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With Great Power #350... 22 Panels with Derf Backderf · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

0:01
Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels. My guest tonight is, is one of my, my favorite, non-fiction cartoonish.
0:11
Tad Eggleston: Whose new book, The Dissidence, is… is due out
0:16
Tad Eggleston: I just looked up the date, and then I forgot the date, but thankfully I have the window open. September 15th, so… so…
0:23
Tad Eggleston: A little bit more than 2 weeks.
0:26
Tad Eggleston: And I was just… I was just telling Derf that… that I think… I think the dissidents for… for my money is… is…
0:35
Tad Eggleston: his magnum opus so far. Of course, my favorite before that was Trash, so take that with… with…
0:42
Derf Backderf: Cool.
0:43
Tad Eggleston: you know.
0:44
Tad Eggleston: My order now is dissidents trashed.
0:53
Tad Eggleston: Penn State.
0:54
Tad Eggleston: Punk rock trailer park, and then… and then that other one that everybody likes.
0:59
Derf Backderf: over. Right.
1:00
Tad Eggleston: I like it. It's very well done.
1:04
Tad Eggleston: you know, I'm not… I'm not trying to bash it. Like, if that's your… if that's your floor, you've had a pretty good career.
1:11
Derf Backderf: That's like in descending order of sales, too.
1:14
Tad Eggleston: You know, I'm often late.
1:20
Tad Eggleston: Derf, tell us about… oh, and Alexandra Bowman, young political cartoonist, winner of what was the award at CXC two years ago?
1:29
Alexandra Bowman: It was the Loker Memorial Award for.
1:32
Derf Backderf: Sure, yeah, Dick Loker.
1:34
Alexandra Bowman: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They don't say it on the name of the award, but it's Excellence, like, by a young person in cartooning.
1:41
Derf Backderf: They don't perfume, right?
1:42
Alexandra Bowman: say that anywhere in the.
1:44
Derf Backderf: She was at the Tribune, right?
1:46
Tad Eggleston: Think so.
1:46
Alexandra Bowman: So…
1:48
Derf Backderf: Yeah.
1:49
Tad Eggleston: So I decided, since the dissidence is about
1:52
Tad Eggleston: old-time political cartoonist, having a new political cartoonist to weigh in would be fun. But, Derf, you want to give us the…
2:00
Tad Eggleston: Like, the front counter pitch for the dissidents.
2:02
Derf Backderf: Run counter pitch, wow.
2:04
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
2:05
Derf Backderf: That's a new term for me.
2:08
Tad Eggleston: I work in comic shops.
2:10
Derf Backderf: The Dissidence is about a really interesting forgotten chapter in comics history.
2:19
Derf Backderf: Wrapped inside a suspenseful spy thriller.
2:24
Derf Backderf: So it's the true story of a group of political cartoonists who drew for the provocative magazine, The Masses. It takes place during World War I,
2:35
Derf Backderf: when the U.S. government essentially put the Bill of Rights on ice.
2:40
Derf Backderf: Freedom of speech no longer existed in America. Following the orders of this thin-skinned autocrat, Woodrow Wilson.
2:51
Derf Backderf: Thousands were jailed for sedition.
2:55
Derf Backderf: Which was a loosely defined offense that meant basically whatever the government said it did. Merely criticizing the president at this time would earn you a 15-year prison sentence, and thousands were sent to jail.
3:10
Derf Backderf: What the cartoonists of the masses documented in their work, it was a country spiraling into darkness.
3:18
Derf Backderf: It was under attack by secret militias, plagued by racist pogroms.
3:24
Derf Backderf: And rocked.
3:26
Derf Backderf: by class war.
3:28
Derf Backderf: The world outside was in flames.
3:32
Derf Backderf: Empires were falling, millions were dying in war and revolution.
3:39
Derf Backderf: And the political cartoons in the masses, some of the best ever made, in my opinion.
3:45
Derf Backderf: Were deemed to be such a threat that the cartoonists were harassed.
3:49
Derf Backderf: Spied upon, blacklisted, and finally put on trial.
3:54
Derf Backderf: Two fled the country into exile, one was imprisoned and tortured.
4:00
Derf Backderf: And another was incarcerated by the U.S. Army and scheduled for execution.
4:05
Derf Backderf: For making cartoons.
4:08
Derf Backderf: So the dissidents is their story.
4:10
Derf Backderf: And it's this tense tale of courage, In the face of authoritarianism.
4:17
Derf Backderf: Revolutionaries and vigilantes, love and betrayal, and of political passions that change the world.
4:27
Tad Eggleston: And then… You told it so well.
4:34
Tad Eggleston: where it falls in with what I liked about
4:39
Tad Eggleston: trashed as well, as I loved… I love the way that you can… weave… A human fiction story
4:49
Tad Eggleston: With the nonfiction to give both.
4:54
Tad Eggleston: The historical account.
4:57
Tad Eggleston: But also, the… the emotional account.
5:01
Tad Eggleston: Right.
5:02
Derf Backderf: Right. The narrator is a fictional character of my creation, because I needed a narrator, you know?
5:11
Tad Eggleston: Right.
5:12
Derf Backderf: lame.
5:13
Derf Backderf: Well, really to explain context, because without context, you can't understand a political cartoon.
5:19
Tad Eggleston: Right.
5:20
Derf Backderf: And these are such powerful cartoons, but just you look at them and you don't know what they're about. So I needed somebody to explain that. So, that narrator was a way to… for me to put a little of myself in the story, and that's where you find the personal connection and the humanity and all of that stuff, so that was the decision that I made.
5:41
Tad Eggleston: You make him a really thoughtful guy.
5:48
Tad Eggleston: I appreciate the fact that, like, in your forward, you talk about how… how you're not necessarily… or you're not a socialist, take this as whatever it is, but.
5:59
Derf Backderf: Well, I'm not a full-blown Marxist. I'm probably leaning… I'm leaning pretty far socialist these days.
6:05
Tad Eggleston: Me too. But, but, but, but also, like, you, you take…
6:13
Tad Eggleston: That's what we see in this character. Like, he…
6:17
Tad Eggleston: Despite the fact that, like, he loses the foot…
6:20
Tad Eggleston: to the mob with the wobblies, and… and, like, he has to… in some ways, he lives more life than… than a lot of the more firebrands that he works with. He keeps,
6:38
Tad Eggleston: a steady gaze. Like, he doesn't… doesn't fall too hard.
6:43
Derf Backderf: I'm curious.
6:43
Tad Eggleston: Right.
6:44
Derf Backderf: I'm curious, but not… A true believer.
6:48
Tad Eggleston: Well, but also, I mean, actually, I think, I think importantly, he is curious. Right. You know, it's not just, oh, hey, this sounds great, and I like these people. It's like, okay, I get what you're saying, and it's great, but what about…
7:03
Derf Backderf: Right. Well, this was… this was really an era of curiosity.
7:09
Derf Backderf: Because remember, none of this stuff had ever been tried.
7:13
Derf Backderf: It was all just political theory, from socialism to anarchism to syndicalism, all of these things were just being developed and put out there.
7:24
Derf Backderf: To oppose this horrible, oppressive.
7:28
Derf Backderf: predatory capitalism that was going on at the time, or monarchism, in the case of Europe, where
7:35
Derf Backderf: Right. You know, it's just crushing oppression. Right. So, it was just all of this stuff bouncing off the walls, and nobody knew what was gonna work, and what wasn't gonna work, and, you know, it, history had to play out first. But that's the moment when all of this stuff
7:50
Derf Backderf: was… was being dried. So it's really an interesting, fascinating period.
7:55
Tad Eggleston: When did you become
7:59
Tad Eggleston: interest in this period? Was this something that had been percolating for a while, or did you stumble.
8:03
Derf Backderf: Oh, yeah.
8:04
Tad Eggleston: Recently.
8:05
Derf Backderf: Well, I mean, the cartoonists of the masses, I discovered in college.
8:10
Derf Backderf: I went to Ohio State.
8:13
Derf Backderf: Which is where the Cartoon Museum is.
8:15
Tad Eggleston: Right.
8:16
Derf Backderf: And it had just been found.
8:18
Tad Eggleston: Billie Ireland, I promise Caitlin that every time it comes up, the Ireland cartoon.
8:24
Derf Backderf: Right.
8:25
Tad Eggleston: Cartoon Museum and… Library and Museum.
8:28
Tad Eggleston: They have all sorts of stuff, and if you ask them in the reading room, they'll bring any of it out for you.
8:33
Derf Backderf: That's right. I did a lot of research down there, actually, for this book. And in my… when I was there, it was still called the Milton Kniff.
8:41
Derf Backderf: Museum. Right.
8:43
Derf Backderf: So it hadn't yet grown into the institution it is today, but Lucy Caswell, the founding curator, was one of my profs.
8:50
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
8:51
Derf Backderf: So, she's the one who really introduced me to the masses, because I was doing these… at the time, I was doing really shitty political cartoons for the school paper. I don't know why, I just…
9:05
Derf Backderf: thought I'd try my hand at it. And feel free to shout out catcalls anytime you want, Alex.
9:14
Derf Backderf: But, He said…
9:19
Derf Backderf: She's the one who appointed me to some of these cartoons. She said, I think you'd really like these guys, you oughta look at them. And at the time, there wasn't a lot published about them. It was all out of print, and all forgotten.
9:31
Derf Backderf: So, it was kind of an exploration, and I just kept…
9:35
Derf Backderf: over the years, I just kept learning more and more about them, and seeing more of their work, and just being really fascinated, and it, you know, it affected my work.
9:44
Derf Backderf: they're a pretty big influence. So, I mean, that's where it started.
9:48
Derf Backderf: So I've been carrying this story around for a while.
9:51
Derf Backderf: And finally, I just decided, oh, what the hell, let's take it on.
9:56
Tad Eggleston: And about when… because I feel like…
9:59
Tad Eggleston: I mean, you hinted just enough the first time we talked on the podcast, which would have been…
10:06
Tad Eggleston: I think 4 years ago.
10:08
Tad Eggleston: four and a half years ago, that you were doing something that I was gonna like, and it had a little bit of that trash thing where it mixed fiction and nonfiction.
10:18
Derf Backderf: How long have you been fishing?
10:20
Tad Eggleston: Working, working on this.
10:21
Derf Backderf: That could have been another project, but it could.
10:23
Tad Eggleston: Oh, okay, see?
10:25
Derf Backderf: This one took about, three, three and a half years, yeah, to finish.
10:30
Tad Eggleston: So, so, so…
10:32
Derf Backderf: It's a big book, it's, you know.
10:33
Tad Eggleston: It is.
10:34
Derf Backderf: 44 pages, it's the biggest book I've done, because I'm insane.
10:39
Derf Backderf: So, yeah, it was a daunting amount of work.
10:45
Tad Eggleston: How much time did you spend researching?
10:49
Derf Backderf: Well…
10:51
Derf Backderf: at least probably half of that time was spent just on the research, yeah. I mean, there's a lot to learn.
10:59
Derf Backderf: Yeah. You had to learn the politics of… of the period, you had to learn about, you know, these… these characters, and what they went through.
11:08
Derf Backderf: you had to learn about… I mean, you know, people like Woodrow Wilson and Emma Goldman and all of these big figures of the day, and what was happening in Europe, and around the world, and blah blah blah. I mean, it was… yeah, it was…
11:22
Derf Backderf: It was a real, history exam.
11:27
Tad Eggleston: You were working on it.
11:29
Tad Eggleston: I think primarily during the Biden years then, Yeah.
11:33
Derf Backderf: Started it when in the middle of the Biden…
11:35
Derf Backderf: regime. So, I thought, wow, this… and I was struck by the similarities.
11:40
Derf Backderf: Between 1917 and, you know, what.
11:44
Tad Eggleston: 2016, 17.
11:47
Derf Backderf: Yeah.
11:48
Derf Backderf: And I thought, well, this will be maybe a warning. Hahaha. By the time I finished it, too late for warnings.
11:56
Tad Eggleston: Right.
11:56
Derf Backderf: So… So, you know, I don't know what it is now, but it's really a chilling…
12:04
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I think it's super.
12:05
Derf Backderf: Story about how we circled back around completely, having apparently learned nothing.
12:10
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
12:10
Derf Backderf: And here we are again.
12:14
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I know for me, not knowing… I mean, I know more about Wilson than I think normally gets
12:21
Tad Eggleston: Taught in the history books.
12:23
Tad Eggleston: I know that he's not just the League of Nations, he's also the desegregation of the… or the… the resegregation. Resegregation!
12:31
Derf Backderf: Yeah, he was a bad guy.
12:32
Tad Eggleston: Of the civil service.
12:34
Derf Backderf: He was… he was a bad, bad man.
12:38
Derf Backderf: A virulent racist, But…
12:40
Tad Eggleston: But I hadn't realized the level to which…
12:47
Tad Eggleston: we had suspended the Constitution during World War.
12:50
Derf Backderf: Yeah. Why?
12:51
Tad Eggleston: Until I was reading this book.
12:54
Tad Eggleston: And, like, it gives me this whole… I mean, on one side, it gives me a little bit of hope, because it's like, oh, wait, we have been… we have really, really been.
13:05
Derf Backderf: Yeah.
13:05
Tad Eggleston: We are right now.
13:06
Derf Backderf: Right.
13:07
Tad Eggleston: more.
13:07
Derf Backderf: We pulled out of it. We pulled out of it.
13:09
Tad Eggleston: And we came through, and there were even some really good years after it.
13:13
Derf Backderf: A few, and then, of course, the Great Depression. So…
13:17
Tad Eggleston: No, but there were so.
13:18
Derf Backderf: Cool.
13:18
Tad Eggleston: good years, like, coming out of the Great Depression, is what I meant, is, like, arguably, like, Roosevelt through
13:26
Tad Eggleston: Johnson… Could be argued to be, like, the… the… current peak America.
13:35
Derf Backderf: Maybe, but there were certainly a lot of troubling times during that period, too.
13:40
Tad Eggleston: Well, that's one of the things I love about history, and my version of the American Dream is, like.
13:46
Tad Eggleston: We keep trying to be better. Sometimes it takes way too long.
13:51
Derf Backderf: Right.
13:52
Tad Eggleston: But it's why I get pissed off when we won't look at the places that we went wrong, because you can't try to be better if you can't…
14:00
Tad Eggleston: Acknowledge where you've gone wrong.
14:02
Derf Backderf: Well, The Dissidence is not… it's not a hopeful book. It's not a happy book, let's say.
14:07
Tad Eggleston: No, it's not a happy book.
14:08
Derf Backderf: It does leave, because you do know that we pulled out of it, I mean, there is a hope at the end.
14:15
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
14:15
Derf Backderf: And, well, I don't.
14:18
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it took a couple of wars.
14:22
Derf Backderf: Yeah.
14:23
Derf Backderf: But what we still have is, you know, what we're left with is this incredible work, and these incredible cartoons.
14:30
Tad Eggleston: Well, and, and that, that…
14:32
Derf Backderf: Boom.
14:32
Tad Eggleston: made.
14:33
Derf Backderf: Part of my goal was to bring that back… bring those back to life, and bring them… ensure…
14:37
Tad Eggleston: How many of those great cartoons are timely again?
14:41
Derf Backderf: Quite a few.
14:43
Tad Eggleston: You know.
14:44
Derf Backderf: Pretty amazing.
14:45
Tad Eggleston: Y-you know.
14:46
Alexandra Bowman: I was just asked to speak at an event in Chicago about cartoons from wartime throughout U.S. history, where they had this exhibit at this library, and they called in me and Lalo Alcaraz and Scott Stantis and said, can you look through our hundred cartoons from cartoons from previous, from previous wars, and tell us which ones relate to you?
15:11
Alexandra Bowman: the most, or which ones connect with you the most. And I was shocked at how history is repeating itself, and how so many of the same things were said. And, I don't know, I struggle to find a positive interpretation of that, like, that so many of these same ideas have been had before, and we're back
15:32
Alexandra Bowman: dealing with those same very basic questions of not just political issues, but human dignity. It just scares me a lot, and I feel like, overall, you know, I always preface these things with humility, but
15:45
Alexandra Bowman: as an… as a… someone who does cartoons, and as a semi-outsider to the field, given how recently I started doing them, it feels like the general quality of cartoons has gone down. Not from you, Mr. Backder, but from everyone.
16:02
Derf Backderf: I'm out of the game. I mean, I don't.
16:03
Alexandra Bowman: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but not from you, but…
16:06
Derf Backderf: I, I failed as a political cartoonist.
16:09
Alexandra Bowman: Okay.
16:10
Derf Backderf: long ago.
16:10
Alexandra Bowman: Oh my goodness. But yeah, just the general quality of argument, and the kind of, overememployment of
16:18
Alexandra Bowman: deeply stupid ad hominems is so much worse now than it seems to have been before, and I am not a believer in ad hominems being tools that can change anybody's mind, or…
16:31
Derf Backderf: There's always been lazy cartoonists, I mean…
16:35
Derf Backderf: the field has been plagued with that for… even back to the period I'm covering, some of the mainstream cartoonists were…
16:42
Derf Backderf: You know, it was very knee-jerk, very predictable stuff.
16:46
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, that…
16:47
Derf Backderf: What I'm seeing now is, honestly, I've seen a bit of an uptick in political cartoons now, because so many of these people have been laid off.
16:57
Derf Backderf: That they're just kind of… they're kind of unrestrained now, and they're doing better work than they've done in years.
17:05
Derf Backderf: You still have your hacks, of course, I mean, that's never gonna change, but I don't know, there's so few of you now that that's the other problem, I mean…
17:15
Derf Backderf: Everybody's… so many people have just given up and gone away.
17:21
Tad Eggleston: I think some of it has to do with the marketplace, too.
17:24
Tad Eggleston: Like, the difference between the masses cartoonists and the other ones was…
17:31
Tad Eggleston: Where they were making or not making their money.
17:34
Tad Eggleston: Y-you know.
17:35
Tad Eggleston: The difference between… I mean, like, the newspapers then were still owned by rich people.
17:42
Tad Eggleston: You know…
17:43
Derf Backderf: Sometimes, yeah, but they were also… I mean, there were…
17:46
Derf Backderf: Well, there were socialists that owned newspapers back then.
17:50
Tad Eggleston: We're some better.
17:50
Derf Backderf: But, but…
17:52
Tad Eggleston: But what I mean is, when you're talking about some of the cartoons then that weren't as good, there was probably a certain amount of, well, I can't make fun of my boss.
18:03
Derf Backderf: Well, you've always got to negotiate that.
18:06
Tad Eggleston: Right.
18:07
Derf Backderf: land.
18:08
Derf Backderf: field.
18:08
Tad Eggleston: And likewise, in this era, one of the reasons that some people are doing their best cartoons again is, like, as they leave the big papers, or get let go from the big papers, and essentially become independent on
18:24
Tad Eggleston: Patreon, or Substack, or whatever.
