean, it's… I bet.
• 28:15
  Tad Eggleston: Something really wrong with a law that allows that.
• 28:19
  mike: Yeah, I don't… I don't even know how it works. I mean, it is…
• 28:23
  mike: it's… it's kind of theft. I mean, honestly.
• 28:26
  Tad Eggleston: It's not kind of theft, it is theft.
• 28:29
  Tad Eggleston: otherwise theft.
• 28:30
  mike: Yeah, they have… Diamond has, you know, 60-70% of our inventory that we're never gonna see again. So, yeah, right now, we're, like, looking at what do we have on hand.
• 28:41
  mike: What do we need to reprint? So, you know, all these titles. Like, Mr. Invincible, rather than just reprinting it, we did get
• 28:50
  mike: Like, 48 new pages from the artist, so we are going to be publishing.
• 28:54
  Tad Eggleston: a new edition.
• 28:55
  mike: new edition, yeah, Mr. Invincible Redux or something, but…
• 28:59
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 29:00
  mike: Yeah, it'll be nice, and we'll publish it in hardcover this time around, because it'll be a little bit thicker, but it's the same stuff. I mean, you know…
• 29:08
  Tad Eggleston: That'll make me re-buy it, so, I mean, that works out.
• 29:12
  mike: Yeah, I mean, it's…
• 29:14
  mike: It's so clever, and I kept… I was waiting for, you know, even more material, so we could just do a Volume 2.
• 29:24
  mike: But the creator just had to admit, it's like, I'm not sure where else to go with this, because, you know, he explores everything from, you know, depth of field to, you know, panel borders, to the edge of the page, to, you know.
• 29:39
  Tad Eggleston: To, to the back of the page?
• 29:41
  mike: Yeah, yeah, he'll have…
• 29:43
  Tad Eggleston: punching through to the… Right, right. It's like color and… Right. You know, I mean, I… I… I love the medium, but… but starting with that book,
• 29:58
  Tad Eggleston: And I don't know, have you ever met Karen Green?
• 30:01
  mike: Yes.
• 30:02
  Tad Eggleston: Karen Green is the one that recommended that book to me.
• 30:05
  mike: Oh, nice.
• 30:06
  Tad Eggleston: She was on the show. Yeah. And, like, I am so eternally indebted to her, because both talking to her, but then, like, some of her specific recommendations, that one at the top of it.
• 30:20
  mike: Made me, who… who…
• 30:23
  Tad Eggleston: have loved comics and been around comics for so long that I started a comics podcast in my 40s.
• 30:31
  Tad Eggleston: start looking at comics differently again.
• 30:35
  mike: Yeah, that's the cool thing, is it makes you… I mean, you're so used to the medium, but suddenly you're like.
• 30:41
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 30:41
  mike: Let's… let's kind of step the camera back a little bit, and, like, look at it as…
• 30:48
  mike: You know, like, why are these limitations there?
• 30:51
  mike: So…
• 30:51
  Tad Eggleston: Well, or, or what things can you do…
• 30:56
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, have you been reading Dennis Camp's work lately?
• 31:01
  Tad Eggleston: Particularly with, assorted crisis events at Image and Absolute Martian Manhunter at DC.
• 31:12
  mike: Yeah.
• 31:12
  Tad Eggleston: Like, every issue… he's… Pushing the boundaries of the form.
• 31:19
  mike: And telling great stories.
• 31:22
  Tad Eggleston: But, like…
• 31:23
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, there was an issue of Martian Manhunter, where to properly read the story, you had to, like, hold up the last page to the light.
• 31:33
  mike: Yeah.
• 31:34
  Tad Eggleston: To get the bleed from the other side?
• 31:37
  mike: Yeah.
• 31:38
  Tad Eggleston: He's done things with, like, different…
• 31:44
  Tad Eggleston: You know, not… I mean, sometimes completely new things, but really, like.
• 31:51
  Tad Eggleston: An encyclopedic knowledge of all cool things that have ever been done in comics.
• 31:56
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. And finding a way to weave them into these universes and do them again.
• 32:01
  mike: Well, and getting DC to agree to, you know, because a lot of those things you have to, you know, print specially, you know, you have to get things.
• 32:09
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, so far, everything he's done has not required special printing.
• 32:16
  mike: But instead, you want to make sure that the printer understands that this is.
• 32:19
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Oh, well, yes, absolutely.
• 32:24
  mike: Yeah, there were things with Mr. Invincible with, I mean, there was that section, the gatefold page, where the story changes depending on if it's open or not. I mean…
• 32:35
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 32:35
  mike: Just getting that through with the printer so that they understand how, you know, they're not just.
• 32:41
  Tad Eggleston: I, I…
• 32:43
  mike: printing files, they're actually… they understand the.
• 32:46
  Tad Eggleston: They have to understand, yeah, no, I, that actually…
• 32:50
  Tad Eggleston: just thinking about crazy things that people have done. Yeah. How well do you know Raw Magazine?
• 32:57
  mike: Oh, look…
• 32:59
  Tad Eggleston: Francois Moulet and Art Spiegelman in, like, the 80s. There was an issue of that.
• 33:06
  Tad Eggleston: They were at Cartoon Crossroads, not this past year, but the last year.
• 33:13
  Tad Eggleston: And Francois told the story of, like, the party they had to do this for the whole thing, because there was an issue of that.
• 33:24
  Tad Eggleston: where… They printed it in such a way that…
• 33:31
  Tad Eggleston: Like, the second page showed that it was something that was done on purpose, but that they tore… literally tore off the corner of the cover of every issue, and then taped that piece inside.
• 33:50
  mike: Like, manually, like, at the.
• 33:52
  Tad Eggleston: Yes.
• 33:52
  mike: Actually, physically be…
• 33:54
  Tad Eggleston: After they got it.
• 33:58
  mike: Oh, so that was the event, that was their recovering party.
• 34:02
  Tad Eggleston: Right, it was, it was every… you know, they physically were tearing off the top right corner of every one of them, and then taping it inside the books.
• 34:12
  mike: Wow.
• 34:13
  mike: That's fair.
• 34:14
  Tad Eggleston: You know, they're major collector items at this point, though I did run into somebody that I knew that, like.
• 34:23
  Tad Eggleston: Got it in a…
• 34:25
  Tad Eggleston: dollar bin, and… and… no, no, no, no, it gets better. He found it in the dollar bin.
