Latest / 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast / With Great Power #305... 22 Panels with David F. Walker

Transcript

With Great Power #305... 22 Panels with David F. Walker · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

0:00
Tad Eggleston: Now we're recording.
0:02
Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels. My guest tonight is David F. Walker.
0:09
Tad Eggleston: One of my favorite writers out there, a regular collaborator with friend of the podcast, and
0:18
Tad Eggleston: Milestone Book Club member Marcus Guamay Anderson, who sends his hellos, and the… the creator of the Currently.
0:29
Tad Eggleston: kickstarting, and I'm gonna pronounce it the way I read it, and you get to either tell me whether I got it right, or whether you do it differently.
0:38
Tad Eggleston: Because I read it as the monster of Blackenstein, not to be confused with Blockenstein, because I think…
0:47
David F Walker: I think.
0:49
Tad Eggleston: I get myself thinking Mel Brooks, and…
0:52
David F Walker: Yep, you will…
0:53
Tad Eggleston: and steam.
0:55
David F Walker: It's… it goes… I don't… I don't… I… as a… as a rule, I don't correct people, but technically it's just the monster Blackenstein, not to be confused with Blackenstein.
1:06
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
1:06
David F Walker: And, and… but again, you know, it's,
1:10
David F Walker: I find it more, like, with a lot of things I do, it's like, whatever you want it to be, whatever brings you comfort.
1:17
Tad Eggleston: Well, I love that attitude. Yeah.
1:21
David F Walker: It's like, I remember…
1:24
David F Walker: When I was a kid, I had one friend who was… he read comics, and we would fight all the time about, like, how certain names were pronounced, right?
1:35
Tad Eggleston: Wolverine.
1:36
David F Walker: Yeah, well, there was Wolverine, there was, there was Submariner, And there was…
1:43
Tad Eggleston: Read Rick Cards!
1:45
David F Walker: And what was there? There was one other one that was, oh, Magneto. Magneto. And, and we fought about this all the time.
1:52
Tad Eggleston: Bitter Man?
1:53
David F Walker: It never was that bad. It was never that bad.
1:56
David F Walker: And, but then when, I, like…
2:02
David F Walker: what was… there was, two… well, one was the… that terrible Iron Fist show, where, oh, I've been pronouncing it wrong, because it was, like, wherever he's from is…
2:14
David F Walker: I've always said it as Kunlun, I think, and they were, like, Kunlun or something, and then with,
2:21
David F Walker: I always said Shang-Chi, and they were, like, Shang-Chai, or whatever, with the… yes. Right.
2:27
David F Walker: I feel we just… we let it be, you know, and… and… and…
2:34
David F Walker: who am I to correct people in how they pronounce things, right?
2:38
Tad Eggleston: Well, that actually plays into, I mean, one of the things…
2:43
Tad Eggleston: I teach high school special ed, so I get to do a lot of different subjects, and particularly when people are reading things, and they're like, well, I don't know what it means, blah blah, and I'm like, sure you do. What do you think about, what do you feel when
2:58
Tad Eggleston: You know, you're the final collaborator.
3:01
Tad Eggleston: It might mean something different to me. It might mean something different to you when you read it next year.
3:06
Tad Eggleston: You know…
3:07
David F Walker: Or 10 years from now… Were you angry.
3:09
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, were you hungry when you were reading it? Were you sad when you were reading it? Like, what you bring also affects
3:16
Tad Eggleston: You know…
3:17
David F Walker: I'm working on a new project that really gets into the heart of that.
3:22
David F Walker: And so, you know… It's a… oh, I'm sorry.
3:26
David F Walker: about it. Are you? I can, yeah, no, I, so for many.
3:32
Tad Eggleston: I mean, we'll get back to Blackenstein in a minute.
3:34
David F Walker: So, for many years, I worked at a newspaper. I was a staff editor, but I was also the, lead film critic. Okay.
3:43
David F Walker: in the time that I worked there, I reviewed approximately 10,000 movies, and…
3:50
Tad Eggleston: Did you actually watch them all?
3:52
David F Walker: Yes.
3:52
Tad Eggleston: Okay, you were the good critic.
3:55
David F Walker: And, and I also…
3:56
Tad Eggleston: re-eaten.
3:57
David F Walker: I also curated, a film festival, so there were… and I would go to film festivals, so I saw a lot of movies, and I was telling a friend of mine about this.
4:08
David F Walker: And… and he was like, you know, you should… you should share those reviews, and I'm like, but we… I… we got into a conversation not that long ago.
4:17
David F Walker: And… and I realized what would be interesting, because it's been… I haven't worked
4:23
David F Walker: I left that job in 2007, 2008, so we're, you know, coming up on 20 years. Right. I don't remember most of the movies I watched. I don't remember what I thought of them. I do remember a lot of what I watched, but people will say, oh, you know, whatever, you know, a certain movie, and I'll be like, yeah, I saw it, but I don't remember it.
4:42
David F Walker: So what I've decided to do for my Patreon is I am going to read the reviews.
4:48
David F Walker: on, you know, record myself reading the reviews, then I'm going to watch the movie, and then record an all-new reviewer.
4:58
Tad Eggleston: I look forward to that.
4:59
David F Walker: But in the process, I… I think what's going to be the funniest, or the most interesting, is I'm… I'm…
5:07
David F Walker: gonna do it almost, like, as a memoir, like, so I'm going to talk about
5:12
David F Walker: Because I was keeping journals and things like that back then, and notes, so I, you know, I know who I was, you know, who I saw the movie with. I remember the context, I, you know, and I remember every review that almost got me fired, right?
5:28
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
5:28
David F Walker: I was… I was that guy. I was really… I didn't care what people thought, and was always getting into fights with readers. This was back in the days when people still sent… you know, they were… they sent emails.
5:38
Tad Eggleston: Leathers were still sent.
5:39
David F Walker: letters and, you know, all kinds of stuff. So, it's… it's gonna be an experiment to see if it works or not, but I found…
5:48
David F Walker: And the crazy thing is, is none of this stuff is digital. None of the… none of the reviews are saved. They're… they're all… but I have hard copies of the newspapers, clippings, right?
5:58
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
5:59
David F Walker: And so I, I, I dug some up.
6:02
David F Walker: this morning, and I… I was reading them, and I was like, oh my god.
6:06
David F Walker: I can't… I can't wait to shock people with…
6:11
David F Walker: And the rule is… the rule I'm setting for myself now is, if it's a movie that I have since watched.
6:18
David F Walker: I, you know, I rewatched… I rewatched the Lord of the Rings movies. I'm not gonna review those. I'm not gonna read those reviews. But, you know…
6:26
David F Walker: I… I saw trash that… and I saw some classics, too, that just most people don't realize, you know? Right. It's, and especially when, you know, at the film festivals that I would… I… not just the one I curated, but
6:42
David F Walker: back then, Portland had a lot of film festivals. Right. They… because we had the Northwest Film Center, which is sadly no longer here. But I went to Sundance a couple times, I went up to Seattle for a festival. There's… I was traveling a lot, and so…
6:57
Tad Eggleston: Right.
6:57
David F Walker: I remember in, in,
7:00
David F Walker: I was in Park City one year for Sundance, Sundance and Slamdance, and I watched
7:05
David F Walker: Close to 20 movies in a day.
7:07
David F Walker: It was, like, I didn't sleep, you know, and it was, it was… Oh, to be younger.
7:14
Tad Eggleston: I mean, some of those must have been short.
7:17
David F Walker: There were some shorts, And I don't know what it's.
7:19
Tad Eggleston: I was just thinking, 20 movies in a day, like, even at 90 minutes, they don't fit.
7:24
David F Walker: Well, so I should say 20 movies over the course of, like, 36 hours.
7:29
Tad Eggleston: Okay, that, that's… yeah.
7:31
David F Walker: And what would happen back in then, I don't know what it's like now, but because I was press.
7:38
David F Walker: You could check out… they had a library, and you could.
7:41
Tad Eggleston: Right.
7:41
David F Walker: some movies, and so what, you know, I was staying with a bunch of other, writers, and we would, you know.
7:50
David F Walker: you… there's a certain amount… they were on VHS, that was the crazy thing. Certain number of VHS, a limit that you could get, but, like, 3 of us would each get that limit.
7:59
David F Walker: And then we would sit, we'd watch shorts, documentaries, features, but if a movie was really crappy.
8:06
David F Walker: you know, we call it video rodeo, right? How long can you last if it's not any good? So…
8:13
David F Walker: But there was, again, there was some really good stuff that I saw, and that's the thing that's, that's,
8:19
David F Walker: I think about that a lot, you know, the… especially the stuff that I saw in film festivals. There was always, like, some amazing documentary.
8:28
David F Walker: Or some, some, you know, incredible short, and back in those days, you know, YouTube was barely a thing, and… Right. And so, so I…
8:38
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, actually.
8:38
David F Walker: It might be fun, I don't know.
8:40
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I'm looking forward to it. It'll go right up there with your movie posters that are so much fun.
8:47
David F Walker: I haven't done one of those in a while, but yeah.
8:51
Tad Eggleston: But
8:52
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, it's funny that that came up, because, like, do you know Jim Terry, the artist?
8:59
David F Walker: Oh, the name sounds real.
9:00
Tad Eggleston: Tim Seeley on a few things. He did a memoir called Come Home India a couple of years ago that was just amazing.
9:06
David F Walker: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
9:08
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah. So… last night, I went down to the city because he spent the last year
9:15
Tad Eggleston: He and a friend made a fake trailer 20 years ago.
9:19
Tad Eggleston: But, like, the idea stuck in their heads, so they spent the last year on, like, no budget making the movie.
9:27
Tad Eggleston: Oh, wow. We screened it last night. So I went downtown, and I saw a movie called Shank that Jim Carrey made.
9:33
David F Walker: Okay.
9:34
Tad Eggleston: That, like…
9:38
Tad Eggleston: I think… I think I'd say, like, if you took a John Wick-ish action movie, but made it… had Kevin Smith and Jim Jarmouche make it.
9:48
Tad Eggleston: on no budget.
9:49
David F Walker: Okay.
9:50
David F Walker: I'd watch that.
9:52
Tad Eggleston: No, I actually loved it. Yeah. I seriously loved it.
9:56
Tad Eggleston: But, but, like, a lot of it was because it's like, okay, you understand your limitations, so you're either…
10:06
Tad Eggleston: being self-deprecating and taking that limitation and… and making it hilarious. Like, the sound design to… like…
10:13
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Old guy's doing karate kicks and stuff, so, so since, since, since…
10:19
Tad Eggleston: Since the choreography wasn't great, they added the sound effects that made it hilarious. You know?
10:26
Tad Eggleston: You didn't have a lot of real actors, so, like, they tended towards more…
10:36
Tad Eggleston: mundane in… you know, why we're gonna bring up the Jarmouche is because they've got a lot of the, like, in-between scenes, but they also have, like, the witty, self-deprecating humor. Yeah.
10:47
David F Walker: No, that's awesome. I mean, I love… I love Jim Jarmisch, I love John Wick, I like some Kevin Smith. I think it would be an.
10:55
Tad Eggleston: Well, and when I say Kevin Smith, I'm like, I'm talking, like, clerk's Kevin Smith.
10:58
David F Walker: Okay, the good stuff, the… when he was young and hungry, and… Right. And I don't dislike his movies, I've just… I guess I'd say I grew out of them, right? Yeah.
11:09
Tad Eggleston: I haven't completely grown out of them, particularly not the actual, like, Esc universe, like.
11:15
David F Walker: Yeah.
11:16
David F Walker: Yeah, those are, those are better.
11:19
David F Walker: Those are better. I love the… I prefer those, so…
11:22
Tad Eggleston: And I'm one of the handful of people that actually loves Jersey Girl.
11:25
David F Walker: Okay, I…
11:27
Tad Eggleston: People can't stand it.
11:28
David F Walker: I'm not with… I'm not with you on that one, but that's okay.
11:31
Tad Eggleston: why they don't, but part of it is I'm also a big Sondheim fan.
11:34
David F Walker: Got it.
11:34
Tad Eggleston: That they decided to do… Like, they had the little kid in…
11:43
David F Walker: It's… but you know what's funny? I'm gonna tell you what's funny, is I had to review Jersey Girl for my job, so I just remember not liking it.
11:55
David F Walker: And… and I… but I don't remember what I said in the review, and… and what's interesting is.
12:01
David F Walker: you know, people would say, oh my god, you're a film critic, that's the greatest job in the world. And I would say, you know, what was the last truly terrible movie you saw? And they would throw something out, and I'd say, imagine doing that, like, 5 times a week, right? Going… because I…
12:17
David F Walker: Right. On average, I saw one movie a day, but there are some times where I'd see two or three, and so my cynicism…
12:24
David F Walker: just hit this, you know, like, an all-time low or an all-time high, whichever you want to look at it. Right. And, and,
12:33
David F Walker: And so there's… there are some movies that I… I would be curious, like, oh, maybe I… like, I… I can tell you a movie that I absolutely hated.
12:42
David F Walker: And… everybody says I'm insane for it, as I hated,
12:47
David F Walker: Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous.
12:50
David F Walker: And, and, like.
12:51
Tad Eggleston: Really?
12:52
David F Walker: with a white-hot passion, I hated it. I don't remember why.
12:56
David F Walker: And… but it's…
12:57
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
12:58
David F Walker: easily be…
12:59
David F Walker: And this'll be the fun… I don't know if this'll be the fun part or not, but it's like, oh, I might have been fighting with my girlfriend at that point, right? So, you know…
13:09
Tad Eggleston: That'd certainly be the fun part for readers.
13:11
David F Walker: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and so what I'll… I won't… I will… again, I'll read the reviews, and then I'll give the… a little bit of context, a little bit of backstory.
13:18
Tad Eggleston: Well, now I have two that I'm hoping you'll… I can't wait to see you do. I want to see you do that with Jersey Girl, and I want to see you do that with Almost Famous.
13:26
David F Walker: Yeah, almost famous, man. Oh, there was… Ugh. So, yeah, that's, that's…
13:32
Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, like, I'm, like, making predictions in my head.
13:37
David F Walker: Yeah.
13:38
Tad Eggleston: I don't want to air them, because I don't want to sway you.
13:40
Tad Eggleston: I can see reasons why you might just go, this is not for me.
13:45
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. I'll be curious as to whether it turns out that you were one of those reviewers that was able to say, this is not for me, while still acknowledging that lots of people are gonna love this.
13:55
David F Walker: I think that, I suspect that…
14:00
David F Walker: what I'm going to discover is there's going to be a really significant mix of movies that I didn't like at the time.
14:08
David F Walker: That I… I will go easier on. And I think that… but I… I think what's gonna be more common is that there's gonna be movies that I liked when I saw them that I don't like now, that they.
14:18
Tad Eggleston: Right.
14:18
David F Walker: age well. Oh, yeah. And that's a pretty common thing.
14:23
David F Walker: You know, and I would talk about… I've talked about this a lot, like, a movie is… isn't just the movie. A movie is who you saw it with, what the weather was like when you were driving there. There's all these things, and…
14:36
David F Walker: And when it's your job, you watch movies differently, you know?