18:32
Tad Eggleston: Their survival is driven by people actually liking them enough to kick them 5 bucks a month, not…
18:42
Tad Eggleston: By… by somebody bigger, And I think that sometimes gives more freedom.
18:51
Derf Backderf: Maybe. I mean, I'd be lying if I said I was an expert on the current state of political cartoons.
18:57
Tad Eggleston: There are still a lot of people that it also just means that they're… they… they don't eat as well, because…
19:04
Derf Backderf: Right.
19:04
Tad Eggleston: There's no money in comics.
19:07
Derf Backderf: Well, it's not that grim, but yeah, I mean, you know…
19:12
Derf Backderf: Yeah, it's a newspaper comics, it's a sorry state of affairs.
19:16
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
19:17
Derf Backderf: Fills me with fury when I think about these rich bastards who have basically destroyed in a great American art form.
19:25
Derf Backderf: Just because they lost interest in it, or because they're too stupid to see that it had value.
19:32
Alexandra Bowman: my big take that I've been yelling about for the last little while is that the low quality of a lot of cartoons is contributing to people thinking it doesn't have value. That's an opinion I hold with regard to the general situation and some cartoons. Obviously not all of them, but I think that, especially given that we've been dealing with similar
19:56
Alexandra Bowman: big arguments from the left about Trump, et cetera, for the last 10 years. We need new arguments, and I can see the, I can understand the argument that, the things that political cartoonists tend to be going towards are not helping at this point. Like, he's rude.
20:13
Derf Backderf: he's…
20:13
Alexandra Bowman: immoral, he doesn't represent Christians, like, all true, all need to be said, but I don't think that those arguments are, have novelty anymore for either, surprising or patting liberals on the back, or for persuading people who still like him. So we need more news.
20:32
Derf Backderf: Doesn't it, but isn't it determined by how you tell it? I mean…
20:37
Tad Eggleston: Sometimes.
20:37
Alexandra Bowman: Part, in part, yeah.
20:39
Derf Backderf: I mean, there's always… if someone's creative and funny, and I mean, the bottom line is, is it funny? And effective? I mean, you know, it can still… there can still be value there.
20:49
Alexandra Bowman: Yeah.
20:50
Derf Backderf: But sad, I'm so far out of the… I'm so far out of this…
20:54
Derf Backderf: this game. I couldn't sit down and draw a political cartoon now if you put a gun to my head. I mean, I just lost those skills.
21:00
Tad Eggleston: Will nobody put any guns to turn.
21:03
Tad Eggleston: I like Derf.
21:06
Derf Backderf: In fact, when I had to draw some political cartoons for this book, I went back and grabbed a couple cartoons I drew when I was in my 20s.
21:16
Derf Backderf: And just redid them.
21:18
Derf Backderf: Like, the cover, the cover is a cartoon I did for the Cleveland Plain Dealer in, like, 1988.
21:24
Derf Backderf: I just reworked it, so the ideas are old, but I just don't have… I just can't think up those… I just can't get my brain to work that way anymore, because I'm used to telling long narratives now, so I've lost that skill completely.
21:40
Tad Eggleston: what?
21:41
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I think… I think we talked a little bit about it, but it was years ago now, so… so I'm gonna ask the question again, like, talk to me about your evolution into long narratives, because…
21:52
Derf Backderf: Excuse me.
21:53
Tad Eggleston: Y-you know, you started with… with… political cartoons.
21:58
Derf Backderf: Right, one panel.
22:00
Tad Eggleston: And then punk rock and trailer parks.
22:02
Derf Backderf: You're missing a whole couple decades there, my friend.
22:05
Tad Eggleston: Of course. Okay.
22:07
Derf Backderf: I mean, after the political cartoons,
22:11
Derf Backderf: I failed at that. I was fired.
22:14
Derf Backderf: For, as the editor at the time put it, general tastelessness.
22:18
Derf Backderf: And, resurfaced a couple years later with a weekly comic strip, which I sold to a shitload of alt weeklies. It was called The City.
22:28
Derf Backderf: In Chicago, we're ran in the reader for many years. Right.
22:33
Derf Backderf: And that was a lot of fun, and that was 4 panels, and, you know, it had narrative in it, so, I mean, small narrative.
22:40
Tad Eggleston: That's still on… Is it on GoCo?
22:43
Derf Backderf: It's on Go Comics, yeah, the archive is, yeah.
22:47
Derf Backderf: And that was great, especially in the 90s, you know, that was really the peak of it, and the peak of all weeklies.
22:54
Derf Backderf: And I just had a blast with it. And then when all leaklies began to fail.
22:58
Derf Backderf: in the odds, I decided, oh shit, I'd better find something else to do, and I thought, well, I'll give a longer narrative a try. So I started doing
23:07
Derf Backderf: longer stories, and yeah, my first… my first book was, called Punk Rock and Trailer Parks, and that…
23:14
Derf Backderf: Came out in, my first… full book.
23:19
Derf Backderf: That was 2009, I think?
23:22
Derf Backderf: Isn't have…
23:22
Tad Eggleston: Lee.
23:23
Derf Backderf: Yeah. Yeah.
23:25
Tad Eggleston: Wow.
23:26
Derf Backderf: Right, yeah, I was an overnight sensation after 30 years working.
23:32
Derf Backderf: Okay.
23:32
Tad Eggleston: I don't know why, in my head, it came out years earlier than that.
23:37
Derf Backderf: No, no. There were a couple shorter books that came out, in the early 2000s. Like, I got… I think I got my first two Eisner nominations in, like, 2001 and 2002.
23:50
Derf Backderf: But the first true graphic novel wasn't until 2009.
23:56
Derf Backderf: And then right after that, I came my friend Dommer, and that changed everything.
24:05
Tad Eggleston: But then you… I mean, I feel like from… like, those two books were more…
24:14
Tad Eggleston: not strictly autobiographical, but those two, and trashed… I mean, my friend Dahmer, obviously, was very autobiographical.
24:21
Derf Backderf: Yeah, it's memoir. It's memo.
24:22
Tad Eggleston: Right. Punk rock and drill.
24:24
Derf Backderf: is actually fiction, but it's based on my.
24:27
Tad Eggleston: Right.
24:27
Derf Backderf: experiences.
24:28
Tad Eggleston: And trashed as well, I know.
24:30
Derf Backderf: Yeah.
24:30
Tad Eggleston: fiction, but based on your experiences. But then with Kent State, and now with Dissidence, you've gone much more into history.
24:38
Derf Backderf: Yeah, well, Kent State is as strict non-fiction as can be.
24:44
Tad Eggleston: Right. So what… what inspired the shift?
24:49
Derf Backderf: Shift to what?
24:51
Tad Eggleston: Will the shift from… will the shift to more… More memoir-ish to more historical.
25:01
Derf Backderf: Well, that's dictated by the story.
25:04
Derf Backderf: So, when I decided to do Kent State, I mean, that's the way I decided to do that book. I mean, I wasn't there.
25:10
Tad Eggleston: No, I…
25:11
Derf Backderf: I know.
25:12
Tad Eggleston: I, I, I, I meant, I meant more, like.
25:16
Tad Eggleston: many creators, if their memoirists tend to be memoirists, and they don't necessarily decide, oh, I feel like telling the historical
25:26
Tad Eggleston: So was it a conscious thing, or was it just…
25:28
Derf Backderf: Yeah, very definitely. I mean, I've never been… I've never been that comfortable with memoir.
25:34
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
25:35
Derf Backderf: I just don't like to, you know…
25:37
Derf Backderf: To be a really good memoirist, I mean, you just have to just… just gorgeous.
25:41
Tad Eggleston: pour it on the page.
25:44
Derf Backderf: Secret is there on the Peugeot type, you know?
25:47
Tad Eggleston: Right.
25:48
Derf Backderf: And I was not…
25:49
Tad Eggleston: I talked to Raquel Jack last week, and her book's amazing, but I…
25:53
Tad Eggleston: was blown away, like, I'm sitting there going, I don't know how you sat with this.
25:58
Derf Backderf: Yeah, you have to be… you have to be absolutely fearless.
26:01
Tad Eggleston: Right.
26:02
Derf Backderf: You know, I think I was with my friend Dahmer, because I had to be. That's the only way I could tell that story. It had to be memoir.
26:08
Derf Backderf: So that forced my hand. But you'll notice that's the only one.
26:12
Tad Eggleston: Right.
26:12
Derf Backderf: You know, I've always kind of hidden behind fiction otherwise, so yeah, it's based on experience, but it's not about me. It's about these characters that I come up with.
26:22
Derf Backderf: Whereas Kent State, that was a period piece. It was, you know, I was 10 years old when Kent State happened, so, I mean, I couldn't really write about it as a memoir.
26:31
Derf Backderf: Right.
26:32
Derf Backderf: So I wrote it as, you know, I dusted off my…
26:38
Derf Backderf: rusty journalism skills and training, and went to work, and I found that very enjoyable. So, it's also a way of mixing it up, I just don't… I don't like to do the same thing over and over again.
26:51
Derf Backderf: So I like to try new things.
26:56
Tad Eggleston: Completely understandable.
26:58
Tad Eggleston: That's me.
27:00
Tad Eggleston: That's a lot of my favorite artists.
27:03
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no.
27:04
Tad Eggleston: I know, like.
27:07
Tad Eggleston: Bob Dylan shows, everybody gets upset because you can't sing along to the songs, because he sings them differently almost every night.
27:17
Tad Eggleston: But it's because he's… he's sung blowing in the Wind a few thousand times.
27:21
Derf Backderf: It's not interesting.
27:23
Tad Eggleston: It's not interesting to him if he does it.
27:26
Tad Eggleston: He'll do it straight up, like, once a year.
27:30
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
27:34
Tad Eggleston: what… In the… in the research process.
27:44
Tad Eggleston: What new thing did you learn?
27:46
Tad Eggleston: That, like, stuck with you the most.
27:49
Derf Backderf: In the dissidents?
27:50
Tad Eggleston: in the.
27:51
Derf Backderf: Yeah, there were a few things, nothing, no, no…
27:58
Derf Backderf: grand revelation. There are a couple in Kent State.
28:03
Derf Backderf: Less so in the dissidents. I was surprised by…
28:08
Derf Backderf: A lot of the history has been… has been whitewashed.
28:12
Derf Backderf: I was surprised how… authoritarian Wilson was. I mean, he's the big villain of this piece.
28:21
Derf Backderf: And how, malevolent he was, and vindictive.
28:27
Derf Backderf: I was also surprised that he was basically a bedridden vegetable for the last 17 years… 17 months of his term, his regime, because he had a massive stroke.
28:38
Tad Eggleston: Right.
28:39
Derf Backderf: And his wife and his chief of staff was called a personal.
28:54
Tad Eggleston: We lose Derf?
29:06
Alexandra Bowman: In my experience, what we're seeing now is what happens when the computer dies of that person.
29:12
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
29:13
Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna pause really quick.
29:18
Tad Eggleston: Alright, we're back from our technical difficulties, and none of us remember what we were talking about, but Alex and I talked some Dolly Parkin while Derf was gone.
29:30
Tad Eggleston: Derf, do you have any thoughts?
29:31
derf: scary?
29:33
Tad Eggleston: Well, you know, we didn't have enough time. Tim Curry might have come up next.
29:39
Tad Eggleston: Dolly came out of the political conversation, because…
29:43
Alexandra Bowman: Yeah.
29:44
Tad Eggleston: She's… she's that interesting animal where, like.
29:48
Tad Eggleston: She didn't necessarily claim to be political, and she didn't necessarily go out on the campaign trail with people, but she was wholeheartedly and loudly
30:00
Tad Eggleston: human rights.
30:02
derf: Oh, absolutely, yeah. Very kind person, yeah. Right. World is lesser for her passing, definitely.
30:09
Alexandra Bowman: One thing I was saying to Tad a second ago, like, Tad was saying, people are suggesting online that she wasn't political.
30:17
Alexandra Bowman: And, I think that the reason for that is that people struggle to imagine the existence of a person in the last, you know, 80 years in the United States who is liked by everyone and political.
30:31
Alexandra Bowman: That's an impossible combination, so I think that's where Coming from.
30:36
derf: You've never heard…
30:37
Alexandra Bowman: Surely she wasn't political enough if she didn't make anybody mad.
30:42
Tad Eggleston: What's that?
30:42
Alexandra Bowman: What's been interesting to me is that she said more than enough, and Lindsay Ellis, the YouTuber, talked about this in the hour-long video she put out a couple days ago, like, she said the things that historically make Republicans very upset, but they seem to tolerate her views.
31:01
Tad Eggleston: It's hard to… it's hard to go after a country icon who grew up in a one-bedroom house with 11 siblings.
31:08
Alexandra Bowman: Yeah, exactly.
31:10
derf: Yeah, no doubt.
31:11
Tad Eggleston: Who's me?
31:12
Alexandra Bowman: is so good. And I… that's something that bothers me, too, is that I don't want people to think that she's one of a kind, I could never do that myself! She's so impressive, she's a god, you know? It's like, no, we all can be that loving and also creatively excellent, so don't… we shouldn't hold… put her up on a, no one is ever capable of this pedestal, even though… while still admiring her.
31:37
Alexandra Bowman: For her character and talent, so…
31:40
derf: Well, sure, if you think too hard about, you know, the great…
31:44
derf: in any field, you just get frozen with fear. I mean, it's that way in comics, for sure. I mean, you know, I can't…
31:52
derf: compare… I look at a Jack Kirby book, or a Moibius book, or something like that, and it's like, oh shit, I'll never draw again. But…
32:01
derf: No, you can't think that way, so you just hold them in the distance. I met her partner, Porter Wagner. I met him.
32:09
Tad Eggleston: Oh, cool.
32:10
derf: Yeah, he was at a newspaper convention in Nashville.
32:15
derf: For the all-weekly papers, you know, they had it down there. It was in the Grand Old Opry.
32:19
derf: And they had hired him to be the official greeter, but I guess he's, like.
32:24
derf: Not good around crowds, so we hid out in the…
32:27
derf: So he was hiding in the gift shop, and I just went in there to get a paperweight or something. And I walked in the corner, and there's Porter Wagner in his full getup, you know, the pompadour and the glittery outfit.
32:40
derf: We had a nice little chat, and then he scurried away.
32:45
derf: Rush with greatness.
32:47
Tad Eggleston: I just… I just love it that they hired him to be the greeter.
32:49
derf: I know, right?
32:50
Tad Eggleston: Shop!
32:54
Tad Eggleston: Hmm.
32:58
Tad Eggleston: Are you able to tell us anything about what's next?
33:02
Tad Eggleston: And you said that you were kind of working on something.
33:05
derf: Yeah, well, my publisher wants me to… wants to revisit punk rock and trailer parks.
33:12
derf: Because that's out of print. And, so they want to put it back in print, which would be great.
33:19
derf: And, and I also have a sequel that I've, you know, mostly written, so…
33:26
Tad Eggleston: Is the sequel about all the talks that Joe Strummer had with you about Shelley Bond?
33:31
derf: No, it is not.
33:34
Alexandra Bowman: I, just…
33:35
derf: That was an epic panel.
33:37
Tad Eggleston: It was?
33:39
derf: thoroughly enjoyed.
33:41
Tad Eggleston: I love it!
33:42
derf: Oh, it would…
33:42
Tad Eggleston: When Reagan dropped the mic.
33:44
derf: Yeah.
33:45
Tad Eggleston: You guys were going after it the whole time, and Reagan just looked at you and said, you know, I mean, you keep saying that you got to meet Joe Strummer, but it seems like all he talked to you about was Shelly.
33:57
derf: I don't remember.
33:57
Alexandra Bowman: I was at the Clash steps in Camden a few weeks ago. Oh, really? Yeah, cool.
34:04
Tad Eggleston: I actually just watched, Mystery Train.
34:08
Tad Eggleston: The Jim Jarmus movie that's got Joe Strummer in it.
34:11
derf: Yeah, he's great in that, it's a flood.
34:13
Tad Eggleston: Yes.
34:13
derf: He's great.
34:14
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
34:16
Tad Eggleston: But, yeah.
34:19
derf: So, I'm playing.
34:19
Tad Eggleston: That would be fun.
34:20
derf: to have some fun. It'll be a shorter book, it'll be a silly book. It guest stars the Ramones, and it all… Nice! …all goes very badly.
34:30
derf: And, so I'll enjoy that, and…
34:33
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
34:34
derf: After that, if I have another book left in me, I'll figure that out then. I approach each book like it's my last, so…
34:43
Tad Eggleston: It's not a terrible thing to do.
34:45
derf: Oh, no, so I'll go as long as I can, but if I croak halfway through one of these things.
34:50
Tad Eggleston: No, you're not allowed to croak anytime soon.
34:53
Tad Eggleston: I don't want that. I like bumping into you at cons.
34:56
derf: Oh, thanks. I'll be at a couple of them, so you can…
35:00
Tad Eggleston: No. I just… like, I… you and I both got to the…
35:05
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I don't know if you remember this, because you meet way more people.
35:08
Tad Eggleston: But… but you and I got to the… museum for the Francois Moulay talk.
35:16
Tad Eggleston: a couple of years ago, early, so you and I got to talk
35:20
Tad Eggleston: talk baseball. Guardians and Cubs for, like, half an hour while we were waiting for them to…
35:25
derf: Over the door.
35:26
Tad Eggleston: They're drinking… drinking coffee, and…
35:29
derf: Fucking Guardians.
35:32
Tad Eggleston: It's been a rough year.
35:34
derf: Yeah.
35:34
derf: Yeah.
35:38
Tad Eggleston: My Cubs are having a good year, though.
35:40
derf: Well, that's in the.
35:42
Tad Eggleston: Not as good… not as… not as good as Dennis Kitchen's Burge. We go back and forth on that. Oh, I see.
35:49
derf: Okay, okay.
35:51
derf: Baseball's my one… my one weakness, so…
35:54
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
35:55
derf: Ford I still give a crap about. The rest of them I could care less about.
35:59
Tad Eggleston: I never cared about any of the other ones.
36:02
derf: Hmm.
36:02
Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's not quite true. I was 5 when the Bears released the Super Bowl shuffle. So between then and when Andre Dawson started hitting home runs on the north side, when I was 7,
36:16
Tad Eggleston: I liked football.
36:18
Tad Eggleston: Andre Dawson started hitting home runs, and I was gone.
36:22
derf: That was it, huh?
36:23
Tad Eggleston: That was it. It's been baseball ever since.
36:25
derf: Okay, well, I can't blame you. Wrigley's a great place.
36:29
Tad Eggleston: Wrigley's a wonderful place.
36:31
Tad Eggleston: But, like, any ballpark's a great place.