• 34:32
  Tad Eggleston: And he didn't know exactly what it was, he just knew it was raw, and knew enough about raw. But he got it up to the counter, and the guy noticed that the corner was…
• 34:41
  Tad Eggleston: torn off.
• 34:44
  mike: give me discounts?
• 34:45
  Tad Eggleston: David's one for 50 cents!
• 34:47
  mike: Oh my god.
• 34:48
  Tad Eggleston: This was, like, this was, like, 20 years after it had happened, so, like, if he'd known what he had, it was, like, a $400 book.
• 34:57
  mike: Right.
• 35:01
  mike: Does he still have it, or did he sell it?
• 35:03
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, no, he totally has it.
• 35:05
  mike: Yeah.
• 35:06
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like… he's like, if… I never would have paid $400 for this, but getting it at 50 cents.
• 35:13
  mike: For 50 cents.
• 35:14
  Tad Eggleston: giving it up. Yeah. I would have paid $50 for it, and I'm never giving it up.
• 35:21
  mike: Yeah.
• 35:24
  Tad Eggleston: It might have even been at, like, a Goodwill, I don't even remember. It was, like, some crazy thing where, like…
• 35:30
  mike: Brown apple vendors.
• 35:32
  Tad Eggleston: Found it! Do it, you know, the… for those of you listening at home, I'm doing the comic flipping through long boxes motion.
• 35:44
  mike: Yeah, it used to be record bins, but now…
• 35:47
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah. I do that, too. I do that, too.
• 35:50
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 35:52
  Tad Eggleston: This is a good point, place, to ask you. Tell me your comics biography. And I'm gonna make a big distinction. Biography, I mean, like, take me from…
• 36:05
  Tad Eggleston: Like, the early comics that you remember reading or buying.
• 36:10
  Tad Eggleston: Up until at least, you know, starting your own press, and possibly the present day. How did you become the guy that makes these cool.
• 36:20
  Tad Eggleston: very… I mean, because we haven't mentioned it, like, not only do you come up with cool stuff, most of it from overseas, though I'm right now looking at the Tezacomi, which I have over on my shelf here, so every once in a while, I also have the… is it Black Box Anthology?
• 36:40
  Tad Eggleston: So you put together really cool anthologies sometimes, too.
• 36:44
  Tad Eggleston: But beyond that, they… I mean…
• 36:50
  Tad Eggleston: The one thing that every magnetic book.
• 36:54
  Tad Eggleston: Has in common is… your… production quality.
• 37:01
  Tad Eggleston: is second to none. These are… Good-looking, sturdy, well-made books.
• 37:09
  mike: The book you want to keep, it's not just… Yeah.
• 37:12
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 37:12
  mike: Yeah.
• 37:14
  Tad Eggleston: It's, it's, it's, it's… Well, but also easy to read. You know, sometimes the well-made books, like…
• 37:23
  mike: You don't want to open them, they'd almost.
• 37:25
  Tad Eggleston: Well, or they're not even really designed to be opened very well, you know? They're not good at… they get worn out easily. I mean, there's a number of well-made books, they're well-made everywhere, except the spine isn't that…
• 37:38
  mike: Yeah.
• 37:41
  Tad Eggleston: what's the word I'm looking for? .
• 37:43
  mike: It's like…
• 37:44
  Tad Eggleston: Durable.
• 37:44
  mike: Yeah.
• 37:45
  Tad Eggleston: Right. It's too loose, or it's glued tight, so as soon as you actually open it, it breaks the…
• 37:52
  mike: Yeah, I remember, I remember, I think it was one of Legend Comics' first books, it was by Frank Miller, and…
• 38:01
  mike: I was so excited, because it was new Frank Miller material, and.
• 38:05
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, the reason Legendary Comics got to print that is because it's the one where he'd fallen off the deep end, and…
• 38:13
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. And DC said, no, no, no, we… we don't want an Islamophobic Batman.
• 38:20
  mike: Yeah.
• 38:21
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. She's like, well, I…
• 38:23
  mike: I won't call him Batman, but he'll still be beating up terrorists.
• 38:27
  Tad Eggleston: Yes. Yes. Yeah, and it was just…
• 38:30
  mike: I mean… I don't know what Legendary had promised him, but it was just… It was just the…
• 38:36
  mike: Poorest quality, the thinnest paper.
• 38:38
  Tad Eggleston: No, I think more than anything, nobody else is willing to publish it.
• 38:43
  Tad Eggleston: But it did well enough for them that they've become a slightly better comic publisher now. They still have…
• 38:50
  Tad Eggleston: Kind of a weird selection of books sometimes.
• 38:53
  mike: Yeah, that was a while ago. They've had time to grow.
• 38:56
  Tad Eggleston: Yes.
• 38:56
  mike: Time to raise money.
• 38:58
  Tad Eggleston: Aren't they tied to the film company, too?
• 39:03
  mike: Yeah.
• 39:03
  mike: Yeah, I think that's how they get, like, Pacific Rim and some of those franchises.
• 39:09
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 39:11
  Tad Eggleston: So… but back to your biography. Tell me about how you got
• 39:15
  Tad Eggleston: got into this, got to where you are. Again, I like to start… I like to start early. If you remember the first comic that you read and loved, we'll start there.
• 39:25
  mike: You know, my first memory of getting
• 39:28
  mike: into comics was… I wasn't into them much at all. You know, maybe I read, like, a, you know, Richie Rich or something as a kid, but…
• 39:37
  mike: One of my dad's friend's sons was going to college.
• 39:42
  mike: He's like, do you want these comic books? And he brought out, literally, a black plastic bag, stuffed
• 39:51
  mike: with comics.
• 39:53
  mike: And it was, like, the best
• 39:55
  mike: Halloween ever. I just… I spent so many hours just sorting through it, and what is this? Sergeant Rock, oh, what is this?
• 40:05
  mike: my whole world changed just because I was just like, wow, just this…
• 40:09
  Tad Eggleston: How cold were you?
• 40:12
  mike: I don't… you know, I don't even remember what all was in there, but I mean, it was…
• 40:16
  Tad Eggleston: I said, how old were you?
• 40:18
  mike: Oh, I was… 6, 7, maybe?
• 40:21
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, perfect age to be given a bag of comics.
• 40:24
  mike: Yeah, and so, I mean, at that point, I just, you know.
• 40:28
  Tad Eggleston: I would read, well, mostly those comics. It would take… it took me, like… Oh, yeah. …to read all those, but then by the time I was actually, like, spending my own allowance.
• 40:36
  mike: That was about the time of, like.
