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With Great Power #320... 22 Panels with Nick Thorburn · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:02
  Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels. My guest tonight is Nick Orburn.
• 0:09
  Tad Eggleston: Whose pear shape Did they just come out, or is it still coming out next week?
• 0:14
  Nick Thorburn: forthcoming June 16th is the date.
• 0:17
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, so it's still almost… almost a month away.
• 0:20
  Nick Thorburn: Yes.
• 0:21
  Tad Eggleston: See, this is the downside, sometimes, of getting sent the advance, is, like, I've read it, and, like.
• 0:31
  Nick Thorburn: You're tuning.
• 0:32
  Tad Eggleston: get when it comes out.
• 0:34
  Nick Thorburn: You're too ahead of the curve, that's your problem.
• 0:36
  Tad Eggleston: Well, particularly because sometimes, like, Fanagraphics had, like, 4 different books come out this week that I had advances of, so it's like, which ones came out?
• 0:46
  Nick Thorburn: Okay, got it.
• 0:49
  Nick Thorburn: They put out… they have a good release schedule, but it's all quality.
• 0:54
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, fan of graphics? Well, and they tend to have heavier weeks, like, like…
• 0:59
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah.
• 0:59
  Tad Eggleston: rather than having something… I don't even know if they actually have something out every week, but there's always one week of the month that I'll have, like…
• 1:10
  Tad Eggleston: 3 completely different phantographics, whoosh.
• 1:13
  Nick Thorburn: Right.
• 1:14
  Tad Eggleston: you know, it was Kim Deich's book, there was, there was a, Book that I forget…
• 1:21
  Tad Eggleston: It's like a, mental health, like, neurology… memoir.
• 1:31
  Nick Thorburn: Okay.
• 1:32
  Tad Eggleston: Hmm. And then, like, a fantasy book all came out this week.
• 1:39
  Tad Eggleston: So… so, like, it seems like every time Phantographics…
• 1:45
  Tad Eggleston: drops a bunch of books in a week, like, I'm the only person in the world that wants all of them.
• 1:54
  Nick Thorburn: Even the, Prince Valiant collection?
• 1:57
  Tad Eggleston: I don't have any of those yet.
• 1:59
  Nick Thorburn: Okay.
• 2:00
  Tad Eggleston: I keep thinking about it.
• 2:01
  Nick Thorburn: I think I draw the line at Prince Valiant. That was always the most boring…
• 2:05
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, see…
• 2:06
  Nick Thorburn: I love the sun… you know, I love Calvin and Hobbes, and…
• 2:09
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I love Calvin Hobbs.
• 2:11
  Tad Eggleston: I haven't actually read any Prince Valiant.
• 2:14
  Tad Eggleston: What I have seen is original Prince Valiant pages, and they're fucking beautiful.
• 2:21
  Nick Thorburn: Yes.
• 2:22
  Nick Thorburn: Yes, it's true.
• 2:24
  Nick Thorburn: it looks good. It's just this boring, like…
• 2:27
  Nick Thorburn: It feels like it's a 15-year-long storyline, and you drop in on these four panels, and you're like, who is this guy, and who is this…
• 2:36
  Nick Thorburn: Gwendolyn, and what the… what?
• 2:37
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I, I, I think, I think…
• 2:39
  Nick Thorburn: for kids.
• 2:40
  Tad Eggleston: I think if I was gonna do it, I would… I would probably only want to buy a volume from the era where they still had, like, a whole page.
• 2:50
  Tad Eggleston: Every day. Because they had a long run where they had… they weren't short, you know, they were…
• 2:58
  Nick Thorburn: Prince Valiant, or all of them? All the funniest?
• 3:00
  Tad Eggleston: No, well, I mean, a lot of comics, but Prince Valiant in particular started out as a… Much.
• 3:07
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I don't even… I mean, I don't even know if Hal Foster was still doing it when it got shrunk.
• 3:15
  Nick Thorburn: seeing the shrinking of the funny pages was a real canary in the coal mine, I think, like, for everything, for print media in general, too, is just, like…
• 3:25
  Nick Thorburn: it's just, like, vanishing before our eyes, you know? And now…
• 3:29
  Tad Eggleston: It is, and it's not.
• 3:33
  Nick Thorburn: I guess things come back around or something.
• 3:35
  Tad Eggleston: It's not just that it comes back around, but, like, it's the weirdest thing. I think it's as hard as it's ever been, and maybe harder to, like, make a living as a cartoonist, but the threshold for actually having your stuff somewhere where people can see it
• 3:53
  Tad Eggleston: And decide they like it, and decide to give you money, is lower than it's ever been.
• 4:00
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, but where is the somewhere? That's the… that's the question. Is it… is it…
• 4:03
  Tad Eggleston: Well, that's one of the reasons why it's as hard or harder than it's ever been to actually.
• 4:07
  Nick Thorburn: actually get.
• 4:08
  Tad Eggleston: paid for it.
• 4:09
  Nick Thorburn: Sure. And you have to wade through thousands and thousands of other…
• 4:14
  Nick Thorburn: similar things. I mean, and that's not even getting into the AI of it all, where soon it'll be hard to discern what's human-made and what's…
• 4:23
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah. No, finding the good stuff is also a challenge.
• 4:27
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's why publishers like Fanographics, publishers like Uncivilized, or even just tastemakers like a Shelley Bond or whatever are still incredibly important, because they love finding the stuff.
• 4:44
  Tad Eggleston: So, so then you know if they found the stuff, It's got a certain…
• 4:52
  Tad Eggleston: stamp of approval on it. It still might not be your thing, but it's less likely to not be your thing because, oh, this looks like it'd be my thing, oh, this person just doesn't have the chops yet.
• 5:04
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 5:07
  Tad Eggleston: But on the flip side, like, I mean, I've had conversations with young cartoonists, and, like, they can build enough of a Instagram following or whatnot.
• 5:18
  Tad Eggleston: To just keep them going long enough to build the skills.
• 5:26
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah.
• 5:27
  Nick Thorburn: I mean, you know, not everything has to be monetized, too.
• 5:30
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 5:31
  Nick Thorburn: I don't know. I… obviously, like.
• 5:33
  Nick Thorburn: we'll get into it, but I come from music, even though comics, cartooning, drawing was my first
• 5:44
  Nick Thorburn: Form of creative, you know,
• 5:47
  Nick Thorburn: exploration or whatever, so I've been drawing…
• 5:50
  Nick Thorburn: the longest of all of my creative pursuits, even though I try to… I dabble in a few different,
• 5:58
  Nick Thorburn: Mediums or whatever, but but cartoons, cartooning.
• 6:03
  Nick Thorburn: Is… is the oldest of them.
• 6:05
  Nick Thorburn: But I, you know, took many detours throughout my life, and music was the thing that was the engine.
• 6:15
  Nick Thorburn: That propelled me
• 6:17
  Nick Thorburn: And, so that's where I… that's where I make my bones, basically, is through music and…
• 6:23
  Nick Thorburn: Whether it's, you know, my own bands and releasing records and touring, which is… I'm doing less of that now, and more scoring stuff, and work music for hire, kind of composing jobs.
• 6:36
  Nick Thorburn: And so I… Comics is this very pure.
• 6:39
  Nick Thorburn: Form of expression for me, because it's…
• 6:43
  Nick Thorburn: I'm not making anything… I mean, I'm not making anything with music, either, that…
• 6:48
  Nick Thorburn: With any intention other than to satisfy
• 6:51
  Nick Thorburn: an urge, unless it's a work for hire, unless it's a job doing a theme song for a, you know, a sitcom or something. But the comics exist in this very pure space for me where it's a…
• 7:02
  Nick Thorburn: It's just… For my enjoyment, for my pleasure,
• 7:08
  Nick Thorburn: I'm not thinking about much else. It brings me… it calms me down in a weird way. It's like a self-soothing kind of thing for me to just sit and draw for hours. And so, that's the means to the end, is just…
• 7:22
  Nick Thorburn: is just doing it, and so it's such a bonus when… You know, my favorite publishing
• 7:28
  Nick Thorburn: company, Fanta Graphics, who I…
• 7:31
  Nick Thorburn: you know, by so much of their books, and I've loved so much of their work.
• 7:36
  Nick Thorburn: When they want to put something out, it's just like… A kind of surreal.
• 7:42
  Nick Thorburn: bonus to it all, but money's still…
• 7:44
  Tad Eggleston: discover you.
• 7:46
  Nick Thorburn: I think it goes back to a really great comic book shop in LA called Secret Headquarters. Okay. And then before that, I think…
• 7:54
  Nick Thorburn: maybe Tom Devlin at Drawn and Quarterly, I was friendly with when I lived in Montreal, and we talked about maybe doing a book on Drawn and Quarterly when I was…
• 8:03
  Nick Thorburn: living in Montreal, which was many years ago, almost 20 years ago, I definitely hadn't figured out the comics form yet, I don't think. But, or not to say I've figured it out now, but I've gotten further along.
• 8:18
  Nick Thorburn: But I moved to LA, and I got friendly with Dave from Secret Headquarters, this really great bookstore in LA.
• 8:27
  Nick Thorburn: And he recommended me, I think, to Eric Reynolds, the publisher of Phanographics, who is doing an anthology called Now, a really great collection of…
• 8:39
  Nick Thorburn: different cartoons.
• 8:39
  Tad Eggleston: He's one of my baseball buddies.
• 8:41
  Nick Thorburn: Oh, sweet. Okay. Yeah, he's a big Mariners guy, right? Obviously.
• 8:45
  Tad Eggleston: Yes.
• 8:46
  Nick Thorburn: And I guess he was a Dodger, because he… I think he's from LA. I think he's from California originally, but…
• 8:50
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I think… I think the Dodgers might actually be his… his original team.
• 8:56
  Nick Thorburn: is number one.
• 8:58
  Tad Eggleston: And more.
• 8:59
  Nick Thorburn: He's awesome, and, like, I didn't… it was years before I knew how good of an illustrator and drawer and cartoonist he was. I couldn't believe it. He would post stuff on his Instagram, I was like, wait, you're, like, a legit…
• 9:12
  Nick Thorburn: you're legitimately really good at drawing. It's great, and inking, and like, it's crazy. I couldn't believe it.
• 9:19
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, one of the things that I've noticed that, that, that… Happens.
• 9:24
  Tad Eggleston: some in the business, and I'm gonna have to ask him about that, because I don't know if I'd realized how much of an artist he was until you just said that.
• 9:32
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah.
• 9:32
  Tad Eggleston: Because we wound up talking, like, the publishing side of Phantographics and baseball.
• 9:37
  Tad Eggleston: The last time he was on.
• 9:39
  Tad Eggleston: And the first time he was on, he was on one of the baseball and comics roundtables that I hold somewhat regularly.
• 9:46
  Nick Thorburn: Cool, cool.
• 9:48
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, he doesn't. But.
• 9:50
  Tad Eggleston: I know a number of people that are great cartoonists in their own right, but…
• 9:55
  Tad Eggleston: But they understand the business side of comics well enough, and kind of fall… into it.
• 10:02
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's the Spike Trotman story, that's the Dennis Kitchen story, you know, and it's not that they ever stop drawing, but, like…
• 10:13
  Tad Eggleston: They're good publishers, and there aren't a lot of… People who get comics publishing.
• 10:22
  Nick Thorburn: that are so passionate about it, and secretly do it themselves. I mean, you couldn't ask for a better person to be.
• 10:29
  Nick Thorburn: Right. To be in that position. We're very grateful for someone like Eric.
• 10:32
  Nick Thorburn: And, everyone at Phante Graphics that I've encountered, it's like…
• 10:37
  Nick Thorburn: It's what you dream of, and honestly, I think it's a little harder in music.
• 10:43
  Tad Eggleston: So did you have, like, self-published things that were at secret?
• 10:47
  Tad Eggleston: Headquarters, or was it…
• 10:49
  Nick Thorburn: I did a little mini with them,
• 10:52
  Nick Thorburn: years ago, years and years ago, and then he kind of recommended me to Eric, Dave did, and
• 11:00
  Nick Thorburn: And so I would do the back covers for the first, like, 10 issues of Now… now.
• 11:05
  Nick Thorburn: Okay. I would do the back, a little 3-panel…
• 11:09
  Nick Thorburn: thing for the back cover that would kind of fit in the letters of N-O-W. I would kind of draw…
• 11:15
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 11:16
  Nick Thorburn: I would draw these secre.
• 11:16
  Tad Eggleston: I've seen those.
• 11:18
  Nick Thorburn: Okay, cool. Yeah, I would always… I had a theme.
• 11:21
  Tad Eggleston: Remember, I said I didn't do any homework. Right. Other than reading the book.
• 11:26
  Nick Thorburn: Well… That's a fact. And.
• 11:29
  Tad Eggleston: When you reminded me that you were a musician, I'm like, oh, that's right! Tucker did send me a link to the YouTube, and I meant to listen to it, and…
• 11:37
  Tad Eggleston: forgot, because I got it while I was at school, which is not a good place to listen to new music.
• 11:43
  Nick Thorburn: No, it's not. Unless it's, Alice Cooper Schools Out.