36:34
Tad Eggleston: I've never been to a ballpark that I won't happily
36:37
Tad Eggleston: Go to over almost any other activity.
36:41
derf: Okay, even comics? Wow.
36:44
Tad Eggleston: Well, I said almost any other activity. And it's not like you can't take comics to the ballpark with you.
36:52
derf: Well, I guess.
36:54
Tad Eggleston: Or do the comic.
36:57
derf: I remember.
36:58
Tad Eggleston: And the ball game in the evening.
37:00
derf: I can't say I've ever seen somebody reading a graphic novel at a ball game, but…
37:05
Tad Eggleston: I normally do it digitally.
37:07
derf: Oh, okay.
37:08
Tad Eggleston: I'll read comic strips on my phone between innings.
37:11
derf: Oh my god… It's sad and weird.
37:17
derf: And I applaud you for it.
37:19
Tad Eggleston: I am… I am weird. I… like, at least right now, this moment, I'm not sad. I'm talking with… with… with Alexandra Bowman and Derf Backderf. How could I be sad?
37:30
Alexandra Bowman: Aww.
37:32
Tad Eggleston: Well, I oughta.
37:33
Alexandra Bowman: I was gonna say, I went to Toronto a month or two ago, and I went to a Blue Jays game when I was there, and it was…
37:40
Alexandra Bowman: you know, there were more cultural differences between the U.S. and Canada than I expected, and it was my first time in Canada, but it was so fun how there were no cultural differences in the baseball field. And that whole experience, it looked exactly like something I would see, in my home area of, you know, DC with Nats Park, and nothing was different. And it was wild that we were in a different country. I was paying for my hot dogs
38:05
Alexandra Bowman: with a different currency, but it was exactly the same. So…
38:09
Tad Eggleston: Now, if you go down to the Caribbean, or you go to Japan, It becomes a different experience.
38:15
Alexandra Bowman: Oh, I'm sure, yeah.
38:18
derf: Oh, jeez.
38:19
Tad Eggleston: Those are way on my bucket list. I won't really want to go
38:25
Tad Eggleston: want to do some games in Puerto Rico, I'd love to do a game in Cuba if it's ever, like, not starving to death again.
38:35
Tad Eggleston: And… and I'd love to do Japan… I just saw that David Hyde.
38:40
Tad Eggleston: was putting up pictures on Instagram.
38:43
Tad Eggleston: from his first game in Japan, and I'm like, I know what we're talking about when you get home.
38:53
Tad Eggleston: So…
38:58
Tad Eggleston: What do you like to read?
38:59
derf: Back to comics.
39:01
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that's what I'm… I'm going back to comics. What do you like to read?
39:04
Tad Eggleston: And I guess that might not be comics, but, but, like…
39:10
Tad Eggleston: What, what makes you curious, Derf? What, what, what do you, what do you…
39:15
derf: What makes me curious?
39:16
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
39:17
derf: What do you mean?
39:18
Tad Eggleston: I, I, I mean, like, when, when you have that free moment, and you want to learn something new.
39:25
derf: Hmm.
39:26
Tad Eggleston: What are you drawn to?
39:28
derf: Well, I've always been a big film buff, I mean, I think that's…
39:33
derf: kind of put it in the way I tell stories, you know, that kind of narrative.
39:38
derf: So I enjoy that quite a bit, and we have great film here in Cleveland, which is where I'm talking from.
39:45
derf: So, I… we see a lot of film. Big music fan, I go to a lot of live music.
39:53
Tad Eggleston: Music?
39:54
derf: I do like history, so, you know, I pursue that, and we have good museums, I go to the museum all the time, just the usual, you know, the usual intellectual stimulation.
40:04
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, I wish that that was the usual intellectual simulation, but I teach high school.
40:14
Tad Eggleston: It seems like the usual intellectual stimulation lately has… is more likely to be on YouTube or TikTok.
40:21
derf: Oh, you poor bastard.
40:22
Alexandra Bowman: Sad.
40:24
Tad Eggleston: I mean, to be fair, I mean, I laughed when Alex brought up the YouTube video that she'd watched about Dolly, because I'm like, okay, she just defined which one of us is way younger than the other.
40:39
Alexandra Bowman: Well, and I promise it's a video essay, so definitely, it was an hour.
40:44
Tad Eggleston: I understand.
40:45
Tad Eggleston: You said the name of the person who did it like… like I would know it.
40:49
Alexandra Bowman: And I had…
40:49
Tad Eggleston: I had no idea who you were talking about.
40:51
Alexandra Bowman: Okay. And lots of.
40:54
Tad Eggleston: Some of my kids watch video essays, too, and even when they do the TikTok stuff, like, I mean, some of my kids are quite discerning, like.
41:01
Tad Eggleston: I won't bash those mediums as ones that are capable of delivering
41:09
Tad Eggleston: like, intellectual stuff, if you look for it, but I… I finally had to admit, I'm too old to learn a new technology and manage to sift through the drudge to get to the good stuff.
41:22
Alexandra Bowman: It was so hard for me to believe when I first got into video essays that YouTube, which I thought of as a place for video, like, epic fails and makeup tutorials, you know, that some, like, hour… up to five-hour video essays on there could be edifying, but some of the best, like, intellectual stimulation I've had in the last couple years has been these.
41:44
Alexandra Bowman: 30-minute to several-hour, video essays about everything ranging from, like, social psychology to musical theater analysis. It's the greatest. So, if you need something to have on while doing the dishes, or to just sit and watch
41:59
Alexandra Bowman: while focusing intently, I would highly suggest YouTube videos.
42:02
Tad Eggleston: Well, you might have to start… you might have to start sending me links from time to time when you.
42:06
derf: Well, I watch, I watch, I watch lectures and, and things like.
42:09
Tad Eggleston: No.
42:10
derf: Yeah, I know, a lot of good stuff on there, documentaries, you know?
42:15
Alexandra Bowman: I'll send you the Dolly Parton one, Tad, that I talked about.
42:20
Tad Eggleston: So, so, so give us, I mean, I know you like punk rock.
42:28
Tad Eggleston: And I was gonna say, like, what music do you… do you… like, who comes to town and you have to go?
42:36
derf: Oh, geez, that's a wide range. Let's see, what are the last…
42:40
Tad Eggleston: I love that.
42:41
derf: One of the last concerts I've seen. I see some local jazz stuff a lot, so I'm…
42:46
Tad Eggleston: Nice.
42:47
derf: Jazz fan.
42:48
Tad Eggleston: Jess.
42:49
derf: I just saw this summer, let's see, I saw the Mekons.
42:53
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
42:54
derf: Saw David Byrne, which is amazing.
42:57
Tad Eggleston: Very, very nice.
42:58
derf: God, who else did I see before that? There was another big show.
43:05
derf: I mean, you know, the days of going to concerts every week is, you know, it's just not a thing anymore. It's too expensive, first of all. Yeah. People don't tour like they used to, you know, it's just, it's not the same animal anymore, but,
43:20
Tad Eggleston: Well, there aren't as many… I don't think there are as many clubs.
43:25
Tad Eggleston: You know, you've got the theaters and the… the… the arenas…
43:32
derf: We have a lot of clubs here, but, you know.
43:35
Tad Eggleston: But as many as you had 20 years ago, or 30 years?
43:38
derf: Maybe not. It's probably… it's… I think it's actually probably… I mean, they're all different.
43:44
derf: Right. Probably close to the same number, yeah. We've got… there's some good clubs that I go to.
43:50
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
43:50
derf: Literally, but…
43:53
Tad Eggleston: I just feel like in Chicago, and maybe, maybe it's just that the ones from my youth are gone, but it feels like, in terms of clubs that regularly have live music.
44:05
Tad Eggleston: We're at maybe half of what we were in the… In the 90s?
44:10
derf: Well, popular culture is constantly changing, I mean…
44:13
Tad Eggleston: Right.
44:14
derf: look any further than comics for that.
44:16
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
44:17
derf: Same animal, you know? What was there is now different, and…
44:21
derf: you just adapt and roll with it, or you leave it behind. I mean, it's…
44:25
Tad Eggleston: So, yeah.
44:26
derf: It's up to you, so…
44:28
derf: I just, I miss what was gone, you know, in comics and in music, but I also like a lot of the stuff that's happening, so…
44:36
Tad Eggleston: Now, that was only my autistic brain breaking down why it was harder to go to a concert every week.
44:42
derf: Yeah, I see. Well, that couch that's awful comfy, too, right?
44:46
Tad Eggleston: Well, yeah, that's fair.
44:48
derf: Well, and now you can also watch concerts on YouTube.
44:50
Tad Eggleston: YouTube?
44:52
derf: Right.
44:53
Tad Eggleston: I do that sometimes.
44:55
Tad Eggleston: You said you like… you're a film guy. What have you seen recently that you love?
45:03
derf: I just saw, film Kafka by,
45:09
derf: Agnesa Holland, who did… who's the pretty well-known Polish director.
45:15
derf: She did, Into Darkness and Europa… Europa, Europa, those are… I think that's her most famous film. And it was really good. I thoroughly enjoyed that.
45:26
derf: It's, a Polish, Czech, German film.
45:32
derf: So, it was all in German, which was nice, because I… I can speak some German.
45:38
derf: And, yeah, that was really good. It was about, obviously, about Franz Kafka.
45:44
derf: I wonder if he… Wait a minute, is it… Oh, I saw the,
45:46
Tad Eggleston: Is it Franz?
45:49
derf: Is it what?
45:50
Tad Eggleston: Is it called Franz, not Kafka? Because Kafka was 91.
45:53
derf: it's called.
45:54
Tad Eggleston: Ron, okay.
45:56
Tad Eggleston: You're right. Because at first, I'm like.
45:59
Tad Eggleston: Kafka, I remember that, because Alec Guinness was in it, but that was 91.
46:05
derf: That was, that was what's-His-Name, too, the guy who did, Sex Lies, and Videotape, I think.
46:10
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
46:11
derf: Yeah, see, you're a film nerd, too. No.
46:15
Tad Eggleston: I… I go back.
46:16
derf: Yeah, absolutely, Rick.
46:17
derf: I do recommend it, it was quite good.
46:20
derf: And then before that, I saw a restored print of network.
46:25
derf: Nice. The film from the 70s, you know.
46:28
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
46:29
derf: I'm not gonna tell you. Yeah.
46:31
Tad Eggleston: Katie Chanovsky.
46:32
derf: I haven't seen… exactly, I haven't seen that in a long time, and boy, does it hold…
46:38
derf: And so that was a… that was a lot of fun.
46:41
Tad Eggleston: Another one that, like, I mean, like with… with the dissidents and… and…
46:47
Tad Eggleston: And that era, I feel like network's another one that's almost come around again.
46:52
derf: Oh, yeah, no, very… it's very relevant, yeah.
46:56
derf: Have you ever seen, heard of that film, Alex?
46:59
Alexandra Bowman: I don't think so, actually, but I've been broadening my film repertoire a little bit lately.
47:05
Tad Eggleston: Network is definitely one that you should.
47:08
derf: Yeah, it won a bunch of Oscars, so… Oh, it's way up.
47:11
Tad Eggleston: your alley.
47:12
derf: I think you'd really like it. Yeah, it's very, very political.
47:15
Tad Eggleston: I mean, there are no singing cats.
47:17
Alexandra Bowman: Well, Tad, you haven't mentioned to our audio viewers why we keep bringing that up.
47:26
Tad Eggleston: Alex is going to a cat cosplay thing soon, so she's already dressed up. But also, like, any of the listeners that…
47:37
Tad Eggleston: Have listened long enough, you talked about cats when you were on.
47:40
Alexandra Bowman: I did. What was that, like, 2 years ago?
47:43
Tad Eggleston: Something like that. But you're the only person I've ever, ever known who defended the movie.
47:48
Alexandra Bowman: Oh,
47:51
Alexandra Bowman: It wouldn't matter if I brought it, to show you to our viewers, but I own a movie prop from the movie, like, a pretty significant movie prop from the Cats movie.
48:02
Alexandra Bowman: The Skimbleshank's pants. I own his pants, they are in a giant shadow box framed in my home.
48:12
derf: That'll be…
48:13
Alexandra Bowman: This…
48:13
derf: Tadness Trophy has just moved from Tad to Duke.
48:19
Alexandra Bowman: That's a new one, I like that.
48:21
derf: Stair them around the house.
48:23
Alexandra Bowman: Unfortunately, the actor is a skinny British guy who doesn't have girl hips, so I can't pull them up past this.
48:32
Tad Eggleston: She clearly tried.
48:34
Alexandra Bowman: I tried, I burst a button on them, it's really sad.
48:37
derf: Wow.
48:37
Alexandra Bowman: But I bought, ones from eBay that look similar, so the replica is on its way, so…
48:47
Alexandra Bowman: It was a bad movie, but I like it because I'm a freak. I'm a little freak, so…
48:52
derf: We all have our weaknesses.
48:54
Alexandra Bowman: Yeah, yep.
48:55
Tad Eggleston: I mean…
48:56
derf: Realty pleasures.
48:57
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I don't even think they're weaknesses. I think they're quirks and fascinations.
49:02
derf: Yeah, no, I didn't mean weakness, I meant…
49:04
Alexandra Bowman: No, no, no.
49:04
Tad Eggleston: Hyperfixations. We all have.
49:06
Alexandra Bowman: a weakness for certain media, that's what I thought.
49:08
derf: No judging.
49:09
Alexandra Bowman: We all have little things that get through our defenses, but this is the Phantom of the Opera as a cat. My… I'm not even done, I have to put… get the bow tie and the cape, but that's what this is. That hat.
49:23
Alexandra Bowman: I could say so.
49:25
Tad Eggleston: You know, you are actually the first person who made me appreciate cosplay.
49:31
Alexandra Bowman: Thank you! Wow!
49:33
Tad Eggleston: You know, I'd gotten over, like, mocking it or anything like that.
49:37
Alexandra Bowman: No, no, no.
49:38
Tad Eggleston: because the people were cool… I knew enough cosplayers who were just cool enough people, but it still was, like, I… I don't get what the fascination is, but I've seen you in so many different costumes now, and every one of them is, like.
49:53
Tad Eggleston: Creative and artistic and, like…
49:56
Alexandra Bowman: Oh.
49:56
Tad Eggleston: You're not just like, oh, I wanna have the best possible Spider-Man costume. It's like, I'm gonna do Phantom of the Opera as a cat.
50:05
Alexandra Bowman: Right? Yeah! Oh, and I, this is a nice segue into drawing conversation, perhaps, but,
50:13
Alexandra Bowman: I've been doing illustrations for so long, proportionally to my life compared to years. But I just eventually really wanted to be able to see the two-dimensional drawings take three dimensions, and a lot of what I like drawing anyway are kind of anthropomorphic animals, which is not a euphemism. So, you know, I really enjoy,
50:37
Alexandra Bowman: Kind of seeing what
50:40
Alexandra Bowman: three-dimensional drawings can look like, and the cat stuff happened to involve a lot of drawing on the face and on the bodysuits, then, you know, I'm just painting with yarn when I make the…
50:51
Alexandra Bowman: warmer, so, they happen to be, like, an easy segue for me to do stuff I already really badly wanted to do, so… But, yeah, I, I, I try to make my own designs to the degree that time allows, because I really don't want to just be regurgitating other people's ideas, so… But we've been talking about punk.
51:12
derf: live by.
51:13
Alexandra Bowman: Yeah, for sure. We've been talking about punk, and I've been inspired by, like, that kind of makeup for designing what the Phantom Cat's makeup would look like. So, yeah.
51:27
Tad Eggleston: Well, we finally have you talking, so, so, so, like.
51:30
Alexandra Bowman: Yeah!
51:31
Tad Eggleston: Political cartoonist asked Derf some questions. Even though she admitted while you were gone that she hasn't managed to read the book yet.
51:38
derf: Yeah, she's bored by my work, I know, I know.
51:42
Alexandra Bowman: Oh my goodness!
51:42
derf: I figured you guys were talking about me behind my back.
51:45
Alexandra Bowman: Good event.
51:48
Alexandra Bowman: I've been working on the Odyssey, because my boyfriend and I are seeing it in IMAX 70mm at the largest IMAX screen in the nation tomorrow night.
51:55
derf: I haven't seen it yet. Yeah, I haven't seen that one yet.
51:57
Alexandra Bowman: Yeah, I've been.
51:58
Tad Eggleston: I actually saw it when it came out, I enjoyed it.
52:01
Alexandra Bowman: Well, good. We have something to look forward to tomorrow?
52:04
Tad Eggleston: I think so.
52:04
Alexandra Bowman: That's good.
52:05
Tad Eggleston: I enjoyed it.
52:06
Alexandra Bowman: But…
52:07
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it wasn't a perfect movie, but I… like, I don't even know what a perfect… I don't know what a perfect piece of art is. You know, there aren't many…
52:15
Tad Eggleston: And when it comes to storytelling, it's even harder to be perfect perfect, because…
52:20
Alexandra Bowman: Yeah.
52:21
Tad Eggleston: What's perfect for me, somebody else is gonna go, well…
52:24
derf: Perfection is boring, my friend.
52:27
Alexandra Bowman: Yeah. Fiction is foreign.
52:29
derf: In the video essay.
52:29
Alexandra Bowman: They just wouldn't have anything to talk about if.
52:31
derf: Laws and the quirks are what makes art interesting.
52:34
Tad Eggleston: Strikeouts are fascist. Throw some ground balls, they're more democratic.
52:39
Alexandra Bowman: Well, Derf, like, what do you think the field is lacking today that you wish it would do more of?
52:50
derf: The field, which field?
52:52
Alexandra Bowman: The, long-form comic narrative.
52:55
derf: graphic novels.
52:56
Alexandra Bowman: Huh.
52:56
derf: Well, more of it. I mean, certainly, retail is abysmal.
53:04
derf: go to Europe, and you see what they have there, and then you come back here, it's, you know, Jesus Christ.
53:10
Alexandra Bowman: Yeah.
53:11
derf: Comics Media, we could use a lot more of that.
53:14
derf: You know, big comics media that people actually, you know, read in number.
53:20
derf: It's just, it's really hard to, to,
53:24
derf: to get attention over here, it's, it's… and it's… it's frustrating.
53:28
derf: There's so much great work being done right now,
53:32
derf: you know, every month, it's like, Jesus Christ, there's a couple dozen graphic novels that come out that just are fantastic.
53:40
Tad Eggleston: There's too much good stuff coming out right now.
53:44
derf: I don't know that there's such a thing as too much good.
53:46
Tad Eggleston: Well, no, I doubt… to keep up with it all.
53:50
derf: Oh, I see, yeah. If you're a reader.
53:51
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I tried really, really hard.
53:56
Tad Eggleston: much of the good news stuff coming out as I possibly can.
53:59
derf: Right, well, yeah, that's.