14:41
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
14:41
David F Walker: And so…
14:44
David F Walker: Yeah, I can… I will tell you the one… there's another one I'm really looking forward to, but I may not rewatch it. It's the only movie I ever walked out of, in all the years that I did it, did that… had that job, which was, Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas.
15:00
David F Walker: I walk out of that one.
15:02
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, that one… I don't… I don't blame you.
15:05
Tad Eggleston: The first Flintstones was pretty good, though. I mean, they could have used Mark Russell.
15:11
David F Walker: Yeah, well…
15:11
Tad Eggleston: I would like to… I would like to see them make a Flintstones movie using… using…
15:16
David F Walker: His comic, yes, I agree, so…
15:18
Tad Eggleston: I mean, he took Flintstones to a whole different level.
15:22
David F Walker: Yup.
15:23
Tad Eggleston: But the first one wasn't bad.
15:27
Tad Eggleston: You know, it was trying to do some things that it didn't…
15:31
Tad Eggleston: I haven't watched it in a long time, so I could be completely wrong, too.
15:36
David F Walker: And that's the… that's gonna be the joy of this… this,
15:39
David F Walker: this little endeavor that I'm gonna… I'm gonna test out, and if it doesn't go over, I don't need to do it for very long, but there's… there is… when I really stopped and thought about it, when I stopped and thought… and thought about, again, all the movies, and… and some of them…
15:56
David F Walker: I don't know if I'm even going to be able to rewatch them, because I don't know if they're going to be available, right? Right.
16:00
Tad Eggleston: Finding them could be hard.
16:01
David F Walker: Yeah.
16:02
Tad Eggleston: No, I, my family, or at least a portion of my family, we get together on Zoom every Wednesday night and talk about a movie that we've watched
16:10
Tad Eggleston: During the week, and everybody gets to pick, and there's essentially no veto.
16:17
Tad Eggleston: you know…
16:17
David F Walker: Oh, man.
16:18
Tad Eggleston: some exceptions, but, like, so there's a round robin between, like, six of us, and…
16:22
Tad Eggleston: And, like, some, you know, it's made clear, like, you can pick it because you love it, you can pick it because you're curious about seeing it, you can pick it because you think it's bad, and you want us to talk about a bad movie.
16:34
Tad Eggleston: And, like, we've had some weird stuff, like, my brother decided that he was in a Raul Julia mood, and do you know what Raul Julia's last movie was?
16:44
David F Walker: No.
16:45
Tad Eggleston: Street Fighter.
16:47
David F Walker: Really?
16:49
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
16:49
David F Walker: Oh, wow, that's sad.
16:51
Tad Eggleston: I mean, he was, like, sick, sick.
16:53
Tad Eggleston: was…
16:54
David F Walker: Yeah, I remember when he passed, I just didn't…
16:57
Tad Eggleston: And he did it because his kids were huge fans of the game.
17:00
David F Walker: Yeah.
17:01
Tad Eggleston: We had him on set the whole time, that sort of thing.
17:04
Tad Eggleston: Ahem.
17:06
Tad Eggleston: We went into it expecting to hate it.
17:08
David F Walker: Yeah.
17:09
Tad Eggleston: Like, expecting to hate it, hate it.
17:12
Tad Eggleston: And came out of it going, you know, if they'd cast some bum off the street rather than Jean-Claude Van Damme, that would have actually been a decent movie.
17:23
David F Walker: Oh, poor van, man.
17:26
Tad Eggleston: The only truly bad part about it.
17:28
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Was… was the star.
17:31
David F Walker: Yeah.
17:32
Tad Eggleston: He was terrible.
17:33
David F Walker: Oh, I, I, I know.
17:34
Tad Eggleston: Digging into it, apparently he had a, like, $10,000 a day coke habit while he was filming.
17:41
David F Walker: Oh, again, poor…
17:43
Tad Eggleston: Or Jay.
17:44
David F Walker: ACVD, so…
17:46
Tad Eggleston: But… but yeah, no, we wound up shocked. It's like, you know, I can't say anything good about this, except that I was…
17:53
Tad Eggleston: actually entertained? Like, didn't turn away.
17:57
David F Walker: That's all you need. That's all you need is to be entertained, yeah.
17:59
Tad Eggleston: You know, I can't… I can't… you know, Julia was actually truly good. Yeah. You know, apparently he tried to base his character, you know, he was… he was watching Hitler and Mussolini and Stalin and trying to get the mannerisms of all of those evil dictator types.
18:17
David F Walker: He was being a real actor, is what he was doing, so yeah.
18:22
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
18:23
Tad Eggleston: The script was… Yeah. But, like, not… BAD, just like… Okay…
18:34
David F Walker: Yeah.
18:34
Tad Eggleston: We're doing just enough,
18:36
David F Walker: Yeah.
18:38
Tad Eggleston: Then, like, the star… was, like… actively horrible.
18:45
David F Walker: Yeah.
18:46
David F Walker: Well, and that's the… I'm trying to remember if there was any Van Damme movies that…
18:53
David F Walker: I… that I reviewed at… while I was at the paper, because I… it seems like…
18:58
David F Walker: it was right around the time he was descending into direct-to-video, and so… but I, you know, again, I could be… I'll be surprised. I'm going to, in the next couple weeks, go through… I've got a huge…
19:12
David F Walker: couple boxes full of the clippings, so I'm gonna pull the clippings out. I'm gonna… I'm also gonna create a master list, I'm gonna… so I have the dates. I'm not gonna do the videos in order, but I'm gonna really give this some serious thought, and… I love this.
19:28
David F Walker: I mean.
19:29
Tad Eggleston: Honestly, I mean, I know we started with cynicism about, like, everybody's gotta have videos now rather than whatnot, but this would make a great book.
19:38
David F Walker: This is… I'll be 100% honest with you, this is the book…
19:43
David F Walker: that, Brian Michael Bendis has been yelling at me to write for over 10 years. Nice! And… and I just…
19:51
David F Walker: for a whole host of reasons, I haven't been able to make the book itself work, but I like, like…
19:58
Tad Eggleston: Well, if you do this, then maybe it…
20:00
David F Walker: Then the book might reveal itself.
20:01
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it either… it either grows into it, or it doesn't, and you get something out of it either way.
20:08
David F Walker: So…
20:10
Tad Eggleston: We should quickly go back to Blackenstein, but we're gonna go to your… you do have a book coming out, which actually… Yes.
20:18
Tad Eggleston: Actually had me pick a movie
20:21
Tad Eggleston: For our movie club, so we'll come back to movies in a minute.
20:25
David F Walker: Okay, sounds good.
20:26
Tad Eggleston: But, since we need to sell a book…
20:29
Tad Eggleston: I mean, that… I mean, you have funded, so it's not one of those ones where I'm looking at the funding and saying, as of right now, he needs $240.
20:38
Tad Eggleston: As of right now, you are… $1,350 over your goal.
20:46
David F Walker: Which is good. It's, you know, what I've been telling… More is better? Yeah, it's, it's… well, the whole thing is, is that there are,
20:55
David F Walker: there are a bunch of follow-up stories that are coming, right? There's… That's even…
20:58
Tad Eggleston: better.
20:59
David F Walker: Of varying lengths, and so the money that's raised above and beyond the initial goal is meant to just pay
21:07
David F Walker: Artists, and… and in one case,
21:10
David F Walker: a good friend of mine, John Jennings, who's a writer-artist, we're collaborating. He's the first major collaboration.
21:16
Tad Eggleston: Haven't gotten to talk to John Jennings yet, but I did get to talk to… oh god, why is his name drawing a blank? Who did he work with on the…
21:27
Tad Eggleston: the… book adaptations.
21:29
David F Walker: Oh, Damien Duffy.
21:30
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
21:32
David F Walker: Oh yeah, Damien Duffy's great, and yeah. And so, it's… that's the thing, it's like…
21:37
David F Walker: This issue that what we're kickstarting right now was 100% paid for out of my own pocket, and I don't mind doing that, but it's like, oh, okay, you know.
21:47
David F Walker: I can't keep doing that. It's… it's… I've got to find ways to… Why?
21:52
Tad Eggleston: Are you trying to tell me that there's no money in comics?
21:56
David F Walker: Not much! Someone else is making it all, it ain't me, so, but this is a project that I really wanted to do, you know?
22:05
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, so, so, before I get into it, because I did get to read it, and I loved it.
22:11
Tad Eggleston: Give me the front counter pitch.
22:13
Tad Eggleston: You're at a comic shop, and you're… you're selling it across the counter. How would… how would you pitch it to the…
22:19
David F Walker: Read this damn comic, that's what I would say.
22:23
David F Walker: No, I… it's, you know, I… it's… I just say, I've been telling people that it's… it's… it's a love letter to classic monster movies, blaxploitation, and a very dark satire of the comics I grew up reading as a kid.
22:37
David F Walker: Which is primarily 70s Marvel stuff, but also, you know, creepy and eerie.
22:44
Tad Eggleston: subtitles, things like that. Social commentary, too.
22:47
David F Walker: Well, yeah, no, but I'm not telling people about that.
22:49
Tad Eggleston: Oh, you're not telling people that.
22:50
David F Walker: I'm just saying…
22:51
Tad Eggleston: that out loud. Everybody ignore that.
22:53
David F Walker: It's… it's… I mean, I feel like the tagline for it is, you know, he was… he was just a man until the man made him a monster, and the cover has got him fighting the police, and so that, in and of itself, was a very common trope.
23:09
Tad Eggleston: Right.
23:09
David F Walker: of blaxploitation, it was not something that was very well explored in
23:16
David F Walker: the actual… there was… there was a movie called Blackenstein. It is one of the worst movies of all time. It's… it is… it is.
23:25
Tad Eggleston: then I won't go searching for it.
23:26
David F Walker: Don't. It's… it is… I cannot emphasize enough, when I… it's not a movie that's so bad, it's good. It's so bad, it's… it's so bad.
23:35
Tad Eggleston: So that's why it's not to be cute.
23:38
David F Walker: Yes.
23:38
Tad Eggleston: Black and stuff.
23:39
David F Walker: I don't think there's anyone who would sue me over it, but it's also, I want to let people know that this is not that… that comic, right? Like, my friend Rodney Barnes did a… he did a Blackula comic.
23:53
David F Walker: his comic is great, but I love the movie Blackula, right? And so, I wanna… there's a handful of people who are like, oh, Blackenstein liked the movie, and I'm like, no, nothing like the movie.
24:07
David F Walker: Which is, again, it's… I tell people the most interesting thing about the movie is that the guy who wrote and produced it
24:16
David F Walker: Was murdered, and it's never been… his murder's never been solved.
24:20
David F Walker: And that the guy who plays the monster in the movie
24:25
David F Walker: was… had been facing charges for first-degree murder, but he was acquitted, and his lawyer was the guy who produced and wrote the movie, so…
24:35
David F Walker: it… that's the end of it, right? That's the end of what's interesting, so…
24:39
Tad Eggleston: The best thing you can say about a movie is to talk about… the people.
24:44
David F Walker: An unsolved murder?
24:45
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
24:46
David F Walker: Yeah, so…
24:48
Tad Eggleston: Say a lot about the movie.
24:49
David F Walker: Yeah. So, yeah, so this is just… it is really, more than anything.
24:54
David F Walker: Again, it's… I love monster movies growing up as a kid. I love blaxploitation movies. I love 1970s Marvel stuff. If it was written by Don McGregor, Doug Monk.
25:06
David F Walker: Steve Englehart.
25:08
David F Walker: You know, those guys, I worship them. But now, when I read some of their stuff as an adult, it's very verbose and very, you know, very wordy.
25:21
David F Walker: And I was like, oh, I want to write something like that, because we don't see comics like that very much, where you, you know, you read a word, and you're like, what is this word? You know, I was a kid who was always running to the dictionary to look stuff up, so I just wanted to do something that… that…
25:39
David F Walker: I knew I would find fun, and that I… that I knew I had some friends who would find it fun, and maybe some people who liked my work would find it fun.
25:50
David F Walker: And… and so far, I'm doing okay, you know?
25:54
Tad Eggleston: Oh, I'm loving it.
25:55
David F Walker: You know, everybody that I've sent it to, has been,
26:00
David F Walker: one of the funniest things was, you know, because again, Brian Bendis and I are really good friends, we've written together, we teach together, and I had sent him an early PDF of it, and he's like, he said, this has got too many words, I'm not going to read all this. And this coming from him, he's, like, one of the worst.
26:19
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I was about to say.
26:20
David F Walker: Right?
26:21
Tad Eggleston: said that?
26:21
David F Walker: And then, like, maybe a day later, he was like.
26:26
David F Walker: okay, I read the whole thing, oh my god, this is hilarious. And he said.
26:30
Tad Eggleston: By the way, you fell into a Bendis there, so, like, it's clear that you guys spend a lot of time together.
26:37
David F Walker: And, and he, and he said.
26:39
David F Walker: What was… what was funny to me was, We talked about…
26:45
David F Walker: He said, you know, it almost read like it was written by someone who the only thing they ever read was comics.
26:52
David F Walker: And… and I was like, that's what I was going for. I was… I was actually looking at some of the comics that I had written when I was a kid.
26:59
David F Walker: Which, again, this was in the 70s and 80s, and I was aping what was… what was standard.
27:06
David F Walker: And… and so, yeah, I just… again, this was… there was a lot of ups and downs in the making of this comic, a lot of them.
27:16
David F Walker: It took way longer than I thought it would, but it's… I'm now at a place where I'm…
27:21
David F Walker: I love the character, I love my collaborators, and I just want to do more stories, and so…
27:27
Tad Eggleston: Oh, I…
27:29
Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, I mentioned that Marcus is a good friend, and, like, when I told him that I was working on setting up the…
27:37
Tad Eggleston: the podcast with you, he's like…
27:39
Tad Eggleston: make certain he sends you the PDF.
27:44
Tad Eggleston: Which is why I knew to ask for it.
27:47
David F Walker: And Marcus was one of the ones, he was like, you know, at this point, of all the collaborators, of all the artists I've worked with, Marcus is… I love working with him so much. I respect his opinion on so many things, and so…
28:00
David F Walker: I sent it to him the same way when I sent it to Bendis, and I sent it to some other people who, again, they're my peers in an industry.
28:11
David F Walker: But they're also my friends, and so they know
28:15
David F Walker: They can be honest if it doesn't work.
28:17
David F Walker: And, you know, you're bracing yourself, because I do feel like with this comic.
28:23
David F Walker: what I'm… part of what I'm doing, I could see, especially if people don't know me in my work, or they don't know
28:31
David F Walker: where my influences are coming from, they might look at it and go, what is this?
28:37
David F Walker: one of the things, one of the stretch goals in the campaign is… I'm trying to do an audio drama version of it.
28:46
David F Walker: Which would be the equivalent to, you know, when I was a kid.
28:51
David F Walker: some comics would come, like, with a 45 with a 7-inch. This one wouldn't press vinyl.
28:57
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'd pay for it if you did.
29:00
David F Walker: Well, you know, the reason why I wouldn't do it is because I don't even have a turntable, but…
29:05
Tad Eggleston: Well, I'd send you a turntable if you did.