• 40:39
  mike: you know, Atari Force, and like, you know, the original G.I. Joe by Larry Hama.
• 40:45
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 40:45
  mike: It's like, those are the ones that I was pulling off a shelf and, like, buying myself.
• 40:50
  Tad Eggleston: Right?
• 40:51
  mike: But yeah, comics just always… as a medium, it just always interests me. I, you know, in high school, I would draw pictures on my notebooks and stuff, and make my own comics. They were terrible, but…
• 41:02
  mike: When I got a chance to write something, I knew the guys at Dark Horse fairly well.
• 41:08
  mike: You know, my… I started attending San Diego Comic-Con And, like, 1991?
• 41:16
  mike: No. No, it was before that, it was… 89?
• 41:20
  mike: So, it was still a tiny show where, you know.
• 41:23
  Tad Eggleston: Well, back when it was very much… She's still a comic show.
• 41:28
  mike: Yeah, and it was at the old convention center, and, like, the attendance was maybe 13,000.
• 41:34
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 41:35
  mike: you know…
• 41:36
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, the only San Diego I've been to was 98, but…
• 41:41
  Tad Eggleston: But Kevin Smith was the big name there in 98. It was, like, one of the last years where it was…
• 41:48
  Tad Eggleston: comics.
• 41:50
  mike: Great.
• 41:50
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, rather than pop culture.
• 41:53
  mike: Yeah.
• 41:53
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 41:54
  mike: Yeah, it was great. I mean, back then, you know, I'm…
• 41:58
  mike: you could just hang out with, you know, Matt Grading, and Chris Warner and all these, you know… like, Dark Horse had just… I think they had their fifth anniversary that first year?
• 42:10
  mike: And I just found myself hanging out with them, you know, during the show, and after the show, and…
• 42:17
  mike: Pretty soon, Chris Warner asked if I wanted to write some ghost with him, so that was my introduction to comics, and…
• 42:25
  mike: I just… I wrote a whole bunch of stuff for Dark Horse, some Star Wars, Alien Predator, Aeon Flux…
• 42:32
  Tad Eggleston: No, I… I… I… this is where I have to apologize for not having done proper homework. I am just realizing that now, that, that you have… you have a history in writing comics before publishing comics.
• 42:48
  mike: Yeah, it was… I… I was… my full-time day job was, in the video game industry, so I was writing comics on the side, so everybody I knew in comics were jealous of the video game work, and everybody I knew in the video game industry were jealous of comic work, so it's like I had the best of both worlds for a while there.
• 43:07
  Tad Eggleston: Hey, you're my second, video game comic guy recently, because, laszlo…
• 43:16
  Tad Eggleston: was on with David Lapham and Shelley Bond to talk about American Caper recently. And, you know, before getting into comics, he did, like.
• 43:27
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know if you've heard about it, Grand Theft Auto, and…
• 43:30
  mike: And bread?
• 43:31
  Tad Eggleston: Dead Revenge, Jim.
• 43:32
  mike: Yeah.
• 43:33
  mike: Some people have played them, I…
• 43:36
  Tad Eggleston: I had to be introduced… no.
• 43:39
  mike: I am still a shameless gamer. I still play way too many games.
• 43:44
  Tad Eggleston: I really only play baseball.
• 43:46
  mike: I have, I have no Twitch capabilities.
• 43:49
  mike: Oh, hi.
• 43:50
  Tad Eggleston: I'm just so bad at the… and with baseball, because there's a limited number of different motions you can do, and I know the game so backwards and forwards.
• 44:02
  Tad Eggleston: I can generally… Relatively quickly get good at… The limited number
• 44:10
  Tad Eggleston: of specific motions that I need to make, as long as I keep myself on the easy level.
• 44:16
  mike: Let's say you're talking about video game baseball.
• 44:18
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 44:19
  mike: Not visible.
• 44:20
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 44:21
  mike: Running around them.
• 44:22
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I like that, too. I don't do it as much as I did when I was in my…
• 44:25
  mike: teens and 20s. I have grandkids now. Yeah.
• 44:30
  Tad Eggleston: But… but… But there is, like… one of the reasons that, like, I'm not good at…
• 44:37
  Tad Eggleston: not nearly as good at, like, other sports video games as I don't know the games. I don't know what I'm…
• 44:43
  Tad Eggleston: supposed to be trying to do, so I have to learn all of it at once. Baseball, I know what I want the players to do. I just have to learn how to make them do it.
• 44:55
  mike: Right.
• 44:56
  mike: Yeah.
• 44:57
  mike: Yeah.
• 44:58
  Tad Eggleston: I know.
• 45:00
  mike: I don't know, I just need… I need that escape, you know, after.
• 45:03
  Tad Eggleston: Oh!
• 45:03
  mike: I know lots of huge gamers. You know, all the business of the, you know, the making sausage…
• 45:12
  mike: That is cute.
• 45:14
  Tad Eggleston: You had Archie marry Betty?
• 45:19
  mike: I'm looking at Archie MarysBetty26.
• 45:24
  mike: No, that wasn't me.
• 45:26
  Tad Eggleston: Wasn't you?
• 45:27
  mike: Nope.
• 45:28
  Tad Eggleston: NK.
• 45:29
  Tad Eggleston: Supposedly, League of Comic Geeks has something wrong, because I had…
• 45:35
  Tad Eggleston: And of course, it's not opening the actual page.
• 45:38
  mike: Hmm, yeah.
• 45:40
  Tad Eggleston: I have it, just supposedly just showing me your work.
• 45:46
  mike: What'd you say?
• 45:47
  Tad Eggleston: League of Comic Geeks, which means that it is, it is, you know…
• 45:52
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it calls you the artist. Is there a Mike Kennedy that's an artist? Because you said that you don't draw very well. It does have your picture there.
• 46:03
  mike: Is it, really?
• 46:04
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 46:05
  mike: Oh.
• 46:06
  Tad Eggleston: Mike and Pat Kennedy, with Paul Kupperberg.
• 46:12
  mike: No, I… somebody must have…
• 46:16
  Tad Eggleston: So, somebody must have… there must be a Mike Kennedy that… Isn't you.
• 46:23
  mike: Yeah, that's… well, I mean, that's me, but I'm not an artist.
• 46:28
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 46:29
  mike: So, yeah, somebody got…
• 46:30
  Tad Eggleston: No, I mean, I love League of Comic Geeks, and… and…
• 46:33
  mike: Yeah, these are all… these are all right. Yeah.