• 11:47
  Nick Thorburn: Well, you can…
• 11:48
  Tad Eggleston: My students would love that, but they don't get that till tomorrow.
• 11:52
  Nick Thorburn: Okay, right. That's cool, you teach, where do you teach?
• 11:56
  Tad Eggleston: high school.
• 11:57
  Nick Thorburn: Oh, cool. Art, or…
• 11:59
  Tad Eggleston: Special Ed.
• 12:00
  Nick Thorburn: Oh, nice. Awesome. Yeah.
• 12:01
  Tad Eggleston: Fantastic.
• 12:03
  Nick Thorburn: Well… Power to you, I had a.
• 12:08
  Tad Eggleston: No, my wife's the art teacher. I appreciate art.
• 12:13
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah.
• 12:17
  Tad Eggleston: That's the best way to put it. Also, with music, I appreciate music. I wish I could make music.
• 12:25
  Tad Eggleston: I sing poorly.
• 12:27
  Tad Eggleston: I'm a good middle school trumpeter.
• 12:31
  Tad Eggleston: I was a… and have been since middle school. Haven't really gotten any better.
• 12:37
  Tad Eggleston: I kind of know how a ukulele works.
• 12:41
  Nick Thorburn: It's not much to a ukulele. We can toss the ukulele, I think. The trumpet, I tried in, like…
• 12:47
  Nick Thorburn: 7th grade, or 7th?
• 12:49
  Tad Eggleston: You say we can toss the ukulele, and I say it like…
• 12:54
  Tad Eggleston: I only kind of know how it works, dude. Let me at least… let me at least semi-master.
• 13:00
  Nick Thorburn: It's going in the junk, it's going in the junk heap.
• 13:03
  Nick Thorburn: No, you could… you could…
• 13:05
  Nick Thorburn: You could probably figure out a ukulele in a weekend, I would say. There's not…
• 13:09
  Tad Eggleston: Well, but I'd have to… you still have to have, like…
• 13:14
  Tad Eggleston: The patience to… to build the actual
• 13:19
  Tad Eggleston: dexterous skills. I mean, I know how it works.
• 13:23
  Nick Thorburn: I know.
• 13:23
  Tad Eggleston: I can't play it because I haven't practiced it enough.
• 13:26
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah.
• 13:27
  Tad Eggleston: I know how a piano works, but I can't play it. I mean, I can always hit the right note…
• 13:33
  Nick Thorburn: It'll take you a while.
• 13:34
  Tad Eggleston: But it won't be at the right speed.
• 13:36
  Nick Thorburn: Sure. Well, think of it like that John Cage piece at that,
• 13:41
  Nick Thorburn: cathedral in somewhere in Germany that's…
• 13:44
  Nick Thorburn: playing, like, the slowest piece of music. I think it's, like, a 3,000-year-long piece that… Accord changes every…
• 13:51
  Nick Thorburn: 30 years or something.
• 13:53
  Tad Eggleston: That I might be able to pull off.
• 13:54
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, you could probably play that tune.
• 13:57
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah.
• 14:00
  Tad Eggleston: But otherwise, I appreciate, like, and I think I have decent taste, though some people think I don't because I like so much more than I don't like, kind of like in comics.
• 14:14
  Nick Thorburn: It's good to be unfiltered, I think.
• 14:16
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, I feel like I'm such a hater. Not with comics so much, though.
• 14:23
  Nick Thorburn: with music and movies, I have a much more critical lens, but with comics, I'm… I'm kind of just…
• 14:30
  Nick Thorburn: Perpetually in my adolescence with comics. I see it still in a really pure way, the way I saw it as a kid.
• 14:38
  Nick Thorburn: Whereas music has been a little sullied by the years of…
• 14:41
  Nick Thorburn: Being up against the industry, and…
• 14:46
  Nick Thorburn: in the machine of it all, or at least adjacent to the machine. It sort of soured me a little bit on the wonderment and fantasy of it all, and especially years of touring, the idea of going to a gig
• 14:57
  Nick Thorburn: It's not the most enticing thing.
• 15:00
  Nick Thorburn: But… Going to the comic book shop.
• 15:03
  Nick Thorburn: is… Is, it's like being a kid in a comic book.
• 15:06
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, it's kind of like… I know almost no…
• 15:11
  Tad Eggleston: Comics people who don't still somewhat regularly go to comic shops.
• 15:16
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah.
• 15:17
  Tad Eggleston: But… but most of the comics people I… I know wouldn't be caught dead at a con unless they were working it.
• 15:24
  Nick Thorburn: Okay, right. That makes sense.
• 15:27
  Nick Thorburn: That's the, like…
• 15:30
  Tad Eggleston: So, like, if you walk by a busker and you really enjoy it, will you stop?
• 15:36
  Nick Thorburn: If I really enjoy it, I suppose. I can't imagine… it hasn't happened yet.
• 15:43
  Tad Eggleston: Cause that would be… that would essentially be the comic shop version of, or do you enjoy going to the record shop?
• 15:50
  Nick Thorburn: No, I don't, because… Oh.
• 15:53
  Nick Thorburn: Records are so expensive nowadays.
• 15:56
  Nick Thorburn: Fucking crazy.
• 15:56
  Tad Eggleston: That's fair.
• 15:58
  Nick Thorburn: I used to go… I feel like such an old man, but, like, I have a pretty sizable record collection, and…
• 16:03
  Nick Thorburn: Most of them are from…
• 16:07
  Nick Thorburn: the bulk of them are from 20 years ago, when, you know, you could go to the… you could go to Amoeba in Hollywood and get…
• 16:13
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, see, I… I mean, I wish I could have gone to Amoeba more often. Like, anytime my dad was on a business trip out there, he'd bring me something cool.
• 16:21
  Nick Thorburn: Oh, cool.
• 16:22
  Tad Eggleston: But…
• 16:23
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah.
• 16:23
  Tad Eggleston: But I… but I ran… The, the, the music department at…
• 16:31
  Tad Eggleston: the Best Buy with the biggest music department, back when Best Buys were actually the place to go for CDs.
• 16:38
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, so…
• 16:38
  Tad Eggleston: So, my CD collection's kind of ridiculous.
• 16:41
  Nick Thorburn: Okay. And CDs are coming back!
• 16:44
  Tad Eggleston: But most of it's ancient.
• 16:47
  Nick Thorburn: That's actually good. CDs are kind of coming back, and collectible, the younger generation, I think, likes the portability and the tactile nature of it, as opposed to…
• 16:59
  Tad Eggleston: See, that's why I predicted the vi… I predicted then.
• 17:03
  Tad Eggleston: that… Digital music might kill CDs, but if it did, it'd bring vinyl back.
• 17:15
  Tad Eggleston: Because there's something about… I mean, I preferred vinyl even then, like, I… you know, particularly my favorite stuff, if I could find it on vinyl, I'd get it on vinyl. There's just something about seeing it spin, there's something about being able to, like.
• 17:31
  Tad Eggleston: Really hold the liner notes.
• 17:34
  Nick Thorburn: And the limited selection, too, there's something fatiguing about the endless choice of digital streaming.
• 17:40
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I was just talking vinyl versus CD.
• 17:43
  Nick Thorburn: Oh, yeah. Back in the day.
• 17:44
  Tad Eggleston: day.
• 17:45
  Nick Thorburn: Oh, back in the day, of course.
• 17:46
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah. But that was why I was also certain that if the more we went digital.
• 17:53
  Tad Eggleston: CDs might go away.
• 17:57
  Tad Eggleston: Because… because the only reason I thought… I mean.
• 18:01
  Tad Eggleston: The only reason cassettes beat out vinyl was because they were smaller, and you could play them in your car, and the only reason that CDs beat out cassettes is because they were more durable.
• 18:14
  Tad Eggleston: And eventually, because they became cheaper, because there were less moving parts.
• 18:19
  Nick Thorburn: And there's a column, when the CD, or the cassette column goes down, the other thing rises. When DD column goes down… I mean, there's a set number of people on the Earth, and there's a set number of people that buy music or listen to music actively, so…
• 18:34
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 18:35
  Nick Thorburn: Something's gonna fill that… that…
• 18:37
  Nick Thorburn: space, I guess. Hopefully. I mean, people…
• 18:40
  Tad Eggleston: But…
• 18:41
  Nick Thorburn: People don't really listen to music as much anymore, though. They listen to podcasts.
• 18:45
  Nick Thorburn: like yours.
• 18:47
  Nick Thorburn: It's your fault.
• 18:48
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, like… I don't know, every kid at my school has headphones on in the passing periods.
• 18:57
  Nick Thorburn: But are they listening to the Joe Rogan experience, or are they listening to the Alan…
• 19:02
  Nick Thorburn: Parsons. Experiment. Wait. Alan? Wait.
• 19:07
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know if I listen to Alan Parsons, but a lot of them…
• 19:12
  Tad Eggleston: A lot of them know their modern music pretty well.
• 19:15
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah.
• 19:16
  Tad Eggleston: And, and thanks to Target and, and…
• 19:21
  Tad Eggleston: And, Old Navy, a lot of them know the grunge period pretty well, because they bought the t-shirt first, and eventually decided that they needed to…
• 19:30
  Tad Eggleston: To learn the music.
• 19:31
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, when you… when you said name 5 songs, they had to do their research.
• 19:36
  Tad Eggleston: I… I have never been that guy. I refuse to be that guy.
• 19:42
  Tad Eggleston: Thank you.
• 19:42
  Nick Thorburn: shipping.
• 19:43
  Nick Thorburn: Chicago Underground.
• 19:46
  Tad Eggleston: But… but, but yeah, no. Do you even know who Nirvana… I mean, I will sometimes be the…
• 19:55
  Tad Eggleston: No judgment, but… Do you like Nirvana, or just the t-shirt guy?
• 20:02
  Nick Thorburn: It's polite.
• 20:04
  Tad Eggleston: You know…
• 20:05
  Tad Eggleston: Well, just because I'm not gonna start a… I'm not gonna start a music conversation about their… the stuff on their t-shirt if it turns out
• 20:12
  Tad Eggleston: they don't know the music, because I don't want to embarrass them.
• 20:15
  Nick Thorburn: Right.
• 20:16
  Tad Eggleston: Some of those t-shirts are cool. And, and, like…
• 20:21
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah.
• 20:21
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, mostly I'm jealous. You remember how hard it used to be to find good music t-shirts?
• 20:27
  Nick Thorburn: You had to…
• 20:27
  Tad Eggleston: Go to special shops.
• 20:29
  Nick Thorburn: You did, and I remember a formative trip to Seattle when I was… it was probably 90… 5?
• 20:36
  Nick Thorburn: I think it was…
• 20:37
  Tad Eggleston: That would have been a good year.
• 20:39
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, and it was… it was maybe 96, maybe it was 95, but it was the summer of 96, I think, and…
• 20:47
  Nick Thorburn: I had recently discovered, you know, hate, like Peter Bagg, and I was getting into…
• 20:53
  Nick Thorburn: 8Ball, Dan Klaus and stuff, and so it was like, oh…
• 20:58
  Nick Thorburn: The music scene from here is really electric, or was from a few years earlier, and there's a comics thing going on, there's, like, our crumb…
• 21:08
  Nick Thorburn: artwork at this… so I went to this bookstore, and I, like, found Fantagraphics' phone number, and I called…
• 21:15
  Nick Thorburn: I called them from a payphone, to see… I was, like.
• 21:20
  Nick Thorburn: I don't know, 13, 14 years old.
• 21:22
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I was about to say, like, you're saying 95, and you're 44, so you're 2 years younger than me, I would have been 15.
• 21:29
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah. And I was, like, trying to set… see if… I think I spoke to someone at the… at the… who picked up, and I was like.
• 21:36
  Nick Thorburn: I had envisioned this giant warehouse of, like, comics and, like, fa- where they, you know, just this…
• 21:43
  Nick Thorburn: basically Willy Wonka version of…
• 21:46
  Nick Thorburn: of comic books, and I was, like, trying to see if I could get a tour of the factory or something, and I think it was too far… I think they were like, yeah, you could come by, but we're way out… we're not actually in Seattle, we're way out…
• 21:57
  Nick Thorburn: by the blah blah blah, and I was like… I asked my parents, they're like, What do you think?
• 22:01
  Tad Eggleston: What's really funny, when I was talking to Eric, is when I discovered that for a while.
• 22:07
  Tad Eggleston: They shared a warehouse with Ebbet's Flannels.
• 22:13
  Nick Thorburn: Is that a guide or a t-shirt?
• 22:14
  Tad Eggleston: Ebbitt's Flannels.
• 22:17
  Nick Thorburn: True.
• 22:17
  Tad Eggleston: like… they're…
• 22:22
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm wearing an Ebbz Flamels cap right now. I was wearing one of the jerseys earlier today. They do, like, authentic…
• 22:34
  Tad Eggleston: recreated vintage jerseys, lots of Negro Leagues, lots of…
• 22:39
  Nick Thorburn: Okay.