29:08
David F Walker: Oh, okay. Well, I'll keep that in mind, but that had come about…
29:15
Tad Eggleston: It's actually currently a Kickstarter for, for, junji Ito.
29:20
Tad Eggleston: story.
29:21
David F Walker: Really?
29:22
Tad Eggleston: vinyl. Yeah.
29:23
David F Walker: Oh, okay, I gotta look that up.
29:25
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
29:25
David F Walker: what had happened was, is while I was lettering the book.
29:31
David F Walker: I do this with a lot of things when I'm lettering, I just read it out loud to make sure the flow works.
29:36
David F Walker: And I… two things kept happening. One is I kept tripping over the words, which was a good thing. Normally, it would be a bad thing, but it was a good thing.
29:46
David F Walker: But I found myself laughing at my own stuff, which is something I almost never do.
29:51
David F Walker: And I realized I was also reading it in this… in a very bombastic voice, like this. And,
29:58
David F Walker: And it hit me, oh, this is what really needs to happen, is… is I need to…
30:07
David F Walker: do a… I need to do a recording, I'll get some other people to do the other voices, but I need to read this to people. Like, I need for them to… like, some people will get it, you got it, Marcus got it. I think a lot of people get it. But I'm just… just nutty enough that I want to do…
30:23
Tad Eggleston: I will toss out there, if you decide that you want to go completely lo-fi with it.
30:29
David F Walker: Yeah.
30:30
Tad Eggleston: 22 Panels did put together the official audio adaptation of the Santos Sisters' Halloween special.
30:37
David F Walker: Okay.
30:38
Tad Eggleston: So we have a little bit of experience.
30:40
David F Walker: Alright, well, I may have to pick your brain about it.
30:43
Tad Eggleston: Way lo-fi!
30:46
David F Walker: Well, that's sort of… I want to go for what I do… I think we pulled it off. Yeah.
30:51
David F Walker: I certainly…
30:52
Tad Eggleston: I certainly… and I still… I haven't just… I mean, I teach, so I haven't had the time to do it, but I've been blocking out to try to more efficiently do the rest of the Santos Sisters
31:05
Tad Eggleston: issues, because they've given me permission to do any of the ones I want.
31:10
David F Walker: No, it's… it's… sometimes it's just, for me, it's very fun.
31:15
David F Walker: to…
31:17
David F Walker: I'm not gonna say I get bored easily, but it's… I do feel like, oh, I'd like to challenge myself.
31:22
David F Walker: creatively, and I… and I'd like to try to do things that…
31:27
David F Walker: it's like, oh, like, I didn't ever think I would do something like this, and then I become obsessed, my… and my ADHD kicks in, and I start to hyper-focus on something, and…
31:39
Tad Eggleston: Fixations, baby!
31:40
David F Walker: Yeah, and… And that's where I'm at right now.
31:45
Tad Eggleston: about so many things, and so little about so many others.
31:50
David F Walker: I, I, I… And the, the, you know, the comic itself is done.
31:56
David F Walker: There's only 3 things that aren't done for the… or 4, if you count the credits page, and the indicia, and all that sort of stuff.
32:05
David F Walker: But I… I'm putting together These ads that are not real ads.
32:10
Tad Eggleston: I love ads. I love fake ads.
32:13
David F Walker: And… and so that's what I'm… I'm wrapping those up.
32:17
David F Walker: And they are all, again, spoofs of ads from the night… primarily the 70s, the stuff you would see in comics in the 70s. And in the process of creating them.
32:28
David F Walker: I actually created… A world within the world of the comic, which is, you know,
32:36
David F Walker: Yeah, so… so we'll see what happens. It's… it's… I… I… like I said, I was talking to John Jennings a couple days ago, we're collaborating on a story together.
32:45
David F Walker: And Marcello, my artist, is working on a Blackenstein short that will probably be done
32:55
David F Walker: It'll probably be done before the campaign is over, and if we hit the stretch goal, one of the stretch goals, it's going to be included in the comic. Otherwise, it'll just be part of the digital, the digital phase of this…
33:10
Tad Eggleston: Well, and you already have cool stuff available, because, like…
33:16
Tad Eggleston: I didn't even notice the Mystery Comic Bundle tier. I think I went with the Early Bird Special.
33:22
David F Walker: then you're getting… it's the same. I mean.
33:24
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
33:24
David F Walker: There's… there's… the mystery comic is…
33:28
David F Walker: It's a mystery, but it's… there's a whole bunch of, like.
33:34
David F Walker: like, there's, like, 3 or 4 comics that I wrote, especially early in my career, that, like.
33:40
David F Walker: are impossible to find, but I…
33:43
Tad Eggleston: Except in my collection, I just don't have them stuck.
33:46
David F Walker: And so I… in fact, I met with my editor today, and she just handed me a box full of.
33:54
David F Walker: of this one particular title that… and we were talking about just, like, how crazy it was. We worked on this thing
34:02
David F Walker: 12, 13 years ago.
34:04
Tad Eggleston: Which one?
34:05
David F Walker: It's a comic called, I want to say it's called The Supernals, or The Supernals Experiment, something like that. It was a… it was a vanity comic for, an NFL player
34:17
David F Walker: It was a comicsology series, but he…
34:21
Tad Eggleston: Right.
34:21
David F Walker: first issue.
34:24
David F Walker: Ramon Box, I believe, was the artist on that, and it was… I was still… getting myself.
34:33
Tad Eggleston: Jamie Rich?
34:35
David F Walker: Mmm… I don't think Jamie Rich was… no.
34:37
Tad Eggleston: Well, I'm just… so far, Google is telling me Superno's Experiment.
34:43
Tad Eggleston: and it says Jamie Rich and Philip Buchanan, but then I get down to.
34:47
David F Walker: No, that's the book, but Jamie Rich wasn't working on it.
34:50
Tad Eggleston: Well, then… then, you know, Google is bad.
34:55
David F Walker: Oh, it's… it's terrible. And… But what Miley…
34:59
Tad Eggleston: The top result now is, like, AI, so…
35:05
David F Walker: Yeah.
35:06
David F Walker: I'm looking to see… my guess is that Jamie might have been,
35:11
David F Walker: he may have been, like, the editor before Shauna came on board.
35:16
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but it's listing him not… it's not listing him as the editor, it's listing him as the author. It's not giving you credit.
35:24
David F Walker: So then people…
35:25
Tad Eggleston: Google?
35:27
David F Walker: That's one of the ones that will be part of the surprise mystery pack.
35:32
Tad Eggleston: Okay, that one I don't have.
35:34
David F Walker: So… Oh, there's… when I say there's comics I've written that have been printed that… that people don't have, there's… I can think of at least…
35:43
David F Walker: There's the Supernals, there's, Mac Afro, almost nobody has that.
35:49
David F Walker: There's some anthologies I was part of, and the one thing that almost nobody has, I don't even have
35:56
David F Walker: that many copies of it. I was the,
35:59
David F Walker: English language writer on a manga series for a while.
36:03
David F Walker: I was… that was, like, one of my first paid gigs.
36:06
David F Walker: And… Okay.
36:08
David F Walker: the last I heard, They were trying to do a collection
36:13
David F Walker: Dark Horse was supposed to do a collection of it.
36:16
David F Walker: I don't know if they were going to use the.
36:18
Tad Eggleston: You're right, I got… I have… I don't recognize Mac Afro either. Yeah. Looking at it on your Instagram right now. Sleazin' crackers.
36:26
David F Walker: Yep.
36:28
David F Walker: So, yeah, no, there's some stuff out there that…
36:32
Tad Eggleston: I believe it, but, but, like…
36:34
David F Walker: And it's hilarious to me because I forget most of it exists.
36:38
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I don't have a huge, huge collection, says the guy that has comic boxes in almost every room of the house, but you're one of the people that I've, like, been grabbing for a long time. You know, I have…
36:54
Tad Eggleston: The people that I collect, I collect. I'm not the, I have to have every issue of Spider-Man.
37:01
Tad Eggleston: I do have to have every issue of Daredevil.
37:03
David F Walker: Okay.
37:05
David F Walker: Fair enough, I could see that, so…
37:08
Tad Eggleston: But Daredevil's, like, the only superhero.
37:10
Tad Eggleston: That I have to have everything from. And after that, it's like, there… I've got… there are writers that I have to have everything they do, there are writers that I have to have everything non-Marvel or DC that they do.
37:22
David F Walker: Yeah.
37:22
Tad Eggleston: There's a really short list of artists that I have to have everything they do Or…
37:28
Tad Eggleston: more likely everything non-Marvel DC that they do. Yeah.
37:32
Tad Eggleston: just because… as much as I understand that art
37:38
Tad Eggleston: Tells a ton of the story.
37:40
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. I'm still such a story guy, and there aren't enough artists that… either…
37:49
Tad Eggleston: I don't go, oh, I need to have it because I have everything that he writes, and he just happens to draw it, too. Or… or that so consistently work with a co-storyteller that I love.
38:02
Tad Eggleston: as well.
38:04
David F Walker: I get what you're saying, yeah, no, I… so for me, because I will buy anything that
38:09
David F Walker: Brubaker and Phillips do.
38:11
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
38:12
David F Walker: And as a team, like, that team specifically, Brubaker and Phillips, I don't have everything that Sean Phillips has done without Brubaker. I probably have…
38:23
David F Walker: the vast majority of stuff Brubaker did, that Ed did.
38:27
David F Walker: And, and so, yeah, there's, there's… there's a… I mean…
38:31
Tad Eggleston: And, like, the people who are more visually oriented are sometimes the reverse of this.
38:37
Tad Eggleston: Like, for me, even if I can, like, tone out the… like, one of my problems reading Kirby… we've got a Kirby book club, which is, you know, one of the people in the book club likes to make fun of me, because there was one day that I said, it's almost like the words don't matter.
38:55
Tad Eggleston: You know, and it's like… That's right, Chad, the words don't matter, and I'm like, I don't mean that overall! I mean, I mean here. If you ignore the words, these comics are amazing!
39:06
David F Walker: Hey, I believe…
39:09
Tad Eggleston: reading Fourth World, and he just overwrites parts of it, and if you, like, just…
39:13
David F Walker: And that's common of the era, you know, that really is. And so, as a kid, there was a lot of times I glossed over a lot of the words, and I think that that helped me develop my sense of the visual. I'm more of a visual thinker anyway.
39:28
David F Walker: But it… it… helps
39:32
David F Walker: and I think it helps comic writers to be visual in how you describe your scripts, but I… the first test is always, for me, when I'm working with an artist.
39:43
David F Walker: You know, The pages start coming in, the art starts coming in.
39:48
David F Walker: And… and I look, and by the time I'm seeing pages, I don't remember exactly what I wrote. So, but what I'm looking for is clarity in the story. Can I tell what's… get a general sense of what's going on? And that's… that's why I love working with Marcus so much, is because there… there's…
40:05
David F Walker: has never been a time where I've looked at a single page or a panel and gone, yeah, I don't know what's happening here.
40:11
Tad Eggleston: Peace.
40:13
David F Walker: And, and I…
40:14
Tad Eggleston: He's so understated, ridiculous.
40:17
David F Walker: And I just grew up, you know, I grew up in an era watching, or watching, excuse me, you know, the comics that I read. The artists that I loved were, you know, those guys like Gil Kane, John Buscema.
40:28
David F Walker: Masters of the Craft, Wally Wood, Jack Davis.
40:33
Tad Eggleston: Hey, we know all about Wallywood here.
40:35
David F Walker: Yeah, and exactly, 22 panels, and so, Alex Toth, one of my all-time favorites, and so…
40:43
David F Walker: Again, I, I…
40:45
David F Walker: I say to the artists that I… when I'm working with them, I try not to be, like, a…
40:51
David F Walker: dictatorial writer. I try not to treat them like an art… like art monkeys, but…
40:57
David F Walker: the artists who work with me, I… I let them know that the vast majority of what I write… I just got that yesterday, yeah. That… that thing is amazing. I…
41:06
Tad Eggleston: It's actually, that's, that's, we, we do what we call the Pope Blotter Book Club.
41:11
David F Walker: Yeah.
41:11
Tad Eggleston: Where we take…
41:14
Tad Eggleston: traditionally pulp-type stuff. Like, it started, we were thinking it was going to be noir, but before we even named it, we went, we want to be able to do sci-fi and some other stuff. This is our next read. We'll be talking about it on Sunday.
41:28
Tad Eggleston: It's…
41:28
David F Walker: I, I, again, I just bought it yesterday, I just started reading it last night, I'm… I'm…
41:33
David F Walker: I'm in love with it. This is the sort of stuff I love.
41:36
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I was blessed, blessed to have, Banagraphics send me a copy a while ago. Yeah.
41:42
David F Walker: I mean, I've got.
41:44
Tad Eggleston: The, the… I mean… Just getting into the right, which one's that?
41:49
David F Walker: That's, I got the blur on. It's Death Stand. It's all Jack Davis stories, so…
41:55
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. But it's reminding me, like, when I finally became…
42:03
Tad Eggleston: Much better at reading EC Comics.
42:05
David F Walker: Yeah.
42:06
Tad Eggleston: Rather than wanting to like them more than I did,
42:11
Tad Eggleston: my boss is a big comic guy, too. He actually wrote his PhD on using comics in school, and for psychology. And, he said the key to EC Comics, or at least most EC Comics, is don't read the ex… or the exposition boxes.
42:29
David F Walker: Yeah.
42:29
Tad Eggleston: just read the dialogue and look at the pictures. And then later, I was reading the Tencent Plague and discovered that
42:36
Tad Eggleston: Feldstein in particular.
42:39
Tad Eggleston: didn't write scripts. He wrote directly on the boards. So, all of those exposition boxes came first.
42:46
David F Walker: Yeah.
42:47
Tad Eggleston: they were literally the design, so I'm sitting there going, Of course it's time!
42:55
Tad Eggleston: He's writing the direction on the board, and it stays, and then of course, you know.
43:01
David F Walker: Yeah.
43:01
Tad Eggleston: So rather than marrying the words in the picture, it's like, here's what to draw. And they take it further than that, but…
43:09
David F Walker: But that's… that's… I mean, again, that's the vast…
43:13
Tad Eggleston: But it's also why, like, the Kurtzman-ridden ones are so much better.
43:17
David F Walker: Yeah.
43:18
Tad Eggleston: This Kurtzman didn't do that.
43:19
David F Walker: Yeah.
43:20
David F Walker: But there's, again, there's such a completely different writing style.
43:25
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
43:25
David F Walker: You know, this shift happened in the mid to late 80s.
43:31
David F Walker: and you start, you know… but I remember the first time I read a comic, I can't remember the specific comic, but I remember reading a comic in, like, 4 minutes, and I was like, there's something wrong with this, right? Like, it should take a while to read, and…
43:48
David F Walker: you know, sometimes they take too long, but I did… when I was done doing the lettering on the Monster Blackenstein.
43:57
David F Walker: I went back, I have a collection of
44:01
David F Walker: a big trade collection of all the Frankenstein stuff that Marvel did in the 70s.