54:01
Tad Eggleston: Andrew.
54:01
derf: So, I mean, you've gotta… I mean, you've gotta bear down and do that. I mean, I don't read that much, but…
54:07
Tad Eggleston: I mean, my job is a special education teacher.
54:11
derf: Well, you know what I'm talking about.
54:12
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I know.
54:16
derf: But yeah, there's too much to keep up with. I mean, it's really phenomenal, but I think it's great for fans, you know? They're… I mean, now's a wonderful period to be a comics fan, because there's just so much stuff out there that's fantastic.
54:33
derf: But the weaknesses are the ones that are, you know, holding us back. Distribution, and retail, and just all this bullshit that never seems to get any better.
54:45
Tad Eggleston: What was the last book you read that blew you away?
54:49
Tad Eggleston: comic.
54:51
derf: See, you're asking the wrong guy, because I do not read that many comics.
54:55
Tad Eggleston: I know, which is why I just said the last one. I didn't ask for a new one, I said.
54:59
derf: I just… I stopped reading comics when I started making comics. I know that sounds.
55:04
Tad Eggleston: Really?
55:04
derf: Yeah.
55:05
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
55:05
derf: I really do not read many comics. The last one that blew me away…
55:11
Tad Eggleston: then it's gonna be like Mobius.
55:14
derf: Gosh, near my shelf, yeah, the last book that…
55:19
derf: Blew me away. Let's see… oh, well, you know, it may be… it may be this one.
55:28
Tad Eggleston: The Eden.
55:29
derf: Is that, the Eternaut. Yeah. Is, you know, a classic… oh, I was holding it sideways, sorry. Yeah.
55:37
Alexandra Bowman: That is so cool.
55:39
derf: Yeah, it's… Fanna does a nice job with their book.
55:41
Tad Eggleston: Banner Graphics does great work.
55:42
derf: Yeah, it's really… the inside cover is, like, really, really bonkers up art.
55:48
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
55:49
derf: Just a fantastic, story, and…
55:54
derf: So moving. Do you know about the Eternaut, Alex? I mean, this is well before your time, but…
55:59
Alexandra Bowman: That cover looks familiar. I think I've seen that cover before. I'm very…
56:04
Tad Eggleston: This is where I have to admit that it's near the top of my pile, but I haven't managed to read it yet, so…
56:10
derf: Oh, it's,
56:11
Tad Eggleston: higher.
56:12
derf: Yeah, it's, it's a, Argentinian, classic Argentinian comic that was made in the 60s.
56:21
derf: by a guy named, Hector Germain Osterheld.
56:26
derf: And it was drawn by Francisco Lopez, and…
56:31
derf: The second part, which is out of print and I'm dying to get, is much more political.
56:36
derf: And it ran right into the dirty Warren you talk about.
56:41
derf: All right, let's stay on the floor then.
56:47
derf: Ersterheld and his entire family were murdered by the junta.
56:51
derf: for… for this book.
56:55
derf: His… all four daughters, and their husbands.
57:00
derf: And Erster held himself. They were probably taken on death flights and thrown into the ocean.
57:05
derf: Because they made a comic book.
57:07
derf: So, I mean…
57:09
derf: It's just an astounding piece of work, and it's… it's really amazing. The Netflix adaptation is actually pretty good.
57:17
derf: Even though it's only, like, you know, a third of the way into the story, but,
57:22
derf: I mean, just the history of this book is just, you know… Mind-blowing.
57:29
Tad Eggleston: Okay, just went way higher on my list.
57:32
derf: Yeah, yeah, no, it should.
57:37
Tad Eggleston: And pleasingly, I finally built connections with Fanographics, and like…
57:43
derf: Oh, there you go.
57:44
Tad Eggleston: I get… I get so… well, Eric's another baseball guy.
57:48
derf: Is he? He's never traveled, so…
57:51
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, Eric's another baseball guy.
57:53
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I've invited you a couple of times, you haven't come yet. We have an annual baseball and comics podcast on 22 Panels.
58:00
derf: Wow.
58:01
Tad Eggleston: And Eric joined it last year.
58:04
derf: Well, it depends how the Guardians finish the season, whether I'll be in the mood to talk about baseball.
58:09
Tad Eggleston: That's fair. Because we always do it after the season, because it actually started, because it turns out…
58:15
derf: Romino.
58:15
Tad Eggleston: Meyer, who's one of my favorite baseball writers, is a big comics fan.
58:20
derf: No, no kidding.
58:21
Tad Eggleston: So… so he's always on… on it too, as is Derek Gould, the,
58:27
Tad Eggleston: Cardinals beat writer is a big comics fan, so they all… they… they come every year, and they're… they're protective. They… they… they haven't… they haven't hooked me up with any more baseball people, because they're…
58:41
Tad Eggleston: For that matter, I had Matt Kent on recently, and apparently he's friends with Derek Gould, and as soon as he figured out what podcast we were, he's like, I have been trying to be on your podcast for 4 years. Derek tells me about the baseball… I'm like, I told Derek to invite you, and he's like.
58:54
Tad Eggleston: Mother?
58:56
derf: Hmm.
59:00
Tad Eggleston: Every once in a while, I actually get praise, and I have to toot my own horn for a second.
59:07
Tad Eggleston: Cheers.
59:15
Alexandra Bowman: Well.
59:16
Tad Eggleston: I feel like I'm.
59:17
Alexandra Bowman: Something you've been reading recently?
59:19
Tad Eggleston: God.
59:21
Tad Eggleston: Actually, I just got this in the mail, I got to read this…
59:25
Tad Eggleston: This is a young cartoonist, it's his first book.
59:30
Tad Eggleston: kid named Jared Sarney?
59:32
Tad Eggleston: Cool. Kid, he's probably at least as old as Alex. It's called The Machine is Broken.
59:39
Alexandra Bowman: Mmm…
59:40
derf: Interesting cover.
59:43
Alexandra Bowman: You said that was Fanta Graphics as well?
59:45
Tad Eggleston: No, this is not Phantographics.
59:47
Alexandra Bowman: Oh.
59:48
Tad Eggleston: oh, what is the publisher on this?
59:53
Tad Eggleston: Field Mouse. Field Mouse Press.
59:56
derf: Oh, they do some interesting stuff, yeah.
59:58
Tad Eggleston: too.
59:59
derf: with them.
59:59
Tad Eggleston: And essentially, the, the… well, I'll read the…
1:00:05
Tad Eggleston: the inside flap, it says, Lux is going to kill herself, and she's invited her mom. Lux's sister is coming too, but she was never officially invited, for the record. The three travel to Zurich, home of the world's first fully legal suicide pod, hijinks ensue.
1:00:25
derf: Well, I'll be at, SPX in a couple weeks, so…
1:00:29
Tad Eggleston: I was gonna ask about that. Might see if it's…
1:00:31
derf: What's happening.
1:00:34
Tad Eggleston: But, but yeah, it deals with a lot of contemporary issues, it's, it's got… I love how he switches…
1:00:42
Tad Eggleston: Various styles of…
1:00:44
derf: Oh, nice.
1:00:45
Tad Eggleston: of, of comic art.
1:00:50
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:00:53
Tad Eggleston: So, there you go, Alex. There's a random recommendation. I talk about my recommendations every Saturday, though.
1:01:02
Alexandra Bowman: Oh my goodness.
1:01:03
Tad Eggleston: So you're gonna be at SBX Derf anywhere.
1:01:07
derf: Yeah.
1:01:08
Tad Eggleston: else that you know of? I mean, we talked a little bit off-air.
1:01:11
derf: Well, apparently.
1:01:12
Tad Eggleston: have some sort.
1:01:13
derf: revenue, too.
1:01:13
Tad Eggleston: we're coming up.
1:01:14
derf: Yeah, yeah, apparently I'm going to the… just the cons?
1:01:18
Tad Eggleston: Cons, bookstores, any… anywhere you know.
1:01:21
derf: Right, well, I'm speaking at Ohio State, you know, CXC, they're not having it this fall, because it's moving to the spring.
1:01:28
Tad Eggleston: It's the spring.
1:01:29
Tad Eggleston: Stupid.
1:01:30
derf: Ohio State and the football team is so obnoxious that they can't.
1:01:33
Tad Eggleston: Stupid football.
1:01:34
Alexandra Bowman: They'd said to us last year that the football team didn't come up with their schedule in time, so that combined with renovations in the Billy Ireland
1:01:45
Alexandra Bowman: it so that they can't do it this year.
1:01:47
Tad Eggleston: not, and there's.
1:01:47
derf: Once they finish the run.
1:01:49
derf: The billy looks great.
1:01:51
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I haven't gotten out there yet, but it looks like it.
1:01:54
derf: Oh my god.
1:01:54
Tad Eggleston: is amazing.
1:01:56
derf: Yeah.
1:01:56
derf: So… that's all set to go, but the football team is a continual problem, believe me.
1:02:03
Tad Eggleston: Right. Well, the one upside is it's always… this is what I tell people when I'm telling them that they need to come out to CXC.
1:02:11
Tad Eggleston: Because there is rental rooms and properties for Ohio State football that don't get used on non-football weekends, it is never hard to find a cheap room.
1:02:25
derf: Right, that's true. That's very true, and on football weekends, yes.
1:02:31
derf: But we don't really need another spring show, but that's just the reality.
1:02:34
Tad Eggleston: No, but it's the way it wound up.
1:02:37
derf: So I'll be speaking at Ohio State, later in September, right after… the week after, SPX.
1:02:45
derf: And then I'm going to New York Comic-Con, I'm going to Baltimore Comic-Con…
1:02:50
Alexandra Bowman: I'm going to all 3 of those as well, and…
1:02:54
derf: I won't recognize you, obviously.
1:02:56
Alexandra Bowman: Yeah.
1:02:57
Tad Eggleston: Well, she'll have to come as a cat.
1:02:58
Alexandra Bowman: Yeah, well, the thing is,
1:03:01
derf: Carrying that outfit.
1:03:02
Alexandra Bowman: Oh, it will be, you know, one of 12, or something like that. But, the National Cartoonist Society chapter in New York lets members, exhibit at the table for a set number of hours, but the rule for me is that the National Cartoonist Society wants to present a clean image that doesn't include cats the Musical, so I have to
1:03:27
Alexandra Bowman: I'll just pull out one of my things from Heather's, something like that, which is objectively worse, but, whatever. So I will look more like myself if I see you at New York Comic-Con on one of the days. I'm only going to be there pivoting briefly, so…
1:03:42
Tad Eggleston: pitched a couple of panels for New York, but… but… and I got waitlisted, but I think we just passed the date where…
1:03:50
Tad Eggleston: Where they would have told me if they'd been picked up, so…
1:03:53
derf: Well, my publisher really… they love New York Comic-Con, so they wanted me to go.
1:03:57
Tad Eggleston: I've never been.
1:03:59
derf: Oh, really?
1:04:00
Tad Eggleston: No, I was gonna go if I managed to get the panels, because it… it…
1:04:04
Tad Eggleston: like, I'm a teacher. Like, the travel is expensive, but… but the travel plus a ticket is a whole different thing, so, like…
1:04:14
Tad Eggleston: If I'd gotten the panels and could have gone for free, I also had a friend who's like, oh, if that's happening, I'll help you get out there.
1:04:22
Tad Eggleston: Well…
1:04:23
derf: Yeah, it is, it's so crowded, it really wears you out, but…
1:04:28
Alexandra Bowman: My first year when I went, I bought, like, a 4-day ticket, and then I went on Thursday and was so exhausted by it that I didn't go back. I felt really bad financially, but it will get you. It's… the exhaustion of taking in all that sound and stimulation all day will get to you, and you will be dead by.
1:04:48
Tad Eggleston: Voice-canceling headphones.
1:04:50
Alexandra Bowman: Good idea.
1:04:51
Tad Eggleston: Find the client.
1:04:52
derf: More sense than San Diego, I think.
1:04:55
Tad Eggleston: I wouldn't be surprised.
1:04:57
derf: Yeah, no, it's…
1:04:57
Tad Eggleston: I've been to San Diego once, but it was the year before San Diego blew up.
1:05:02
derf: Like, blew up, blew up.
1:05:04
Tad Eggleston: It was the last year that it was actually, like, primarily a Comic-Con.
1:05:08
derf: Yeah, that would be… Rather than… Oh, I miss that.
1:05:10
Tad Eggleston: Like, it was either 97 or 98, like, the…
1:05:15
Tad Eggleston: The pop culture idol that was at.
1:05:18
derf: Right.
1:05:19
Tad Eggleston: San Diego that year was Kevin Smith.
1:05:22
derf: Oh, no.
1:05:23
Tad Eggleston: Supporting Chasing Amy.
1:05:26
Alexandra Bowman: I've heard that New York Comic-Con is, like, the slightly more manageable version of San Diego Comic-Con, and I still want to make the…
1:05:33
derf: I would disag.
1:05:33
Alexandra Bowman: Really? Okay, okay. I've never been to San Diego, but that's Cope in part, but what makes that not true?
1:05:41
derf: I just think San Diego has more, overall, more variety. I mean, whatever you're looking for.
1:05:50
derf: San Diego will have it. If you're looking for indie comics, it's there. If you're looking for the superhero garbage, it's there. If you're looking for…
1:05:57
derf: You know, the big movie screenings, well, that's there too, so it's everything.
1:06:02
derf: Where New York Comic Con just seems to be movie, movie, movie, corporate, corporate, corporate.
1:06:08
Alexandra Bowman: They're doing a bunch of Broadway panels this year, which I'm excited about, but…
1:06:12
derf: Really?
1:06:13
Alexandra Bowman: Yeah, yeah, so, and a friend and I are submitting a, Broadway costume meetup thing. I think she did it yesterday. But there's that, and I don't know, in the Artist Alley, it's been, of course, comics-focused, but that's not a given these days, I think. But a lot of independent, excellent, online, famous illustrators. So, I get rejected from it year after year, but I gotta say, they are
1:06:38
Alexandra Bowman: cultivating a very nice artist alley, so… Yeah.
1:06:42
derf: It's in kind of a dungeon now, I think it's still there. It's like in a.
1:06:46
Alexandra Bowman: Yeah, it's in the weird basement of the Javits Center.
1:06:48
derf: Yeah, but did you…
1:06:49
Alexandra Bowman: Did you say you were just attending or exhibiting?
1:06:52
derf: Well, my publisher has a big…
1:06:54
Alexandra Bowman: Oh.
1:06:55
derf: big multi…
1:06:57
derf: table booth, so I'm there doing signings and whatever else I'm required to do. I just want me there. I mean, I'm not… I don't think they really have a use for me, but, you know, I mean, I'm happy to do it for them, but it's… I don't know that, you know, it's going to be that fruitful.
1:07:16
derf: But they like to have a presence there, so, you know.
1:07:19
Alexandra Bowman: Yes.
1:07:20
derf: That's fine.
1:07:20
Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's… that's… I, like, my local con is C2E2, and…
1:07:26
derf: Yeah, I've been…
1:07:27
Tad Eggleston: one thing. I know, I saw you there. I saw you…
1:07:31
Tad Eggleston: Went to CAIC that year, too.
1:07:32
derf: memory.
1:07:34
derf: What? Wow.
1:07:35
derf: Yeah, CAIC I like a lot.
1:07:37
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
1:07:37
derf: That's a fun little show.
1:07:39
derf: C2e2 is just another big, you know, big corporate.
1:07:43
Tad Eggleston: Exactly.
1:07:44
Tad Eggleston: Exactly.
1:07:45
derf: Probably the West, and then after that, probably Europe, so…
1:07:50
Tad Eggleston: You do… that was one of my questions. I know… I know the last time we were talking, you were going to get to go to France, and you were very much looking forward to that.
1:07:59
derf: Yep.
1:07:59
Tad Eggleston: Bomb.
1:08:01
Tad Eggleston: So, how was… that… that was the trip that they… they did the whole exhibit for you, wasn't it?
1:08:08
derf: Oh, was it? Yeah.
1:08:10
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:08:11
derf: Yeah, in the fall? Yeah, I guess it would be. That was unbelievable. Yeah, it was…
1:08:15
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:08:16
derf: Bull and, Sam Milo.
1:08:18
derf: Which is on the coast. A city on the coast in Brittany.
1:08:22
derf: And they put on this huge exhibit of my stuff, with all these, like, 3D sculptures they made out of images from my books, and it was just… it was just jaw-dropping. I mean…
1:08:36
Tad Eggleston: Well, that's… that's the single biggest reason I want to get to European shows, is I have never seen…
1:08:43
Tad Eggleston: I mean, the closest I've come to seeing anything
1:08:47
Tad Eggleston: even remotely like that in the United States.
1:08:51
Tad Eggleston: was the exhibit Carol Tyler did at CXC last year.
1:08:56
derf: That was a very European exhibit, that was an outstanding.
1:08:58
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:08:59
derf: Yeah, that was…
1:09:00
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:09:00
derf: Beautiful job with that. So, yeah.
1:09:03
derf: Something like that.
1:09:04
derf: But, but…
1:09:04
Tad Eggleston: But, like, Alex and I met Leonie Bischoff the same night, and when I saw… Blake.
1:09:12
Tad Eggleston: one of her displays, I'm like, oh my god, that's just…
1:09:16
Tad Eggleston: Why don't we have comics displays like that, ever?
1:09:21
derf: The French know how to put on exhibits, that's.
1:09:24
Tad Eggleston: They do.
1:09:25
derf: And, you know, Uncle M should be… and it'll be coming back next year.
1:09:29
Tad Eggleston: coming back. It feels like they, they… They sorted that out.
1:09:34
derf: Yeah, they've… hopefully, knock on wood. That should be on every comics creator.
1:09:40
Tad Eggleston: Oh, it's totally on my…
1:09:42
derf: And bucket list, you have to go once in your life.
1:09:45
Tad Eggleston: No, Anglem and Thought Bubble are the two that are at the top of my bucket list among ones that I haven't been to yet.
1:09:55
derf: It's incredible. On your limb, it's just… it's, ugh.
1:09:57
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:09:58
derf: I mean, I've been to, what, 8?
1:10:01
derf: So it's, it's, just spectacular. Yeah.
1:10:07
Tad Eggleston: Well, and I love that they have their res… I mean, I've gotten to talk to a handful of people who've gotten to do their residency, and like…
1:10:15
Tad Eggleston: The fact that the, like, just put you up for a couple years to make comics?
1:10:21
derf: Yeah, yeah.
1:10:22
derf: Yeah, of course, you have to live in Ungelem, which is, you know, when the festival's not there, it's like Ohio State when the football team's not.
1:10:30
Tad Eggleston: You know, when I was talking to Matt Madden about it, he said that he and Jessica were kind of sad to have to leave at the end.
1:10:40
derf: No, that's good.
1:10:42
Tad Eggleston: They really enjoyed their time there.