• 46:36
  Tad Eggleston: It is… it is right way more often than it's not, but it's also…
• 46:42
  Tad Eggleston: kind of like Wikipedia, where it's…
• 46:45
  mike: Yeah, anybody can update the database.
• 46:47
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, like Wikipedia, there's also people to approve your updates and whatnot, but initial data is user inputted and then…
• 46:58
  Tad Eggleston: goes through a process of… so, like, if nobody had said no.
• 47:03
  Tad Eggleston: And they couldn't find an actual issue, they would put it up.
• 47:07
  mike: Yeah, mostly, like, except for that Betty.
• 47:10
  mike: Except for that penny. Well, like I said, everything else seems… everything else looks accurate. Well, let's, you know, I'll… sometimes I'll check Amazon just to see what…
• 47:20
  mike: You know, what credits they have.
• 47:21
  Tad Eggleston: Let's…
• 47:22
  mike: Take you…
• 47:22
  Tad Eggleston: Or actually, let's just look at what it says you're the artist and penciler on.
• 47:27
  mike: Yeah. Just for…
• 47:28
  Tad Eggleston: Just for giggles.
• 47:31
  mike: Yep, I didn't draw.
• 47:32
  mike: I knew those.
• 47:36
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, it just says you're the artist on Betty.
• 47:39
  mike: Perfect.
• 47:40
  Tad Eggleston: Spencer, I bet he. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 47:44
  mike: Nope.
• 47:46
  Tad Eggleston: Artists, artists, yeah, so it's just… so the two items here that you weren't involved in…
• 47:51
  mike: Yeah.
• 47:52
  Tad Eggleston: are the Archie comics… and it caught my eye, because Archie just signed a deal with Oni, where they're gonna be doing… and that looks amazing.
• 48:02
  mike: It does, it's really… well, I mean… I don't know if…
• 48:07
  Tad Eggleston: And now… now I have to do all sorts of…
• 48:10
  mike: more… I was already needing to catch up on my Archie knowledge. It's one of those big black holes in my comic knowledge, and now I feel like I've got a clock on when I need to get caught up on my Archie knowledge. Yeah, I know that they've got a lot of plans. So, Magnetic and Oni are both owned by the same parent company.
• 48:29
  mike: Okay. So, last year, we started talking about how we can work closer together and share resources, so…
• 48:38
  mike: I'm sure there's probably going to be some kind of press release or announcement, but the 2026 Magnetic and Oni will really be a lot closer
• 48:48
  mike: related? Integrated? I mean, not like a…
• 48:51
  mike: You know, it's not like a merger or imprint thing, but… .
• 48:57
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, we're working a lot closer with only these days.
• 49:01
  Tad Eggleston: No, Oni has,
• 49:04
  Tad Eggleston: Oni was one of those companies that, like, almost died, and seems to have very much…
• 49:10
  Tad Eggleston: Reason from the ashes, stronger and more interesting.
• 49:14
  mike: Yeah, the last 2-3 years, when they… Hunter, when they hired Hunter Gornson as the,
• 49:19
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 49:20
  mike: publisher, he turned that thing around, I mean, between EC and Cult of the Lamb, and…
• 49:27
  Tad Eggleston: Sierra Hahn's doing the editing of both the EC line and was just announced for the Archie stuff, so yeah.
• 49:34
  mike: Yeah.
• 49:35
  Tad Eggleston: No, that's been.
• 49:36
  mike: A lot of stuff together.
• 49:38
  Tad Eggleston: It's been, been exciting. I, I like any time where, where, we're good comic stuff.
• 49:45
  mike: Both continues and or gets better.
• 49:48
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 49:49
  Tad Eggleston: Particularly when, like magnetic press, I remember to bring it back to the topic from time to time.
• 49:58
  Tad Eggleston: Particularly when, like Magnetic, they're doing different things.
• 50:03
  Tad Eggleston: Thing, you know, one of… One of the things that…
• 50:11
  Tad Eggleston: when we started this podcast to begin with, was… was… was one of our goals, was we have too many friends that…
• 50:20
  Tad Eggleston: or, you know, because both Tyler and I are teachers, too many students, they find out we're into comics, and they ask us about the most recent Spider-Man movie. Yeah. It's like, okay, two problems here. First, I said comics, not movies. Second…
• 50:39
  Tad Eggleston: Yes, Spider-Man is a comic, but comics are so much wider.
• 50:45
  mike: Yeah. There's… it's like 1 in, you know, 100,000. Yeah.
• 50:50
  Tad Eggleston: Right. But then I also… my wife's an art teacher, and she'll do the,
• 50:58
  Tad Eggleston: She does, like, various questions of the day. Oh, you did the Topi, too?
• 51:03
  mike: Yeah.
• 51:05
  Tad Eggleston: You really have done all of the… well, not all of the cool stuff. I've got… I've got Eric Reynolds coming on later in the month. If I say you do all of the cool stuff, then talk to the Phanographics guy and say he does all of the cool stuff, people will know that I think everything is cool, which is true!
• 51:24
  mike: They do a lot of good stuff, Phantographics. There are a couple titles that, you know, we…
• 51:30
  mike: Pursued that, you know, we lost out to them, but, you know, that's cool.
• 51:34
  Tad Eggleston: I…
• 51:35
  mike: Anytime, just getting the book out.
• 51:38
  Tad Eggleston: out. English is… that's the goal.
• 51:40
  mike: It's like, you can't win them all, but, you know, we're all in this together, so…
• 51:45
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 51:46
  Tad Eggleston: But, oh, I had a question, and then I got distracted by Topi… Topi.
• 51:54
  Tad Eggleston: Oh! I didn't have a question, I was finishing a story. My wife was telling me one day that…
• 52:00
  Tad Eggleston: She'd asked her students what their favorite comic was, and, like, 90% of the class said, we don't read comics, that's his stuff, blah blah blah.
• 52:09
  Tad Eggleston: And then the next day, she asked them what their favorite book was, and more than half the class listed a Raina Telgemeyer book as their favorite book.
• 52:21
  mike: Well, that's…
• 52:21
  Tad Eggleston: She's…
• 52:22
  mike: That's a classical.
• 52:23
  Tad Eggleston: No, they didn't even say that! She's like, you know that these are comics, right? And they're like…
• 52:28
  Tad Eggleston: What? Yeah, words and pictures. We just thought they were books.
• 52:33
  mike: Sequential?
• 52:34
  Tad Eggleston: They didn't even think of them as graphic novels, they just thought of them as books!