44:06
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
44:06
David F Walker: And…
44:08
David F Walker: I… for whatever reason, it was like, oh, you know, I'm gonna sit down and reread this. I hadn't read those issues in a long time, and as I started reading it, I'm… I'm like, this is exactly what I did. This is that sort of writing. It's a writer who used a thesaurus a lot.
44:27
David F Walker: And.
44:28
Tad Eggleston: Though I would say you're still more interesting.
44:31
David F Walker: I've read enough of.
44:32
Tad Eggleston: those comics, I mean, you have that feeling, you're not as repetitive, And you're not as explanatory.
44:43
David F Walker: I was trying to find that right balance, right? Because that's what's.
44:48
Tad Eggleston: I mean, you can… you can be wordy.
44:51
David F Walker: Yeah.
44:52
Tad Eggleston: if… you're… I mean, if you're not making the pictures superfluous…
44:59
David F Walker: Yeah.
45:01
Tad Eggleston: You know…
45:02
Tad Eggleston: For that matter, like, I've heard lots of people talk about, like, not liking the 4-minute read, and I get where they're coming from, but I actually find that not only do I not mind the 4-minute read.
45:14
Tad Eggleston: makes it more likely that I'm gonna go back and dive deeper.
45:17
David F Walker: Yeah.
45:19
David F Walker: You know, if it's.
45:20
Tad Eggleston: 4-minute read, it has everything to do with it's pulling me forward so much that I'm not taking everything in, because I need to know what comes next.
45:28
Tad Eggleston: But once I know what comes next.
45:31
David F Walker: Yeah.
45:32
Tad Eggleston: it's like, now I'm gonna… I mean…
45:36
Tad Eggleston: Saga is one of the best things ever done, and it's pretty regular for me to do my first read of a new issue of Saga.
45:45
Tad Eggleston: In 10 minutes or less.
45:48
David F Walker: I… I think about it when it comes to the 10-minute read versus the 20-minute read. I'll be 100% honest with you. I'm thinking about how much money I'm asking people to give me.
46:00
Tad Eggleston: No, and I get that, too.
46:01
David F Walker: And that's… But that's where I'.
46:02
Tad Eggleston: is going, is, is that, is that…
46:07
Tad Eggleston: I… my first read of Saga is…
46:10
Tad Eggleston: almost always 10 minutes or less. And I still spend…
46:15
Tad Eggleston: Probably an hour with that issue in the week that it came out.
46:19
David F Walker: Yeah.
46:19
Tad Eggleston: And I've re-read Saga again and again and again and again.
46:25
David F Walker: Yeah.
46:25
Tad Eggleston: So it's… it's not just the first read that you're paying for. So the key is not… not how much time does it take
46:33
Tad Eggleston: To get through it, particularly the first time, where you're being compelled by wanting to know what comes next.
46:41
Tad Eggleston: It's…
46:41
David F Walker: Well, and here's the thing…
46:42
Tad Eggleston: with it and say, I'm done with it.
46:46
Tad Eggleston: I…
46:47
David F Walker: I'm cynical enough that I don't think most people read comics the way you do.
46:52
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I can't tell you… I've spent enough time working in comic shops that I think that there's a remarkable number of people that buy your comics and never even intend to read them.
47:03
David F Walker: And, and it's… no, it's, it's, you know, I have people come up to me, I get… when… when people come up to me at cons and they want to get stuff signed, I don't have a problem with that, but when they're getting them graded.
47:18
David F Walker: And it's like, oh, you've never read this. And it's like…
47:23
David F Walker: have you even looked at it, right? And that, to me…
47:28
Tad Eggleston: I hate the graded comics just because that, I mean, like, the second you get it graded…
47:33
David F Walker: Yeah.
47:33
Tad Eggleston: You can't read it anymore.
47:35
Tad Eggleston: People have got…
47:36
David F Walker: Yeah, no, that's the point I'm getting at. But it's not that you can't read it anymore, it's that it was never read in the first place.
47:44
Tad Eggleston: Probably not.
47:46
David F Walker: And, and Matt is…
47:47
David F Walker: to me, it's a shame, right? Like, I take this medium and this art form incredibly seriously.
47:55
David F Walker: And I put my heart and soul into it.
47:58
David F Walker: And it's one thing if you choose to not buy my stuff and not read it. That's fine, because that's your prerogative. But… and… and I get into this argument, look, I… I understand the economics
48:13
David F Walker: of the variant cover, right? I wrote a one-shot for Marvel last year. It's… I earned more in royalties off of that one comic than anything else I've ever written for Marvel, right? So I can't complain that much, but it's like…
48:29
David F Walker: when… knowing That there's people who just buy stuff.
48:36
David F Walker: And don't look at the speculator market, and it's like, didn't… haven't you studied the history of what the speculation market.
48:45
Tad Eggleston: No, I… what I…
48:46
David F Walker: I mean…
48:47
Tad Eggleston: What I've tried really, really hard to do is only get worked up.
48:52
Tad Eggleston: When I feel like the speculator market is getting in the way of the people who care about reading.
48:58
Tad Eggleston: Like, every once in a while, you'll have a sellout of, like, an issue 4.
49:03
David F Walker: Yeah.
49:03
Tad Eggleston: Right? On a book that hadn't quite, like, hit its stride yet.
49:08
David F Walker: Yeah.
49:09
Tad Eggleston: I mean, for that matter, this happened with Bendis on Legion of Superheroes.
49:14
David F Walker: Yeah.
49:15
Tad Eggleston: I think it was issue 6 or 7 was… was the introduction of the… the gold… The… the…
49:23
Tad Eggleston: what, the gold lantern, something like that? So, everybody needed that book.
49:29
Tad Eggleston: Which means people who hadn't started subscribing yet, but were still picking it up off the shelf.
49:34
Tad Eggleston: missed that issue, and it made it so much less likely that they'd pick up the next issue. I mean, I know a couple of different comic shops, like, they had to reorder that issue, reorder that issue, they didn't know what to order at all for the next issue.
49:47
David F Walker: Yep.
49:48
Tad Eggleston: because they.
49:48
David F Walker: I know.
49:49
Tad Eggleston: And then it turned out that they actually lost readers because of that, even though they'd gotten… so that sort of thing pisses the hell out of me.
49:59
David F Walker: And it's also, I mean, there's a lot to it. It's that…
50:04
David F Walker: Matt Fraction and I have talked about this at length. I've talked with a lot of people about this. It's, you know, you're at a convention, you sign a comic, and then a day later, it's up on eBay for hundreds of dollars.
50:19
Tad Eggleston: That's one of the reasons I always ask to have my comics made out to me. I want to make it clear
50:25
Tad Eggleston: To whoever's signing for me, they're like, no, this is for me.
50:29
David F Walker: And I don't… I don't… I don't charge for my, my signature, and I… I…
50:35
David F Walker: look, I'm honored and privileged to be in that position, but I know some creators who, like, brag about how much their stuff is going for on eBay, and I just look at them and I go, do you get a percentage of that?
50:50
Tad Eggleston: Right.
50:51
David F Walker: And it's… because I'll be 100% honest, I don't give a shit how much the Bitterroot variants are going for on eBay, right? Like, if you're not… if someone is actually willing to pay $1,000 to that.
51:06
David F Walker: For that, and you're not giving a cut of that to me, Chuck Sanford, and the colorist, and the letterer, and the editor, then I have no…
51:15
David F Walker: Like, like, what's the point of that? And so…
51:17
Tad Eggleston: Right.
51:18
David F Walker: It's interesting to me, because I… I… We… this… this industry is…
51:25
David F Walker: you know, when they did the first issue of the Batman-Deadpool crossover a few months ago, and I went to my comic store, and this was during the first printing of it.
51:35
Tad Eggleston: 20-some-odd covers on that?
51:38
David F Walker: And, and I was like, you know, Aside from the fact that
51:43
David F Walker: you're taking money from your… your fan base, and you're not giving them much of anything else other than these different covers, but you're putting the retailers in a position where they feel obligated to buy these. There's no room for on the shelf, for… and you know, I'm preaching to the choir, but…
52:03
Tad Eggleston: I mean, my one counter-argument with the covers…
52:08
Tad Eggleston: Is, for whatever reason, in this industry, we still pay artists…
52:15
Tad Eggleston: Somewhere between 4 pages worth and a comic's worth for a cover.
52:21
David F Walker: Yeah.
52:22
Tad Eggleston: Versus the interior work, even though the interior work is harder. And I'm all for…
52:28
Tad Eggleston: Like, giving the artist the thing that can help them make rent.
52:33
David F Walker: Oh, I don't have a problem with that. I don't have a problem with that, but what I do have, again, I have a problem with…
52:39
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
52:40
David F Walker: 20 variant covers at, what, it was, like, $7 each.
52:44
Tad Eggleston: You know, so…
52:45
David F Walker: That's mine.
52:46
Tad Eggleston: I mean, there are a lot of shops that, that, like…
52:50
Tad Eggleston: they don't actually order all the variant. I mean, you gotta know your market.
52:54
David F Walker: well.
52:55
Tad Eggleston: I know.
52:55
David F Walker: There's.
52:55
Tad Eggleston: shops, that it's like, if we really like a variant, we'll order it, or…
53:01
Tad Eggleston: or if somebody pre-orders it, we'll order it for them, but otherwise, we're getting the A cover.
53:09
David F Walker: And I've sadly been into the stores where
53:13
David F Walker: That's all they get. And I… I have what I call the saga test.
53:18
David F Walker: I walk into a comic shop, and if they don't have any trade paperbacks of Saga on the shelf.
53:23
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
53:23
David F Walker: And don't buy anything. Oh, yeah.
53:26
Tad Eggleston: Hell yeah.
53:27
David F Walker: I would say… I… I…
53:31
Tad Eggleston: I mean.
53:32
David F Walker: The vast majority…
53:33
Tad Eggleston: They don't have 10 copies of Volume 1, they need to have their head examined.
53:38
David F Walker: But I can tell you that I… I have been to more stores…
53:42
Tad Eggleston: of Saga in one shift is insane.
53:45
David F Walker: I… I have been to more stores that don't carry Saga than not. Oh, I know! And that's the problem. I've been to more stores that, you know, and I did this when… when Kelly C. DeConnick's Bitch Planet came out, there was a long time where I was like, you know, I would look for Bitch Planet, and it wouldn't be there, and… and…
54:03
David F Walker: I also… I'm also big on, like, customer service. Do you, you know, do you greet me when I… when I come into a store? And… and because I… every time I'm in another city.
54:14
David F Walker: I try to make it to…
54:17
David F Walker: independent bookstore, comic store, record stores. And, and the rule is, is if I read it…
54:23
Tad Eggleston: travel together, man.
54:24
Tad Eggleston: If you wanna go to a ball game, too, then we're gonna be, like, in heaven.
54:28
David F Walker: But it's about supporting those sort of businesses that support us, and when you go into a store that doesn't support
54:37
David F Walker: And more than that, it's, maybe it's the teacher in me, I don't know, but it's like…
54:44
David F Walker: You know, you're… I can't tell you how many comics… my local comic shop is…
54:51
David F Walker: I yell at them, because I go in there, and they'll be like, you should check this out. And I'm like.
54:57
David F Walker: I don't have the money this week. And it's, you know, they… and I'm… and I… and I walk away, and they've… they… over the years, they've never steered me wrong. And I've come across stuff that has blown my mind.
55:10
David F Walker: And they know me, but I see them with every customer who comes in, and you can… a lot of times you can tell someone who's not a regular, right? Right. And it's… it's… as someone who spent his teen years and his 20s working in retail, like.
55:30
David F Walker: I… I've turned into the grumpy old man that's like, you know, what's happened to customer service? What's happened to greeting them?
55:36
Tad Eggleston: See, come on.
55:38
Tad Eggleston: I'm the one that, like…
55:40
Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna target, like, the mom that doesn't want to be there, but, like, the kid got an A on his report card, this is where he wanted to go for his… while he's looking at books, I'm gonna get her into comics.
55:53
Tad Eggleston: It's…
55:55
David F Walker: I get it.
55:55
Tad Eggleston: more times than I thought possible. And Saga's one of the big ways to do it.
56:01
David F Walker: there's… oh, there's a million ways to do it, and it's… it's, you know…
56:06
Tad Eggleston: Planet is another one. Kelly Sue's a great way to get people who don't think they like comics into comics.
56:12
David F Walker: you know, I go into a store, and I'm like.
56:16
David F Walker: do, you know, do you have any copies of Dogman on the shelf?
56:21
David F Walker: Do you have any of Raina Tego Meyer's books on the shelf?
56:24
David F Walker: Because that tells me that you as a store, you as the.
56:29
Tad Eggleston: Understood.
56:29
David F Walker: Owner or your staff, like, care about this sort of stuff, right? And…
56:35
David F Walker: I… I tell this story regularly. This is… I was in a shop, this is on the East Coast years ago.
56:42
David F Walker: And… it was… it was the sort of story I don't like.
56:47
Tad Eggleston: Right.
56:47
David F Walker: And they've since gone out of business, and… but I remember going in there.
56:53
David F Walker: And I'm looking around, and it's not passing the Saga test, it's not passing the Bitch Planet test.
56:59
David F Walker: No one has asked me, you know, greeted me, and this older couple comes in, they had to be in their 60s or 70s.
57:07
David F Walker: And, you know, they're looking around, and you can tell. They're not… they don't… they're not there for comics. They're there to buy somebody a gift.
57:16
David F Walker: And,
57:17
David F Walker: Finally, they walk up to the guy behind the counter, and they go, excuse me, which they never should have had to do. He should have greeted them.
57:25
David F Walker: And and they said, you know, we're looking for something for our grandson, and he really loves Godzilla. Do you have any Godzilla stuff?
57:33
David F Walker: And he just looked at me and said, no.
57:36
David F Walker: And they were like, oh.
57:39
David F Walker: So, there's… there's no Godzilla stuff that we could get him, and he was like, no. And they went, thanks, and they walked out.
57:45
David F Walker: And I… I'm still beating myself up that I didn't chase them and go, hey, no, there's all this Godzilla stuff, IDW's putting it out. You can go down the street, there's a Barnes & Noble, half a mile down the street, I was just there, and… and it's like, that's what that guy's job is to do. And… and I can't tell you…
58:05
David F Walker: how many comic shops I've been in where that happens, right? I did, I did… I did a signing
58:12
David F Walker: At a comic store.
58:14
David F Walker: They asked me to do the signing, right? This is… I'm not gonna say where it was, it was in another city, in another state. I was in town for something else. They found out I was gonna be in town. They wanted me to do a signing. I said yes.
58:26
David F Walker: They did not have one title that I had written. They didn't have any… they didn't have any of the Bitterroot Trade paperbacks, they didn't have anything, and I'm… I'm in there, and I was like.
58:37
Tad Eggleston: What am I supposed to do?
58:37
David F Walker: What am I doing here? Like, like…
58:39
Tad Eggleston: my signing?
58:40
David F Walker: And the guy was like, oh, I'm really sorry, we don't carry your stuff, and I was like.
58:45
Tad Eggleston: Then why did you ask me here?