• 22:39
  Tad Eggleston: Independent teams from all through the ages, foreign teams, like…
• 22:47
  Tad Eggleston: So, yeah, he was telling me about how when they… they… when Ebbets left the warehouse… Ebbets left the warehouse before Fanta did, and they left, he said it was a pile of, like…
• 23:03
  Tad Eggleston: What do they call the… the… the clothes where, like, one stitches off?
• 23:11
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, I don't know, but… but…
• 23:13
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but you know the ones that they would sell cheap, or whatever.
• 23:17
  Nick Thorburn: Yes, yes, yes.
• 23:18
  Tad Eggleston: They just left them behind. He said it was a pile the size of an elephant, and they just said, hey, if any of you guys want this stuff…
• 23:24
  Nick Thorburn: Whoa.
• 23:25
  Tad Eggleston: So he's like, he and one other guy were the only baseball guys at Fanna at the time, and they were just like, Christmas!
• 23:32
  Nick Thorburn: That's cool.
• 23:33
  Nick Thorburn: That's funny. I'm not familiar with… with… but I'll have to look into that.
• 23:38
  Tad Eggleston: What?
• 23:39
  Nick Thorburn: I'll have to look into that, I'm not familiar with, Ebbitt's flannel.
• 23:42
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, it's… I mean, it's named after the Brooklyn Dodgers ballpark.
• 23:47
  Tad Eggleston: Got it. Primarily, it… I mean, right now, they have a…
• 23:53
  Tad Eggleston: a couple of lines of Major League stuff, but they don't have a full Major League license. They've got lots of Negro League stuff, they've got lots of…
• 24:01
  Tad Eggleston: college stuff now. They've branched out beyond baseball a little bit. Really, they've always been my go-to, because they've got a really great selection of Negro League stuff.
• 24:11
  Nick Thorburn: Cool.
• 24:12
  Tad Eggleston: And, and, like, in original materials.
• 24:15
  Tad Eggleston: So, like, they used to wear these really great, heavy-duty wool jerseys. They're just… neat.
• 24:24
  Nick Thorburn: Hmm.
• 24:25
  Nick Thorburn: Interesting.
• 24:27
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no.
• 24:28
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, we didn't have… we didn't figure out,
• 24:30
  Nick Thorburn: We didn't have it all figured out with breathable cotton.
• 24:34
  Tad Eggleston: No.
• 24:35
  Nick Thorburn: Back then.
• 24:36
  Tad Eggleston: Nope.
• 24:37
  Tad Eggleston: I can't imagine they were actually the best things to play baseball in.
• 24:42
  Nick Thorburn: No.
• 24:43
  Tad Eggleston: I bet you it actually had more to do with them not ripping.
• 24:48
  Tad Eggleston: It's easily.
• 24:48
  Nick Thorburn: As they, as they…
• 24:51
  Tad Eggleston: Because they didn't want to have to replace them a lot.
• 24:53
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, as they dive for the ball.
• 24:55
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 24:56
  Nick Thorburn: Makes sense.
• 24:57
  Tad Eggleston: Actually, I was at… I was at… see, this is how this podcast goes. Sometimes we go all over the place. We will get back to your comic, I promise, and maybe even your music, who knows?
• 25:08
  Tad Eggleston: But I was at a minor league game last weekend.
• 25:12
  Tad Eggleston: And… Since the pandemic, they've switched the minor league schedules so that
• 25:20
  Tad Eggleston: Road trips are, like, a whole week in a city.
• 25:24
  Tad Eggleston: rather than going and playing, like, 3 games against a team, you get there on Tuesday, and you play Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
• 25:34
  Tad Eggleston: Or Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, so it's always a 5-game series.
• 25:38
  Tad Eggleston: And then 2 days off for travel.
• 25:42
  Tad Eggleston: And we were there on a Sunday, and that's when I decided that they probably don't actually pack…
• 25:50
  Tad Eggleston: Pack as many uniforms as they should for these trips, because there were, like, 4 different players on the,
• 25:58
  Tad Eggleston: Visiting team who were… Playing in ripped pants.
• 26:06
  Nick Thorburn: Well, you know, maybe they were fans of grunge.
• 26:10
  Tad Eggleston: No, none of the rips were in the right places. Okay.
• 26:15
  Tad Eggleston: That'll do it.
• 26:17
  Tad Eggleston: One of them had, like, his back pocket hanging out because, like, he'd ripped his bottom, and…
• 26:27
  Tad Eggleston: None of them, it was like that neat knee rip. They were rips that you'd get sliding or diving in a baseball game.
• 26:40
  Tad Eggleston: Just… random stuff.
• 26:42
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 26:46
  Tad Eggleston: Let's talk about Nick Thorburn. Tell me your… this is one of my favorite questions to ask. Tell me your comics biography.
• 26:54
  Tad Eggleston: Not bibliography, biography. Talk to me about what you read as a kid, what made you want to draw comics.
• 27:02
  Tad Eggleston: What inspired you? What, what… What, what…
• 27:07
  Tad Eggleston: What defined your fandom? What… what… Yeah.
• 27:12
  Tad Eggleston: You get to pick, but give me names, dates, places, whatever.
• 27:16
  Nick Thorburn: Okay. It's, you know, forming a list is always, I always…
• 27:22
  Nick Thorburn: Kind of blank when it comes to…
• 27:25
  Nick Thorburn: itemizing everything, but I'll do my best.
• 27:28
  Tad Eggleston: That doesn't have to be that itemized.
• 27:30
  Nick Thorburn: was,
• 27:31
  Nick Thorburn: You know, I was drawing from a very, very, very young age, you know, as… probably before I could learn to walk, I was, like.
• 27:41
  Nick Thorburn: Doing the writing on the walls kind of thing, crayons and stuff. And…
• 27:47
  Nick Thorburn: as the legend goes, as my mom has recounted, I…
• 27:53
  Nick Thorburn: They didn't scold me for writing on my bedroom wall.
• 27:57
  Nick Thorburn: My dad was clever enough to go to…
• 28:01
  Nick Thorburn: the, like, newspaper in the nearby town. We lived, like, in the country, but he went to the newspaper in the town and bought a roll of newsprint on a giant.
• 28:12
  Tad Eggleston: Nice.
• 28:13
  Nick Thorburn: And he brought that home, and you could just, like, unroll it onto the floor, and I could just sit for hours, and just… as it would unroll, I would just, like, continue this, you know, I guess in a way, a sequential series of drawings that could be classified as a comic book.
• 28:31
  Nick Thorburn: So that was kind of the beginning.
• 28:33
  Nick Thorburn: And then, you know, Archie comics were huge for me.
• 28:38
  Nick Thorburn: Little Jinx, and Archie, and… That is, like, a kid, like, getting the digests from the supermarket.
• 28:46
  Nick Thorburn: And then, I remember the moment I found a…
• 28:50
  Nick Thorburn: Fantastic Four comic book. In 1989, we'd moved from…
• 28:55
  Nick Thorburn: Vancouver Island up north to Prince Rupert, and I was… went into a comic book store, I was probably looking for an Archie comic still.
• 29:04
  Nick Thorburn: and found this Fantastic Four…
• 29:06
  Nick Thorburn: comic, which I still have, I just found it at my parents' place when I was home over the Christmas break, and
• 29:14
  Nick Thorburn: And it kind of unlocked something, obviously, when… and I went towards Spider-Man was kind of my… my thing.
• 29:23
  Nick Thorburn: And I remember just being… 12, 11, and…
• 29:30
  Nick Thorburn: you know, there was, like, 4 different Spider-Mans, there was Amazing, Spectacular, Webb, and regular Spider-Man.
• 29:37
  Nick Thorburn: And it would come out every week.
• 29:40
  Nick Thorburn: You know, there was 4.
• 29:41
  Tad Eggleston: I remember that arrow.
• 29:42
  Nick Thorburn: And you get one a week, and it was just…
• 29:45
  Nick Thorburn: Bang, we're going to the store to get the
• 29:49
  Nick Thorburn: this month… this week it's… it's Web of Spider-Man, this week it's Spectacular, and the stories started…
• 29:55
  Nick Thorburn: To intersect, so you'd have to get all of them to know.
• 29:59
  Tad Eggleston: I remember that era, too. That era… I mean, I went through it and bought a bunch of them, but to be honest, that was when I started to slip away, because it's like, I don't want to have to have all of my comics be Spider-Man.
• 30:13
  Nick Thorburn: Right.
• 30:14
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, they figured out how to get… extract the most money from kids possible.
• 30:20
  Nick Thorburn: I also really loved the… the trading cards, that first set, 1990, I think it was.
• 30:27
  Nick Thorburn: It was around that time, 1990 to, like, 93, I was really into…
• 30:35
  Nick Thorburn: X-Men and Spider-Man and Fantastic Four, always Marvel, never, ever went across the pond or the river to DC. That was, like…
• 30:45
  Nick Thorburn: That was, like, a no-go zone, it was just not of… it just seemed not interesting to me.
• 30:51
  Nick Thorburn: Then… I don't know what broke me out of…
• 30:55
  Nick Thorburn: superhero stuff, but it was becoming, like, a teenager, or, you know, 13, 14, and seeing, seen crumb.
• 31:06
  Nick Thorburn: the documentary… was huge for me, I think.
• 31:12
  Nick Thorburn: and seeing… Discovering…
• 31:16
  Nick Thorburn: Peter Bagg's hate. I think I noticed it in the movie Kids. One of the kids was carrying…
• 31:22
  Nick Thorburn: this comic, and I was like, what's… that's… what's that comic?
• 31:25
  Nick Thorburn: And my town was so small, when we moved back to the island from up north of northern BC, we moved back to the island around 95, 96,
• 31:34
  Nick Thorburn: There was a comic book store, but it was a… it was a…
• 31:38
  Nick Thorburn: it was a used comic book store. You had to drive 2 hours to get the… go to the new one in a town called Nanaimo.
• 31:46
  Nick Thorburn: To get the new stuff. And that was… that put the brakes, really, on superhero stuff. It's like, I can't get the new… I can't keep up with this, I can't…
• 31:55
  Nick Thorburn: I can't buy the new…
• 31:58
  Nick Thorburn: the new issues. So, you know, I was starting to slip away myself around this time.
• 32:05
  Tad Eggleston: Well, that was a hard error to stay…
• 32:08
  Tad Eggleston: In, just because it was also kind of a…
• 32:13
  Tad Eggleston: For the trade paperback era, and way before the librarians deciding comic books were cool era.
• 32:22
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah.
• 32:23
  Tad Eggleston: so, like… If you drifted from a comic shop, or…
• 32:29
  Tad Eggleston: Became less interested in what your comic shop was carrying.
• 32:36
  Tad Eggleston: Suddenly, you know, you were on this, this…
• 32:41
  Tad Eggleston: Deserted island with… with limited options.
• 32:45
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, definitely. But… but then it became this pilgrimage to go to the bigger… to go to Vancouver.
• 32:51
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
• 32:53
  Nick Thorburn: And I was young, so I couldn't go there on my own, but when I was there, it was… there's a comic book store in Victoria called Legends that was really important to me, and some places in Vancouver, I don't remember the names, but Legends was big. That was in Victoria, and…
• 33:10
  Nick Thorburn: I would go… and that was kind of…
• 33:13
  Nick Thorburn: the way… that unlocked things, where I started to…
• 33:17
  Nick Thorburn: pull the thread a little bit. You know, you discover through Peter Bagg and, Dan Klaus and Crumb and that, you know, you see…
• 33:28
  Nick Thorburn: you start to go deeper in, and you discover all the other things in the crevices, and so I just kept going deeper, and then I started to do my own comics in…
• 33:39
  Nick Thorburn: Early… probably in high school, like, 10th, 10, 11.
• 33:43
  Nick Thorburn: 10, I think, grade 10.
• 33:46
  Nick Thorburn: And my dad was a… worked… had a government job as a fisheries and oceans fisheries officer, and he… he let me come into the office after hours, and I could Xerox my comics.
• 33:58
  Nick Thorburn: And I would do that, and then I would,
• 34:02
  Nick Thorburn: And they were, you know, who knows what they were, but I would…
• 34:06
  Nick Thorburn: you know, I would fold them and staple them and,
• 34:09
  Nick Thorburn: figured… my dad helped me how to double print them, and then when I would go to Victoria, I would go to Legends, and I would sell it. They had a little consignment.
• 34:17
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, wow.
• 34:18
  Nick Thorburn: shelf, so you could bring your books, and the guy, he still works there. I did a…
• 34:22
  Nick Thorburn: book reading in 2018, and he was a young kid then, and, you know, he still works there. I think he inherited the shop.
• 34:30
  Nick Thorburn: So it was really cool to go… to go back there.
• 34:34
  Tad Eggleston: No, I was just looking it up, and as soon as I saw that, like, part of the billing on their
• 34:41
  Tad Eggleston: their Facebook page is Comics, Comics with an X, and Graphic Novels. I'm like, okay, you know this is a real comic shop. Yes.
• 34:52
  Nick Thorburn: They rule.
• 34:53
  Nick Thorburn: really special.
• 34:54
  Tad Eggleston: if they're making a point of letting you… I mean, for that matter, even the fact that they did both… I mean, I always trust the shop that spells it with an X more…
• 35:07
  Tad Eggleston: Even more than just a shop that spells it.