• 52:39
  mike: Yeah, I guess maybe to them, comic books means capes and tights.
• 52:44
  Tad Eggleston: Right. That, that is how much… Capes and tights have become…
• 52:51
  mike: Oh.
• 52:52
  Tad Eggleston: in the American psyche.
• 52:55
  mike: Yeah.
• 52:56
  Tad Eggleston: the meaning of comics, and that just drives me up the wall, particularly because almost everybody you talk to
• 53:02
  Tad Eggleston: That doesn't think they like comics, Loves Charlie Brown.
• 53:08
  Tad Eggleston: or loves Calvin and Hobbes, or Farside, or Doonesbury, or… you know, it's like, you know, those are comics too, right? Yeah.
• 53:20
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I like comic strips. Well, I mean, they're all kind of strips.
• 53:25
  mike: Right, it just strips on top of each other on a single bite.
• 53:30
  Tad Eggleston: For that matter, as I learn about, like, as I get deeper into the history of comics, I laugh at how much things come around again, because it's like.
• 53:41
  Tad Eggleston: Some of the stuff that gets…
• 53:44
  Tad Eggleston: Listed as… as… er, not listed, talked about as, like.
• 53:50
  Tad Eggleston: innovative and boundary-pushing as it pops up today, and just in terms of, like, style and page layouts and whatever, you go back and you look at, like, newspaper comics when they were all full page, rather than…
• 54:05
  Tad Eggleston: two lines? It's like, dude, Windsor McKay and Roy Crane were doing that 75 years ago.
• 54:13
  mike: Yeah, seriously.
• 54:14
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, how much of Frank Miller was Will Eisner?
• 54:19
  mike: Yeah.
• 54:19
  Tad Eggleston: And I don't want to take much away from Miller.
• 54:21
  mike: And Jim Starenko, and yeah.
• 54:23
  Tad Eggleston: Right. But, like, how many of the things that got…
• 54:28
  Tad Eggleston: that got… that people loved about Daredevil, or about Miller when he got to Batman.
• 54:36
  Tad Eggleston: were things that Eisner had done with the spirit.
• 54:38
  mike: Yeah.
• 54:40
  Tad Eggleston: You know? It's just… It's weird to me how… comics always…
• 54:49
  Tad Eggleston: in the United States is this second-class art form.
• 54:54
  Tad Eggleston: And it's one of the reasons I love that more… like you.
• 55:00
  Tad Eggleston: more European comics are making it here.
• 55:03
  Tad Eggleston: Because… In France, it's the 9th Arch.
• 55:09
  mike: Yeah.
• 55:10
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know what they call it in Italy, but they… but they also clearly… Italy, Belgium, Spain, pretty much everywhere in the world except the United States, it's…
• 55:21
  mike: Yeah, I mean, it's movies…
• 55:22
  Tad Eggleston: Literature, comics, all mediums, all worthwhile.
• 55:25
  mike: and all ages, and every genre, and topic that you can imagine. It's like, I'm so…
• 55:32
  mike: I am very jealous of the European Ben Dezine comic market, just because… Yeah.
• 55:39
  mike: Everybody buys them, nobody judges them, nobody, you know, they're not just for kids, and it's, you know… like, if we sell 3,000 to 5,000 copies of a book, that's pretty good for us. Over there, you know, they average 10 to 15, 30, you know, 6,000 copies of, you know, hardcovers.
• 55:58
  mike: Right.
• 55:59
  Tad Eggleston: Well, how about, japan, where everything comes out in digest form initially.
• 56:07
  mike: Yeah!
• 56:07
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I was talking to Paul Pope, because he did work with Cadansha early in his career. He was part of a pilot program that they tried.
• 56:17
  Tad Eggleston: And he was talking to me about how…
• 56:20
  Tad Eggleston: Because I'm like, how do they figure out what's popular, given… it's like, oh, they treat it the way we treat movies. They have focus groups, they have surveys, they have a whole team that goes out to find out what people read. They'll give people 5 bucks at the mall to come sit down and say what…
• 56:40
  mike: The Tezukomi Anthology, I mean, that was actually produced by Tezuku Productions in Japan.
• 56:47
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 56:48
  mike: all of that material was originally published in Japanese, even though it's French artists.
• 56:54
  mike: But they…
• 56:56
  Tad Eggleston: American? Weren't there some American?
• 56:58
  mike: There's a.
• 56:59
  Tad Eggleston: I thought Oming did one in that.
• 57:01
  Tad Eggleston: You've had my own?
• 57:03
  mike: I'll…
• 57:03
  Tad Eggleston: I know you had Oming in… in black… Black Box, but I thought he did one in the…
• 57:09
  mike: No, who's it? Ken… Ken… Can Nishimura?
• 57:15
  Tad Eggleston: Ken Namira lives in.
• 57:17
  mike: He'll be around, yeah.
• 57:19
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I've had him on a couple of times. He and Joe Casey do great work together.
• 57:22
  mike: Yeah, Joe Casey was… I guess he's probably the token American on that anthology, but everybody else is, you know, Spain, Italy.
• 57:31
  Tad Eggleston: That might have been why I jumped on it, was the Joe Casey and… I mean, I… Yeah. Bellin Ortega and Victor Santos? Yeah. I have to go re-read that now.
• 57:42
  mike: Yeah, I mean…
• 57:43
  Tad Eggleston: No, Bellin did writing.
• 57:45
  mike: They usually…
• 57:46
  Tad Eggleston: Favorite artists, too.
• 57:47
  mike: Yeah, actually, well, I… Did she write that? Yeah, I guess she.
• 57:51
  Tad Eggleston: Or maybe Victor… or maybe… I just… I always assume, based on American style, that the writer's coming first, but I know Victor does write, so maybe Bellin did the art and Victor wrote that story.
• 58:07
  mike: I don't remember specifically.
• 58:10
  mike: Oh, the Victor did…
• 58:11
  Tad Eggleston: soon, and then.
• 58:11
  mike: And two other stories where he wrote, and… True.
• 58:16
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, he did at least one, because I see, I see the eyes of Pandora.
• 58:20
  mike: Yeah.
• 58:22
  mike: Yeah, now Bellin might have…
• 58:24
  Tad Eggleston: Juan Diaz Canales?
• 58:26
  mike: Yep.
• 58:27
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, this is a hoo-hoo. And there… yeah, that's right, because one of Joe Kelly's favorite books is Blackjack, so of course he and Ken would do…
• 58:36
  mike: Yep. A blackjack story.