58:47
David F Walker: You know, yeah, exactly. So it's… it's… it's interesting to me because, again, I see a lot of… there's… there's…
58:55
David F Walker: every year or so, once a year, there's a conversation with podcasters and influencers trying to explain the concept of the pre-order, and it's like, oh, we're still having these conversations, right? Like, I remember making my posts.
59:09
Tad Eggleston: No, I explained the pre-orders, too.
59:14
Tad Eggleston: But I will say that, like, there needs to be…
59:17
Tad Eggleston: I mean, again, just because I always play devil's advocate, and because I think it's important…
59:23
Tad Eggleston: To… to… to look…
59:29
Tad Eggleston: I'm first gonna say that, yes, there are horrible comic shows.
59:32
David F Walker: Yeah, yeah.
59:33
Tad Eggleston: But, but we're also… we're, we're… we're… we're… an industry, medium or whatnot that… that…
59:45
Tad Eggleston: kind of attracts shy people, it attracts… you know, so I like to give a lot of… leeway?
59:53
David F Walker: I… I agree, which doesn't…
59:55
Tad Eggleston: Does that mean that that's the shop for me?
59:58
David F Walker: But, at the same time,
1:00:02
David F Walker: Look, I'm old enough to remember
1:00:05
David F Walker: When… if you bought comics, if you… if it…
1:00:09
David F Walker: If people found out you read comics, one of two things happened. You either got beat up on a playground and got wedgies, or you learned how to fight back.
1:00:17
David F Walker: As plain and simple as that. And that was me. I was the kid who learned how to fight back, right?
1:00:21
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:00:22
David F Walker: And… and I, you know, I work with…
1:00:26
David F Walker: A lot of, like, neurodivergent young people.
1:00:29
David F Walker: And… and I… part of what I try to talk to them about is…
1:00:32
Tad Eggleston: How cute.
1:00:35
David F Walker: You know, how to not just protect yourself, but how to…
1:00:40
David F Walker: Get your agency, and how to…
1:00:42
Tad Eggleston: And one of the reasons I love comics is that's one of the places that I feel more agency. It's one of the, like, I'm shy everywhere except a comic shop.
1:00:51
David F Walker: And, and so… when… I go into a store that's not welcoming, and…
1:01:00
David F Walker: And I encounter people who aren't welcoming.
1:01:04
David F Walker: Right? Then I… I feel like, okay, not only is this counterintuitive to everything that I hold near and dear, but it's also, like, how are we…
1:01:15
David F Walker: You and I agree that comics are an amazing medium, and they're empowering.
1:01:18
Tad Eggleston: The best. The best.
1:01:20
David F Walker: So…
1:01:21
Tad Eggleston: Not just an amazing medium, the best medium.
1:01:23
David F Walker: Okay, so then…
1:01:25
Tad Eggleston: I think we can… I think we can argue this empirically.
1:01:29
David F Walker: And, and, and I'm… you notice I'm not disagreeing.
1:01:33
Tad Eggleston: I know!
1:01:33
David F Walker: And… and so the, so the question then becomes, Why is it so difficult?
1:01:39
David F Walker: for… So many people who are…
1:01:44
David F Walker: Trying to make a livelihood of selling these floppy pamphlets and these perfect bound books.
1:01:52
David F Walker: why are they making it so much difficult… so much more difficult for themselves, right? And… and I talk to my students about this all the time. I, you know…
1:02:02
David F Walker: I talk about
1:02:03
David F Walker: and Bendis and I, we do this a lot. We put them through their paces, because it's not just learning about how to be a writer.
1:02:09
David F Walker: It's about learning how to Not only find your voice.
1:02:15
David F Walker: But to assert your place in the world, right?
1:02:20
David F Walker: And a lot of, you know, again, A lot of times.
1:02:25
David F Walker: The outside world beats you down and tells you to stand in a corner, and… and it's like… okay.
1:02:32
David F Walker: We're not… not only do we not want you to do that, we want to help you develop the skills that
1:02:41
David F Walker: let you know you belong here, right? Like, everybody.
1:02:44
Tad Eggleston: Wait a minute.
1:02:44
David F Walker: months.
1:02:45
Tad Eggleston: See, this is why I wanna, like, I just wanna come be a fly on the wall in your classes, because it's almost like you're not just teaching comics, you're teaching.
1:02:55
David F Walker: Oh, I don't…
1:02:55
Tad Eggleston: I hear this.
1:02:56
David F Walker: I don't teach comics at all. I mean, I do, but I… last week was our last day of class, and the students said… a bunch of them said.
1:03:04
David F Walker: They, they said.
1:03:07
David F Walker: I just thought I was gonna learn how to make comics. I didn't think I was gonna learn about myself.
1:03:12
David F Walker: And I was like, That's… that's the only way you can make comics, is you.
1:03:16
Tad Eggleston: I agree. But, I mean…
1:03:19
Tad Eggleston: Particularly because I work in a public high school, and you know how much of a political football we can be, so, like, there are certainly times when…
1:03:28
Tad Eggleston: I don't feel like we can talk about anything that isn't, like, completely boiled down and…
1:03:36
Tad Eggleston: whatnot, so I'm always happy when I hear teachers that, like, okay, the technical stuff is the stuff and whatnot, great, but…
1:03:47
Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, we haven't even touched on, you just… your last Kickstarter was about creative well-being, which I adored. I loved that you did it, I loved the book, I, you know…
1:03:58
Tad Eggleston: Like…
1:04:02
Tad Eggleston: One of my biggest frustrations with education in general right now is we certainly seem to have drifted as a nation away from the idea that
1:04:14
Tad Eggleston: It's about… Building citizens and people of character versus… Teaching discrete skills.
1:04:24
David F Walker: Yeah.
1:04:28
Tad Eggleston: And I hate it when we drift that way, because…
1:04:32
Tad Eggleston: Because A, we've done it a bunch of times, and it's never worked out well.
1:04:36
David F Walker: Yeah. No, I know, I know, this… again, you're preaching to the choir, and so… becomes this.
1:04:42
Tad Eggleston: Big Jim and the white boy.
1:04:43
David F Walker: And, and so, you know, I just… I need to…
1:04:47
Tad Eggleston: Give Marcus a hard time. He's supposed to send me a nice,
1:04:51
Tad Eggleston: remarked version of it, because I don't currently have a copy, because I've bought it for myself, I think, 6 times now, and given away every time.
1:05:01
David F Walker: Oh yeah, see, I stopped doing that stuff a long time ago. Like, it's… it's what I… I had… it's called the Purple Rain Test.
1:05:09
David F Walker: And I… I started forming in the 80s, I would… I would start dating somebody, and…
1:05:15
Tad Eggleston: No, no, no, I didn't lend it. I gave it away.
1:05:17
David F Walker: No, no, for me it was lending.
1:05:19
Tad Eggleston: to come back to… no, no.
1:05:21
David F Walker: And I never got it back.
1:05:22
Tad Eggleston: But, none of them were supposed to come back.
1:05:24
Tad Eggleston: They were given away.
1:05:27
David F Walker: I don't… I'll buy you a gift card somewhere, or I'll buy you a copy, but I don't… I will never give away my…
1:05:33
Tad Eggleston: Some went to students, some of them went to family members, one of them literally became a wedding… I mean, my first one became a wedding present, like, two days later. Yeah. Because I was trying to figure out what to get one of my oldest friends for…
1:05:44
Tad Eggleston: for his wedding present, and I couldn't come up with anything.
1:05:49
Tad Eggleston: But I just… I had, and I read it already, because Marcus sent me a,
1:05:55
David F Walker: Yeah.
1:05:55
Tad Eggleston: preview… I looked down, and I had a hardcover of… of…
1:06:01
Tad Eggleston: Ta-Nehisi Coates' new book, and I had…
1:06:05
Tad Eggleston: Copy of Big Jim and the White Boy, and, like, this particular friend is both African American and grew up in a really…
1:06:12
Tad Eggleston: white… conservative community, so, like.
1:06:17
Tad Eggleston: had always been… you know, I mean, one of the things that we've always talked about through the years is, like.
1:06:25
Tad Eggleston: his… Having to kind of find himself
1:06:28
Tad Eggleston: in both communities, because when he's around a bunch of African Americans.
1:06:33
Tad Eggleston: Like, he doesn't code switch well, because, like.
1:06:36
Tad Eggleston: It was a long time before he even had to code Smith.
1:06:39
David F Walker: It's difficult. It can differ.
1:06:41
Tad Eggleston: You know…
1:06:41
David F Walker: So… So…
1:06:43
Tad Eggleston: when there were two brilliant, brilliant books that I knew would speak to him that came out the week before he got married.
1:06:50
David F Walker: Yep, you're just a better friend than I am.
1:06:52
Tad Eggleston: ordered these for me, but I guess they're going in the bag for you.
1:06:57
David F Walker: I… you're a better friend than I am. I just… I…
1:07:01
Tad Eggleston: Well, and I kept buying it. My in-laws have a copy that I bought for myself.
1:07:04
David F Walker: Well, and thank you, because that goes towards our earn-out, so yeah, we'll eventually start getting royalties.
1:07:10
Tad Eggleston: That's why I told Marcus a while ago, I need a… because this is one of the advantages of this podcast. When I give away too many copies of a book that is from a friend of mine or whatnot, I say, look, you need to send me a copy.
1:07:25
David F Walker: Yeah.
1:07:25
Tad Eggleston: that's remarked, or has really nice inscription to me, or something in it, so that I won't give this copy away.
1:07:34
David F Walker: Oh, that's hilarious. Yeah, no, I, I, I, I was somewhere…
1:07:39
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I think I've given away 5 copies of, Bob Sikoriak's Constitution Illustrated. I finally said, Bob, you need to send me a copy.
1:07:48
David F Walker: I can't remember where I was, I was… it must have… it was obviously a used bookstore, and… and I just happened to see one of my books on the shelf, and for whatever reason, I picked it up and I opened it, and it was an autographed copy, and it was personalized to somebody, and I was like…
1:08:05
Tad Eggleston: That's always sad.
1:08:06
David F Walker: It was like, oh, come on.
1:08:08
David F Walker: Like, you got… and it's… it's… and I knew the person, right?
1:08:13
Tad Eggleston: Oh, that's even worse!
1:08:15
David F Walker: And, and so it's, it's…
1:08:17
Tad Eggleston: still alive?
1:08:18
David F Walker: They're still alive, yeah, yeah, yeah, they were… They were divorced.
1:08:21
David F Walker: No, I, I, I assume… I assume what it was, was they did a,
1:08:27
David F Walker: they did a purging, right? And, like, I'm in the process of getting rid of a lot of books right now, but one of the criteria for keeping a book is, is it written by someone that I know, and if they signed it to me, then I'm like, I'm never gonna let it go, because it… Exactly. There's something…
1:08:46
David F Walker: very… it has always been inspiring to me is… is meeting and knowing other creatives, so… But yeah, it's… it's… it's… it's… I mean, all of it's hilarious to me. I mean, there's so…
1:08:58
Tad Eggleston: And I'm also a nerd for just wanting to put things that I love in the hands of people that I think will love them. There are certain books that if I find them.
1:09:09
Tad Eggleston: if I find them at half-price books, and particularly if I find them in the… like…
1:09:17
Tad Eggleston: bargain area half-price books, like the $1, $2, $3 area, doesn't matter how many copies I have at home, I'll buy it, because I know that eventually I will give it away.
1:09:27
David F Walker: There's a handful. I do that with,
1:09:29
David F Walker: I've done that with Kyle Baker's Why I Hate Saturn. Oh, absolutely. And I've got… I've got… I've had multiple copies over the years.
1:09:38
David F Walker: I… but I'm also really careful to make sure I don't give my copies away. Right. So when I find them, especially if I find, in addition.
1:09:47
David F Walker: Because he went… he re-lettered the whole thing. He re… he remastered it. And it's fine that way, but I like the old version, so if I see it…
1:09:56
David F Walker: In the wild, I will pick it up.
1:09:59
David F Walker: And there's a couple other things like that that I'll pick up, but I've also just…
1:10:04
David F Walker: You know, you run out of space, and it's… it's money, and… and… and.
1:10:10
Tad Eggleston: No, the first book that I really did this with was Exubery's The Little Prince. And Scholastic used to have it for 99 cents on a regular basis, and my mom worked at a school. So every time Scholastic had it at 99 cents, I'd just have her order 40 of them for me.
1:10:27
David F Walker: Okay.
1:10:28
Tad Eggleston: Just have a box with 40 of them.
1:10:31
Tad Eggleston: that when it emptied, I'd say, okay, mom, the next time it comes up at 99 cents, give me…
1:10:37
David F Walker: One of the things that I was trying to price out How to do that with…
1:10:43
David F Walker: bringing it back to Blackenstein, I was trying to figure out how to price it out to be a very cost-effective way to.
1:10:50
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:10:51
David F Walker: produce it so that I could give copies away for free, and not be losing a bundle. This particular issue.
1:10:59
David F Walker: Can't do that.
1:11:00
David F Walker: I'm working on the version you can give away for free, or I can hand to people.
1:11:07
Tad Eggleston: it's…
1:11:08
David F Walker: The struggle has been…
1:11:12
David F Walker: I can't tell you how many times I've given stuff away for free at conventions to people, and… and been walking the floor, and then later I see it… Just find the couch, yeah. And it's like…
1:11:23
Tad Eggleston: Man.
1:11:24
Tad Eggleston: Like…
1:11:25
David F Walker: I don't… I don't… I don't take stock.
1:11:26
Tad Eggleston: I recommend a much more targeted giving away for free. Yeah.
1:11:31
David F Walker: And one of the things that I've discovered, it's kind of hilarious…
1:11:35
Tad Eggleston: Convention should be stickers and bookmarks.
1:11:38
David F Walker: Yes. And… and… and the thing is, is…
1:11:41
Tad Eggleston: Only bookmarks, because stickers are a good way to allow the person that wants to give you money, but can't afford the more expensive thing, to give you a couple of bucks.
1:11:51
David F Walker: Yeah. No, you're… you're, you're… you've hit the nail on the head with a lot of this, so it's, and that's the…
1:11:57
Tad Eggleston: This is… this is, again, I'm… I'm autistic.
1:12:00
Tad Eggleston: joy of running the Kickstarter.
1:12:02
David F Walker: is, thinking when you…
1:12:05
Tad Eggleston: David, David, if you gave me enough money, the first thing I would do is look into…
1:12:11
Tad Eggleston: Making a sustainable and flexible paper mill printing press, somewhere in a red state, so that both…
1:12:24
Tad Eggleston: I could control printing costs on things that I wanted to get printed.
1:12:28
David F Walker: Yeah.
1:12:28
Tad Eggleston: And, because I'm creating jobs, In a comics media that, like, Comics have always been liberal.
1:12:37
David F Walker: Yeah.
1:12:38
Tad Eggleston: always been something to make people think more. By putting it in a red state, which… it drives me up the wall how much people don't think that red states can be flipped, because they're fucking small!
1:12:49
David F Walker: Yeah. Yeah.
1:12:51
Tad Eggleston: you don't have to flip that… I mean, I worked out the math, like, when… when… when the hurricane hit.