• 35:10
  Tad Eggleston: comics ICS, because then you know that they're gonna get into some of the undergrounds and whatnot, but if they give you both, I know that it won't just be undergrounds. It's that, now I know, you know the difference, but you like them all.
• 35:28
  Nick Thorburn: And it's cool, because it's kind of a gateway. I mean, I think you can… you know, I probably started going there to look for…
• 35:35
  Nick Thorburn: Spawn, and, Lady Death, and, you know… Stray bullets, and
• 35:43
  Nick Thorburn: but then you just pull a little deeper, and you go a little deeper. I mean, I remember…
• 35:48
  Nick Thorburn: even before all that, I remember seeing an issue of Black Hole in the comic book store, and Prince Rupert in Northern BC, Charles Burns, and I was like, what is this? Like…
• 35:58
  Nick Thorburn: That and seeing Bone, Jeff Smith's Bone.
• 36:01
  Nick Thorburn: time I start… I think I started to see, like, okay, there's other ways to do this. I mean, I knew Archie comics, and I've just been buying Spider-Man, but there's something else here that feels kind of fresh and kind of freaky, too. Yeah.
• 36:15
  Nick Thorburn: So that was, like, another way in, too, was through…
• 36:19
  Nick Thorburn: Was seeing, you know, seeing that, seeing that potential, and
• 36:25
  Nick Thorburn: And that was kind of the… the journey was beginning, I guess, there, and then…
• 36:29
  Nick Thorburn: you know, since then, I've just sort of…
• 36:32
  Nick Thorburn: Tried to keep up with all the good…
• 36:34
  Nick Thorburn: all the good stuff. Joe Sacco, and Sam Harcombe, and…
• 36:41
  Nick Thorburn: you know, it's kind of just like I could… I have to, like, think…
• 36:45
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, frankly, I think we're in the platinum age of comics right now. It's really hard to actually keep up with all of the good stuff.
• 36:53
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah.
• 36:53
  Tad Eggleston: There's just so much good stuff.
• 36:58
  Nick Thorburn: There is. It's really exciting. You know, and this book… so I did a book with…
• 37:04
  Nick Thorburn: Phantographics in 2018. I had done the back covers of NOW, the comics anthology, and I emailed Eric. I had this idea
• 37:15
  Nick Thorburn: for a book I wanted to do, Which was…
• 37:19
  Nick Thorburn: a comic book, but not really a comic book. It was, like, vignettes and drawings and interconnected kind of drawings, and just, like, a mood and a theme. But my one
• 37:31
  Nick Thorburn: concept was that I didn't want to… I didn't want there to be any words. It was a… it was a completely wordless,
• 37:38
  Nick Thorburn: thing I wanted to do, so…
• 37:40
  Nick Thorburn: I pitched him with the first 3 pages.
• 37:44
  Nick Thorburn: Of what that would look like.
• 37:46
  Nick Thorburn: You know, just a shot in the dark, like… I wasn't…
• 37:51
  Nick Thorburn: I wasn't sure… it was a little bit of delusion, and I guess… just…
• 37:59
  Nick Thorburn: I don't know, recklessness? I just didn't think… you know, if I thought about it for too long, I'd probably think, well, I don't belong in this…
• 38:07
  Nick Thorburn: real, like, pantheon of… real deal cartoonists. I mean, even…
• 38:12
  Nick Thorburn: you know, imposter syndrome is one thing, but I don't even,
• 38:16
  Nick Thorburn: I don't even think I'm at the… was even at the level of imposter syndrome. I hadn't even, like… I hadn't done anything. I'd spent my years in music and that sort of thing, but I had not proved myself with comics. So…
• 38:30
  Nick Thorburn: I wasn't sure what he would say, but he dug it, and he liked it, and wanted to go forward with it, and so I just spent the next year
• 38:39
  Nick Thorburn: putting this thing together, and that became Penguins. And it's, you know, it's like 288 pages, I think, and
• 38:47
  Nick Thorburn: It's a big hardcover.
• 38:49
  Nick Thorburn: And you know, it was sort of marketed kind of as a graphic novel, which is just a default. It's like indie rock, I guess, is what…
• 38:56
  Nick Thorburn: People would call… the music I make, even though that's not what I make at all, and…
• 39:02
  Nick Thorburn: It's a meaningless descriptor, and graphic novels.
• 39:05
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, indie rock is like indie comics. It's not really a genre as much as it's…
• 39:17
  Tad Eggleston: I don't even like to, like…
• 39:20
  Tad Eggleston: From a literal standpoint, it should mean that, like, you either have super small publishers' labels, or you're putting it out yourself, but that's not even really… India is almost like a coolness factor.
• 39:33
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, it's like a mentality, I guess.
• 39:36
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 39:37
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, there's a little bit of a DIY aesthetic, but it actually, in some ways, has more to do with the fan base, and like…
• 39:46
  Tad Eggleston: Indie rock, like indie comics, is more… it's like…
• 39:52
  Tad Eggleston: It's the less pretentious way to say discerning rock, or discerning comics.
• 39:58
  Nick Thorburn: And I think it came out of an era, especially music, the music side of things, where the independent…
• 40:07
  Nick Thorburn: of it wasn't necessarily your label affiliate, it was affiliations, it was your… unwillingness to…
• 40:17
  Nick Thorburn: sell your music to advertising. Yeah. And that was considered…
• 40:22
  Tad Eggleston: Or your perceived unwillingness to sell out. I mean, I… because I remember, you know, we grew up at about the same time.
• 40:31
  Tad Eggleston: And the band that I remember, at least.
• 40:35
  Tad Eggleston: the most people that I hung around with just absolutely being furious and calling them sellouts was 311, when their self-titled album came out, after their more harder…
• 40:50
  Tad Eggleston: ones, and I'm sitting there going… So you're… you're…
• 40:55
  Tad Eggleston: you… you can't imagine that maybe they evolved to this, rather, because this isn't enough like other things, that I think a label came to them and said, this is the thing to do. You're calling them a sellout because they went platinum. You're calling them a sellout
• 41:12
  Tad Eggleston: Because they don't have to work at Walmart anymore.
• 41:16
  Nick Thorburn: It became a catch-all, you know,
• 41:20
  Nick Thorburn: diss, the way that, like, Hipster 10 years later became this, like, you just throw it around at anybody, it became meaningless. You know, I mean.
• 41:28
  Tad Eggleston: Well, hipster, in some ways, is the dis for…
• 41:32
  Tad Eggleston: For people who are pretentious, pretentiously indie.
• 41:37
  Nick Thorburn: Right, I mean, I think now they… I don't even know what they call… what they would call it now, like, op or something, but, I think about just when you were talking about
• 41:47
  Nick Thorburn: a band like 311, who I'm… I don't… not really familiar with, but, I mean, obviously, peripherally, I am, but I don't think I've ever…
• 41:54
  Nick Thorburn: actively listened, I couldn't name a song or hum a melody, but I think of the band Ween, and their first couple of…
• 42:01
  Tad Eggleston: For example.
• 42:02
  Nick Thorburn: were really lo-fi, four-track recordings, and then they signed to a major… made a…
• 42:08
  Nick Thorburn: You know, a professional-sounding record, and people…
• 42:11
  Nick Thorburn: sort of turned on them, or sort of rejected it, some small set, probably. But their argument was, we never wanted to make
• 42:20
  Nick Thorburn: shitty lo-fi music, we just had to. We didn't have the means to make… we didn't have the money to go into a studio. Now we do. This is what we've always wanted to do. So they were never, like, actively…
• 42:31
  Nick Thorburn: embracing this, DIY aesthetic, that was just what they were…
• 42:36
  Nick Thorburn: kind of forced into. So it's interesting, too, like.
• 42:39
  Nick Thorburn: You know, the sellout term definitely became meaningless, but…
• 42:43
  Nick Thorburn: You know, in my early… the first 5 or 6 or… the first… maybe…
• 42:50
  Nick Thorburn: Maybe 7 years of my musical… profession. Licensing music was…
• 42:57
  Nick Thorburn: it was verboten. I mean, like, we… the Unicorns was my first band, and we turned down…
• 43:03
  Nick Thorburn: everything you could imagine. I mean, it was… every car company and…
• 43:11
  Nick Thorburn: the OC wanted to put a song in the last episode of the OC. I was actually into that, but…
• 43:18
  Nick Thorburn: But… You know, I'm willing…
• 43:21
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, while I get that, and you're clearly still working and making music and comics and whatnot, I have long also been the other side. If I want
• 43:33
  Tad Eggleston: Great art to happen.
• 43:36
  Tad Eggleston: than… than the artists I like.
• 43:39
  Tad Eggleston: Need to be able to eat.
• 43:41
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, it's true. It's a selfish thing to say, like, hey, I don't want to hear you in this car commercial. It bums me out. It's like, well, do you want to hear me make another record? Because… Right.
• 43:50
  Tad Eggleston: No, I remember… I remember when there was a badly drawn boy and a…
• 43:55
  Tad Eggleston: song in a Target commercial, and my immediate response was, hell yeah, Damon's getting paid!
• 44:02
  Nick Thorburn: Well, that's very nice of you. I mean, all this stuff is negotiable, right? Like.
• 44:07
  Nick Thorburn: badly drawn boy in a Target commercial is lower on the scale than
• 44:11
  Nick Thorburn: some band that licenses their song to the U.S. Army or something like that, you know, or…
• 44:17
  Tad Eggleston: Obviously. Though, I mean…
• 44:18
  Nick Thorburn: an AI.
• 44:19
  Tad Eggleston: Again, if the army paid them well enough, I might actually forgive them.
• 44:24
  Nick Thorburn: I mean, we live… we live under capitalism, it's… it's already… we're already complicit in the system in some way, so…
• 44:33
  Nick Thorburn: Nitpicking these little… These little things from our throne, it isn't impossible.
• 44:38
  Tad Eggleston: Well, particularly because we have to… I mean, in doing so, we immediately decide that we know their situation.
• 44:46
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, right. No, it's arrogant and…
• 44:50
  Tad Eggleston: I'm an affluent white guy.
• 44:52
  Tad Eggleston: I've never had to worry about having a roof over my head.
• 44:56
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah.
• 44:57
  Nick Thorburn: Oh, that's cool.
• 44:58
  Tad Eggleston: I've very rarely gone hungry.
• 45:00
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah.
• 45:02
  Tad Eggleston: And certainly never because I had to.
• 45:04
  Tad Eggleston: because I didn't feel like asking my parents for money? Maybe. Every once in a while. Yeah. You know? But…
• 45:14
  Tad Eggleston: I never didn't have the resources to turn to.
• 45:18
  Tad Eggleston: So who the fuck am I to say if…
• 45:22
  Tad Eggleston: if somebody whose background I don't know, or I do know, and it wasn't as good as my background, decides to take a boatload of money.
• 45:33
  Tad Eggleston: From somebody that, you know what, they probably don't like either. But now they have a buttload of money to go…
• 45:42
  Tad Eggleston: A not worry about having a roof over their head, but B, maybe they put that into…
• 45:48
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, the U.S. Army paid me, but I'm… I'm… I'm gonna use it to make an album about pacifism.
• 45:57
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, there's that too. There's ways to counteract the… harm that we… Create just by… living.
• 46:08
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 46:10
  Nick Thorburn: Thankfully, comics, and my comics, I don't really have to worry about that. It exists in a pure space, just like my creation of it is… it's very pure and…
• 46:21
  Nick Thorburn: Unsure.
• 46:22
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, it does look at some of those things. I mean, I was struck by some of the…
• 46:30
  Tad Eggleston: I was struck by, by a number of your… your… vignettes.
• 46:35
  Nick Thorburn: Oh, thanks. Of pear shapes?
• 46:37
  Tad Eggleston: In pear shape, yeah.
• 46:39
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, there's a… so it's… pear shape is a…
• 46:43
  Nick Thorburn: I spent years… so after Penguins came out in 2018, I was like, I gotta do another book.
• 46:48
  Nick Thorburn: I have… this golden opportunity of, like, Fanta graphics
• 46:55
  Nick Thorburn: I don't know if they'll necessarily put out my other book, but… I at least have an…
• 46:59
  Nick Thorburn: inroad with them, I need to do something, and I spent years mulling over what that would be, and trying to think of these broader stories in a more traditional graphic novel sense. Never memoir, but, like, something more story.
• 47:14
  Nick Thorburn: Driven, like a real, like, traditional…
• 47:18
  Nick Thorburn: graphic novel, I guess. And I just really… it's not really where my…
• 47:24
  Nick Thorburn: it's not really where my head is at. I have other outlets for wanting to tell stories long form like that, that I…
• 47:31
  Nick Thorburn: That I tinker with, but not with comics. And so I spent years kind of going back and forth, and then I just, a couple years ago.
• 47:40
  Nick Thorburn: kind of submitted and said, I want to do…
• 47:44
  Nick Thorburn: In the tradition of these kind of…
• 47:46
  Nick Thorburn: 60s, 70s underground comics. Yeah. Like.