• 58:39
  mike: Yeah.
• 58:41
  Tad Eggleston: They're really cool.
• 58:42
  mike: Bunch of stuff.
• 58:43
  Tad Eggleston: They're… Joe and Ken are really cool.
• 58:48
  Tad Eggleston: Had them on together a couple of times.
• 58:50
  mike: Well, because they did…
• 58:52
  Tad Eggleston: They did… they did, I Killed Giants, and they did…
• 59:00
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, what was the new one called? I hate it. I have too many names in my head.
• 59:06
  mike: I know the feeling.
• 59:08
  Tad Eggleston: Something, Lieutenant, or… No, Joe Kelly can… It was so good.
• 59:24
  Tad Eggleston: Immortal Sergeant.
• 59:25
  mike: Yeah.
• 59:26
  Tad Eggleston: Mortal Sergeant was their more recent one.
• 59:30
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, they, they, they have a cool working… kick.
• 59:35
  Tad Eggleston: Ken does more edits of himself than any comic creator, I know, apparently.
• 59:42
  mike: Tommy does, like… Yeah.
• 59:46
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, because most of them, like, they want to do… once they get to full pages, they want that to be done, and he was… he was showing us, like…
• 59:56
  Tad Eggleston: oh, you know, it was this many pages, and then we went ahead and we decided that this needed to come out, but because this needed to come out, and Joe's like, when he says we decided, it was he decided. I wasn't making him redraw stuff!
• 1:00:12
  mike: Well, you know, he treats like…
• 1:00:14
  Tad Eggleston: This came out, I had to draw this.
• 1:00:16
  mike: Yeah, I mean, everything, I mean…
• 1:00:18
  mike: You know, it all comes across like a storyboard, which is, you know, that's…
• 1:00:24
  mike: If you need to change an angle or something, that's, you know, the best way to do it.
• 1:00:28
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:00:30
  Tad Eggleston: No, they, they do great work together. So, yeah.
• 1:00:34
  Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna have to go re-read that again.
• 1:00:37
  Tad Eggleston: This is the other thing I love. I talk to people and I wind up having to reread everything, but I'm feeling like I'm getting into Chris Farley mode. Remember that book you did? That was awesome.
• 1:00:46
  mike: That was awesome.
• 1:00:51
  Tad Eggleston: The… there was… there was… there was that guy, and that other guy.
• 1:00:56
  mike: Yeah, it was awesome.
• 1:00:57
  Tad Eggleston: It was great.
• 1:01:01
  Tad Eggleston: So… Give us… give us the spiel again for… for…
• 1:01:06
  Tad Eggleston: Freaks squeal, and then I'm gonna ask the closing question.
• 1:01:12
  Tad Eggleston: closing questions. I have to keep reminding myself, I have two now.
• 1:01:15
  mike: Lee.
• 1:01:15
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, Freak School is just, I mean, it's a fun.
• 1:01:20
  mike: It's… it's…
• 1:01:21
  mike: it's a fun, kind of heroic romp through university, but it's also… it's got a lot of depth. I mean, the seven volumes, and there's been, like.
• 1:01:32
  mike: I want to say 4 spin-offs from that, and just, like, there is apparently a role-playing game in French, and I mean, it's… it's a full.
• 1:01:41
  Tad Eggleston: I was… I was about to say, I feel like it's got a role-playing…
• 1:01:45
  mike: Yeah, it's a full…
• 1:01:47
  Tad Eggleston: Feel to it.
• 1:01:47
  mike: Definitely.
• 1:01:49
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and later down here, it does say that there are spin-offs of it, even, so…
• 1:01:56
  mike: Yeah.
• 1:01:56
  Tad Eggleston: There's a whole world beyond the 7 volumes, so…
• 1:02:00
  mike: And we'll probably, I mean…
• 1:02:02
  Tad Eggleston: Hopefully those are…
• 1:02:03
  mike: Chances are good. Chances are, we'll…
• 1:02:05
  Tad Eggleston: I mean…
• 1:02:06
  mike: Follow them.
• 1:02:07
  Tad Eggleston: $102,325 on your $7,500 goal.
• 1:02:13
  mike: Yeah, with 2 weeks left to go, so…
• 1:02:15
  Tad Eggleston: And… and that means that we're, we're, we're up…
• 1:02:20
  Tad Eggleston: I think, like, 100-something since we started.
• 1:02:23
  Tad Eggleston: Since we started recording.
• 1:02:28
  Tad Eggleston: So, okay, my, my, my, I have two, two questions. One has always been a final question, but… but another one that's come to me, is I, as I have started my fifth year on this podcast, and I think of how much…
• 1:02:46
  Tad Eggleston: My life has changed because of it, just in terms of…
• 1:02:51
  Tad Eggleston: The conversations I get to have.
• 1:02:54
  Tad Eggleston: the people I've gotten to know, and or call my friends,
• 1:02:59
  Tad Eggleston: It's just, like, the experiences that if you told
• 1:03:03
  Tad Eggleston: teenage me, or even 30-something me, hey, this is gonna be a part of your life someday, I would have gone, yeah.
• 1:03:13
  Tad Eggleston: Fuck!
• 1:03:15
  mike: Yeah.
• 1:03:15
  Tad Eggleston: Bigs will fly, right?
• 1:03:17
  mike: for you again? Yeah.
• 1:03:18
  Tad Eggleston: Right, right. Are you certain you're talking about me when you say that's gonna be part of life?
• 1:03:26
  Tad Eggleston: But as I talk to creators, I realize that no matter how famous they are, they all have stories that fit into that. Oh my god.
• 1:03:37
  Tad Eggleston: what happened in my life that I get to do this amazing thing, or meet this amazing person, or hang out with this person, or in this place, or whatever, or even sometimes it's just like…
• 1:03:52
  Tad Eggleston: The story that some random person tells them about their book at a signing table, you know?
• 1:04:00
  Tad Eggleston: Give me one of those surreal moments.
• 1:04:02
  Tad Eggleston: Something that if you hadn't fallen into this career, if you hadn't chosen this career.
• 1:04:09
  Tad Eggleston: You can't imagine what have happened in your life.
• 1:04:12
  Tad Eggleston: But it did, and you still sometimes pinch yourself, because.
• 1:04:16
  mike: Yeah, I think, I mean, being a comic fan growing up, you know, and, you know, reading things off the… I worked in a comic shop in high school, and, you know.
• 1:04:28
  mike: big fan of, like, the badger and American flag and all that stuff.