1:12:57
Tad Eggleston: Puerto Rico? Yeah. And… and… Trump was just… Yeah. Throwing fucking…
1:13:05
Tad Eggleston: paper towels at them. I worked out the math, and I'm like, if you took everybody out of Puerto Rico, and split them up between these 8 red states, and they actually all voted Democratic, you would flip these 8 red states.
1:13:20
David F Walker: Yeah.
1:13:22
David F Walker: Yeah.
1:13:23
David F Walker: It's, yeah, so I… it's figuring out, again…
1:13:28
Tad Eggleston: Deep… these DEEP red saints. Yeah.
1:13:33
David F Walker: It's… it's… and again, it's figuring out how to… somebody just told me a story the other day about a… I've… I've experienced this before in the past with printers that won't print your stuff, because they find it offensive, and… Right. But, you know, again, for me, like, what I'm doing…
1:13:50
Tad Eggleston: Also, like, the problem with capitalism is…
1:13:58
Tad Eggleston: people… Somehow, somehow they, they decided that the capital.
1:14:05
Tad Eggleston: is the person who's supposed to get the biggest return, rather than just the capital is another part of the workers. Yeah. Like, like…
1:14:14
Tad Eggleston: So, like, if you're okay covering your costs in a 5% profit.
1:14:21
Tad Eggleston: You would immediately make printing costs Way cheaper.
1:14:25
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. For a lot of people.
1:14:28
Tad Eggleston: You know…
1:14:29
David F Walker: Yeah, and so it's been an interesting… They're on…
1:14:34
Tad Eggleston: More sustainable ways to do so many things.
1:14:36
David F Walker: Yes.
1:14:37
Tad Eggleston: That would make it cheaper, because they're more sustainable, but because it requires that initial Investment never happened.
1:14:48
David F Walker: Yeah.
1:14:49
Tad Eggleston: And because there's nobody who can make that initial investment that's not in the field already.
1:14:54
David F Walker: Yeah.
1:14:55
Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, comics is an industry that I swear to God, $1 billion, you could completely revolutionize the entire industry.
1:15:05
Tad Eggleston: Half a billion dollars, you could probably completely revolutionize the entire industry.
1:15:11
David F Walker: And, and yet, here we are. I know, I know. You know, we're… we're essentially… a lot of us are panhandling, and I, I, I find that…
1:15:23
David F Walker: I've been fortunate. I've been a very lucky person. I…
1:15:26
David F Walker: I've worked at every level in comics that I've wanted to, I've worked for every publisher I've wanted to, I've worked on characters I've wanted to, intellectual properties I've wanted to, and this is crucial. I've made a living writing comics.
1:15:39
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:15:40
David F Walker: I'm not making a living right now.
1:15:42
David F Walker: And… and… but rather than give up on this medium that I've loved my entire life, rather than, and this is crucial, rather than giving up on myself.
1:15:51
David F Walker: And because I came from the world of DIY, and doing it myself, and doing zines, I don't mind going back to it. But I just said something to someone the other day, you know, when I started
1:16:07
David F Walker: I hope between the.
1:16:08
Tad Eggleston: teaching and the zines, you're making a living. If you're not, let me know, and we'll start plugging your Kickstarters even more.
1:16:16
David F Walker: Oh, no, I'm definitely not making a living. I'm… I'm…
1:16:19
Tad Eggleston: I meant between all of the jobs.
1:16:23
David F Walker: Well, with, with the teaching, I'm… I… I'm getting ready to take another break again, because the,
1:16:29
David F Walker: And that's just a lot of that's the politics of teaching at, you know, a university. But, you know, what it comes down to is, at the end of the day.
1:16:38
David F Walker: I like what I do, and I've said this all along.
1:16:43
David F Walker: I… you know, if… if I can't…
1:16:46
David F Walker: do it the way I want to do it. I'll find a way to do it that works, right? And so, you know, with Blackenstein.
1:16:55
David F Walker: The goal right now is to get this one shot printed.
1:16:59
David F Walker: And equally as important, to get people knowing who the character is, to get an idea of the tone of what we're doing. And then, online, doing short stories.
1:17:12
David F Walker: because I can afford to finance those short stories. Right. I can't afford to do a, you know.
1:17:20
David F Walker: 60 pages worth of stories, but I can pay this person over here for 10 pages, and then 4 months later, pay someone else to do 8 pages. And you stockpile those, you pay some out.
1:17:32
David F Walker: And then… You have 5 or 6 of those, and then you have enough for another issue.
1:17:37
Tad Eggleston: And this is, this is,
1:17:39
Tad Eggleston: This is essentially, Jonathan Bayliss's… model for show buttons.
1:17:46
David F Walker: And so that's what I'm… you know, that's… that's one part of what I'm doing. And then the other part of what I'm doing is,
1:17:53
David F Walker: you know, like, I've had… Some pretty heated conversations with… with some…
1:18:00
David F Walker: aspiring creators in the past, and when I say aspiring creators, I mean specifically artists who have accused me of, you know, not looking out for them and not trying to get them work.
1:18:10
David F Walker: And, you know, the reality is, is that I, with the exception of working with Marcus.
1:18:16
David F Walker: I've never had a publisher give me a choice of who I…
1:18:20
David F Walker: can work with. Marvel never did it, DC never did it.
1:18:25
David F Walker: And… and… there's… there's a lot of artists I'd like to work with, And…
1:18:31
David F Walker: And what I discovered is, oh, I can get an artist to draw a 10-page story for me.
1:18:39
David F Walker: And I can pay for that out of my own pocket.
1:18:42
David F Walker: And then I can say, oh, I've worked with this person. But more importantly, there's a lot of artists out there who… who are either almost ready, or they're ready
1:18:55
David F Walker: they're ready to play the major leagues and major leagues, right? Right.
1:18:59
David F Walker: But they're not getting that work, for one reason or another. And the thing is, is that there's a lot of artists who think they're ready and they're not, right?
1:19:06
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
1:19:07
David F Walker: But what I've… what I'm hoping will happen, which is what I'm working.
1:19:12
Tad Eggleston: Some of them, unfortunately, sell a lot of comics.
1:19:15
David F Walker: Some of them.
1:19:16
Tad Eggleston: I grew up during the image revolution, and it almost drove me away from comics.
1:19:21
David F Walker: Yeah.
1:19:22
David F Walker: And, and…
1:19:22
Tad Eggleston: I mean, don't get me wrong, some of that art? Amazing.
1:19:26
David F Walker: I think the less I say about that are…
1:19:28
Tad Eggleston: Amazing AND good storytelling?
1:19:31
Tad Eggleston: And a lot of it… Neither.
1:19:35
Tad Eggleston: And I don't understand how they sold so many copies.
1:19:39
David F Walker: I… again, the less I say about it, the better, because I… there's a good chance I'll run into some of those people in the next couple days.
1:19:45
Tad Eggleston: Actually, I mean, to go back to something we were saying about comic shops and not being able to find anything, like, one of the recurring themes when…
1:19:54
Tad Eggleston: When we're doing our milestone book clubs, which…
1:19:57
Tad Eggleston: It's another thing that just sits by the computer, because I'm always… it is like…
1:20:04
Tad Eggleston: And I don't completely blame the owner, because I know the town, and, like, I probably would have bought him and read them, but, like…
1:20:13
Tad Eggleston: He had a limited amount of space, and he sold a lot of stuff that wasn't superhero or whatnot, but, like.
1:20:18
Tad Eggleston: Anytime we're reading milestone stuff, and I'm going, oh my god, this is good, and then I look at the stuff that came out that month, and I'm like, how did I not know about this stuff then? This is so much better than 85% of what was coming out that month, but I didn't even hear about it.
1:20:34
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. When it was coming out.
1:20:37
David F Walker: And that's the… look, I can tell you right now, when people ask me, what are your favorite titles, what's the… what's the last really great graphic novel you've read? And I start naming the titles, and most people have never heard of any of this stuff, right?
1:20:55
Tad Eggleston: We're gonna have fun when I… when we get to one of my favorite closing… we've got two closing questions, and one of them will touch on that, so I'm looking forward to it now.
1:21:01
David F Walker: Okay.
1:21:01
Tad Eggleston: I was already looking forward to it, but…
1:21:03
David F Walker: But yeah, so it's, it's, it's an, it's an interesting…
1:21:06
David F Walker: It's… it's not… this isn't immediate…
1:21:11
David F Walker: I… I told my… I tell my students this all the time.
1:21:15
David F Walker: if you're trying to make a living making comics, there's a very good chance you're wasting your time. But if you're making comics because you like making comics.
1:21:27
David F Walker: do it, right? And again, I happen to be in an incredibly fortunate position in that I've written stuff that's done well, people know me, people like me, people like the stuff I do, and, you know.
1:21:40
David F Walker: every now and then, I stumble into a little bit of money.
1:21:43
David F Walker: And I'm like, okay, I've got enough money to pay an artist to draw a story, right? I just reached out to a guy a couple days ago, and I.
1:21:51
Tad Eggleston: You mean you don't buy a Lamborghini?
1:21:53
David F Walker: I pay my rent, is what I do, and that's it, you know? And then I just keep my fingers crossed and hope for the best.
1:22:02
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:22:03
David F Walker: But… but it's… it's… Wh…
1:22:06
David F Walker: if you go into comics, or you want to go into comics because you want to get rich, or because you want to get a film deal, just stop right now and don't do it. Please. Right?
1:22:15
Tad Eggleston: Please stop.
1:22:16
David F Walker: And, and, and, and my thing is.
1:22:19
Tad Eggleston: And that goes doubly for publishers?
1:22:22
David F Walker: Well, again.
1:22:24
David F Walker: do not get me started on that one. There's… there's another reason why I'm self-publishing, right? Because here's the thing.
1:22:31
David F Walker: If you can't match my page rate, and if you can't pay an artist a decent page rate.
1:22:37
David F Walker: and then… And then on top of that, you expect to either control or have a significant
1:22:44
David F Walker: Percentage of my intellectual property.
1:22:47
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:22:48
David F Walker: That's not gonna happen, right? And so I say to artists all the time, I'm like, I can't pay you as much as some of these publishers pay you.
1:22:57
David F Walker: But are you working right now?
1:23:00
David F Walker: And that's the thing, it's like… I…
1:23:06
David F Walker: We have to find a way to make comics, and we have to find.
1:23:10
Tad Eggleston: Well, in this…
1:23:11
David F Walker: going.
1:23:13
Tad Eggleston: This is where I, like, I'm a big, big proponent sometimes of actually talking about the numbers, and I'm not gonna do the whole breakdown, but, like.
1:23:22
Tad Eggleston: you could… like… Your average comic is 22 pages.
1:23:31
David F Walker: Yeah.
1:23:32
Tad Eggleston: If you spent $1,000 on each page.
1:23:36
David F Walker: Yeah.
1:23:37
Tad Eggleston: Everybody would be getting paid well enough to live.
1:23:40
David F Walker: Yeah.
1:23:42
Tad Eggleston: $22,000.
1:23:44
Tad Eggleston: assume… Roughly… 3,000 more for the print run?
1:23:56
Tad Eggleston: And then, all you have to do is manage to sell… roughly… 20,000 of those books.
1:24:06
Tad Eggleston: And I know that that's a big number in comics right now, but that has to do a lot with…
1:24:12
Tad Eggleston: Not sticking up for the medium.
1:24:14
Tad Eggleston: Not… Promoting it the right way, not… and, like.
1:24:18
Tad Eggleston: there are people that, well, then you're spending more money on promotion. I'm like, except that, like, the promotion doesn't have to be book by book.
1:24:26
Tad Eggleston: Comics don't get promoted properly.
1:24:29
David F Walker: Now, they don't get.
1:24:29
Tad Eggleston: And you also have the trade paperback backend. You don't actually have to sell those 20,000 copies of each issue. What you need is a combination between the 6 issues or whatever, and the trade that works out to…
1:24:46
Tad Eggleston: And if you can't pull that off, you're not shopping to libraries well enough, you're not shopping to bookstores well enough.
1:24:52
David F Walker: Well, it's… it's… but again, the… part of the problem is, is that the bookstores
1:24:59
David F Walker: won't carry them, right? It's, it's, it's, I can't tell you…
1:25:05
David F Walker: how… I mean, I self-published a graphic novel last year. Not a floppy, not a one-shot.
1:25:14
David F Walker: That's arguably the best thing I've ever written.
1:25:17
David F Walker: And not a single retailer.
1:25:19
Tad Eggleston: Okay, how'd I miss this?
1:25:21
David F Walker: Which one? I don't know.
1:25:22
David F Walker: The death of Bobby Hart.
1:25:25
David F Walker: And.
1:25:26
Tad Eggleston: Maybe I didn't.
1:25:27
David F Walker: And.
1:25:27
Tad Eggleston: I feel like I've read that.
1:25:29
David F Walker: He probably did, I think he backed it.
1:25:30
Tad Eggleston: Did you make it available digitally?
1:25:33
David F Walker: Yes, I did make it available.
1:25:35
Tad Eggleston: Okay, I think I bought the digital version.
1:25:37
David F Walker: And I was just… the other day, I was like, okay, I guess I'm gonna put it up on Global Comics. But, you know, the key is, is you don't have to sell 20,000 units to do okay. You can.
1:25:48
Tad Eggleston: No, no, I'm saying, I'm saying if we were paying…
1:25:52
David F Walker: Yeah.
1:25:53
Tad Eggleston: I mean, because we don't pay $1,000 per page. If we were paying $1,000 per page, then… then comics professionals
1:26:01
Tad Eggleston: Who would actually be professionals.
1:26:03
David F Walker: Well, I can tell you that… If you included What my page rate is.
1:26:10
David F Walker: on the stuff I self-publish, I would be spending $1,000 a page. But I'm not, because I don't pay myself.
1:26:17
David F Walker: Right. I pay… Well, that means.
1:26:20
Tad Eggleston: But you're paying your artists better than…
1:26:22
David F Walker: Yes. I am. No, I'm paying them a competitive wage with Marvel and DC.
1:26:26
Tad Eggleston: That's what I'm saying.
1:26:27
David F Walker: because it's… it's worth it to them, but it's… so when you look at the Blackenstein Kickstarter, I can… and I've been very transparent with people about it.
1:26:39
David F Walker: that… the money I'm raising is to pay for the printing and the shipping.
1:26:42
David F Walker: It's not… it's not to reimburse myself. If… if I… I had an issue with… an artist who…
1:26:51
David F Walker: ended up not doing some of the work, and I… Had paid them in advance.
1:26:58
David F Walker: at a 24-page comic. The final comic is going to be 40 pages.
1:27:04
David F Walker: to give some more material, but a 24-page story is the most expensive thing I've ever produced in my life, and I've made feature films.
1:27:12
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:27:13
David F Walker: And, yeah, it's… it's… I… and Marcus can tell you about this, because he was there with me when it happened, when I had to make the decision to double down on Blackenstein and keep going.
1:27:27
David F Walker: And… and spend… Several more thousands of dollars, Or just pull the plug.
1:27:35
David F Walker: And… and I thought about it really long and really hard, and what it comes down to is…
1:27:40
David F Walker: Not only do I believe in myself.
1:27:43
David F Walker: But I believe in that character, and I believe in the story that I'm trying to tell.