1:10:45
derf: Good.
1:10:45
Tad Eggleston: You know… Yeah.
1:10:51
Tad Eggleston: Have you ever done any sort of comics retreat?
1:10:54
derf: No.
1:10:55
derf: No, I've always been a working cartoonist, so, you know, I can't… Okay.
1:10:59
derf: I can't afford to take, 6 months off to go, you know.
1:11:03
Tad Eggleston: Well, theoretically, a comic store.
1:11:05
derf: around.
1:11:06
Tad Eggleston: Retreat, you're supposed to be working just in a different place.
1:11:11
derf: Well, yeah, but that's easier said than done.
1:11:13
Tad Eggleston: No, I get that.
1:11:15
derf: when you've got a deadline, as I'm sure Alex can attest, those deadlines are pretty cruel, and you can't… you can't fuck around with them. I mean, you know, you've gotta… you gotta get your work done, and I can't be moving to another continent in the middle of it, you know, I just don't have that.
1:11:31
derf: Tad time.
1:11:32
Alexandra Bowman: Yeah, deadlines are… I'm… I hate them, but they are so effective for me.
1:11:39
derf: Yeah.
1:11:39
Alexandra Bowman: Tragically, I have to run Tad and Derf, but Derf, it's so wonderful to meet you.
1:11:43
derf: Thank you.
1:11:44
Alexandra Bowman: in a podcast again, and maybe…
1:11:46
Tad Eggleston: Well, and it sounds like you guys are gonna have to get to hang out in multiple different cities over the next…
1:11:52
derf: Yeah, be sure to say hi, because I won't recognize you.
1:11:56
Alexandra Bowman: I'm gonna be artist alleying at Baltimore as well, and a costume contest judge, so hopefully I might be very loud and present. We'll see. I've never been to Baltimore Comic-Con before, so we'll see how it goes.
1:12:09
Tad Eggleston: things about Baltimore, too.
1:12:10
Alexandra Bowman: Yeah, me too. Very comic-centric, like, authentic Comic-Con experience, is what I've heard.
1:12:15
derf: Okay.
1:12:16
Tad Eggleston: I've got 2 or 3 friends who list Baltimore among their top guns.
1:12:20
derf: Really?
1:12:21
Alexandra Bowman: I know that when I apply to New York Comic-Con every year, they list, like, 10 that they want you to have exhibited at, or a group of them, and Baltimore Comic-Con's on the list, so I actually got in a previous year, but then I got sick that weekend, so I'm excited to actually do it for the first time, so…
1:12:38
Tad Eggleston: Very cool.
1:12:39
Alexandra Bowman: Yeah, awesome. Well, thank you, like, all again, I really appreciate it.
1:12:42
Tad Eggleston: Go have fun being a cat.
1:12:44
Alexandra Bowman: Oh, I will see the photos. It's at the United Palace, where the Tony Awards sometimes are, so it's like a 10-minute walk from my house, but I'll take an Uber anyway. So, have a good night, and goodbye.
1:12:56
Alexandra Bowman: 25.
1:12:57
Tad Eggleston: So… Let's roll into… to some closing questions, because I've got to teach in the morning, too.
1:13:07
Tad Eggleston: But, but, I have a new one for you, because this is the fifth year of this podcast.
1:13:14
Tad Eggleston: And…
1:13:15
Tad Eggleston: One of the things that I reflected on coming into this year was just how dramatically my life had changed just because of this podcast. Just in terms of, like, the experiences that I get to have, the fact that.
1:13:29
derf: Nope.
1:13:29
Tad Eggleston: I'm hanging out with Derf Backderf on a Thursday night, and it's not the first time that I've randomly…
1:13:35
derf: out with…
1:13:36
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, you know, that I drank coffee and waited and talked baseball with you, that, like…
1:13:42
derf: Of course.
1:13:42
Tad Eggleston: on the ball… I went to a baseball game… a minor league baseball game with Dennis Kitchen. I, you know…
1:13:49
Tad Eggleston: The conversations that I've gotten… what?
1:13:52
derf: In Columbus?
1:13:53
Tad Eggleston: No, in Milwaukee.
1:13:55
derf: Oh, nice.
1:13:56
Tad Eggleston: We're out of town, so we went.
1:13:57
derf: Point up.
1:13:58
Tad Eggleston: The Milwaukee Milkman.
1:13:59
derf: Sure, yeah.
1:14:00
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, he was in town.
1:14:03
Tad Eggleston: I somehow have endeared myself enough to him that he generally lets me know when he's in town.
1:14:10
derf: Great.
1:14:11
Tad Eggleston: I like it.
1:14:12
derf: Bennett.
1:14:13
Tad Eggleston: Dennis is a great guy. But what I've found is everybody who works in comics, to a certain extent, everybody who works in the arts.
1:14:22
Tad Eggleston: Also has those surreal experiences, those… those… those stories, or things that they got to do, or see, or feel.
1:14:31
Tad Eggleston: That if you told them when they were 10 that that was going to be part of their life, they never, ever would have believed you. I mean, hell, for me, if you told me when I was 35 that this was going to be my life, I would have been… on what planet? On what planet?
1:14:48
Tad Eggleston: Do I text with that person?
1:14:51
Tad Eggleston: because we're trash-talking each other's baseball games. Baseball team, you know what I mean? So I've started collecting
1:15:02
Tad Eggleston: just surreal stories. Tell me… Tell me a story.
1:15:06
derf: Tell you a story, just one story, I mean…
1:15:09
Tad Eggleston: From your time in comics, that you sit there going, oh my god, that was.
1:15:14
derf: Timing comics. Because you are talking to a guy who grew up with Jeffrey Dahmer, after all.
1:15:19
Tad Eggleston: Well, no, no, no.
1:15:20
Tad Eggleston: You didn't have to be part of comics to grow up with Jeffrey Dahmer. Something that wouldn't have happened to you…
1:15:27
derf: it helps.
1:15:29
derf: My favorite… my favorite comic story is actually one of my earliest. When I was a political cartoonist in Florida, I was, like, 22.
1:15:40
derf: And I got invited to the Orlando Comic Con for some reason.
1:15:45
derf: I was in South Florida.
1:15:47
derf: So I went up there.
1:15:49
derf: And, this is not a big con, small con, you know, back in the 80s, so it was still not Hollywood or anything.
1:15:57
derf: locally run.
1:15:58
derf: And they had, like, a dinner beforehand, you know, when… the first night when all the guests are there, so all the guests were invited to dinner. There may be 20 people, and this, like, table set up in a big square.
1:16:12
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:16:13
derf: I sat down next to this,
1:16:16
derf: older gentleman, and I'm sitting there looking around, you know, trying to figure out who people are, and I recognize, like, the Hagar the Horrible guy, you know, Dick Brown. He looks just like Hagar the Horrible.
1:16:30
derf: A couple other people, but I didn't know anybody, I mean, I'm a kid, you know, so I said.
1:16:35
Tad Eggleston: Well, and it's not like… It's not like it's easy to know what a cartoonist looks like.
1:16:41
derf: Right. So, I turned to the guy next to me, I said, well.
1:16:45
derf: I'm just gonna introduce myself and, you know, have a chat with somebody, and I turned to this guy, and I said, hi, my name's Derf, I'm a political cartoonist,
1:16:55
derf: And the guy said, nice to meet you. I'm Will Eisner.
1:17:01
derf: And, as you can imagine, my jaw just dropped on the ground.
1:17:06
derf: And suddenly, I mean, I drew this up as a comedy story years later, you know, I just felt like I was staring up at this giant worms, you know, from a worm's eye view.
1:17:17
derf: And we talked all night… well, that whole evening. I followed him around like a puppy all weekend,
1:17:24
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:17:25
derf: studio, because he lived in Florida at that time.
1:17:29
Tad Eggleston: No, I mean, everybody…
1:17:31
derf: My hero, one of my heroes, you know?
1:17:33
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. He was not…
1:17:35
derf: He was not really…
1:17:37
derf: that, hot at that point, you know? Right. He put up a couple books, but he was not the giant that he, you know, the revered giant that…
1:17:47
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:17:47
derf: was later, but yeah, Will Eisner.
1:17:50
Tad Eggleston: You know, that's the… that's the third time Eisner has appeared.
1:17:55
Tad Eggleston: In, in stories like…
1:17:56
derf: Really?
1:17:57
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah. Matt Wagner showed a elevator ride with him after the first Eisner Awards.
1:18:05
derf: Oh, sweet.
1:18:06
Tad Eggleston: where Matt had presented, but not won anything.
1:18:10
derf: Hmm.
1:18:11
Tad Eggleston: And, and, and…
1:18:12
Tad Eggleston: Will congratulated him, and he's like, oh, well, I didn't actually win anything. Apparently, Will got a very nice smile on his face and leaned over to him and said, yes, you did.
1:18:25
Tad Eggleston: And it just made his… and then,
1:18:28
Tad Eggleston: I think it was James Sturm?
1:18:31
Tad Eggleston: The only time he was ever up for an Eisner?
1:18:34
Tad Eggleston: Lost.
1:18:35
Tad Eggleston: to Will Eisner, therefore really couldn't complain.
1:18:41
derf: No, you just gotta throw up your hands at that point, yeah.
1:18:46
Tad Eggleston: All right, my, my last question…
1:18:49
derf: Cory's better, sorry.
1:18:50
Tad Eggleston: No, your story is better.
1:18:52
derf: I win, I win the Eisner sweepstakes.
1:18:55
derf: regrets is I never met Kirby, you know, that I did.
1:18:58
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
1:18:59
derf: California, and, you know, track him down, walk up to his door, and knock on his door, like, all the.
1:19:05
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I mean, apparently, Roz would have let you in.
1:19:09
derf: Yup.
1:19:09
derf: Made you a sandwich?
1:19:11
derf: And you could talk to Jack while he worked, yeah, no, that's one of my biggest regrets.
1:19:16
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:19:17
Tad Eggleston: No, I'm gonna have to get back in, like, there… there are two…
1:19:23
Tad Eggleston: roundtable discussions that I've been
1:19:26
Tad Eggleston: trying to kick together. I wanna… I wanna have a group of people talk about Will Eisner, and I wanna have a group of people talk about
1:19:35
Tad Eggleston: Harvey Kurtzman.
1:19:37
Tad Eggleston: And Dennis… Yeah, Dennis managed both of their,
1:19:42
derf: Yeah, it's.
1:19:43
Tad Eggleston: Bird Estates.
1:19:44
derf: Yeah.
1:19:44
Tad Eggleston: So, so, so…
1:19:45
derf: Well, you're good.
1:19:46
Tad Eggleston: I'm around.
1:19:47
derf: My colleagues and, you know, indie comics colleagues in New York, there's a bunch of them that took him
1:19:53
derf: The classes from him, it's…
1:19:55
Tad Eggleston: Oh, nice.
1:19:56
derf: for Visual Arts, so, I mean, they're crawling all over the place. They've got lots of Harvey stories.
1:20:02
Tad Eggleston: I believe it.
1:20:03
derf: Yeah, I never met him either, so, you know, that.
1:20:05
Tad Eggleston: I actually, actually, I, I, like, we'll, we'll tease this one.
1:20:10
Tad Eggleston: I have, I have Bart Simpson coming up in about a week.
1:20:14
derf: Hmm.
1:20:14
Tad Eggleston: Bart Simpson, not the cartoon, the taller documentary filmmaker who just, just debuted a Kurtzman documentary.
1:20:27
Tad Eggleston: Film Festival.
1:20:29
derf: Hmm.
1:20:30
Tad Eggleston: So I get to talk some Kurtzman soon.
1:20:33
derf: Cool.
1:20:33
Tad Eggleston: Alright.
1:20:34
Tad Eggleston: My favorite closing question, and you already burned the eat or not, so you're gonna have to come up with something else. Tell me something you love.
1:20:42
Tad Eggleston: Preferably a comic, but we don't have rules.
1:20:45
Tad Eggleston: Preferably storytelling, but again, with the rules. But something that you love.
1:20:50
Tad Eggleston: That not enough people around you have experienced, and you really like them too, so you have more people to talk about it with.
1:20:58
derf: I would… well, the first one that pops into my head is, air Tight Garage by…
1:21:05
Tad Eggleston: Oh…
1:21:06
derf: previous.
1:21:07
derf: And…
1:21:08
Tad Eggleston: It's so good.
1:21:09
derf: I have almost every version.
1:21:12
Tad Eggleston: Nice.
1:21:13
derf: been published, including… A pirated version.
1:21:18
derf: that was copied from Heavy Metal Magazine when they reprinted it here, because that has some episodes that were not published in French.
1:21:27
Tad Eggleston: Okay…
1:21:28
derf: So, that was given to me as a gift. And then I've got, like, 4 or 5 different French versions as well.
1:21:35
Tad Eggleston: Hi.
1:21:36
derf: And I have a lot of… I have almost a complete set of, Mitel Erlong, the,
1:21:43
Tad Eggleston: Oh.
1:21:43
derf: inch magazine that I pick up over in…
1:21:46
Tad Eggleston: Right?
1:21:47
derf: For very little money, the French don't.
1:21:48
Tad Eggleston: True.
1:21:49
derf: back issues, but God bless them.
1:21:53
derf: Well, they're not morons like we are here.
1:21:55
Tad Eggleston: No, I know. Well, and let's be honest, we don't care about the right-back issues.
1:22:01
derf: Yeah.
1:22:02
derf: Right, that's true, that's true.
1:22:04
Tad Eggleston: the shitty story that happens to be the debut of some character that's in a movie is $1,000, and the amazing story is in the… I mean, I got an original spirit supplement.
1:22:18
derf: Hmm?
1:22:18
Tad Eggleston: From, like, 1942.
1:22:21
Tad Eggleston: For 10 bucks.
1:22:22
derf: Oh, yeah, yeah.
1:22:24
derf: Right. I don't… I didn't pay… I got about a dozen of them, and I never paid more than 40 or 50. Right.
1:22:30
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:22:33
derf: I know, I agree. But, Airtight Garage is just a masterpiece, and it's such an interesting…
1:22:39
derf: Book… well, it's not really a book.
1:22:41
derf: Such an interesting series, because it was just all stream of consciousness, and yet.
1:22:46
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:22:46
derf: And he'd just end one episode, and then he'd come back the next week and start up and just go with it.
1:22:52
Tad Eggleston: We, we… We do a monthly heavy metal book club.
1:22:57
derf: Nice.
1:22:57
Tad Eggleston: Where we've been working from the beginning, but also doing, like, the NuMetal Erlant and whatnot, but…
1:23:02
derf: Well, I'm in it, you know.
1:23:05
Tad Eggleston: I know! I'd love to.
1:23:07
derf: They asked me, they asked me…
1:23:08
Tad Eggleston: picked you as my favorite story that month.
1:23:11
derf: Oh, nice.
1:23:14
Tad Eggleston: For the first issue.
1:23:15
derf: Oh, yeah, the… the creature from the canal?
1:23:19
Tad Eggleston: Right, right.
1:23:19
derf: Yeah, yeah, I had fun.
1:23:21
derf: seemed to like it, they made a t-shirt out of it, you know. Did they?
1:23:24
Tad Eggleston: Fantastic.
1:23:25
derf: I know. It was a real thrill. They asked me if I would do it, and I said, sure, and that was kind of a boyhood…
1:23:33
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:23:33
derf: fulfillment there. That's like, wow, I'm drawing for…
1:23:37
derf: needle or long, my God. Yeah.
1:23:40
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. But we're about two-thirds of the way through Airtight Garage, in terms of it coming out in Heavy Metal Magazine.
1:23:46
derf: Right.
1:23:47
Tad Eggleston: So, it's… it's kinda… it's been interesting experiencing it as…
1:23:52
Tad Eggleston: Some issues, it's like 4 pages.
1:23:54
derf: Right.
1:23:55
Tad Eggleston: And has a little bit of a story. And some pages, it's one page, and you're.
1:23:59
derf: Yeah, right.
1:24:00
Tad Eggleston: What the fuck?
1:24:02
derf: I know, it's just whatever he felt like that was.
1:24:04
Tad Eggleston: And we've deliberately not allowed ourselves to go read it
1:24:08
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I think a couple of us had read it
1:24:11
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I feel like I read it years ago.
1:24:14
derf: Right.
1:24:14
Tad Eggleston: But not well enough to remember, remember, and it's like.
1:24:18
Tad Eggleston: When we finish reading it in heavy metal, then we're gonna take a month where we just read it together and say.
1:24:24
derf: Ugh.
1:24:24
Tad Eggleston: How differently it… reads together, rather than what we've been deliberate Trying to do it.
1:24:32
Tad Eggleston: in… in the chunks. Sure. Which makes it, you know, it's often, like.
1:24:38
derf: meant to be read month to month, I mean, that's how it originally appeared, and that's how I read it.
1:24:43
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:24:43
derf: month in heavy metal, because I hopped on with Issue 1 when I was.
1:24:47
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:24:48
derf: And that's how I read it, and you know, at first, it's like, what the fuck is this? But then…
1:24:53
Tad Eggleston: If you ever want an excuse to talk heavy metal, let me know, you're welcome.
1:24:58
Tad Eggleston: anytime.
1:24:59
derf: But by the fourth or fifth issue, I was just like, my God, this is fantastic!
1:25:04
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah!
1:25:05
Tad Eggleston: Actually, I was doing brief research on… on Bart Simpson to… to… today, after we locked down our
1:25:17
Tad Eggleston: recording time, and he also did a Moibius documentary, so I am… Really, really looking forward.
1:25:24
derf: Yeah, I'll have to track that one down, absolutely.
1:25:27
Tad Eggleston: to him.
1:25:27
derf: Never met him, unfortunately, but
1:25:31
Tad Eggleston: He… Yeah, no, Moibious is… and I didn't realize until, I think, today that it's Moibius, not… Mobius.
1:25:42
derf: Oh, right, Moibius.
1:25:44
Tad Eggleston: Er, er…
1:25:45
derf: Girard.
1:25:45
Tad Eggleston: Maybe. But yeah, Moibius Redux A Life in Pictures.
1:25:50
derf: Oh, nice.
1:25:52
derf: Park.
1:25:53
Tad Eggleston: directed in… er, produced, I guess, in 2007.
1:25:58
derf: But that is criminally…
1:26:00
derf: unknown, even in comic circles. There are just huge numbers of people that have never heard of it, or…
1:26:08
Tad Eggleston: I believe it.
1:26:09
derf: How great it is.
1:26:10
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean… And it doesn't surprise me that you're a jazz guy, because, like, it's…
1:26:17
Tad Eggleston: what I love… I mean, I probably like it the most of our heavy metal group. Everybody always will acknowledge
1:26:24
Tad Eggleston: it being beautiful.
1:26:25
derf: Mmm.