• 47:51
  Nick Thorburn: Zap and Arcade and all these kinds of things. I want to have these
• 47:56
  Nick Thorburn: sort of short gags, and in the spirit of Archie, honestly, and Little Jinx, and that sort of thing. I wanted these simple, silly, sometimes one-page.
• 48:08
  Nick Thorburn: sometimes…
• 48:09
  Nick Thorburn: one page, and then a few pages later, that character comes back, and so I… that's how I approached Pear Shape, was it was these collection of…
• 48:18
  Nick Thorburn: Of very, very short stories, but with a thread connecting them.
• 48:23
  Nick Thorburn: with one character, basically, who is this hapless, down-on-his-luck guy who starts out… named Dunce Chumpley, who starts out very…
• 48:32
  Nick Thorburn: Stupid, and very, barely… verbal, literate.
• 48:37
  Nick Thorburn: were able to really express himself. And by the end of the book, he is,
• 48:44
  Nick Thorburn: He has kind of… grown, like…
• 48:48
  Nick Thorburn: intellectual, like, empathy and, and, thoughtfulness and stuff, and… but at the enden, he sort of… not to give it all away, but he realizes it's all…
• 48:59
  Nick Thorburn: Hopeless and pointless.
• 49:02
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I hope he's wrong about that, but it's easy to think sometimes.
• 49:06
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah. And, you know, because it's a cycle, it sort of… the book begins
• 49:10
  Nick Thorburn: the book ends where it begins. I guess there's a thought… there's an idea that…
• 49:16
  Nick Thorburn: He might be on this karmic wheel for a little longer.
• 49:19
  Nick Thorburn: Until he's.
• 49:20
  Tad Eggleston: That's kind of how we all are, isn't it?
• 49:21
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, I believe, possibly.
• 49:23
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I guess there are also those that somehow just manage to not notice.
• 49:30
  Tad Eggleston: I kinda envy them sometimes.
• 49:32
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah.
• 49:34
  Tad Eggleston: But… but otherwise, I think we go through this… this… this… these cycles of… of…
• 49:41
  Tad Eggleston: Noticing the beauty, and the meaning, and… Noticing the horror, and… and… Questioning the why, and…
• 49:50
  Tad Eggleston: Believing that we can fix it, and then believing that it's hopeless, and then starting over again.
• 49:56
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, yeah.
• 49:59
  Tad Eggleston: It's one of the reasons I love art.
• 50:01
  Tad Eggleston: Whether… I mean, comics are definitely the medium that I'm most in love with, but I listen to a lot of music. I've started watching movies.
• 50:09
  Tad Eggleston: More, again.
• 50:11
  Tad Eggleston: I started watching more TV, just because there's enough crossover
• 50:17
  Tad Eggleston: between people I know in comics and, like, doing TV, so, like, at the very least, I have a tendency to go, oh, you're my buddy from comics, and you just made a TV show. I should watch that.
• 50:28
  Nick Thorburn: Cool, yeah. Yeah, you do…
• 50:31
  Tad Eggleston: Devlin Silver on AMC.
• 50:33
  Nick Thorburn: What's it called?
• 50:34
  Tad Eggleston: Devil in Silver?
• 50:36
  Nick Thorburn: Okay, I'll check it out. That's cool. Did it start as a comic, or did he just…
• 50:41
  Nick Thorburn: Make a new…
• 50:41
  Tad Eggleston: No, it started as a novel by another guy who has written comics.
• 50:47
  Nick Thorburn: Okay.
• 50:48
  Tad Eggleston: Because it was a… it was a novel by Victor LaValle, and Victor Laval was very involved in making the comic.
• 50:56
  Tad Eggleston: But the showrunner is Christopher Cantwell, who…
• 51:01
  Tad Eggleston: made Halton catch fire, so his first big thing was TV as well, but… but since then has done a lot of work in comics.
• 51:11
  Tad Eggleston: And… and… now.
• 51:13
  Nick Thorburn: My… I like… I like that. I'm pro that.
• 51:17
  Nick Thorburn: I do see, living in LA,
• 51:20
  Nick Thorburn: And it turns me off, and I think it was another reason why I decided to go full
• 51:25
  Nick Thorburn: headfirst into making pear-shape a comic…
• 51:30
  Nick Thorburn: not a graphic novel, it's a comic book, and proudly so, is that I, you know, I live in LA, and I do see…
• 51:38
  Nick Thorburn: Writer… writers in film and television.
• 51:42
  Nick Thorburn: or filmmakers who try to get their film made, or their TV show made, and…
• 51:49
  Nick Thorburn: And they go, oh, I know it's a good way to, like, Do… do this.
• 51:53
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 51:54
  Nick Thorburn: sell the… create the IP, and sell it, and then it'll make it be a show. And so they're kind of… they…
• 52:00
  Tad Eggleston: 9 times out of 10, the people who do that, though, wind up making really bad comics. Because comics are not only a better medium, they're a harder medium.
• 52:10
  Tad Eggleston: You can't take a TV script and just
• 52:13
  Tad Eggleston: Flip it into a good comic.
• 52:15
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah.
• 52:16
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, it happens, but yeah, maybe you're right, but I've seen in some instances, I think one became a
• 52:23
  Nick Thorburn: someone I knew, it was, like, a… acquaint.
• 52:26
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, like…
• 52:28
  Nick Thorburn: bestseller comic book or something, and I was like, damn.
• 52:30
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, I'll use Chris as an example, because his first comic, he had written a TV script.
• 52:38
  Tad Eggleston: bore it.
• 52:39
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah.
• 52:39
  Tad Eggleston: Just because TV had been the industry that he was working in before he got an opportunity to write comics. But… but first, like, that didn't mean he wasn't a massive comics fan.
• 52:50
  Tad Eggleston: Comics was always something they wanted to do, or had interest in doing.
• 52:54
  Nick Thorburn: Sure.
• 52:55
  Tad Eggleston: Like, as a writer, doesn't draw. There's not…
• 53:00
  Tad Eggleston: Like, the number of writers who don't draw, who make a living in comics is really small.
• 53:06
  Tad Eggleston: You're better off trying to get into a writer's room than you are trying to be that guy who writes and doesn't draw in comics.
• 53:15
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah.
• 53:16
  Tad Eggleston: bomb.
• 53:17
  Tad Eggleston: But, but, like, I've read the script for the pilot, That… that became…
• 53:23
  Tad Eggleston: the comic She Could Fly, and, like, it's good, and I can imagine it being a great TV show. The comic is way better than I think the TV show ever could have been, and part of that is because when Chris re-adapted it, he re-adapted it. He didn't…
• 53:41
  Nick Thorburn: Didn't paper… he didn't put it over as a.
• 53:43
  Tad Eggleston: You didn't go, oh, here's my script, turn it into a comic.
• 53:48
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, that's fair, and I think that's honest.
• 53:51
  Tad Eggleston: You're right, there are both kinds.
• 53:54
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah. No, and I know people in LA who make,
• 53:57
  Nick Thorburn: Who make films and are doing this, but they also do… they are doing the comic thing
• 54:04
  Nick Thorburn: as a way in, and… but they do have a genuine appreciation and knowledge of the medium and of the world, and so I don't think it's necessarily.
• 54:14
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's… I mean, in that sense, yeah, in that sense, it's… it's not that different from…
• 54:22
  Tad Eggleston: A novelist writing a comic, or a songwriter writing a comic.
• 54:26
  Tad Eggleston: Y-you know…
• 54:28
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah.
• 54:29
  Tad Eggleston: You can… you can be good at two different kinds of art, or two different kinds of storytelling,
• 54:36
  Tad Eggleston: Where it becomes dangerous is when you view one as less than the other, or strictly as a gateway to the other.
• 54:44
  Nick Thorburn: I think the Gateway is the thing that I bump up against, because obviously, like you said, I mean.
• 54:49
  Nick Thorburn: I fall into that camp as someone who was primarily known for music, and…
• 54:56
  Nick Thorburn: You know, I mean, look, I think Jack Black.
• 54:59
  Tad Eggleston: Though I did see on Wikipedia that you were also in an episode of Drunk History.
• 55:04
  Nick Thorburn: I was, that's funny.
• 55:05
  Tad Eggleston: And I feel like that should be what we led with.
• 55:08
  Nick Thorburn: Well…
• 55:09
  Nick Thorburn: I got Derek, you know, this isn't a video podcast, but this is, derek's, I have his headshot, the creator of Drunk History. Oh, shit.
• 55:18
  Tad Eggleston: Just knocking your…
• 55:19
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, they can all park.
• 55:21
  Tad Eggleston: down at all!
• 55:22
  Nick Thorburn: Derek's a dear old friend, the creator of that show, and I was just an extra, I don't even… I can't believe that's even on there. I was…
• 55:30
  Tad Eggleston: Well, it does say extra.
• 55:31
  Nick Thorburn: Okay.
• 55:32
  Tad Eggleston: Wikipedia page.
• 55:33
  Nick Thorburn: It's fun, I had a scene with Winona Ryder.
• 55:35
  Tad Eggleston: It says, Drunk History, Television Series, semicolon, extra.
• 55:40
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, that's funny. Yeah, that was fun. He invited me out, it was the pilot episode, and we just…
• 55:46
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, wow.
• 55:47
  Nick Thorburn: It didn't end up airing first, funny enough, but it was.
• 55:51
  Tad Eggleston: That's not uncommon, at least from what I've heard.
• 55:54
  Nick Thorburn: I didn't know this, but but it was fun, I had a scene with… well, I was in the background, of course, but…
• 56:00
  Nick Thorburn: with Winona Ryder, and she was, she was very interesting.
• 56:05
  Nick Thorburn: Very… a very interesting actor, I will say.
• 56:09
  Nick Thorburn: Doctors are interesting.
• 56:10
  Tad Eggleston: I've heard… you know, I mean, all the actors I've ever known are definitely interesting. The best of them tend to be…
• 56:20
  Tad Eggleston: Like a lot of comics people, like a lot of musicians, kind of polymaths.
• 56:24
  Nick Thorburn: Hmm.
• 56:25
  Tad Eggleston: You know, in that, like, yeah, their focus is acting, but they're fascinated with… All sorts of other things.
• 56:37
  Nick Thorburn: I mean, as an actor… That's one of the reasons. Yeah, you're a cipher, you kind of have to be…
• 56:42
  Tad Eggleston: It's one of the reasons I'm not one of the people who, like… I mean, I get…
• 56:48
  Tad Eggleston: From a creator's standpoint, how it can be frustrating when you suddenly have to
• 56:54
  Tad Eggleston: Compete with somebody who's got name recognition from somewhere else.
• 56:58
  Tad Eggleston: Damn.
• 56:59
  Tad Eggleston: But it's why, when, like, an actor or whatever writes a novel, or… A comic book, or…
• 57:08
  Tad Eggleston: I don't automatically assume that it's strictly a vanity thing, because… like…
• 57:17
  Tad Eggleston: A, like, the more famous they are, the more time they have to hone other crafts anyway. You know, if you're making 20 million a picture, that means that you've got, you know.
• 57:28
  Tad Eggleston: Probably 6 months out of the year that you don't have to work.
• 57:32
  Tad Eggleston: Hmm.
• 57:35
  Tad Eggleston: Y-you know what I mean?
• 57:36
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, you could do…
• 57:38
  Nick Thorburn: You could, brush up on the fabulous Furry Freak Brothers.
• 57:42
  Tad Eggleston: Right. But then the other thing is, is, like, particularly if it's anything collaborative, it's like, the first thing I do is I look at, okay, who are they working with?
• 57:54
  Tad Eggleston: Like, half the comic world freaked out when, oh, Keanu Reeves is making a comic, whoa, this is just a whatever, and I'm like, he's making it with Matt Kint.
• 58:06
  Tad Eggleston: I can't imagine how… I mean, sure, Matt, like everybody else, probably has a number that he… he could have written him a check.
• 58:14
  Tad Eggleston: And Matt would have just gone along with it, but…
• 58:18
  Tad Eggleston: But A, Matt's successful enough that that's probably not a small number.
• 58:24
  Tad Eggleston: And… and B, like…
• 58:26
  Tad Eggleston: Why? Why would you even think to go after Matt Kint to make your vanity comic? What…
• 58:33
  Tad Eggleston: like, the fact that… because again, it's not even like Matt is…
• 58:39
  Tad Eggleston: the most… he didn't go after Todd McFarlane. He didn't go after an instantly recognizable name to people outside of comics. He went after…
• 58:48
  Tad Eggleston: Or got paired with and agreed to work with, whatever.
• 58:52
  Nick Thorburn: Right.
• 58:53
  Tad Eggleston: One of the best storytellers in comics that…
• 58:57
  Tad Eggleston: Some people know really well, and other people haven't come across yet.
• 59:02
  Nick Thorburn: I mean, it looks cool. You know? Yeah.
• 59:04
  Tad Eggleston: And it wound up being good.
• 59:07
  Nick Thorburn: So he wrote it with the guy, and Matt Kent, I'm not… sorry, I'm not familiar. Co-writer Ron Garney, I see, okay.