1:27:47
David F Walker: And… And…
1:27:50
Tad Eggleston: And the medium, and the artist.
1:27:51
David F Walker: and the medium and the artist, and I had… what had happened was I reached out to,
1:27:57
David F Walker: my friend Joe Prado, who runs a studio out of Brazil.
1:28:01
David F Walker: He's an inker by trade, and a good guy, and I said, Joe, I need an artist.
1:28:08
David F Walker: And… and I said, this is what I'm paying, and I know for a fact that I'm offering
1:28:15
David F Walker: More than some of the publishers.
1:28:18
David F Walker: you know.
1:28:19
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:28:19
David F Walker: And I was like, but I… I need somebody who's gonna be…
1:28:23
David F Walker: respectful of the script, who's gonna pay attention to what's in the script, and who's gonna deliver, like, I said, I don't need somebody who's… who's…
1:28:32
David F Walker: gonna be treating this story and this comic as an audition for Marvel or DC, for a superhero book, for any of that stuff. Because then we're not gonna be doing any… nobody's gonna be happy. And… and Joe delivered the goods, and Marcello, the artist, he… he…
1:28:50
Tad Eggleston: Fantastic.
1:28:50
David F Walker: me with is so amazing, and so amazing that, in fact, I am trying to develop… I haven't even told Marcello this… I'm trying to develop a series that I would consider pitching to a publisher.
1:29:05
David F Walker: That… for him to draw with me, and if…
1:29:09
David F Walker: For some reason, somebody says no?
1:29:12
David F Walker: then I'll figure out a way to do it myself, right? Like, this is… this is…
1:29:16
David F Walker: I was raised in the era of again, like… I'm old enough to remember
1:29:26
David F Walker: When both punk bands and early hip-hop bands were selling cassette tapes out of the trunk of their car.
1:29:31
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:29:31
David F Walker: Right? Right. This is the… this is… this is where I learned how… this… this is how I learned how to be created. This is how I learned how to be an artist. And… and… and I think back to…
1:29:43
David F Walker: The… the zine days of the 80s and the 90s, and… and…
1:29:47
David F Walker: And when I entered that world, Knowing that
1:29:51
David F Walker: You know, I posted something about this the other day. I have a new book coming out next week.
1:29:56
Tad Eggleston: I was about to say, you're segueing perfectly to the last thing I wanted to talk about before we hit final questions.
1:30:02
David F Walker: And, and we're… 30 years… so my book comes out next week, it's the end of March.
1:30:08
David F Walker: And then next month, April, is the 30th anniversary of the first issue of Badass Mofo coming out.
1:30:15
David F Walker: And when I did that, I had no money.
1:30:18
David F Walker: I wasn't expecting money, I wasn't expecting… I didn't need it to be perfect, and I didn't ask anyone's permission. I had a creative thing I needed to do, and I did it.
1:30:30
David F Walker: And 30 years later, I can hold this book in my hand that I don't have in front of me right now, but…
1:30:36
Tad Eggleston: You need to plug it, because I was about to ask you about it.
1:30:40
David F Walker: And… But it's…
1:30:43
Tad Eggleston: Which means we should name it, David.
1:30:45
David F Walker: It is.
1:30:46
Tad Eggleston: We don't know.
1:30:46
David F Walker: The title of the book is, is, is Black Film, A History of Black Representation and Participation in the Movies.
1:30:55
David F Walker: It's from 10 Speed Press.
1:30:58
David F Walker: It is exactly as the title implies. It's not a graphic novel.
1:31:04
David F Walker: But it is… Inc.
1:31:06
David F Walker: It's a bookbook, but it is… very…
1:31:13
David F Walker: A lot of posters, there's a lot of lobby… a lot of ephemera.
1:31:19
David F Walker: That… that shows the progression of
1:31:22
David F Walker: not just the film industry, but specifically, the representation of African Americans in film. And there's some original art in there, too. And it's a project that, to be 100% honest, is actually more than 30 years in the making.
1:31:36
David F Walker: And… I… it wasn't until very recently that I realized that I'm a pretty patient person.
1:31:44
David F Walker: Because I've never stopped. I get frustrated, I get upset.
1:31:49
David F Walker: But I just keep going. I just keep putting stuff out, and… and this was a book that I've been wanting to write for…
1:31:56
David F Walker: Not quite 30 years.
1:31:59
David F Walker: But at least 20.
1:32:01
David F Walker: And I could not find anybody who was interested in it, right? And…
1:32:07
David F Walker: And then finally, because of the work I'd done with 10 Speed, and they do more than just graphic novels, they… they were interested, and… and it took a while. There were some times where it felt like pulling teeth.
1:32:19
David F Walker: I was…
1:32:21
David F Walker: I had to go back to a wheelhouse of writing about film, which is something I have not done
1:32:29
David F Walker: With any, you know, any significant seriousness since… 2008.
1:32:37
David F Walker: Right? I mean, I was a professional film critic for over 10 years of my life, but when I walked away from it.
1:32:45
David F Walker: I really walked away from it.
1:32:47
David F Walker: And there was a whole host of reasons I don't need to get into.
1:32:52
David F Walker: And… and when I went into this book, I… I…
1:32:56
David F Walker: made a vow. I wasn't going into it as a critic, I was going into it as a historian.
1:33:02
David F Walker: And there's a huge difference.
1:33:04
David F Walker: And one of those… one of the roles of a historian is to try to be
1:33:10
David F Walker: as impartial as you can be, right? It's… it's… you can be critical,
1:33:18
David F Walker: I hate Gone with the Wind.
1:33:20
David F Walker: I'm not gonna say how much I hate Gone with the Wind in my book, but I will mention the fact that Margaret Mitchell was
1:33:29
David F Walker: a racist, you know, and… and that she pushed a racist agenda in her book. That's just… that's… that's how it has to be. So, yeah.
1:33:37
David F Walker: Black film, a history of Black representation and participation in the movies.
1:33:43
David F Walker: comes out March 24th, which is creepin' up, and… Yep.
1:33:47
Tad Eggleston: Day before my birthday, I just pre-ordered a copy.
1:33:51
David F Walker: It's… I'm pretty nervous about it, for a whole host of reasons.
1:33:56
Tad Eggleston: Well, I know you sold one, because I just pre-ordered.
1:34:00
David F Walker: I've sold… I've sold a few, I've heard… I've heard from… in fact, what's hilarious, this is crazy to me, it's not a graphic novel, and I've… I've been very clear, and I feel like the publisher has been very clear that it's… it's…
1:34:13
David F Walker: not a graphic novel, but I was at my local comic store yesterday, and they had just gotten all their, you know, it was a new comic day, and they… they bought copies of the book, and I was… my first thought was like, oh, God, I hope you didn't buy the book thinking it's a graphic novel. And then I was like, no, I know the guys at the store.
1:34:30
David F Walker: They support me with everything I do.
1:34:33
David F Walker: And… and…
1:34:35
David F Walker: But it's so… again, it feels so far out of my wheelhouse, and then I have to remind myself, oh no, it's not outside my wheelhouse. Like, I am…
1:34:45
David F Walker: I actually… and I'm not saying this to brag.
1:34:50
David F Walker: But I actually know more about film than I do about comics.
1:34:55
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it was your career long enough that you watched 10,000 movies.
1:34:58
David F Walker: Yeah, and, and it's… But I… the… and what a lot of people don't know is that.
1:35:05
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I've probably read 10,000 comics, but they're much shorter.
1:35:10
David F Walker: I… I… I kind of stumbled into being a film critic and doing film journalism, entertainment journalism.
1:35:18
David F Walker: And I stumbled into it after I had given up on comics.
1:35:22
David F Walker: And the… my… the secret origin story that I talk about fairly regularly is that
1:35:29
David F Walker: The person who brought me back into comics, literally brought me back into comics, was Will Eisner.
1:35:36
David F Walker: And it was… it was because I was… I was working at a newspaper.
1:35:41
David F Walker: And I had the opportunity to interview him in 2001,
1:35:45
David F Walker: And it was a really good interview, and anyone who has really studied Will Eisner's career knows that
1:35:51
David F Walker: he… he used to have a column called Shop Talk, where he would interview other creators.
1:35:58
David F Walker: And if you read Shop Talk, Shop Talk is a podcast before there was podcasts, right? Yeah.
1:36:04
David F Walker: And so after the interview, he complimented me on the fact that I had, you know, done my homework, and I was… I was calling it sequential art and graph novels, and… and I told him, yeah, you know, I love this medium. He was… he was…
1:36:19
David F Walker: overjoyed that I called it a medium, and… and then I told him, I said, you know, well, I always wanted to make comics, and
1:36:26
David F Walker: And then that turned in.
1:36:27
Tad Eggleston: You mean comics aren't a genre?
1:36:28
David F Walker: It turned into a conversation about why I didn't do it, why I stopped doing it, stopped pursuing it.
1:36:36
David F Walker: And he said to me, he said, you should really…
1:36:39
David F Walker: go for it. He said, you know, you're…
1:36:43
David F Walker: you know enough that you'll be good at it. That's what he said to me. Just from this half-hour conversation, he said, you know enough about… about this medium.
1:36:52
David F Walker: you'd be really good at this. And I looked at him, I was 32 years old at the time, and I said, yeah, I'm too old for a career switch.
1:37:01
David F Walker: And he looked at me, and he went, Really.
1:37:06
David F Walker: You're too old.
1:37:07
David F Walker: And then he just turned around and walked off. This look of disappointment on his face, and I was just like, oh…
1:37:14
David F Walker: I just blew it with Will Eisner.
1:37:17
David F Walker: I went home that day, and I really thought about it, and I didn't quit my day job.
1:37:23
David F Walker: But that day, I said, I am going to, at some point, make it in comics.
1:37:29
David F Walker: Because if I… If I find out I don't like it, I can leave.
1:37:35
David F Walker: But I don't want to be in my 40s or 50s, or 60s and wondering what if. Because that comics was the only thing that I would have been wondering, what if about.
1:37:45
David F Walker: Right. And so…
1:37:46
David F Walker: I pushed and pushed and pushed, and that's when I say… why I say sometimes I don't realize how patient I am, right? Because it took me…
1:37:56
David F Walker: Almost 10 years after that to, like, get anything…
1:38:01
David F Walker: significant publish, and when I say significant, I mean something that someone paid me
1:38:08
David F Walker: To write, and then they published it, as opposed to me self-publishing.
1:38:12
David F Walker: Right. So… you know, and here I am now, you know, That… that…
1:38:19
David F Walker: Will Eisenor was… that encounter was 25 years ago.
1:38:23
David F Walker: You know, and here I am.
1:38:26
David F Walker: I know.
1:38:26
Tad Eggleston: In my head, I'm just sitting here thinking, because again, geeky math, autism brain, I'm sitting here going.
1:38:33
Tad Eggleston: He told Will Eisner that you were too old to change careers. Now, admittedly, he stayed in the medium, but, like, he was older than 32 when he stopped doing the weekly spirit
1:38:45
Tad Eggleston: and essentially became work-for-hire for the Army, and he was way older than 32 when he came out of retirement and did, like.
1:38:55
Tad Eggleston: Graphic novels, graphic novels!
1:38:57
David F Walker: He was… No, he was… I thought about this. He was 60 when he…
1:39:02
David F Walker: did Contract with God. When Contract with God was actually published, he was 60. He'd been working on it for a while.
1:39:09
David F Walker: he… And… and I would argue that
1:39:13
David F Walker: it was all that stuff that he published after he came out of retirement, contract with God, and…
1:39:20
David F Walker: New York, you know, city life, and Last Day in Vietnam, and Fagan the Jew. This is his best work. I love this.
1:39:28
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
1:39:29
David F Walker: But this is his best work. And… and again, to have disappointed him that way, And, and…
1:39:36
Tad Eggleston: I don't think you did.
1:39:37
David F Walker: I, I, I know.
1:39:38
Tad Eggleston: That's what I know about.
1:39:38
David F Walker: I know I didn't.
1:39:39
Tad Eggleston: bought Eisner, that was for effect.
1:39:42
David F Walker: Yep.
1:39:42
David F Walker: And, and, you know, and then to…
1:39:46
David F Walker: After that, at some point, to…
1:39:48
David F Walker: just be nominated for Eisner Awards is great.
1:39:53
David F Walker: But the key is, is I have that story, right? And the thing was, is that… he was…
1:40:00
David F Walker: One of the first outside people
1:40:03
David F Walker: who, other than close friends and family, who said, oh, you can do this, right? Because the big mistake a lot of us make, creatively and personally.
1:40:12
David F Walker: is… There's nothing worse than telling your dreams to the wrong people.
1:40:18
David F Walker: Right. And… and sometimes those people are in your family, sometimes they're your friends. And they… they… that they…
1:40:25
David F Walker: They don't even know how to be kind.
1:40:27
Tad Eggleston: not practical.
1:40:28
David F Walker: Yeah.
1:40:28
David F Walker: And… and so, I try really hard to…
1:40:33
David F Walker: Be, positive in my feedback.
1:40:37
David F Walker: And, you know, one of the things I… I push an agenda now that's very much like.
1:40:42
David F Walker: with my students, I say, look, you know, they're talking about… they've got this massive, epic story that they want to do, and I said, man, this story sounds great. I said, I want you to just make a 10-page comic.
1:40:54
David F Walker: I said, because if you, if you…
1:40:56
David F Walker: If you set out to do Saga.
1:40:59
David F Walker: or whatever, The Walking Dead or Bone, some epic thing, but you haven't actually done anything yet?
1:41:06
David F Walker: You're going to run into obstacles that will be so disheartening, you're likely to quit or give up.
1:41:12
David F Walker: But if you.
1:41:12
Tad Eggleston: I mean, this is where you could… you could totally use Bone as a perfect example, because before it was bone, it was thorn, and before it was thorn, it was the, like, handmade…
1:41:25
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Jeff and I are friendly, he's been on the show a couple of times, and, like, one of my… do you have the Thorn Kickstarter Edition?
1:41:34
David F Walker: I don't, I don't.
1:41:35
Tad Eggleston: So, in the Kickstarter edition, they include facsimiles of mini-comics he made, with essentially fully formed bone.
1:41:43
Tad Eggleston: Bones, from age 8, age 12, and age 16, Jeff Smith.
1:41:49
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. So, so long before there was BONE!
1:41:55
David F Walker: and…
1:41:56
Tad Eggleston: just been doing it.
1:41:57
David F Walker: I talk about this all the time.
1:42:00
David F Walker: There's nothing more magical than when something inspires you and… and…
1:42:06
David F Walker: It ignites your imagination, and… and…
1:42:11
David F Walker: But most people don't understand how long it takes. Right. And so, you read something like Bone.
1:42:19
David F Walker: Right? You read something that Junji Ito did, or you read…
1:42:24
David F Walker: you know, whatever, loving rockets.
1:42:27
David F Walker: And you go.
1:42:29
Tad Eggleston: One of my book clubs.
1:42:30
David F Walker: Yep.
1:42:30
Tad Eggleston: I…
1:42:31
David F Walker: I wanna do this!
1:42:33
Tad Eggleston: And also, another crazy story, because, like.
1:42:36
David F Walker: Yeah.
1:42:36
Tad Eggleston: 18 and 21 when they started that?