1:26:26
Tad Eggleston: But sometimes it's like, it's beautiful, but I don't know if I love it, because I don't know what the fuck's going on.
1:26:32
derf: You just gotta go with it, yeah, it is.
1:26:34
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:26:34
derf: You just gotta float along with it, and not worry about meaning, or…
1:26:38
Tad Eggleston: Right, and I remember when I kind of figured that out, and then I went and did a little research and discovered that that was exactly… like, because I got that feel that it was that…
1:26:49
Tad Eggleston: riff comic, that it wasn't…
1:26:51
derf: Right.
1:26:53
Tad Eggleston: And then when I discovered, oh, it was, in fact, stream of consciousness, it's like, oh, this makes so much sense.
1:26:59
derf: Absolutely. I used to do some of that in the all-weeklies with my comic strip. I would just do comics that made no sense at all.
1:27:05
derf: And they were fun, you know, I liked doing them. I don't know that anyone cared other than me, but, you know, it was great.
1:27:11
Tad Eggleston: Well, I think… I think sometimes… I mean, we talked briefly about Mystery Train earlier, and I've got a family movie group, and that's what we watched it for. I picked it, and, like, the movie group was split between.
1:27:23
derf: people.
1:27:23
Tad Eggleston: Who thought, like, well, the Japanese section was great and whatnot, but, like, the whole movie just…
1:27:31
Tad Eggleston: They didn't do anything. And, like, me, who's like, oh, but, like, it's the feel, and it's the, like…
1:27:40
Tad Eggleston: Here you have this… this… These teenagers from
1:27:46
Tad Eggleston: The other side of the world, coming to… this city…
1:27:52
Tad Eggleston: In honor of something that's not there anymore.
1:27:56
derf: Right, right.
1:27:57
Tad Eggleston: You know.
1:27:58
derf: Oh, God.
1:27:58
Tad Eggleston: And the balancing of, of, like, hope versus decay, and…
1:28:04
derf: Right.
1:28:05
Tad Eggleston: And all of it to just a wonderful…
1:28:10
Tad Eggleston: A soundtrack that somehow manages to weave right between Sun and Stax?
1:28:15
derf: Yeah. I mean, lack of narrative can also be narrative.
1:28:20
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:28:21
derf: It's, it gets a little complicated, but it's, it's, you know, there's… it's a different way of… of telling a story, and there are people that do it beautifully, and…
1:28:31
derf: And we can do that in comics as well, God knows. I mean, there's lots of them in comics.
1:28:36
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:28:37
derf: Indie comics, in ways, not mainstream comics, but,
1:28:41
Tad Eggleston: I mean, every once in a while, Moibius did a Silver Surfer story, it had some.
1:28:45
derf: Terrible.
1:28:46
Tad Eggleston: I know it was. He worked with Stan Lee. Stan Lee…
1:28:51
derf: Are we retelling the same story for the 20th time?
1:28:54
Tad Eggleston: Stan Lee was necessary. Stan Lee was the greatest pitch man… like, like, Stan Lee saved comics after…
1:29:03
Tad Eggleston: worth them.
1:29:04
derf: Well, hey, I guess, you know, Stan was a brilliant pitch man, and.
1:29:08
Tad Eggleston: But he wasn't a good writer.
1:29:09
derf: I grew up with Stan, I mean, I grew up with those…
1:29:12
Tad Eggleston: But I'm not willing to call him a good writer. No, he's a good writer. He had his moments.
1:29:17
derf: He's a terrible…
1:29:17
Tad Eggleston: Just moments, but overall, he was a terrible writer.
1:29:20
derf: Well, he didn't really write, so, I mean, you know, he filled in word balloons, that's not really right.
1:29:26
derf: And when your partner is Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko.
1:29:29
Tad Eggleston: Or Steve Ditko.
1:29:31
derf: You're a pretty…
1:29:31
Tad Eggleston: I, like, every once in a while, I will revisit
1:29:34
Tad Eggleston: Amazing Fantasy 15, just to remind myself what you can do in 11 pages.
1:29:40
derf: Right. Do you have a copy?
1:29:43
Tad Eggleston: I don't have a physical copy.
1:29:44
derf: Oh, I used to.
1:29:46
Tad Eggleston: I have… I think I've got at least one reprint, and I've got it digitally.
1:29:51
derf: Yeah, I have a reprint, too.
1:29:53
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:29:53
derf: quite a few Ditko Spider-Men, just, you know, but not the really valuable ones, just because I don't keep books worth.
1:29:59
Tad Eggleston: strange.
1:30:00
derf: in my.
1:30:00
Tad Eggleston: I know.
1:30:01
derf: anymore. I sold.
1:30:02
Tad Eggleston: Well, violin.
1:30:03
derf: Oops.
1:30:03
Tad Eggleston: I, I'm young.
1:30:04
derf: No one said to me.
1:30:05
Tad Eggleston: So, it was expensive by the time I was born.
1:30:09
derf: No, not me. I mean, I bought it for, I think, 20 bucks.
1:30:12
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:30:13
derf: Yeah. I just liked having it, just ha- I mean, it was just such a cool artifact.
1:30:18
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
1:30:18
derf: A book like that.
1:30:20
derf: That felt that way.
1:30:22
derf: Do you know.
1:30:22
Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, I… the first reprint I have of it, I got when I was relatively young, and, like, it's disintegrated.
1:30:32
Tad Eggleston: I kinda still have it, but, like…
1:30:35
derf: Yeah, I have one of the early reprints where it's still on newsprint, you know.
1:30:39
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:30:40
derf: Original coloring, and.
1:30:41
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:30:41
derf: Not on glossy paper and recolored.
1:30:45
Tad Eggleston: That's probably the one that I got when I was a kid.
1:30:49
derf: Yeah.
1:30:50
Tad Eggleston: No.
1:30:51
derf: It's probably the same one I have, Marvel Tech.
1:30:52
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
1:30:54
Tad Eggleston: But, but yeah, just, like, what he did in 11 pages. 11 pages!
1:31:00
derf: Right, did go?
1:31:01
Tad Eggleston: Spider-Man story.
1:31:02
derf: Right.
1:31:03
Tad Eggleston: And it not only has the entire Spider-Man mythology.
1:31:07
derf: Yeah.
1:31:09
Tad Eggleston: But it has, like, every iconic Spider-Man pose that would be used for, like, the next 50 years.
1:31:15
derf: That's true, yeah.
1:31:17
derf: All in 11 days. We invented it right there, is what you're saying, and probably should have.
1:31:22
Tad Eggleston: Right. And… and for that matter, I read… I read at one point that… that… Literally every character.
1:31:31
Tad Eggleston: including the kid that goes, hey, mom, a spider on the wall, or a man on the wall, has at least one Marvel issue
1:31:43
Tad Eggleston: Dedicated to them.
1:31:45
derf: Right, well, and then that becomes a key book, worth $10,000.
1:31:48
Tad Eggleston: In the last 50 years, that story has been told from literally every angle.
1:31:54
derf: Right, right. Well, God bless Work for Hire, because, you know, no one's gonna create anything new.
1:32:00
Tad Eggleston: Well, yeah, I mean, that sucks, but… but, but it is still, like, it says something about the quality.
1:32:08
derf: Oh, absolutely.
1:32:09
Tad Eggleston: You can inspire a good story.
1:32:11
derf: It's a classic piece of comics literature, no doubt. It's a handful of books that have that kind of greatness to them.
1:32:18
Tad Eggleston: Right. Yeah.
1:32:19
derf: No, I liked having it, but I had to let it go. I mean, it's just…
1:32:26
derf: Put up in a safety deposit box.
1:32:27
Tad Eggleston: If you let it go at the right time, you could have paid off your mortgage.
1:32:31
derf: I did pretty well selling off my…
1:32:35
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I want to say it's Ides. Do you know Ides in Pittsburgh?
1:32:41
derf: Oh, sure.
1:32:43
Tad Eggleston: The way I understand it, they bought that building by selling their amazing fantasy.
1:32:49
derf: Oh, no kidding. Wow.
1:32:50
Tad Eggleston: They own the building.
1:32:51
derf: go there when I lived there. I used to go to Ives when I was 18. I was going to school there.
1:32:58
Tad Eggleston: Aye.
1:32:59
derf: They were just in a little tiny store then, but yeah. You know, you sniff out your comic shops, they can smell them blocks away.
1:33:05
Tad Eggleston: Pretty much.
1:33:07
derf: And in you go.
1:33:08
Tad Eggleston: much.
1:33:09
derf: No, no, no, that's great.
1:33:10
derf: That's great. Yeah, I forget what I… I think I put the down payment on a house and funded, like, 4 trips to Europe.
1:33:18
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:33:19
derf: Yeah.
1:33:21
Tad Eggleston: I mean, if I had one, I would pretty much have to do that, because… Yeah.
1:33:24
derf: Well, what's the point of having an artifact that's in a safety deposit box, you know?
1:33:29
derf: Right. You might as well cash out, and then have experiences.
1:33:33
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:33:34
derf: So, I had a house.
1:33:35
Tad Eggleston: I mean, particularly for… I mean, to me, like, If I had a page, from…
1:33:44
Tad Eggleston: The book, it'd be harder to give up.
1:33:47
Tad Eggleston: like, an original…
1:33:48
derf: We won't have a page, because they're all in.
1:33:50
Tad Eggleston: Oh, I know.
1:33:51
derf: Congress.
1:33:52
Tad Eggleston: Right, right, right. But you know what I mean.
1:33:55
Tad Eggleston: If I had a paid…
1:33:56
derf: The owner donated the whole story, so I imagine I'll see it at SPX, because we get a tour of the Library of Congress, and they.
1:34:04
Tad Eggleston: Oh, do you?
1:34:05
derf: I don't… Yeah.
1:34:07
Tad Eggleston: Oh, very cool.
1:34:08
derf: Yeah, it's pretty amazing to see those pages.
1:34:11
Tad Eggleston: Now I really gotta get to SPX.
1:34:13
derf: Yeah, well, you gotta be a guest to get a tour of…
1:34:17
Tad Eggleston: Well, are the guests…
1:34:18
derf: Library of Congress and make an appointment and ask to see it.
1:34:21
Tad Eggleston: That's true, too, but my question was, are the guests are allowed to bring guests, or are the guests only…
1:34:27
Tad Eggleston: Because I know enough people who…
1:34:29
derf: Just… Yes.
1:34:30
Tad Eggleston: often guessed that if they were allowed to bring a plus one.
1:34:33
derf: Mike.
1:34:34
Tad Eggleston: I'll be able to get in.
1:34:35
derf: I don't… yeah, I think that's a case-by-case basis. I don't know what the rules are.
1:34:41
Tad Eggleston: Not a guarantee, I don't
1:34:43
Tad Eggleston: speak for anybody, but I do…
1:34:45
derf: No guarantees, sorry.
1:34:46
Tad Eggleston: I have developed a handful of French… it's weird, that's the other, like, completely surreal thing for me about this podcast, is I have made more genuine friends in my 40s than I did in my teens.
1:34:59
Tad Eggleston: Nice. Well, they're probably not.
1:35:01
derf: Points to how, you know, how unlikable we all were in our teens, more than anything else.
1:35:08
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I made a decent number of friends in my teens.
1:35:10
derf: Yeah, I didn't have a lot, like most comics guys, you know, it's just kind.
1:35:14
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean, I wasn't popular, but I made those good friends that stayed friends.
1:35:20
derf: Yeah, sure. Well, those are the important ones.
1:35:23
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:35:24
Tad Eggleston: And then… and…
1:35:25
derf: Didn't have a lot of comics friends, believe it or not.
1:35:28
Tad Eggleston: Right. I mean, that's my thing, is like…
1:35:32
Tad Eggleston: I, I, I, I had, like…
1:35:36
Tad Eggleston: 10 good friends by the end of high school.
1:35:41
Tad Eggleston: Probably 8 of which are still good friends.
1:35:45
Tad Eggleston: And then, maybe 5 or 10 good friends made in the next 20 years.
1:35:50
derf: Well, yeah, see, I made a lot more in college, but…
1:35:54
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:35:55
derf: And then in comics, I mean, I've got tons of friends now in comics.
1:35:58
Tad Eggleston: That's my point. And in comics, I've made a ton of friends.
1:36:01
derf: Right, that's great fun, you know, just…
1:36:04
Tad Eggleston: like.
1:36:04
derf: And that was…
1:36:06
Tad Eggleston: That was so much fun, it was, it, like…
1:36:09
Tad Eggleston: I think CXC was the first time that I… the first CXC that I went to.
1:36:15
Tad Eggleston: was where I felt it the first time, where it's like, oh, I'm a podcaster.
1:36:21
Tad Eggleston: But most of the people here think I'm part of the… I'm actually part of this. They don't… they don't treat me as…
1:36:29
Tad Eggleston: the separate fanboy, it's…
1:36:32
derf: Well, you are a part of it. I mean, yeah, that's how it works.
1:36:35
Tad Eggleston: I know, but it took me a minute to have that, like…
1:36:39
Tad Eggleston: sink in.
1:36:40
derf: Right.
1:36:42
Tad Eggleston: you know.
1:36:43
derf: That's a pretty mellow show, so, I mean.
1:36:44
Tad Eggleston: It is.
1:36:45
derf: Everybody's welcome there.
1:36:47
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, well, yeah, but, I mean, this is… I haven't told this story in a while, so for my handful of listeners that listen to everything, like, my first
1:36:58
Tad Eggleston: Big, big guest on the show.
1:37:02
Tad Eggleston: I made myself a promise that if anybody followed me on Twitter and therefore opened up DMs that I wanted to talk to, I had to send them a message. Because at the beginning of the show, I was really bad at sending cold emails. I've gotten pretty good at it because I've been so successful.
1:37:19
Tad Eggleston: But the first person to follow us, that I really wanted to talk to, was Jeff Smith.
1:37:27
derf: Oh, yeah.
1:37:28
Tad Eggleston: And it was like,
1:37:32
Tad Eggleston: I wrote him the most awkward… I came completely clean. I don't even know how to write this. I'm… I'm…
1:37:38
Tad Eggleston: And he responded, like, 5 minutes later.
1:37:41
derf: Yeah, nice.
1:37:42
Tad Eggleston: And the next thing we knew, we'd set something up, and we hit it off, and he's like, if you're ever… if you're ever, like, anywhere near Columbus, let me know, I'll take you on a backroom tour of the Billy Ireland. So my wife and I were going out
1:37:57
Tad Eggleston: East one summer, and I shot him an email, and he… he and Caitlin met me…
1:38:04
Tad Eggleston: at the Billy Ireland at 2 o'clock on, like, a Tuesday afternoon.
1:38:08
derf: Yeah, exactly.
1:38:09
Tad Eggleston: They had set up a specific tour for me.
1:38:12
derf: Yeah, that's something.
1:38:14
derf: That's something to go through.
1:38:16
Tad Eggleston: And then pitched the hell out of, you gotta come to CXC, you love CXC, you gotta come to CXC. Nice. You know? So, like, the first time I got there, like, I… obviously I wasn't, but I felt like an invited guest, because…
1:38:32
Tad Eggleston: like… I had been specifically told about the con by… Chef Smith and Caitlin McGurk!
1:38:40
derf: Nice.
1:38:41
derf: Well, you know that, Jeff and I were both drawing cartoons for the Ohio State.
1:38:46
Tad Eggleston: the lantern.
1:38:47
derf: paper at the same time.
1:38:48
Tad Eggleston: At the same time, yeah.
1:38:50
Tad Eggleston: No, that would be an artifact that I'd like… like, if I had a copy of one of the ones that had you both in there.
1:38:57
derf: I don't even think I…
1:38:58
Tad Eggleston: It would have to become really valuable before I'd sell it.
1:39:01
derf: Oh, I see. Yeah, they're pretty bad cartoons, but
1:39:05
Tad Eggleston: It doesn't matter. I mean, there's certain things where it doesn't matter how good they are.
1:39:11
Tad Eggleston: Particularly because, I mean, as I said earlier, with artists, like.
1:39:15
Tad Eggleston: I never… whether it's musicians or comic artists or whatnot, I'm sorry, you guys are your own worst critics.
1:39:23
Tad Eggleston: You know, the number of times that, like, people will say, this is terrible, and I'll look at it and go, what the fuck are you talking about?
1:39:31
derf: No, I never say that. I mean, I never say that. I mean…
1:39:34
Tad Eggleston: No, I know you… but there are people who do, like, who will…
1:39:37
derf: very critical of my work, you know, I'll focus in on a panel or two that I fucked up, and goddammit, but I'm.
1:39:43
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:39:44
derf: Overall, I generally have a pretty good sense of where a work stands or doesn't stand. And I've been lucky that my work's, you know, been so well received.
1:39:54
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:39:55
Tad Eggleston: It's good work.
1:39:56
derf: Looks have been so well received.
1:39:58
Tad Eggleston: It's… Everything…
1:40:01
derf: This one's getting a lot of praise, so that makes me.
1:40:03
Tad Eggleston: It's so good. And, and, and, like, I…
1:40:06
Tad Eggleston: I've been thinking all day about, like, how properly to describe it, because… and it's something that's a uniquely Derf thing. You have…
1:40:16
Tad Eggleston: No, you have an ability to get
1:40:21
Tad Eggleston: To the essence of your characters.
1:40:24
derf: Hmm. A lot of characters in this one.
1:40:26
Tad Eggleston: In a way that I'm not used to seeing. Oh, that's pretty neat. Where somehow, where I can't tell if it's…
1:40:36
Tad Eggleston: Where it's actually, like, sometimes… some people are phenomenal at acting.
1:40:43
Tad Eggleston: through their characters. Like, Elsa Chartier has acting and body language down…
1:40:49
Tad Eggleston: beyond belief. And others have facial expressions that just, like, always tell you a million things in the eyes, and then there are the writers that, like, it all just comes out through the dialogue. And I can't pinpoint
1:41:06
Tad Eggleston: What in your art?
1:41:09
Tad Eggleston: brings out the essence of the characters, but I feel like I know every one of them. And I feel like I know every one of them immediately.
1:41:17
derf: Oh, nice. Well, thank you.
1:41:19
Tad Eggleston: I think I'm…
1:41:20
derf: I think I'm a pretty good storyteller. That's really good.
1:41:25
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:41:26
derf: you know, the other stuff, I mean, I'm gonna be… I'll never be on anyone's shortlist for great artists, but my artwork is good enough.
1:41:35
derf: To tell the story.
1:41:36
Tad Eggleston: And that's one of the beauties of comics, is that, like, The storytelling is what matters.
1:41:44
derf: Right.
1:41:45
derf: And that's my story.
1:41:47
Tad Eggleston: There are a lot of really beautiful art and comics that are bad comics.
1:41:51
derf: Yeah, right, right, exactly.