• 1:04:33
  Tad Eggleston: I've had Howard on a couple of times, I love Howard.
• 1:04:37
  mike: Also, this relates to him. So, he was, I mean, he was just my favorite writer, and as I started, you know, writing professionally with some of the stuff for Dark Horse, it's like, you know, I just…
• 1:04:50
  mike: if anybody asks, it's like, well, you know, Pete's probably my first inspiration.
• 1:04:57
  mike: So, one of the last video games that I worked on We were creating the…
• 1:05:03
  mike: The mission structure in, like, 12 chapters?
• 1:05:07
  mike: And so each chapter
• 1:05:10
  mike: I propose that we… let's just book them with, like, comic book pages, kind of motion comic kind of stuff, and each chapter, it's like.
• 1:05:19
  mike: Let's get a different artist.
• 1:05:21
  mike: So… one of the chapters, I reached out to Howard Chaikin.
• 1:05:26
  mike: thinking, oh, no chance in hell, but I have to at least ask.
• 1:05:32
  mike: My wife and I were at dinner, and my cell phone rings, and it's Howard Chaikin calling me, saying that he'll do it. So he actually drew, like, a 10-page chapter
• 1:05:43
  mike: in Bleed Out, and I was just…
• 1:05:47
  mike: That, to me, is still kind of the over-the-moon, Starstruck.
• 1:05:52
  mike: moments.
• 1:05:54
  Tad Eggleston: I'm not a video game guy, but now I want this video game just for.
• 1:06:00
  mike: Yeah, Bleed Out? I think Bleed Out should still be available on Amazon. That wasn't… it was before Magnetic Press, so it wasn't a Magnetic Press book, but I think Bleed Out should still be… we had, like, a chapter by…
• 1:06:14
  mike: illustrated by Glenn Fabry, we had, like, trevor Harrison, Ben Templesmith, Nathan Fox?
• 1:06:25
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, it's on Steam!
• 1:06:27
  mike: Is it?
• 1:06:28
  mike: Oh, the gaming.
• 1:06:29
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:06:31
  mike: It might still be running, I mean, it's…
• 1:06:33
  Tad Eggleston: Minimalist, roguelike… Idle… from Blackline Development? No, that…
• 1:06:40
  Tad Eggleston: Well, it was developed by Voguester, but I don't… but Voguester's not around, so somebody else might have picked it up, and they're still running it on servers, but… Does this keep you alive materials feel your research? Does that sound right?
• 1:06:54
  mike: Yeah, but it was a first-person shooter.
• 1:06:56
  mike: kind of…
• 1:06:57
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, wait, no, probably this one. That was one word, bleed out.
• 1:07:01
  mike: Oh, the game itself was called Crime Craft.
• 1:07:04
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, Crime Craft.
• 1:07:06
  mike: Yeah, and then the mission structure was a… an update that we called Bleed Out.
• 1:07:14
  Tad Eggleston: But, yeah.
• 1:07:16
  mike: So I… I wrote that story, and we got all these artists to draw them, so that was actually how I got…
• 1:07:22
  mike: into publishing was Archaea Entertainment, Chose to publish that as a book?
• 1:07:32
  mike: so…
• 1:07:33
  Tad Eggleston: Oh.
• 1:07:33
  mike: even though we commissioned all this artwork from Fabry and Chaikin, it was to make, motion comics, but they were all drawn in traditional comic book.
• 1:07:44
  mike: Format, so we just published it as a graphic novel.
• 1:07:49
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I'm gonna have to… is that… is that also called Crime Crafter, or is that called…
• 1:07:53
  mike: The graphic novel is bled out.
• 1:07:55
  Tad Eggleston: Bleed out. Gotcha!
• 1:07:57
  mike: And it might… I don't… I mean, it was… so, it was published by Arkea in, I don't know, 2010?
• 1:08:05
  mike: And then Archaic got bought by Boom Studios.
• 1:08:08
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:08:09
  mike: So Boom might have reprinted it, I don't think they have.
• 1:08:14
  mike: I don't think that the style of the license, but it might still be there.
• 1:08:18
  Tad Eggleston: The hardcover is available on Amazon at a reasonable price.
• 1:08:23
  mike: Yeah.
• 1:08:24
  mike: Yeah, it was a fun book, and the Tim Bradstreet cover, I mean…
• 1:08:28
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I'm looking at the camera right now.
• 1:08:30
  mike: Yeah, we got.
• 1:08:30
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, Sanford Green, too?
• 1:08:32
  mike: Yeah, yeah, Sambergreen.
• 1:08:36
  mike: Trying to think, who else did we get?
• 1:08:38
  Tad Eggleston: Jonathan Fox, Zach Howard, Sanford Green.
• 1:08:40
  mike: Is that a word.
• 1:08:41
  Tad Eggleston: Ben Temple Smith, Gary Erskine, Howard Chaikin, Glenn Fabry, Vince Procy, and Trevor Harrison.
• 1:08:50
  mike: Yeah.
• 1:08:50
  Tad Eggleston: with a car.
• 1:08:51
  mike: That's fine.
• 1:08:52
  Tad Eggleston: Bradstreet, and written by you.
• 1:08:54
  mike: Yeah.
• 1:08:56
  Tad Eggleston: That just went on my list.
• 1:08:59
  mike: Yeah, that was probably… that's my starstruck moment, that's… that's the…
• 1:09:03
  Tad Eggleston: I get that. I… I… I'll have to share Chaikin's story off-air.
• 1:09:09
  mike: Yeah.
• 1:09:10
  Tad Eggleston: Because he's great.
• 1:09:12
  Tad Eggleston: But, okay, so the… the mandatory, mandatory final question is, tell me something you love.
• 1:09:23
  Tad Eggleston: Preferably a comic.
• 1:09:25
  Tad Eggleston: But we don't really have rules.
• 1:09:27
  mike: Preferably storytelling.
• 1:09:31
  Tad Eggleston: But again, with the rules.
• 1:09:33
  Tad Eggleston: But something that you love… That not enough people around you have experienced.
• 1:09:41
  Tad Eggleston: And you REALLY want them to.
• 1:09:44
  Tad Eggleston: So that you have more people to talk about it with.
• 1:09:50
  mike: And it'd be… A plug, also?
• 1:09:53
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah!
• 1:09:55
  mike: You know, Magnetic has published this series called The Ogre Gods.