• 59:14
  Tad Eggleston: Barney did the art.
• 59:16
  Tad Eggleston: And he's also very good.
• 59:19
  Tad Eggleston: Matt Kent is one of my favorite writer-artists.
• 59:23
  Tad Eggleston: But he generally only does art on stuff he's also written.
• 59:29
  Tad Eggleston: Okay. So I wasn't surprised that he wasn't… doing art.
• 59:34
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, just talk to Matt. Matt, if you haven't, do you like, kinda… mind-bending…
• 59:46
  Tad Eggleston: Mystery, espionage-type stuff at all?
• 59:51
  Nick Thorburn: In, in comics?
• 59:54
  Nick Thorburn: You mean?
• 59:55
  Nick Thorburn: Oh, did you freeze?
• 1:00:02
  Nick Thorburn: Did I freeze?
• 1:00:05
  Nick Thorburn: -Oh.
• 1:00:12
  Nick Thorburn: We've frozen. Can you hear me?
• 1:00:19
  Nick Thorburn: I seem to still have internet.
• 1:00:37
  Nick Thorburn: Oh.
• 1:00:38
  Nick Thorburn: Gone.
• 1:00:40
  Nick Thorburn: You are the host now.
• 1:00:45
  Nick Thorburn: You are the whore.
• 1:00:47
  Nick Thorburn: Do I end the meeting, do you think? What do you think?
• 1:00:52
  Nick Thorburn: Do I wait for him to come back?
• 1:01:04
  Nick Thorburn: Still being recorded.
• 1:01:08
  Nick Thorburn: It's probably good that I stay on.
• 1:01:11
  Nick Thorburn: Probably good.
• 1:01:15
  Nick Thorburn: think.
• 1:01:20
  Nick Thorburn: I'm gonna stay on just because I got a feeling.
• 1:02:17
  Nick Thorburn: Hello?
• 1:02:17
  Tad Eggleston: Alright, now I'm back. Did you keep everybody entertained, or am I gonna have to go edit?
• 1:02:23
  Nick Thorburn: I did a…
• 1:02:25
  Nick Thorburn: Tiny… I did a limerick that was really, really offensive, so you have to cut it out, or else I will be canceled.
• 1:02:32
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, then I will… I will try to go find this spot when the time comes.
• 1:02:37
  Nick Thorburn: No, cool. I was… I just sent you an email, but I just undoed… I just hit undo because you're here, but I was… I kept… I was like, should I get off the…
• 1:02:46
  Tad Eggleston: Can we just freeze again?
• 1:02:47
  Nick Thorburn: Oh, no, yeah, you're frozen.
• 1:02:52
  Nick Thorburn: I feel like I need to… one of us needs to stay on for the recording to survive, right?
• 1:02:57
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I record to the cloud, so I think that our recordings go from opposite sides, so even when I can't hear you, you get recorded. When you can't hear me, I get recorded, which is why half the time I don't edit. But this time, it was a long enough dropout that I'll go find it.
• 1:03:16
  Nick Thorburn: I'll figure it.
• 1:03:17
  Tad Eggleston: out what happened.
• 1:03:18
  Nick Thorburn: Okay.
• 1:03:21
  Tad Eggleston: What I was asking, though, Matt's got, his book, Mind Management just coming back, which is just, like, a trippy espionage book that…
• 1:03:30
  Nick Thorburn: Oh, cool.
• 1:03:31
  Tad Eggleston: If you have any interest in, like.
• 1:03:36
  Tad Eggleston: The type of stuff where you have to read it and reread it because what you thought you read isn't what was actually there, or…
• 1:03:43
  Tad Eggleston: or… things that happened in Issue 1 pop up again in issue 30.
• 1:03:49
  Tad Eggleston: That's… That's a mind management thing.
• 1:03:54
  Nick Thorburn: Okay. What's it called?
• 1:03:57
  Tad Eggleston: He's… he's a cool creator.
• 1:03:59
  Tad Eggleston: But before the internet kills us again, and because we're starting to run up against time.
• 1:04:06
  Nick Thorburn: Yes, we are.
• 1:04:07
  Nick Thorburn: Coming.
• 1:04:08
  Tad Eggleston: I want you to first, pitch your band Cream, and tell me whether you actually named it after the,
• 1:04:16
  Tad Eggleston: the, the Lester Banks.
• 1:04:19
  Tad Eggleston: magazine, or… or…
• 1:04:23
  Nick Thorburn: Well…
• 1:04:24
  Nick Thorburn: It's a long story that, it's more Mike's story to tell, I guess, ultimately. Mike is my other… my better half in the cream, we're a duo. And,
• 1:04:35
  Nick Thorburn: But the short version is that we were recording
• 1:04:39
  Nick Thorburn: up in the Catskills in his studio at his house, where he used to live. He no longer lives there, but not relevant to the story, but…
• 1:04:47
  Nick Thorburn: He had recently discovered he had an uncle, and his uncle had sent him these magazines.
• 1:04:53
  Nick Thorburn: I'm like, I got all these old rock magazines, you play rock music, cool, and so he sent him…
• 1:05:00
  Nick Thorburn: Trouser and cream, and… and all these old, cool…
• 1:05:05
  Nick Thorburn: funny rock mags with, like, incredible advertisements for albums and stuff, just, like, really fun to look through, and so while we were recording, I was kind of…
• 1:05:15
  Nick Thorburn: Rifling through the magazines, and… It just seemed like a cheeky enough name.
• 1:05:20
  Nick Thorburn: That, sort of, It felt, like, kind of defiant in a way, because, hey, this… this thing already exists.
• 1:05:28
  Nick Thorburn: And… But knowing that Cream Magazine had nicked the name from… Eric Clapton's band.
• 1:05:36
  Tad Eggleston: Right?
• 1:05:37
  Nick Thorburn: it was kind of like, well, what are you gonna do about it? Like, you stole… you stole it first. We're just kind of.
• 1:05:42
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, they changed the spelling, so you should, like, flip one of the E's around or something.
• 1:05:47
  Nick Thorburn: We added a the, you know?
• 1:05:50
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, okay, there you go.
• 1:05:50
  Nick Thorburn: So… Totally.
• 1:05:54
  Tad Eggleston: Very different. It has the word THE.
• 1:05:56
  Nick Thorburn: It's very, very different. Definite articles make it different. Really hard to Google.
• 1:06:02
  Nick Thorburn: not really helpful. Turns out Cream also had an album called Goodbye, which was one of our songs, so… not…
• 1:06:09
  Nick Thorburn: You know, I'm not a business-minded person when making these kinds of creative decisions, so…
• 1:06:15
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. It does, it does seem like that,
• 1:06:18
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, if you find the right people to make it so that you come up first when other people are…
• 1:06:25
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah.
• 1:06:25
  Tad Eggleston: when people are googling the other cream and goodbye, that could be really good.
• 1:06:31
  Nick Thorburn: Search Engine Optimization.
• 1:06:33
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:06:33
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, we gotta work on our SEO, we gotta train the algorithm, you know, we got a lot to do. It's a fun… making music in 2026 is fun. It's just a lot of algorithmic, training.
• 1:06:46
  Tad Eggleston: I imagine it's similar to making comics in 2026.
• 1:06:51
  Nick Thorburn: Well, you can't… You can't down… you can't stream a comic. I mean, I guess you can with…
• 1:06:57
  Nick Thorburn: I'm… I don't know if that…
• 1:06:58
  Nick Thorburn: Exology or Amazon Kindle, whatever. I don't know if that stuff still exists, but…
• 1:07:03
  Tad Eggleston: It does, but now it has real competition, because, you know, Amazon inshitified Comixology, so… now both Global Comics and Neon Ichiban are better comics platforms, and Suite just opened.
• 1:07:19
  Nick Thorburn: Well, I'm kind of naive to all of this stuff. I prefer the hard… Physical object.
• 1:07:26
  Tad Eggleston: I do too, but I also like to read comics in my spare time at school, and it's much easier to carry a tablet than a backpack with 500 comics in it.
• 1:07:35
  Nick Thorburn: Fair. That's fair.
• 1:07:38
  Nick Thorburn: I think if you have, you know.
• 1:07:40
  Nick Thorburn: a little column A, column B, you should be…
• 1:07:42
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I…
• 1:07:46
  Nick Thorburn: Oh, am I getting the…
• 1:07:49
  Tad Eggleston: Help!
• 1:07:51
  Nick Thorburn: Wanna… oh yeah, okay.
• 1:07:53
  Nick Thorburn: Okay.
• 1:07:55
  Tad Eggleston: I spend, like, $40 to $100 every week on… Fresh, physical comics.
• 1:08:03
  Nick Thorburn: Boom.
• 1:08:04
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah.
• 1:08:05
  Nick Thorburn: They're not getting cheaper, either.
• 1:08:07
  Tad Eggleston: Nope.
• 1:08:09
  Nick Thorburn: So I made this as a one-shot, you know, it's coming out as a one-shot, but…
• 1:08:13
  Nick Thorburn: I put number 1 on the cover of Pear Shape because… I do want… I was sort of hoping
• 1:08:21
  Nick Thorburn: I want it to do well enough that…
• 1:08:23
  Nick Thorburn: Fanta Graphics would be willing to do another one.
• 1:08:26
  Nick Thorburn: Part of the…
• 1:08:27
  Tad Eggleston: And…
• 1:08:28
  Nick Thorburn: Was it…
• 1:08:28
  Tad Eggleston: I mean.
• 1:08:29
  Nick Thorburn: Shoe.
• 1:08:30
  Tad Eggleston: It's… it's coming from that… Comics with an X underground…
• 1:08:37
  Tad Eggleston: DNA to it, so, like…
• 1:08:44
  Tad Eggleston: It's not required that it come out on a regular basis.
• 1:08:47
  Nick Thorburn: Right. It comes out when it comes… yeah, we're all smoking weed, and… And playing bongos, and…
• 1:08:53
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, like…
• 1:08:57
  Tad Eggleston: What was just announced? I mean, first of all, I mean, you brought up hate already. There was a new volume of hate, like, what, last year?
• 1:09:05
  Nick Thorburn: Yep, yep.
• 1:09:05
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, my God.
• 1:09:06
  Nick Thorburn: Great. It was like you just picked up the three.
• 1:09:08
  Tad Eggleston: there was…
• 1:09:15
  Tad Eggleston: I think Palookaville just had an issue for the first time in, like, 5 years.
• 1:09:20
  Nick Thorburn: No kidding.
• 1:09:21
  Tad Eggleston: And… and… I mean, maybe it was… was it Palookaville? Yeah, I just, like, every once in a while, you'll notice, like, issue 27, and it's like, oh, yeah. I mean, I guess it is. I thought they were done with this.
• 1:09:35
  Nick Thorburn: I'm… I'm into that. I'm into that. I would…
• 1:09:38
  Tad Eggleston: S…
• 1:09:38
  Nick Thorburn: No, you can do…
• 1:09:39
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I think there were 30 years for the 17 issues of Zap?
• 1:09:44
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah.
• 1:09:47
  Nick Thorburn: I'm at a good pace right now, let's… we'll see how I do, but…
• 1:09:51
  Tad Eggleston: So putting the 1 on it just… I mean, A, everybody knows that number 1s sell better.
• 1:09:57
  Nick Thorburn: Right.
• 1:09:58
  Tad Eggleston: That's why Marvel has so many of them.
• 1:10:01
  Nick Thorburn: That's right. I should just keep putting number 1 on… On every issue.
• 1:10:07
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, eventually she could do the zero issue, or you could do the Carolyn Cash issue, er, thing, and, like, not number in any particular order.
• 1:10:15
  Nick Thorburn: Oh, weird. Wow.
• 1:10:16
  Tad Eggleston: Arnold Wimberly did that with his lab, too.
• 1:10:20
  Nick Thorburn: Okay. But…
• 1:10:21
  Tad Eggleston: But yeah, Carolyn Cash has taken it to a whole new level with PeePee Poo-poo, because it's…
• 1:10:28
  Tad Eggleston: I can't remember what her numbers are.
• 1:10:30
  Tad Eggleston: But none of them are won.
• 1:10:33
  Tad Eggleston: And none of them are successful. Or successive.
• 1:10:37
  Nick Thorburn: Oh, I was gonna say.
• 1:10:38
  Tad Eggleston: Which is very successful. Oh, good. In fact, Yeah. Bringing it full circle…
• 1:10:45
  Tad Eggleston: She's… she's got the Nancy gig right now.
• 1:10:50
  Nick Thorburn: Oh, right.
• 1:10:52
  Nick Thorburn: Right, right. Yes, I'm wearing a Nancy shirt, and I have original Nancy art on the wall behind me.
• 1:10:58
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah.
• 1:10:59
  Tad Eggleston: There's, there's a, there's a, pee-pee Poo-poo, number 69, number 420, number… 80,085.
• 1:11:10
  Nick Thorburn: Oh, wow, okay. She's messing with us.
• 1:11:14
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:11:15
  Nick Thorburn: Maybe eventually they'll all…
• 1:11:17
  Tad Eggleston: And I guess, I guess there is a 1, but I think it was the fourth issue.