1:41:55
Tad Eggleston: I mean, that was… to me, that was the initial image revolution, was, oh, we've got a lot of beautiful art, but not a lot of good comics.
1:42:03
derf: Right. Yeah, it sure was.
1:42:06
Tad Eggleston: You know, it was their second decade that they started to figure out, oh, we do need people who know how to write.
1:42:13
derf: Right. Well, whenever the Macs came along, I think they finally started to figure it out. Right.
1:42:19
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:42:19
derf: Like, okay, here's something really weird, and this story's very compelling, and I mean, I have no idea what the fuck it's about, but, you know, you had to pick up every issue, and that was really kind of the tipping point. But before, yeah, that early stuff is just, ugh.
1:42:35
derf: The whole extreme age is just, ugh.
1:42:40
derf: But, not surprisingly, I was not doing comics at that time. I was still immersed in comic strips, which were a whole different…
1:42:48
derf: ball game, because of all the people that were working there, you know, Chris Ware, and Matt Groening, and Linda Berry, and Charles Burns, and… Right. Bechdel, these were my contemporaries.
1:42:58
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:42:59
derf: These were the people that I was competing with for space.
1:43:02
Tad Eggleston: You've now convinced me that I need to go get a bunch of old copies of the reader.
1:43:07
derf: Yeah, well, the Reader was a great comics paper. I mean, it was one of the best, but yeah, if you're gonna get a
1:43:13
derf: You're gonna get old copies of the reader, you're gonna have to build a room onto your house, because that thing was the size of a phone book every week.
1:43:19
Tad Eggleston: Right?
1:43:20
Tad Eggleston: I remember it, and, like, cause I… Grew up in Chicagoland, so…
1:43:26
Tad Eggleston: Like, I was at Loyola. I was at Loyola in 97,
1:43:31
Tad Eggleston: I picked up the Reader and the onion pretty regularly. Yeah? For free! Right.
1:43:36
derf: I know. Free comics. They were exceptional comics. I would make the argument that the weekly comics in the 90s were the best comics being made anywhere.
1:43:46
Tad Eggleston: That's a good argument.
1:43:48
derf: And, largely overlooked, and almost completely uncollected. That's, you know, the other… the flip side of that.
1:43:55
Tad Eggleston: Well, see, if you… if you ever want to go the Eddie Campbell route and do a…
1:44:03
Tad Eggleston: Comic history book, where you're doing more of the writing and less of the drawing.
1:44:08
derf: I don't know that I have… I don't know if I.
1:44:11
Tad Eggleston: You have a topic.
1:44:13
derf: I only have so much time left, I don't think I'm gonna… I would like somebody to do it, and I know somebody is kind of working on one, so…
1:44:20
Tad Eggleston: Well, that's good to hear. I hope to see it.
1:44:22
derf: That'll be, that'll be a good one, and it's desperately needed, because it's…
1:44:27
Tad Eggleston: Because I think I was just the wrong… I think I was just the wrong age.
1:44:32
derf: You're a little too young, yeah.
1:44:34
Tad Eggleston: To appreciate it when it was coming out.
1:44:36
derf: Yeah, you're about 10 years too young.
1:44:38
Tad Eggleston: And… and… and a lot of those artists.
1:44:41
derf: as much as.
1:44:41
Tad Eggleston: I appreciate them now.
1:44:44
Tad Eggleston: like, Chris Ware in particular, I know that one day, will…
1:44:50
Tad Eggleston: snap into place for me. Every time I read Chris Ware, I go, I know there's genius here that I'm just not feeling yet.
1:45:00
Tad Eggleston: I'm still missing.
1:45:01
derf: It's a tough read, because it's so complicated. I mean, right now at the Billy, there is a huge Chris Ware show, which is.
1:45:07
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:45:08
derf: Spectacular.
1:45:09
Tad Eggleston: Well, then there was a great exhibit at…
1:45:12
derf: Read Crystal.
1:45:12
Tad Eggleston: there were a couple of Chicago… comics, exhibits…
1:45:16
derf: So I'm…
1:45:17
Tad Eggleston: a few years ago.
1:45:18
derf: That's on.
1:45:19
Tad Eggleston: There was a whole room of his stuff there that was pretty good, too.
1:45:23
derf: Yeah, yeah.
1:45:24
Tad Eggleston: and I have the utmost appreciation for him.
1:45:29
derf: ruining.
1:45:30
Tad Eggleston: And, like, when I… when I managed to track down, like, an Acme novelty library and read it as that, rather than the collection.
1:45:38
derf: Right.
1:45:39
Tad Eggleston: I tend to appreciate it more, so I almost wonder if, like.
1:45:43
derf: Jimmy Corrigan, too. I think Jimmy Corrigan was his script.
1:45:47
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, it was definitely a strip, but I've only read it as the volume, and it just gets too heavy, and I wonder if it was just more designed to be read.
1:45:56
derf: Week to week. Week to week. Cover a whole page. It was in a paper about the Chicago New City.
1:46:02
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I know, I know…
1:46:04
derf: The reason…
1:46:05
Tad Eggleston: I loved it.
1:46:05
derf: Togo.
1:46:06
Tad Eggleston: And I just never…
1:46:08
derf: was because of this wear. I mean, they just… they just were publishing just to publish this comic.
1:46:13
Tad Eggleston: Brilliant.
1:46:14
derf: a little unfair, too, because Chris was not really…
1:46:18
derf: I mean, he's not really one of anything, you know, he's not really of this earth.
1:46:22
Tad Eggleston: No. But…
1:46:23
derf: He wasn't doing what the rest of us were doing, which is, you know, scratching out these black and white strips, very DIY… Right. You know, panels, or squares or whatever, and sending them out, Xerox copies out everywhere. I mean, he was a…
1:46:37
Tad Eggleston: Well, but, I mean, even with Evan Dorkin, like, I have the complete milk and cheese, and I had to teach myself to, like, no more than 3 at a time.
1:46:46
derf: Right.
1:46:47
Tad Eggleston: If I read more than 3, I stop liking them.
1:46:50
derf: Right. Well, they were meant… yeah, and weekly strips were meant to be read week to week, just like we're getting now to Moitius. That's how they were meant to be read.
1:46:58
Tad Eggleston: be read.
1:47:00
derf: So, to read it another way, I mean, yeah, it'll be a completely different experience, and it may get a little… may get a little tiresome. I mean, but, you know, they're remarkable strips. I mean, it was…
1:47:11
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
1:47:12
derf: It's an honor to be among them.
1:47:14
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:47:15
derf: to be…
1:47:16
derf: about my own space and be successful at it was, it was a great thrill. Even though those strips are consigned to the 90s, you know, they live there.
1:47:25
derf: That they were of their time, and in their time, and that's where they belong.
1:47:30
Tad Eggleston: I mean, the 90s weren't a bad decade.
1:47:33
derf: Yeah, no, compared to now. Yeah, no, they weren't. But, the comics were great, but…
1:47:40
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:47:40
derf: So what I mean is, you know, they're not really strips that can be run today. They were just too topical, they were just too in their moment.
1:47:48
derf: So, that's where they live, and I'm okay with that, because now I'm doing these books which are more permanent.
1:47:54
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:47:55
derf: I think we'll live on.
1:47:56
Tad Eggleston: This one… this one will be. This one…
1:47:58
derf: Oh, thank you. I think all of them, so far, have.
1:48:01
Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
1:48:02
derf: rule.
1:48:02
Tad Eggleston: Absolutely.
1:48:03
derf: Longevity, but nobody seems to be tiring of them.
1:48:05
Tad Eggleston: I… I am… I feel ridiculously blessed that I've already gotten to read it twice.
1:48:10
derf: Ugh.
1:48:13
derf: Well, I said…
1:48:13
Tad Eggleston: Can't wait.
1:48:14
derf: Yeah, bro.
1:48:14
Tad Eggleston: I can't wait to have a physical copy in my.
1:48:17
derf: Oh, yeah, right. Yeah, the physical copy's beautiful. Abrams does beautiful books.
1:48:22
Tad Eggleston: That actually does remind me, of one question. In the PDF, it talks about…
1:48:30
Tad Eggleston: it was hard to tell from the opening pages where it was talking about being a galley proof, whether all of the color was done, or whether they were giving us a couple sample pages of what color would look like. So, is what I looked…
1:48:43
derf: The PDF? Yeah, that was unfortunately the… the color. I just… I just… I was deeply disappointed.
1:48:51
derf: In the color that I did for that. I had lofty goals to do something more complex, but I just ran out of time.
1:48:59
Tad Eggleston: See, Derf, I was about to go the other direction. I thought.
1:49:02
derf: Oh, that's good to hear.
1:49:04
Tad Eggleston: I thought it worked, like, like, the mixture of color and black and white.
1:49:09
derf: Hmm.
1:49:10
Tad Eggleston: worked really well.
1:49:12
derf: Oh, thank you, I'm glad to hear that. I did the best I could.
1:49:14
Tad Eggleston: You know.
1:49:15
derf: I might add.
1:49:17
Tad Eggleston: I started, like, when I saw that, I'm like, I actually kind of hope that it doesn't turn out that, like, all of the characters are in color eventually, because I kind of like how the color is reserved more…
1:49:31
derf: No.
1:49:33
Tad Eggleston: The magazine for…
1:49:35
derf: Right.
1:49:36
Tad Eggleston: the setting… Where it really brings out stuff, rather than just being…
1:49:43
derf: Right. Yeah, that was my… my intention. I mean, comics now, quite frankly, are a little over-colored.
1:49:50
derf: I mean.
1:49:50
Tad Eggleston: A lot of them.
1:49:51
derf: I've really gone kind of nut babe shit on color, and… Right. And there's some beautiful color, too, don't get me wrong, but…
1:49:59
derf: My stuff… I mean, I can't quite shake those DIY roots I was talking about, you know?
1:50:06
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:50:06
derf: started… It was just me, and a piece of paper, and a pen, and, you know.
1:50:11
Tad Eggleston: Right?
1:50:11
derf: scratched stuff out as best I could, and I'm still doing it that way.
1:50:15
Tad Eggleston: Still don't…
1:50:16
derf: I like doing that. I like pens scraping across paper. I mean, that's something I enjoy.
1:50:22
derf: So, you know, I'm never gonna…
1:50:23
Tad Eggleston: Color physically, too?
1:50:25
derf: I have.
1:50:27
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
1:50:28
derf: This one, I… it was digital color, mostly.
1:50:31
Tad Eggleston: someone was digital.
1:50:32
derf: Yeah, I mean, I was doing… using a tablet, you know.
1:50:35
derf: But everything else is no pen on paper. It's analog up at that point.
1:50:39
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
1:50:40
derf: So, but I wish that I'd… I wish that I'd been able to do a little more finely tuned color than I did, but, I don't think it affects the story, I think it's still…
1:50:51
Tad Eggleston: Again, I… I was… I was struck by the color.
1:50:54
derf: Oh, thank you.
1:50:55
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm not saying that it couldn't possibly be better, because I assume that if you saw things that you wish you could have done, that they would have been worth doing, unless you're George Lucas's long-lost brother.
1:51:06
derf: Well, I didn't want to take, you know, it's been so long.
1:51:11
derf: I mean, Kent State came out in 2020.
1:51:15
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:51:15
derf: So, I didn't want to spend another… I didn't want this book to come out at the end of 2027. I wanted to get it out this year.
1:51:22
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:51:23
derf: That was just the sacrifice I had to make.
1:51:27
derf: And, I mean, obviously there were reasons why it took this long, you know?
1:51:31
Tad Eggleston: If you hadn't told me, I wouldn't have known you sacrificed, so…
1:51:34
derf: Oh, well, thanks, that's good to hear.
1:51:36
Tad Eggleston: I, I, I, I was very appreciative of the way it… highlighted
1:51:45
Tad Eggleston: Provided emphasis to some of the…
1:51:49
derf: Yeah, I tried really hard on that. Yeah, I did.
1:51:53
Tad Eggleston: I felt like the color… the color was.
1:51:56
derf: Sam.
1:51:56
Tad Eggleston: emphasize the society… The societal impact, the bigger picture.
1:52:02
derf: Hmm.
1:52:03
Tad Eggleston: Is how it felt to me most of the time.
1:52:06
derf: Good, glad to hear it.
1:52:08
derf: Glad to hear it. And of course.
1:52:09
Tad Eggleston: What's the cover.
1:52:09
derf: are all in, you know, the masses covers that I produce, they're all full color. They had to be.
1:52:16
derf: Because it's so astounding. I mean, readers will find out when they read this book just how amazing this magazine was, and just jaw-dropping the cartoons and the artwork.
1:52:28
derf: And that was important to me, to bring that back, so…
1:52:31
Tad Eggleston: And you said they've got some at the Billy Ireland?
1:52:34
derf: They have a bound copy, I have some in my collection,
1:52:40
derf: I have a colleague who has an almost complete set.
1:52:44
Tad Eggleston: Wow.
1:52:45
derf: Yeah, I just went to his house, and
1:52:48
derf: Spent a week there just scanning the shit out of them.
1:52:51
Tad Eggleston: So…
1:52:52
derf: A lot of the… a lot of the cartoons in… in the book are scanned from his… they're scanned from the magazine.
1:53:01
derf: And then some of the cartoons are scanned from the original art.
1:53:05
derf: Nice. In the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress has quite a few.
1:53:09
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
1:53:10
derf: So, yeah, that's quite a…
1:53:11
Tad Eggleston: Must have been after Wilson was out of office.
1:53:14
derf: Yeah, yeah.
1:53:16
derf: I don't know where they came from, but… Yeah.
1:53:20
derf: I don't think they were collecting comic art in 1919.
1:53:23
Tad Eggleston: It sounds like the Library of Congress has a much better comic collection than I realized.
1:53:28
derf: Oh yeah, it's astounding. It's, it's amazing.
1:53:31
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:53:32
derf: They have quite an archive.
1:53:34
derf: I'm not sure what the history of it is there, or why it's there, but it's, you know, I'm glad it's somewhere.
1:53:41
derf: So it's, you know, Library of Congress, Columbia University has a pretty astounding.
1:53:46
Tad Eggleston: Yep.
1:53:46
derf: And then the billions.
1:53:47
Tad Eggleston: Karen… Karen Green has… has curated a… I haven't gotten to see her collection, but I've talked to Karen.
1:53:53
derf: Right, right. Yeah, she's a sweetheart, yeah.
1:53:57
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:53:57
derf: Force and Comics.
1:53:59
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:54:00
derf: Oh, she's done an amazing job. So, the archives, the better, as far as I'm concerned, but…
1:54:05
Tad Eggleston: Absolutely.
1:54:06
derf: Yeah.
1:54:07
Tad Eggleston: I know that they're working on putting together a museum in Portland. I think they're working on putting together a museum in San Francisco.
1:54:14
derf: I hope that those votes.
1:54:15
Tad Eggleston: Let's get off the ground.
1:54:16
derf: Oh, right, right. And then there's some in Europe, too, like Angola.
1:54:20
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:54:20
derf: A museum that has some pretty amazing stuff as well.
1:54:24
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:54:25
derf: So, yeah, it's everywhere.
1:54:27
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I gotta actually go get a passport one of these days.
1:54:30
derf: Yeah, I think you do. Would you get to uncle him? Yeah.
1:54:32
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:54:33
derf: I would recommend it.
1:54:35
Tad Eggleston: I mean, hell, the last time I went to Toronto, I didn't need one.
1:54:38
derf: No, right, you do now.
1:54:41
Tad Eggleston: Yep.
1:54:41
derf: And you're not really welcome there right now, either. I might postpone a trip to Canada right now until…
1:54:47
Tad Eggleston: What if I went and said, I am seeking asylum?
1:54:51
derf: Yeah, I don't know. I don't think they won any Americans, and I can't blame them.
1:54:56
Tad Eggleston: I can't either. Can't either.
1:54:58
derf: Yeah.
1:54:59
Tad Eggleston: I love the Canadians right now.
1:55:01
derf: What do I? Love him to death. I mean, I've, you know, I've been to Canada probably 50 times in my life, but…
1:55:09
derf: Yeah, I'm just… I would just walk around apologizing the entire time I was there, you know?
1:55:15
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, pretty much, pretty much.
1:55:17
derf: That's what I do in Europe, too, so…
1:55:19
Tad Eggleston: As much as I love Shohei, I kinda wish that the, Blue Jays had won last year, just so that they would have had a really good excuse not to go to the White House.
1:55:33
derf: And we're back to baseball.
1:55:35
Tad Eggleston: I never… I never go all… I mean, I'm holding… I'm holding a 19th century style baseball in my hand.
1:55:41
derf: Oh, nice, nice.
1:55:44
Tad Eggleston: And I have my Wrigley Clock baseball.
1:55:47
derf: Oh, nice, nice.
1:55:48
Tad Eggleston: With the proper 120 start time.
1:55:51
derf: Well, my baseball artifacts are downstairs, they're not up here in my studio. It's all comics up here.
1:55:57
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, I got my Spider-Man action figure in stacks of comics, too, I just mix them all together.
1:56:03
derf: Oh, there you go. No, I like to keep mine separate.
1:56:06
Tad Eggleston: I mean, Mark Chiarello gave me his, original three-finger Brown.
1:56:14
Tad Eggleston: That I have on my wall over here. And I've got his Josh Gibson print, so, like, my comics and baseball…
1:56:22
Tad Eggleston: I bring my hyperfixations together, Derf. I don't… I don't need my peas not to touch my mashed potatoes.
1:56:29
derf: I'm the… I'm the… I'm the ladder there.
1:56:32
Tad Eggleston: You gotta have your plate separated carefully.
1:56:34
derf: Gotta have it divided up. Can't… can't have the grapevy running into the mashed potatoes.
1:56:41
Tad Eggleston: Whereas I'm the one that my wife is like, did you really just mix this and that? And I'm like, yeah, it's awesome. And she's like, I'm just gonna trust you.
1:56:50
derf: There you go.
1:56:54
Tad Eggleston: Well, Derf, it is always a pleasure. Like I said.
1:56:57
derf: Thanks for having me on.
1:56:59
Tad Eggleston: If you're in Chicago, let me know.
1:57:01
derf: I will.
1:57:02
Tad Eggleston: Pizza, or whatever the food of choice is.
1:57:10
Tad Eggleston: Hopefully, no later than the next CXC, we'll see each other again, because it's always nice to…
1:57:16
derf: Yeah, boy, my schedule is really packed this year.
1:57:19
Tad Eggleston: And maybe next time you'll remember who I am.
1:57:26
Tad Eggleston: You get… I mean, I…
1:57:28
derf: Wear a cat costume, and maybe I'll, and then it'll click right.
1:57:32
Tad Eggleston: No, I'm the one always in a vintage baseball cap, and often a vintage baseball jersey.
1:57:36
derf: Nice.