• 1:10:00
  mike: And there are 4 books in the series. Each one is actually pretty self-contained with a new kind of…
• 1:10:07
  mike: They feed into and reference each other.
• 1:10:10
  mike: But it's such a cool universe. It's very…
• 1:10:13
  mike: It's very, kind of, dark fairy tale.
• 1:10:17
  mike: And…
• 1:10:18
  Tad Eggleston: firstborn. Yep.
• 1:10:20
  Tad Eggleston: Half-Blood and the Great Man.
• 1:10:23
  mike: Yeah, and they're just really… I mean, besides the fact that they're really well written, they're beautifully illustrated, and kind of the…
• 1:10:30
  Tad Eggleston: And… got to…
• 1:10:31
  mike: yogurt? Yep.
• 1:10:32
  Tad Eggleston: and Hubert.
• 1:10:34
  mike: Yeah.
• 1:10:35
  Tad Eggleston: You look really cool.
• 1:10:36
  mike: Yeah, and it's like, honestly, that would be such a fantastic RPG. It's…
• 1:10:42
  mike: It's another one of those just complete universes.
• 1:10:46
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean,
• 1:10:49
  Tad Eggleston: Are you a… are you an RPG guy? I mean, do you… do you do tabletop gaming, too? Yep. So, I don't know if you've read, Kieran Gillen and…
• 1:10:59
  mike: died.
• 1:11:00
  Tad Eggleston: Stephanie Hun… yeah, die. Yeah.
• 1:11:02
  Tad Eggleston: So we do… an actual play, die… Podcast once a month.
• 1:11:11
  mike: Oh, really? They did release a die RPG, didn't they?
• 1:11:15
  Tad Eggleston: Yes, we use it. But part of that is, like, the game master gets to create all sorts of stuff, because there are 20 sides to the die, whatnot, so, like…
• 1:11:27
  Tad Eggleston: I'll have to read this and pitch it to Phil to be a side of our die, and…
• 1:11:31
  mike: Yeah.
• 1:11:31
  Tad Eggleston: Then we'll invite you to come play with us.
• 1:11:33
  mike: Yeah, it's… I mean, as a series, it's just…
• 1:11:36
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, frankly, you're invited to come play with us anyway. Anybody's invited to come play with us.
• 1:11:40
  Tad Eggleston: Sure. I guess you should check out the Planet of the Apes RPG that we just released. Oh, wow.
• 1:11:47
  Tad Eggleston: Did you do that through magnetic?
• 1:11:49
  mike: Yeah, Magnetic Press Play is kind of our gaming imprint.
• 1:11:54
  Tad Eggleston: I didn't know you had a gaming.
• 1:11:55
  mike: Yeah, we just really… it was fulfilled, it was a Kickstarter, that we fulfilled.
• 1:12:00
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah?
• 1:12:01
  mike: 12 months ago.
• 1:12:02
  Tad Eggleston: Planet of the Apes?
• 1:12:03
  mike: But yeah, they'll be hitting stores in February, I think?
• 1:12:07
  Tad Eggleston: Carbon gray… Hugo Broiler?
• 1:12:13
  Tad Eggleston: That's a cool cover.
• 1:12:17
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I could fall down so many rabbit holes. So many rabbit holes! I like rabbit holes.
• 1:12:23
  mike: Yeah, we like.
• 1:12:24
  Tad Eggleston: But… What?
• 1:12:26
  mike: We like to dig as many rabbit holes as we can.
• 1:12:29
  Tad Eggleston: Exactly. But we're gonna do any more rabbit holes for the moment off-air. So for Mike Kennedy, this has been 22 panels. Freak Squeal is on Kickstarter for another 2 weeks.
• 1:12:45
  Tad Eggleston: I think I'm actually gonna get this up tonight, tomorrow at the latest, so…
• 1:12:49
  Tad Eggleston: maybe only 13 days. Friday, January 2nd, at 7pm.
• 1:12:54
  mike: Yeah.
• 1:12:55
  Tad Eggleston: It's already completely backed, so you're going to buy your stuff. And I discovered…
• 1:13:02
  Tad Eggleston: Because one of the options is you can… and I… yours is only the second Kickstarter I've seen to do this.
• 1:13:12
  Tad Eggleston: And I think the other one might have been one of your books, too, where you have an available…
• 1:13:20
  Tad Eggleston: reward tier to just buy access to the Pledge Manager.
• 1:13:25
  mike: Yeah, if you're not sure, and you just want to pre-order it later, just back it there, and then you'll get your survey, and you can always adjust your pledge.
• 1:13:33
  Tad Eggleston: you can decide… decide what you're gonna do at that point. But that also, because none of the… none of the… and I'm just gonna tell this to… to people listening, one of the reasons it took me so long to back was that before I'd done that.
• 1:13:50
  Tad Eggleston: I didn't see anything that, you know, cause… cause it does go from… the… the…
• 1:14:00
  Tad Eggleston: The $2 to, like…
• 1:14:02
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I guess you can get a digital copy of one volume of choice, which.
• 1:14:07
  mike: Yeah.
• 1:14:08
  Tad Eggleston: I suppose you could choose… yeah, you could choose one, so…
• 1:14:11
  mike: Yeah.
• 1:14:12
  Tad Eggleston: So I guess that was kinda in my head.
• 1:14:15
  Tad Eggleston: But it felt like you jumped way up, but as soon as I clicked on the Open Pledge Manager, it offered add-ons, and it's like, add on the copy of, and I'm like, oh! Duh! Here I can get one.
• 1:14:28
  mike: One vibe!
• 1:14:29
  Tad Eggleston: of choice is actually, if I'd thought about it, I would have gone, oh yeah, just request one.
• 1:14:35
  Tad Eggleston: But that didn't actually pop into my head until I got to the add-ons. So if you have a weird head like mine, it's all in the add-ons too, and you can buy into the rewards. $67 for all 7 volumes?
• 1:14:49
  Tad Eggleston: In the, the digital version is, I mean.
• 1:14:54
  mike: 1,000 pages of material.
• 1:14:56
  Tad Eggleston: Over a thousand pages, and for that matter, the 175 for all seven hardcovers is a legit good deal, if you want to, like, jump on full in. Yeah.
• 1:15:08
  mike: I mean, the hardware will be, you know, 25 bucks each at retail, so…
• 1:15:12
  Tad Eggleston: Right, exactly. So, everybody should go look at that.
• 1:15:17
  Tad Eggleston: like I said, Freak Squeal on Kickstarter. This has been 22 Panels, and we will see you after the next page.