• 1:11:22
  Nick Thorburn: Okay.
• 1:11:23
  Nick Thorburn: That's fun, I mean, it's always good to play with convention, you know?
• 1:11:28
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:11:28
  Nick Thorburn: I'm a fan of that.
• 1:11:30
  Nick Thorburn: That's good.
• 1:11:30
  Tad Eggleston: So, so yeah.
• 1:11:33
  Tad Eggleston: But… I'm a numbers nerd, so I'm all for having numbers.
• 1:11:40
  Nick Thorburn: If you want.
• 1:11:40
  Tad Eggleston: to really fuck with me, have the numbers not mean anything, because I'll be looking for the meaning until the cows come home.
• 1:11:46
  Nick Thorburn: Okay.
• 1:11:48
  Tad Eggleston: And I don't have any cows, so that'd be a really long time.
• 1:11:53
  Nick Thorburn: Well, I'll think about that for issue…
• 1:11:58
  Nick Thorburn: 2, or whatever it's gonna be called.
• 1:11:59
  Tad Eggleston: 17.
• 1:12:00
  Nick Thorburn: 17, if, if the… the… The gods at…
• 1:12:05
  Tad Eggleston: 42,412.
• 1:12:09
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, that'll be it.
• 1:12:10
  Tad Eggleston: You'll have to come back and listen to this podcast to remember to make it $42,412.
• 1:12:15
  Nick Thorburn: Huh.
• 1:12:17
  Nick Thorburn: It'll be just a piece of paper, though, I think.
• 1:12:21
  Tad Eggleston: Alright.
• 1:12:24
  Tad Eggleston: I am gonna alter one of my final questions, just because… well, I'm certain that you have a cool comic story as well.
• 1:12:36
  Tad Eggleston: I'm enough of a music geek that I want it from the other half of your life. Okay.
• 1:12:43
  Tad Eggleston: I've been doing this podcast for a little less than 5 years now, and I feel like I've entered the Twilight Zone. The number of people who…
• 1:12:52
  Tad Eggleston: I've met and gotten to talk to, or become friends with.
• 1:12:57
  Tad Eggleston: the… the thing, you know, we've talked about both Prince Valiant and Bone.
• 1:13:03
  Tad Eggleston: I've gotten to watch Jeff Smith gush over an original Prince Valiant page.
• 1:13:11
  Nick Thorburn: Okay.
• 1:13:12
  Tad Eggleston: Right? So, the number of ways… I mean, that's just an example that I never would have thought about, except for the fact that we've talked about both of them. Like,
• 1:13:24
  Tad Eggleston: The number of things that have happened in my life now, that if you told
• 1:13:30
  Tad Eggleston: me even 10 years ago, but certainly as, like, a teenager, hey, this is gonna be your life, I would have gone, fuck you, you're nuts.
• 1:13:39
  Tad Eggleston: And it's awesome, but I've found that, like, everybody in comics, and I gotta imagine a lot of people in music, too, have that same surreal…
• 1:13:49
  Tad Eggleston: existence, where, like, even though there's lots of hard stuff, too, and whatnot, there are these things that's like, oh, wow, I got to do that. So, give me one of your, oh wow, I got to do that stories.
• 1:14:03
  Nick Thorburn: Hmm…
• 1:14:09
  Nick Thorburn: God.
• 1:14:11
  Nick Thorburn: The first thing that came to mind, it's just… it's not even…
• 1:14:15
  Nick Thorburn: it wasn't even something I've ever even really thought about until now. I think when you're in it, doing it, for me, when I'm, like.
• 1:14:23
  Nick Thorburn: In… in the thick of it?
• 1:14:27
  Nick Thorburn: the it being… I guess, making or performing music.
• 1:14:32
  Nick Thorburn: You don't really… You don't really have enough time to… always… appreciate exactly…
• 1:14:48
  Nick Thorburn: the importance of it, I think because in these moments that I'm thinking of, I still felt like I was on this…
• 1:14:54
  Nick Thorburn: Upward trajectory, so… I can think of two.
• 1:14:58
  Nick Thorburn: One, you know, the first concert I ever went to was Lollapalooza 94 in Vancouver.
• 1:15:06
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, that's…
• 1:15:08
  Tad Eggleston: No, it was 95. I went to… my first concert was Lollapalooza 95, but I went to it at… and they're…
• 1:15:16
  Tad Eggleston: not… or Tinley Park, which is.
• 1:15:21
  Nick Thorburn: Okay.
• 1:15:22
  Tad Eggleston: Chicago suburb.
• 1:15:23
  Nick Thorburn: Sonic Man, Hole, maybe?
• 1:15:27
  Tad Eggleston: Yep, Sonic Youth, Hole, Cypress Hill, Sinead O'Connor.
• 1:15:31
  Nick Thorburn: So, well… Smashing Pumpkins played, who I loved, they were headlining, and so then…
• 1:15:37
  Nick Thorburn: I'm really only realizing… I mean, I knew…
• 1:15:40
  Nick Thorburn: I was aware of this fact at the time, but only really thinking about the thread of, like, oh, this is… like, basically the first band I saw was Smashing Pumpkins, and…
• 1:15:52
  Nick Thorburn: In 2009, you know, my band Islands made a record with,
• 1:15:59
  Nick Thorburn: producer Chris Cody, and we made it in New York at a place called Stratosphere, which belonged to James Eha from Smashing Pumpkins. Oh, wow. And Adam Schlesinger from Fountain of Waynes, who…
• 1:16:11
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:16:11
  Nick Thorburn: Sadly, he's no longer with us. I think he died of COVID.
• 1:16:15
  Nick Thorburn: In the early…
• 1:16:16
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:16:17
  Nick Thorburn: months of COVID.
• 1:16:18
  Nick Thorburn: really nice guys, who were around the studio and kind of puttering around would pop in, but actually weren't really… were not a bother at all, obviously, but they would just pop in and stuff, and…
• 1:16:32
  Nick Thorburn: You know, you'd go up to their, like, little office area, and it would just be a wall of…
• 1:16:37
  Nick Thorburn: Of awards, and you realize, okay, we're in, like, we're in this, like, pretty…
• 1:16:42
  Nick Thorburn: heavy kind of place, and I do remember…
• 1:16:46
  Nick Thorburn: they let us use all their, you know, personal stuff, and so I got to play James Eha's guitar
• 1:16:53
  Nick Thorburn: In the… in the… on a… on a… on one of the songs.
• 1:16:57
  Nick Thorburn: And, I will say, it was a very expensive guitar, I think it was, like, a 57 Fender…
• 1:17:06
  Nick Thorburn: Stratocaster, some crazy… It must have been, like, $60,000. And I dropped the guitar.
• 1:17:14
  Nick Thorburn: But thankfully, I caught it with my foot.
• 1:17:21
  Nick Thorburn: And, saved it from, like, falling over. I mean, these are durable guitars, but…
• 1:17:28
  Nick Thorburn: it's just not… you know, that's something I don't wanna… I don't wanna have to explain to the…
• 1:17:33
  Nick Thorburn: the guitarist from Smashing Pumpkins. Smashing Pumpkins. I smashed his guitar.
• 1:17:39
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, they were my hometown band.
• 1:17:41
  Nick Thorburn: That's right, Chicago. Yeah.
• 1:17:43
  Tad Eggleston: Hell yeah.
• 1:17:44
  Nick Thorburn: Exactly, big, big, big hometown boy.
• 1:17:47
  Tad Eggleston: I missed it.
• 1:17:51
  Tad Eggleston: Billy Corgan was shopping at… the Best Buy that I ran the music department one Saturday.
• 1:17:58
  Nick Thorburn: Whoa.
• 1:17:59
  Tad Eggleston: And the reason I know that they weren't fucking with me is they did get him to sign, like, literally.
• 1:18:06
  Tad Eggleston: every Smashing Pumpkins album that we had.
• 1:18:09
  Nick Thorburn: Huh.
• 1:18:10
  Tad Eggleston: time.
• 1:18:11
  Nick Thorburn: That's cool. That's nice.
• 1:18:13
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, the silly part was, like, on top of the cellophane.
• 1:18:19
  Nick Thorburn: Oh. Yeah, I would have popped the cellophane open.
• 1:18:23
  Tad Eggleston: Well, but then, like, I mean, I wasn't there, but, like, it was a Best Buy, and if we popped the cellophane open, we couldn't then sell it.
• 1:18:32
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, but it has a… this is where Best Buy needs to be a little more…
• 1:18:36
  Tad Eggleston: Well, no, it was literally the kids in my department that did it, it wasn't, like, the managers.
• 1:18:41
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah.
• 1:18:42
  Nick Thorburn: Billy didn't say, maybe I should open, this isn't actually gonna be a very cool signing telephone.
• 1:18:49
  Nick Thorburn: Although, I guess you just never unseal it, if that's the case.
• 1:18:52
  Tad Eggleston: They bought copies and opened them to have them signed.
• 1:18:56
  Nick Thorburn: There you go.
• 1:18:57
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah.
• 1:18:59
  Tad Eggleston: They were at least that smart.
• 1:19:01
  Nick Thorburn: It's cool that he was down to…
• 1:19:03
  Nick Thorburn: you know, I'm sure he had a busy… a busy day, things to do, so it was cool that he…
• 1:19:07
  Nick Thorburn: Did that?
• 1:19:08
  Tad Eggleston: I think we were short on supply that day, too, so it wasn't like he had to, like, sign for…
• 1:19:16
  Nick Thorburn: Right.
• 1:19:18
  Tad Eggleston: It's just one of those between-shipment times, so it's like he signed 8 discs.
• 1:19:24
  Tad Eggleston: And don't get me wrong, we weren't that low often, but it was like the Christmas season, and it was between shipments.
• 1:19:30
  Tad Eggleston: You know, so we'd, like, hit our… ebbed.
• 1:19:34
  Nick Thorburn: What albums… what album era was this for?
• 1:19:37
  Tad Eggleston: This would have been…
• 1:19:43
  Tad Eggleston: There's, what, 3 years between… Melancholy and adore.
• 1:19:49
  Nick Thorburn: Okay.
• 1:19:50
  Tad Eggleston: So it was… Like, two and a half years after Melancholy, and about 6 months before a door.
• 1:19:57
  Nick Thorburn: Okay.
• 1:20:00
  Nick Thorburn: Which is…
• 1:20:00
  Tad Eggleston: That's the other reason we were able to wane. He didn't have anything new-new.
• 1:20:04
  Nick Thorburn: Right.
• 1:20:06
  Tad Eggleston: you know, the newest was… I mean, I think it was still 2 years after the Airplane Flies High box set.
• 1:20:13
  Nick Thorburn: Right, right. I mean, Melancholy had long… a long tail, too. I mean, that was a double album with a lot of singles.
• 1:20:20
  Tad Eggleston: Well, the, the airplane flies high box set.
• 1:20:24
  Tad Eggleston: Had all those singles in extended versions, I have that.
• 1:20:27
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah.
• 1:20:29
  Tad Eggleston: I think… One of the rare times where a stripped-down version is my favorite version is the Tonight Reprise.
• 1:20:36
  Nick Thorburn: Hmm.
• 1:20:37
  Tad Eggleston: From… from the extended tonight to night?
• 1:20:41
  Tad Eggleston: Actually, I meant to bring that up earlier, have you… do you know the author, Nick Hornby, at all?
• 1:20:47
  Nick Thorburn: I do. I'm not wet… you know, I've… I think I read…
• 1:20:53
  Nick Thorburn: I think I read High Fidelity, like, in 20…
• 1:20:56
  Nick Thorburn: Right. Four years ago. Long, yeah.
• 1:20:59
  Tad Eggleston: I, I just… Just rewatch the movie of…
• 1:21:05
  Tad Eggleston: what's probably my favorite of his novels, and late enough that not as many people know it, it's a book called Juliet Naked.
• 1:21:13
  Nick Thorburn: Okay.
• 1:21:13
  Tad Eggleston: Where essentially the premise is…
• 1:21:17
  Tad Eggleston: Like, you've got this rock star that has, like, this cult following, in part because he just vanished off the scene 20 years earlier.
• 1:21:26
  Tad Eggleston: But… but, like, the book… Starts out centered around, like…
• 1:21:38
  Tad Eggleston: A museum curator that's dating, like, this guy's biggest fan, who runs the message board, is just obsessed with him, blah blah blah.
• 1:21:46
  Tad Eggleston: And then…
• 1:21:48
  Tad Eggleston: In the mail comes a disc called Juliet Naked. The famous album from this fictional rock star had been Juliet.
• 1:21:56
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, she winds up sabotaging their relationship by… by,
• 1:22:05
  Tad Eggleston: Listening to it before… before her boyfriend, who's the obsessive
• 1:22:10
  Tad Eggleston: Star listens to it, and it's essentially the demo version, the stripped-down demo version of the album.
• 1:22:16
  Tad Eggleston: And he gets it, and he listens to it, and he immediately writes about how it's genius, and blah blah blah blah blah.