1:57:38
Tad Eggleston: Negro Leagues often with the jerseys.
1:57:40
derf: I'm sure I'll recognize you on sight.
1:57:43
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, we'll see. One of my best friends, who I met through comics, was a regular at a comic shop that I worked in.
1:57:51
Tad Eggleston: And the first time he came in that we talked for 3 hours, it was about baseball, and the second time that he talked.
1:57:57
Tad Eggleston: came in that we talked about for 3 hours, it was about music, and the third time that he came in that we talked for 3 hours was about comics, and the fourth time that he came in and we talked for 3 hours is when I realized that he was the same guy from the other 3 times.
1:58:14
Tad Eggleston: And we've been really good friends ever since, but he was kind enough to say, no, Tad, like, when you come to the shop, you see lots of people, and I'm not always one of them. But when I come to the shop, you're here.
1:58:28
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
1:58:30
Tad Eggleston: So, so I come for you, and… and you come…
1:58:35
Tad Eggleston: Because you work here on Saturdays.
1:58:37
derf: Right. Well, that's, you know, and that's a good perspective to have. I mean, you know, in comics, I meet probably 10,000 people a year.
1:58:44
Tad Eggleston: Exactly.
1:58:45
derf: So…
1:58:46
Tad Eggleston: So I'm never surprised when somebody… I'm never surprised even when it's somebody that I've had on the podcast, because again, it's different to watch somebody on video.
1:58:54
derf: Hmm.
1:58:55
Tad Eggleston: Versus having them in front of you.
1:58:57
derf: Oh, sure, yeah.
1:58:59
Tad Eggleston: And lots of people, like… I'm a podcast, you might do 10 this month.
1:59:05
Tad Eggleston: You know, depending on who you are, you know what I… you know what I mean? So, like, I never expect to be remembered.
1:59:12
Tad Eggleston: I sometimes joke about it, and I'm always really touched when I am.
1:59:17
Tad Eggleston: Because, again, it's weird that I've gotten to make so many actual friends.
1:59:23
Tad Eggleston: as a grandfather. I had grandkids before I started making friends in comics.
1:59:28
derf: Well…
1:59:32
Tad Eggleston: Which just… it feels like I'm doing something wrong, except that I like it.
1:59:36
derf: It doesn't, you know, time doesn't matter. I mean, I had my big breakthrough when I was 50 years old.
1:59:43
Tad Eggleston: Yeah?
1:59:44
derf: So, you know, you just keep going.
1:59:47
Tad Eggleston: And you're a Cleveland guy. Satchel Page pitched in your town.
1:59:52
Tad Eggleston: He was the king of time, doesn't matter.
1:59:54
derf: Oh yeah, that's true, yeah.
1:59:57
Tad Eggleston: In fact, isn't he the one that said age is a…
2:00:00
Tad Eggleston: Matter, or age is just a question of mind over matter?
2:00:04
derf: My day.
2:00:04
Tad Eggleston: I don't mind, it don't matter.
2:00:07
derf: Thanks so I'm pitch.
2:00:08
Tad Eggleston: Did he?
2:00:09
derf: Yeah?
2:00:10
Tad Eggleston: If we ever had time machines, that would be one of the first things that I'd want to do.
2:00:15
derf: Oh, yeah, see Satchel in his prime? You bet.
2:00:20
Tad Eggleston: I wanna see the Satchel Gibson at-bat.
2:00:25
derf: Mmm.
2:00:26
Tad Eggleston: You know the one I'm talking about, right?
2:00:28
derf: Yeah, I think so, yeah, I know what you're talking about.
2:00:31
Tad Eggleston: Where it was, it was like the East-West series.
2:00:33
derf: Right.
2:00:34
Tad Eggleston: And Satchel loaded the bases to bring Gibson up as the winning run.
2:00:42
derf: Right.
2:00:43
Tad Eggleston: And then struck him out.
2:00:44
derf: That's what he says. I mean, you know…
2:00:46
Tad Eggleston: No, they're…
2:00:47
derf: Whether it actually happened or not, who knows?
2:00:49
Tad Eggleston: There's newspaper commentary on it.
2:00:52
derf: Yeah.
2:00:54
Tad Eggleston: Satchel… Satchel blew it up more than…
2:00:58
Tad Eggleston: Like, the Satchel story was exaggerated.
2:01:01
derf: Right.
2:01:01
Tad Eggleston: But the event happened.
2:01:06
Tad Eggleston: Though my favorite… like, the game that I'd need to go to first, is…
2:01:14
Tad Eggleston: if you… if you look up Martin Digo on the Sabre Biography Project.
2:01:19
derf: Hmm.
2:01:20
Tad Eggleston: It… it starts with… Talking about a game that he pitched in Mexico, and I… I think 38?
2:01:30
derf: This is a deep dive here.
2:01:32
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but, but it was, it was, it was, it was during a year that Satch and Gibson and whatnot were all playing in the Mexican League. So…
2:01:42
Tad Eggleston: It was a 1-0 shutout.
2:01:46
Tad Eggleston: Where Digo went the whole… 9.
2:01:50
Tad Eggleston: And hit the walk-off home run.
2:01:54
derf: Good day.
2:01:54
Tad Eggleston: Satchel went 8.
2:01:56
derf: Mmm.
2:01:58
Tad Eggleston: Digo coming into the game, was the league's leading hitter and the league's leading pitcher.
2:02:05
derf: Yeah, those old stats are amazing.
2:02:08
Tad Eggleston: Right. I mean, when people… when people say that nobody's ever done what Shohei is doing, I say.
2:02:15
Tad Eggleston: Not quite.
2:02:16
derf: Yeah, right.
2:02:18
Tad Eggleston: Go… go look up Martin Deco.
2:02:21
derf: Right.
2:02:22
Tad Eggleston: And yeah, it's… but we're getting… like, there were a handful of people starting in the 90s that really ran around
2:02:31
Tad Eggleston: and, like…
2:02:33
Tad Eggleston: like, Bill Blackbeard and comic book… er, comic strips, like, Scott Simkiss and a handful of other guys were about going around and finding every Negro League box score they could find in any
2:02:47
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it's nice.
2:02:48
derf: It's all archived now. I mean, that's… that's great, because you're right.
2:02:51
Tad Eggleston: Right.
2:02:52
derf: 90s, it was almost completely just misty time, I mean… Right. We heard about it, but they didn't really have any documentation.
2:02:59
Tad Eggleston: Right. And then there were half… I mean, Simkiss is actually, like, I remember his blog, I don't think it's up anymore, but he's like a Chicago-area taxi driver that would take long weekends to drive places and go through Negro… or, like, black paper archives just looking for box scores.
2:03:17
derf: Right, yeah, listen.
2:03:19
Tad Eggleston: You know, and now we have a near-complete record, and while a lot of the reason why they finally called the Negro Leagues Major Leagues was publicity, another part is…
2:03:29
Tad Eggleston: There is now a strong statistical case that they… were…
2:03:36
Tad Eggleston: At an absolute equal playing level, or higher, Then the white man.
2:03:41
derf: There's any doubt. Yeah, absolutely. And those stats should be included.
2:03:46
Tad Eggleston: Right.
2:03:47
Tad Eggleston: Which is why… The all-time leading hitter is Josh Gibson, not Ty Cobb.
2:03:52
derf: Mmm.
2:03:53
Tad Eggleston: It's a beautiful thing.
2:03:55
derf: Right.
2:03:57
derf: Of course, we don't really know how many games Satchel won, because, you know…
2:04:01
derf: Some of all that stuff, I mean…
2:04:03
Tad Eggleston: No!
2:04:04
derf: Barnstorming, we have no idea.
2:04:06
Tad Eggleston: We still don't know how old he was.
2:04:08
derf: Right, exactly.
2:04:10
Tad Eggleston: You know?
2:04:11
derf: the Indians, we have no idea how old he was.
2:04:13
Tad Eggleston: No, I mean, because he was born in…
2:04:16
Tad Eggleston: officially, it's, like, June 6, 1907, I think, except that that birth certificate doesn't spell the last name properly, and there was a page without an I in town, so, like, there's reason to believe that it's not
2:04:32
Tad Eggleston: the right birth certificate, and there are ballplayers that grew up with him in Birmingham that are like, I remember playing with Satchel in, like, 1903, and he was older than me.
2:04:45
derf: That's right.
2:04:46
Tad Eggleston: Playing, as in, like…
2:04:50
Tad Eggleston: playing Kick the Can, or whatever 5-year-olds do. Right, right.
2:04:54
derf: Right?
2:04:54
Tad Eggleston: But, like, the guy who's born in 1898 going, no, I've been friends with Satchel Page since I was 5 years old, and he was old.
2:05:01
derf: We have no clue, we have no clue.
2:05:04
derf: I don't think anybody cared, I mean, you know, he came here, and he was a big, big showman, and he filled the stands. And you think about that Indians team, 48,
2:05:14
derf: Bob Feller and Satchel Page were in the same rotation.
2:05:18
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Well, they did barnstorming together before that.
2:05:21
derf: Right?
2:05:23
Tad Eggleston: So did Dizzy… Satchel Page pitched long enough that he did barnstorming tours with Dizzy Dean and Bob Feller.
2:05:30
derf: Yeah.
2:05:32
derf: Right.
2:05:34
derf: Right.
2:05:35
Tad Eggleston: That's just…
2:05:36
derf: Incredible.
2:05:38
Tad Eggleston: Incredible.
2:05:39
Tad Eggleston: I mean, the number… the number of… of… like…
2:05:44
Tad Eggleston: I can't believe how long it took me to discover Oscar Charleston.
2:05:51
Tad Eggleston: You know… Now that I've discovered him, it's like, oh my god.
2:05:56
Tad Eggleston: like… He's got an argument for the greatest Offensive ballplayer that ever lived.
2:06:03
derf: Yeah,
2:06:04
Tad Eggleston: And I didn't know who he was until I was… In my 30s.
2:06:09
Tad Eggleston: Never heard of it.
2:06:10
derf: I wanted to see… the guy I want to see would be… have been, The Cleveland Spiders.
2:06:17
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
2:06:18
derf: And Cy Young.
2:06:19
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
2:06:20
derf: Who won, like, 39 games for them one year. Right.
2:06:24
Tad Eggleston: Right?
2:06:25
derf: And that would have been…
2:06:26
Tad Eggleston: I was one of the people that really wanted Cleveland to go with the Spiders when they finally dropped the Indians.
2:06:34
derf: I don't know, AL team taking an NL team's name?
2:06:39
Tad Eggleston: No, that's fair. That's fair.
2:06:40
derf: The problem with that as a purist.
2:06:43
Tad Eggleston: No, that's fair, that's the whole reason that you've got the Nationals rather than the Senators.
2:06:47
derf: That's right. That's right. And there were a lot of people here who wanted the spiders, too. I think it was, but they, you know, they didn't go with it. And the Guardians is kind of a stupid name, but I'm getting used to it.
2:06:58
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
2:06:59
derf: Stupid name, great bridge, but a stupid name.
2:07:02
Tad Eggleston: I'm just glad they finally gave up on the…
2:07:06
Tad Eggleston: The… the… the stupid argument that it was…
2:07:12
Tad Eggleston: Like, the first time the Socket Lakes story.
2:07:15
derf: That's all bullshit.
2:07:17
Tad Eggleston: See, huh.
2:07:18
derf: The history with that is actually kind of interesting, since comics and baseball collide.
2:07:25
derf: Because back in the 90s, there were not a lot of people protesting…
2:07:30
derf: Or criticizing the name. Or Chief Wahoo.
2:07:34
derf: there were… but there was this group of Native Americans that showed up every year to protest opening day.
2:07:42
derf: And…
2:07:45
derf: That bugged the owner of the Indians at the time more and more as it went on, because he was getting closer to his new ballpark opening up, so there was a lot of coverage. And the team was good after years of being suck… sucky.
2:07:56
Tad Eggleston: Alright.
2:07:57
derf: The other guy who was criticizing Chief Wahoo all the time was a certain cartoonist who worked for a weekly paper.
2:08:06
Tad Eggleston: I love it!
2:08:07
derf: in Cleveland, And one of the sports editors told me that… that…
2:08:16
derf: you know, when it came time to move to the new stadium, they were gonna quietly retire Chief Wahoo.
2:08:23
derf: They were gonna keep the Indians' name, but they were gonna require… retire this hideous cartoon mascot.
2:08:30
Tad Eggleston: Right.
2:08:31
derf: But the owner was so pissed, At the protesters.
2:08:35
derf: And my cartoons, because I was doing them on the cover by this point, that he said, we're keeping Wahoo, and we're taking him to the new stadium, so my cartoons actually had the exact opposite.
2:08:50
derf: result of what I intended, which kind of just really encapsulates the whole, you know, pouty billionaire thing that we live with every day.
2:08:59
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
2:08:59
derf: But yeah, I had a role in that, and yeah. They're a good cartoon. I love it.
2:09:05
Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna have to go dig some up.
2:09:07
derf: Yeah, you'll have to dig some up.
2:09:09
Tad Eggleston: Because that sounds cool.
2:09:10
derf: out there.
2:09:13
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
2:09:14
Tad Eggleston: No, that's the only thing… that keeps Major League from being…
2:09:22
derf: Oh, the movie? That's a stupid movie, too, but…
2:09:26
Tad Eggleston: I love that movie!
2:09:27
derf: Do you?
2:09:28
Tad Eggleston: I do, but it can never be even quite in my top 5.
2:09:34
Tad Eggleston: Because… Of Wahoo.
2:09:37
derf: Right. Yeah, it was pretty embarrassing. You know, the 2016 series is what really… I think finished off.
2:09:44
derf: Chief Wahoo, because it was all over national TV, and it was such an embarrassment. He had these meatheads dressing up in red face, and it was just… it was… ugh.
2:09:55
Tad Eggleston: And then… and then my beloved cubs were kind enough to extend the Wahoo curse.
2:10:02
derf: Yeah, fuck you with the cubs.
2:10:06
derf: A team with… with a rotation of two.
2:10:10
Tad Eggleston: I didn't know.
2:10:11
derf: By the end of it, because all the others were on the injured list, and it took you 7 games and extra innings to win that series.
2:10:18
Tad Eggleston: One of them was Kyle Hendrick.
2:10:19
derf: So bad.
2:10:21
Tad Eggleston: I love Kyle Hendricks.
2:10:23
derf: Hmm…
2:10:24
Tad Eggleston: And, and, like, as much as overall I love Joe Madden, like, I thought he so mismanaged Game 7.
2:10:31
Tad Eggleston: I think he lifted Kyle way too early. I think putting Lester in…
2:10:37
Tad Eggleston: in the middle of an inning rather than a clean inning, even though before the game, he'd said, if I put Lester in, it'll only be in a clean inning. I think…
2:10:45
derf: The Indians just ran out of pitchers, that's why you won. I mean.
2:10:49
Tad Eggleston: But, but I also… It's almost unforgivable to go to… Chapman early.
2:10:55
derf: Given how much.
2:10:56
Tad Eggleston: when she… run him.
2:10:58
derf: Right.
2:10:59
Tad Eggleston: I mean, he essentially gave up on the bullpen that had gotten him to the playoffs.
2:11:02
derf: Well, that's…
2:11:04
Tad Eggleston: playoffs.
2:11:04
derf: Bauer hadn't sliced up his finger playing with a drone the night before his start, it would have ended right there.
2:11:14
derf: So…
2:11:14
Tad Eggleston: Well, I'm glad it.
2:11:15
derf: Only in Cleveland could this happen. Only in Cleveland.
2:11:19
Tad Eggleston: Glad it didn't. I needed my championship.
2:11:22
derf: Fuck you.
2:11:25
Tad Eggleston: Hey, I'm rooting for the Guardians now.
2:11:28
derf: No, they're not going anywhere this year, but…
2:11:31
Tad Eggleston: No, it's… the White Sox came out of nowhere. The White Sox have actually been good.
2:11:35
derf: They're a mirage.
2:11:38
Tad Eggleston: Maybe? I mean, I don't… I don't know… I don't know if they're… they're…
2:11:43
Tad Eggleston: They have the feel of a team where there's gonna be a lot of regression, and the chances that all of the kids that are having good years will actually have.
2:11:52
derf: Right, next year they'll be the Tigers. Next year.
2:11:55
Tad Eggleston: Right.
2:11:55
derf: I agree, it's the same thing.
2:11:57
Tad Eggleston: There you go.
2:11:57
derf: The Guardians may catch them this year, the Guardians are so.
2:12:00
Tad Eggleston: They might.
2:12:00
derf: So…
2:12:02
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
2:12:02
derf: The thing about the Guardians is they always play better in the second half, and they always close really well. I don't know what it is about that team, but they're starting to heat.
2:12:12
Tad Eggleston: Well, and they've been… like, I think the only team over…
2:12:17
Tad Eggleston: The last 10 years that's been better at growing their own pitching is Milwaukee.
2:12:21
derf: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, they do very well at that. Hitters, not so well, but of course, they've got some good young hitters now.
2:12:28
Tad Eggleston: They do.
2:12:29
derf: But the owner's just such a cheapskate that they're never gonna compete until they get older.
2:12:34
Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's true of all of the owners except for the Dodgers.
2:12:38
Tad Eggleston: And now he's under indictment, so, like…
2:12:41
derf: I've spent pretty well.
2:12:44
Tad Eggleston: They spent really well until 2016, and they still… I mean, let me rephrase.
2:12:53
Tad Eggleston: There are definitely teams to spend even more
2:12:57
Tad Eggleston: than other teams, but the only team that spends as much as they can afford to spend, who never lets money get in the way, is the Dodgers. And there's not a team in baseball that, if they chose to.
2:13:10
Tad Eggleston: Couldn't spend like the Dodgers without losing money.
2:13:13
derf: Right.
2:13:14
derf: Right. Oh, no, they're all just pocketing their… their wealth. Right. Straight into the.
2:13:19
Tad Eggleston: Right. I mean, that… particularly as we go into another labor fight.
2:13:23
derf: Right.
2:13:25
Tad Eggleston: I think that's important to be said, is that, like, no, the Dodgers didn't break baseball. Every team could spend like the Dodgers.
2:13:33
derf: Right. Well, the Mets do, they just do it badly.
2:13:36
Tad Eggleston: Oh. Yeah.
2:13:38
Tad Eggleston: Well.
2:13:39
derf: Are you kidding me?
2:13:41
Tad Eggleston: now I really gotta go.
2:13:43
derf: All right.
2:13:43
Tad Eggleston: I… I got stuff to get done, but it's…
2:13:45
derf: Yeah, I mean?
2:13:46
Tad Eggleston: Such a pleasure. Yeah.
2:13:48
derf: Thanks for having me on.
2:13:50
Tad Eggleston: Absolutely. For 22 Panels, this has been Derf Beck Derf, and we will see you after the next page.