• 1:22:22
  Tad Eggleston: And she's like, well, I don't know if I agree, I think it's…
• 1:22:27
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's good, but I… don't you think, like, the…
• 1:22:31
  Tad Eggleston: the full version with all the instrumentation and whatnot is better? This is… this is like the rough draft. This is the pencil sketch of the great piece of art.
• 1:22:41
  Tad Eggleston: Huh.
• 1:22:42
  Tad Eggleston: And, and then…
• 1:22:48
  Tad Eggleston: They have enough of a fight that she writes that up on his message board.
• 1:22:54
  Tad Eggleston: And… the artist… Sends her an email saying, yeah, I agree with you.
• 1:23:02
  Tad Eggleston: And the book goes from there.
• 1:23:05
  Nick Thorburn: Cool.
• 1:23:06
  Tad Eggleston: And the movie's got Ethan Hawke as the artist.
• 1:23:10
  Nick Thorburn: There you go.
• 1:23:12
  Tad Eggleston: Another one of those polyglot guys that…
• 1:23:14
  Nick Thorburn: He let…
• 1:23:15
  Tad Eggleston: That somehow can act, write, and he even writes comics.
• 1:23:19
  Tad Eggleston: Really? It's got two graphic novels, they're really good.
• 1:23:24
  Nick Thorburn: Well, he's probably got a lot of time on his hands, you know?
• 1:23:29
  Nick Thorburn: It's not tilling the field.
• 1:23:32
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, you would think. I mean, that's, that's, that's, that's… Totally true.
• 1:23:38
  Tad Eggleston: So then my,
• 1:23:43
  Tad Eggleston: My closing question has always been, and it's my favorite closing… er, one of my favorite questions to ask anybody. Tell me something you love.
• 1:23:51
  Tad Eggleston: Preferably a comic, but we don't have rules, and for you, I'm actually gonna make a minor rule. I want a comic.
• 1:23:57
  Tad Eggleston: And something music. An album, a song, a band. But something you love,
• 1:24:07
  Tad Eggleston: That not enough people around you have experienced?
• 1:24:11
  Nick Thorburn: Okay.
• 1:24:13
  Tad Eggleston: And you'd like them to, so you have more people to talk about it with.
• 1:24:19
  Tad Eggleston: By the way, do the wonders of, of…
• 1:24:22
  Tad Eggleston: of the way things are set up, and the fact that I can… I can listen to one thing in one ear, and another thing in another ear. While you were telling a longer story earlier, I took the time to listen to your song, it's pretty cool. The cream one.
• 1:24:36
  Nick Thorburn: Okay.
• 1:24:37
  Nick Thorburn: Sweet.
• 1:24:38
  Tad Eggleston: It's, it's got kind of a.
• 1:24:41
  Nick Thorburn: The left speaker, though.
• 1:24:44
  Tad Eggleston: What? Actually, no, really, it was coming through both ears, and I was just hearing you through it, because that's the way it is automatically set up, so… so I didn't get to hear it as deeply as I normally would, but I liked the…
• 1:24:58
  Tad Eggleston: the, like…
• 1:25:00
  Nick Thorburn: That's funny.
• 1:25:03
  Nick Thorburn: Was that, the cream's Taste of Cherry?
• 1:25:07
  Tad Eggleston: I think so, yeah, that's what he sent me.
• 1:25:10
  Tad Eggleston: link to the YouTube. I feel like it's got a bit of a 70s glam, and a bit of a,
• 1:25:21
  Tad Eggleston: I don't even… classic rock… But classic rock, meaning classic rock, like…
• 1:25:29
  Tad Eggleston: late 60s through early 90s that doesn't quite fall into another category, rock, if that makes sense.
• 1:25:35
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, yeah, I think, I think that makes sense.
• 1:25:40
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:25:42
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I could feel a little bit of the Bowie and Mott the Hoopo, but also a little bit of the Tom Petty and, and, like…
• 1:25:51
  Tad Eggleston: the strokes.
• 1:25:52
  Nick Thorburn: Oh, take all of that. Take all of that to the bank.
• 1:25:56
  Tad Eggleston: Well, there you go.
• 1:25:58
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know which bank I can, I can, help you take it to, but.
• 1:26:05
  Nick Thorburn: Or Chase.
• 1:26:08
  Nick Thorburn: Do they…
• 1:26:08
  Tad Eggleston: Cash compliments?
• 1:26:11
  Nick Thorburn: I don't know, I'm Chase Preferred, so I'll see what they… maybe they can hook up.
• 1:26:15
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, if they do, let me know, because I'll work on becoming Chase Preferred, because I get way more compliments than dollars.
• 1:26:22
  Nick Thorburn: Okay, well, we can convert that to at least to points.
• 1:26:27
  Tad Eggleston: I'll take them. I don't get to travel very often.
• 1:26:30
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah.
• 1:26:31
  Nick Thorburn: Just stack it.
• 1:26:33
  Nick Thorburn: Okay, I'm going to say… song? You know, I was just listening to my friend… my friends in…
• 1:26:41
  Nick Thorburn: Toronto have a band called Kiwi Jr. They're awesome, and… They have a red…
• 1:26:47
  Tad Eggleston: Jr.
• 1:26:47
  Nick Thorburn: Kiwi Jr. They put out a record on Sub Pop.
• 1:26:51
  Nick Thorburn: And they have a new record coming out on K Records, so still in the same…
• 1:26:56
  Nick Thorburn: Pacific Northwest region.
• 1:26:59
  Nick Thorburn: I think in…
• 1:27:01
  Nick Thorburn: I don't know when it's out, it's out in a couple months, but they just released a single yesterday, and I was… before I spoke to you, I was walking around listening to an early, advanced stream of their album.
• 1:27:13
  Nick Thorburn: And so I would say… the song I've been loving.
• 1:27:17
  Nick Thorburn: And I think more people should know this band, because they're very good, is Kiwi Jr. and their song, Blowin' Up.
• 1:27:25
  Nick Thorburn: Alright.
• 1:27:25
  Tad Eggleston: It is the first thing that comes up on
• 1:27:29
  Tad Eggleston: On Google, if you Google Kiwi Jr.
• 1:27:33
  Nick Thorburn: Good.
• 1:27:35
  Tad Eggleston: We order the vinyl on Bandcamp for $25.
• 1:27:41
  Nick Thorburn: That's a steal.
• 1:27:42
  Tad Eggleston: $15 for the CD.
• 1:27:49
  Nick Thorburn: That's a steal, too.
• 1:27:51
  Nick Thorburn: Okay, now… now for the…
• 1:27:55
  Nick Thorburn: the book… well, okay, I mean, a book I've loved, a cartoonist… who…
• 1:28:01
  Nick Thorburn: made these comics a few years ago, and then just kind of disappeared. Or I haven't heard him, but he made this book called Dungeon Quest, this guy Joe Daley.
• 1:28:11
  Nick Thorburn: I think it came out on Fanta Graphics. He made a series of these
• 1:28:15
  Nick Thorburn: large stories, and they're kind of fantasy… I guess, in the…
• 1:28:21
  Nick Thorburn: maybe some… I don't know much about Dungeons & Dragons, but it feels like it's loosely…
• 1:28:27
  Nick Thorburn: Referencing that kind of… kind of fantasy, I guess, but…
• 1:28:32
  Nick Thorburn: it's drawn more in the style of Chester Brown or something like that.
• 1:28:39
  Nick Thorburn: And it's so funny, I remember reading it, Years ago, And…
• 1:28:46
  Nick Thorburn: Just laughing out loud, like, multiple times,
• 1:28:51
  Nick Thorburn: And it stuck with me, and I've waited for… you know, this… the book ends, I think he's done 3 books of Dungeon…
• 1:28:58
  Nick Thorburn: No, is it called Dungeon Quest?
• 1:29:00
  Tad Eggleston: It is.
• 1:29:01
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, right? Okay.
• 1:29:02
  Tad Eggleston: Engine Quest.
• 1:29:03
  Nick Thorburn: And the story kind of ends on a cliffhanger, and it just never came back.
• 1:29:10
  Nick Thorburn: So…
• 1:29:10
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, see, I have read some from… I haven't read Dungeon Quest, but I've read the Red Monkey Double Happiness book.
• 1:29:17
  Nick Thorburn: I think that was before…
• 1:29:19
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:29:21
  Nick Thorburn: But, it's very funny. It's just very, very funny, and
• 1:29:26
  Nick Thorburn: Looks really cool, I love that.
• 1:29:28
  Nick Thorburn: Stark, you know, the… the… The Chester Brown, Charles Burns, Joe Matt, Seth kind of just…
• 1:29:35
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:29:36
  Nick Thorburn: Heavy blacks and big whites with the drawing style, with the ink, so…
• 1:29:43
  Nick Thorburn: It's, it's what I aspire to, I guess.
• 1:29:46
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, this one actually looks harder to put your hands on.
• 1:29:51
  Tad Eggleston: At the moment… Oh, maybe not as hard as I thought.
• 1:29:59
  Tad Eggleston: Because among other things, it is available digitally. Oh! You can read it for free on Comixology Unlimited, which I still have.
• 1:30:07
  Tad Eggleston: Haven't canceled yet. I'm getting closer. Is Comixology… Becomes less and less useful.
• 1:30:14
  Tad Eggleston: But I haven't actually yet, so I'll read the Dungeon Quest books before I cancel it.
• 1:30:20
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah, it's fun.
• 1:30:22
  Tad Eggleston: You're managing to actually sell me stuff, though. I'm, like…
• 1:30:27
  Nick Thorburn: Okay, good.
• 1:30:29
  Tad Eggleston: ordering the, the, the Kiwi Jr. album as we…
• 1:30:33
  Nick Thorburn: Awesome.
• 1:30:34
  Tad Eggleston: On vinyl, even. I'm just… I'm going whole hog.
• 1:30:36
  Nick Thorburn: I love it.
• 1:30:38
  Nick Thorburn: I love it.
• 1:30:40
  Nick Thorburn: I gotta get some kickback for that.
• 1:30:44
  Tad Eggleston: But, yeah, that's available on Bandcamp right here.
• 1:30:50
  Nick Thorburn: Yes, it is. Well, cool, man. Well, thank you.
• 1:30:52
  Tad Eggleston: So…
• 1:30:53
  Nick Thorburn: for…
• 1:30:53
  Tad Eggleston: It has been a pleasure, Nick. Hopefully you will come back, talk comics with me, talk music with me. Anytime you're bored and need somebody to talk
• 1:31:02
  Tad Eggleston: comics or music with, like, I will take assignments for book clubs.
• 1:31:07
  Nick Thorburn: Nice.
• 1:31:07
  Tad Eggleston: Like, you say, I want to talk about this.
• 1:31:11
  Tad Eggleston: Just tell me, I'll read it, and we'll set up a time.
• 1:31:14
  Nick Thorburn: Word, okay. Thanks, Ted. And hopefully, yeah, if I get another issue, through the pipeline, I'll…
• 1:31:22
  Nick Thorburn: I'll let you, you know, be…
• 1:31:24
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and if you play Chicago, let me know, and… I mean, it better still put me on the list, I don't know if I've ever been on the list.
• 1:31:30
  Nick Thorburn: I could do that. That's one of my.
• 1:31:32
  Tad Eggleston: I've heard that's a cool thing.
• 1:31:34
  Nick Thorburn: It's a cool thing, and, you know, I don't know too many folks in Chicago, so I think we'd have some… we'd make some room for you on the list, and…
• 1:31:42
  Nick Thorburn: Get you set up in the little special viewing.
• 1:31:46
  Nick Thorburn: Zone near the side of the stage, you know?
• 1:31:49
  Tad Eggleston: See, see, and I'm autistic, so that would actually probably be super perfect for me.
• 1:31:54
  Nick Thorburn: Okay.
• 1:31:55
  Tad Eggleston: Cause, like… Concerts are one of few crowds that I can mostly handle, but, like, I don't like crowds.
• 1:32:03
  Nick Thorburn: Damn.
• 1:32:03
  Tad Eggleston: like, even when I'm at concerts, when I see the people on the side of the stage, or behind the stage, or whatnot, I'm like, how do you get those seats? Those seem awesome.
• 1:32:15
  Tad Eggleston: All of the music and energy, none of the people.
• 1:32:19
  Nick Thorburn: Yeah.
• 1:32:20
  Nick Thorburn: Exactly.
• 1:32:22
  Tad Eggleston: Nick, it has been a pleasure. I enjoyed myself immensely. I hope you did, too.
• 1:32:29
  Nick Thorburn: I did, I very much so.
• 1:32:32
  Tad Eggleston: And, like I said, hopefully we'll find an excuse to talk again. For Nick Thorburn, the book is Pear Shaped, the single on…
• 1:32:43
  Tad Eggleston: on YouTube, at least, that's what I've been sent, is… is Taste of Cherry by The Cream, not Cream, The Cream, with two E's. No copyrights have been violated. Nope.
• 1:32:59
  Nick Thorburn: Listen to it.
• 1:33:01
  Tad Eggleston: it's cool, I'm gonna listen to it again, because I got 40 minutes before the next interview, so I might even listen to it twice, who knows?
• 1:33:09
  Tad Eggleston: It has been a blast, and for 22 panels, we will see you after the next page.