1:42:39
Tad Eggleston: But, they've been drawing pretty much non-stop since they were…
1:42:43
David F Walker: Yeah.
1:42:44
Tad Eggleston: And, and…
1:42:45
David F Walker: And, you know, you become inspired by it, but it's… I joke about this all the time. I remember being a kid and buying how to draw comics the Marvel Way, and going, I'm gonna learn how to draw comics the Marvel way.
1:42:58
David F Walker: And then a year later, realizing it wasn't working out, right? And… and I…
1:43:03
David F Walker: my… at… at… you know, I'm in my 50s now, and my biggest regret… I only have one regret.
1:43:10
David F Walker: And that's that I didn't stick with drawing.
1:43:12
David F Walker: I… there's one…
1:43:14
David F Walker: facet of my life I never had the patience for. I still don't have the patience for. I struggle with it all the time. And if… if I'm… if I am, in fact, a good writer in this medium of comics.
1:43:28
David F Walker: it's because I'm a failed artist, and… and…
1:43:33
David F Walker: you know, when I… when I partnered up with Marcus, again, more so than any other artist I've ever worked with, although I've worked with some great artists.
1:43:40
David F Walker: But Marcus is, is like… he is…
1:43:46
David F Walker: it's like we're telepathically connected in some capacity, and I tell him this all the time.
1:43:52
Tad Eggleston: You'll book tomorrow, right? Because you guys are just working on it right now while you're talking to me.
1:43:56
David F Walker: Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're working on it, and it's, and it's gonna be… it's gonna be different from Big Jim.
1:44:03
David F Walker: But it's gonna be better than Big Jim.
1:44:06
David F Walker: And, and it's…
1:44:06
Tad Eggleston: That's a… that's a… that's a high bar, man.
1:44:09
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I believe that you guys can clear it.
1:44:13
David F Walker: M, and…
1:44:16
David F Walker: because I… I… him and I talked about this a lot. We… it was… Big Jim was nominated for a lot of awards.
1:44:24
David F Walker: And we won almost a lot.
1:44:25
Tad Eggleston: One more of them.
1:44:27
David F Walker: I'm thankful that it didn't win.
1:44:31
David F Walker: Which people think I'm being disingenuous when I say this, but it's true. I'm glad we didn't win.
1:44:38
David F Walker: Because then I would have gotten caught in the trap of trying to figure out how to top Big Jim.
1:44:44
David F Walker: by basically repeating Big Jim. That's good. And… and…
1:44:50
David F Walker: I… little… not quite a year ago.
1:44:53
David F Walker: Marcus and I have been talking about it since before Big Jim came out. What are we gonna follow it up with? What's it gonna be?
1:45:00
David F Walker: And… and I was having a random conversation with somebody, and they…
1:45:04
David F Walker: Usually, when someone says, you know what would be a good idea? And I listen, and I go, yeah, it might be okay. And a friend.
1:45:11
Tad Eggleston: Great, you go make that comic.
1:45:13
David F Walker: But someone said to me, you know what would be a good idea?
1:45:17
David F Walker: And I said, no, what's that? And they said, Blah blah blah blah blah.
1:45:21
David F Walker: And… light went off in my head. I think I called Marcus the next day.
1:45:27
David F Walker: And…
1:45:29
David F Walker: he was like, oh my god. And I said, are you interested in doing this with me? He said, yes. And I said… and then we got to talking about, what if nobody is interested in publishing? What if we can't find a traditional publisher? And that sort of… we haven't exhausted all of those
1:45:46
David F Walker: avenues yet, but we… we came to the conclusion
1:45:51
David F Walker: last fall in Minnesota, of all places, that even if we gotta put the book out ourselves.
1:45:56
Tad Eggleston: When were you guys in Minnesota? How did I miss you guys being in Minnesota? I would have driven to Minnesota to see you guys.
1:46:02
David F Walker: We were, we weren't in Minnesota. We weren't. We were in Wisconsin. I'm sorry, I just…
1:46:09
Tad Eggleston: Wisconsin's even closer to me!
1:46:12
David F Walker: We were there. That's horrible!
1:46:14
Tad Eggleston: First, David!
1:46:15
David F Walker: I was… I was there for 20 hours. It was… we were in and out. I've never done anything where I was in and out so fast.
1:46:23
Tad Eggleston: I would have driven up there. I would have…
1:46:24
David F Walker: It was,
1:46:26
Tad Eggleston: I'm off of school. I would've been at that event. I am… I will give him a harder time, because.
1:46:31
David F Walker: the Wisconsin…
1:46:32
Tad Eggleston: are having a great conversation, and I.
1:46:34
David F Walker: Madison Book Club? Madison Book Festival? Or some sort of book festival sort of thing.
1:46:39
Tad Eggleston: I can be in Madison in, like, two and a half hours.
1:46:43
David F Walker: If we ever go back, we'll let you know, so…
1:46:46
Tad Eggleston: Like I said, it's Marcus that I'm gonna give a hard time. Okay. Like I said, hopefully…
1:46:51
Tad Eggleston: hopefully we're having a good enough conversation here, and this is the third time you've been on, first time solo, that, like, I can start thinking about calling David Walker a friend, because we're having a good time, I think, I hope.
1:47:02
David F Walker: Yeah, yeah.
1:47:03
Tad Eggleston: But Marcus is definitely a friend, and he didn't tell me he was that close to me.
1:47:07
David F Walker: I, you know, in defense of Marcus, I have the same problem. I don't necessarily.
1:47:13
Tad Eggleston: Well, and you guys were doing some crazy travel for that book.
1:47:16
David F Walker: We were.
1:47:17
Tad Eggleston: Overall, I… it will be a hard time, not a… A, a, how dare you.
1:47:25
David F Walker: We, I've never…
1:47:26
Tad Eggleston: The third member of the Milestone Book Club is Ted Anderson, and he's in Minneapolis, so, like, he can go from… he could have been in
1:47:34
Tad Eggleston: We could have had an in-person meeting of the Milestone Book Club with only, like, 3 hours of driving apiece for the people that live in the Midwest.
1:47:44
David F Walker: Well, next time I… next time I make it to the Midwest, I will… I will make sure I let… I will try to remember to let you know. Yeah, no, we…
1:47:54
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's… I get it. I just…
1:47:56
David F Walker: And, and you, you know, you, you just sort of lose track of time, and you…
1:48:00
Tad Eggleston: Because, I mean, just to give you a mild idea of how crazy I am, Marcus had to at least mildly… when you guys did…
1:48:09
Tad Eggleston: the talk at the Mark Twain Museum.
1:48:12
David F Walker: Yeah.
1:48:13
Tad Eggleston: I was working out whether or not I could manage to blitz a drive out there.
1:48:19
Tad Eggleston: And still be home to teach on Monday morning.
1:48:23
David F Walker: Well, we are doing an event in Elmira, New York, in, I believe, October.
1:48:29
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
1:48:30
David F Walker: And…
1:48:31
David F Walker: one of the things I'm talking to him about is, since I'm going that… traveling that far across country, like, we should try to do a couple things in… in the capital region of New York. I've got family there, and…
1:48:42
David F Walker: So we'll see. But it's… it's… I get… man, I get so tired traveling, like, it's not like it used to be, where it, you know, that trip to, to, to Madison, Wisconsin was…
1:48:56
David F Walker: it was… I was up for 26 hours straight.
1:49:00
David F Walker: I got to the hotel.
1:49:02
David F Walker: took a quick nap, Marcus got there a couple hours after me, we went to the art museum, we gave our talk.
1:49:08
David F Walker: Had dinner.
1:49:10
David F Walker: I went to sleep, got up at 4 in the morning, and caught an early flight. I was… I was… I was in Wisconsin for 20 hours. I spent more time up and traveling.
1:49:20
Tad Eggleston: You're making me think of the…
1:49:23
Tad Eggleston: there was a West Wing episode called 20 Hours in LA, where Bartlett got up at, like, 4 in the morning to fly to Los Angeles.
1:49:32
Tad Eggleston: And then flew home that night, and there were, like, a half-dozen people that went on the trip just because he was taking meetings with them on the plane.
1:49:40
David F Walker: Yeah.
1:49:41
David F Walker: It's, it's, I've, I've… I try not to do stuff like that anymore.
1:49:47
David F Walker: But I'm doing a trip to Boston that's very similar coming up. I did one to San Jose that was very similar. That… San Jose is not that bad, because that's, like, a 45-minute flight, but Boston's, like, five and a half hours, and it's like…
1:50:00
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:50:00
David F Walker: Ugh, you know, it's like, oh, I'm…
1:50:04
David F Walker: I'm gonna have time for one meal, you know? Who's it gonna be with? Marcus is gonna be there, so it'll be him.
1:50:10
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:50:11
David F Walker: other people, but… Yeah. But you know what?
1:50:13
Tad Eggleston: Boston's a nice town.
1:50:15
David F Walker: I… I can't complain. This is… this… I… I… this is the life I chose for myself.
1:50:20
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:50:20
David F Walker: This is the career I've chosen for myself, and I'm happy with it.
1:50:25
David F Walker: For the most part, there's sometimes I get frustrated, but, you know, I… I… I don't lose sight of the fact of how lucky I am, you know? I don't lose sight of the fact that… that,
1:50:37
David F Walker: you know, I can go, okay, I want… there… there's…
1:50:40
David F Walker: I spent so many years trying to make comics, and they went nowhere. And then I started making comics, and…
1:50:49
David F Walker: And some of them weren't that good. And now I'm to a point now where I think most of the stuff I'm doing is pretty solid, so I… I feel like I…
1:50:59
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. That's a perfect segue into one of my closing questions, which means we won't talk a lot about Ralph Cooper, but I'm going to bring him up really quick, just to say that the movie club that I was telling you about
1:51:11
Tad Eggleston: After you wrote about him, we watched, Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba… The Duke is tops.
1:51:19
David F Walker: Yep, Ducas Tops, okay, yeah.
1:51:20
Tad Eggleston: I picked it out, and it went over quite well with everybody, which made me… made me happy, because I liked it, and I always worry that my picks aren't going to go over well with the.
1:51:30
David F Walker: Yeah, Ralph Cooper's an interesting guy, you know, he was… because he's also the guy who,
1:51:35
David F Walker: is, basically created Amateur Night at the Apollo. Right. And, and,
1:51:42
David F Walker: You know, he did a… he didn't do a lot of films, but he did films with,
1:51:47
David F Walker: the Popkin brothers, who were…
1:51:50
David F Walker: really pioneers in understanding that there's a Black audience, and, you know, the Dukas Tops, and…
1:51:58
David F Walker: Oh, you know, the crazy thing is, every movie Ralph Cooper made had at least 3 titles.
1:52:03
David F Walker: You know, they're kind of rough around the edges, but what I talk about all the time is, like.
1:52:09
David F Walker: they helped pave the way for what would eventually become movies like Sinners, right?
1:52:15
David F Walker: And, and, and… And I don't take anything away from any of those movies, right?
1:52:22
David F Walker: The sound is bad, usually, but that's neither here nor there, so…
1:52:27
Tad Eggleston: Well, and some of that just has to do with restoration, too.
1:52:29
David F Walker: Yeah.
1:52:30
David F Walker: Yeah.
1:52:30
Tad Eggleston: Probably better.
1:52:31
David F Walker: finding even decent copies. A lot of… a lot of this… a lot of that stuff is, like.
1:52:36
David F Walker: it's just being mastered off of… Right.
1:52:39
Tad Eggleston: I mean, half the reason that we watch Duke as Tops is, like, our one rule is, just because it's what everybody has access to, if it's not streamable off of the Bad River site, then…
1:52:54
Tad Eggleston: then you can't pick it, because… Got it. Because we can't have… we can't have people have to go nuts to be able to watch a movie. And it was one of, like, two of his movies. I had two movies to pick from if I wanted a Ralph Cooper.
1:53:06
David F Walker: I wanna say that I…
1:53:07
Tad Eggleston: And I went, give me the Lena Horne one.
1:53:10
David F Walker: I want to say I think there's only two movies of his that exist at this point. I could be wrong.
1:53:16
Tad Eggleston: I think I came across a third somewhere else, but I… you could be right.
1:53:22
David F Walker: Yeah, there's… there was,
1:53:24
David F Walker: in… this is… and I was telling somebody this the other day, we were talking about the book getting ready to come out, and I said, the interesting thing is, is that because the release date got pushed multiple times.
1:53:36
David F Walker: how many…
1:53:37
David F Walker: silent films and films from the 30s and 40s. There's not a lot, but there's a handful of stuff that got discovered. Prints were found, things that were found, like.
1:53:47
Tad Eggleston: It's always wonderful when that happens, isn't it?
1:53:49
David F Walker: But it was like, oh, the, you know, oh, I guess it's a good thing the book was delayed, so I can mention this, right? And so, every now and then.
1:54:00
David F Walker: you know, something gets discovered, and I… I don't necessarily hear about it right away, because it's, you know, if somebody finds a…
1:54:07
David F Walker: actual director's cut of the Magnificent Ambersons, that will make the news. If somebody finds…
1:54:15
David F Walker: a print of a Ralph Cooper movie, most people are gonna go, who's Ralph Cooper? And, you know…
1:54:21
Tad Eggleston: So… Right.
1:54:23
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, finding the actual original director's cut of Magnificent Ambersons would be like when Bob Hope died and they discovered that there was a full kinescope of Game 7 of the, what, 1963…
1:54:36
Tad Eggleston: 8 World Series in his wine vault.
1:54:40
Tad Eggleston: You know, the game that… the only World Series that ended on a walk-off home run, and for, like.
1:54:46
Tad Eggleston: 50 years… There was, like, 5 minutes worth of footage available, and suddenly there was a… Yeah. Bull… Color.
1:54:57
David F Walker: And it's, it's, it's amazing, some of those things that turn up, and, you know.
1:55:00
Tad Eggleston: All because he'd been on a USO tour and had his assistant
1:55:05
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Aim a camera at the television screen.
1:55:08
David F Walker: The app?
1:55:09
Tad Eggleston: But because it was Bob Hope, they had the equipment to do that well.
1:55:14
David F Walker: It's… it's… I find stuff like that amazing. Look, I know we need to wrap it up, so I will… but I'll share this story with you. It was,
1:55:22
David F Walker: the… again, black film was… The release date was pushed multiple times.
1:55:28
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:55:29
David F Walker: And there was… I was…
1:55:32
David F Walker: for whatever reason, I was just sort of messing around last year.
1:55:37
David F Walker: It was supposed to come out in 2025, was one of the times it was supposed to come out, and got pushed to 2026.
1:55:44
David F Walker: which was fortunate, because then I got to see Sinners and mention that in the book, but I was thinking around, and I stumbled across
1:55:52
David F Walker: a collection, an archival collection in the UCLA Special Library section that I had never discovered in my research.
1:56:02
David F Walker: And… and I was… This sounds pretty important.
1:56:08
David F Walker: There was a… two brothers, the Noble and George Johnson, started a company in 1916 called the Lincoln Motion Picture Company. They were…
1:56:18
David F Walker: The leading pioneers of race films.
1:56:21
David F Walker: And, and George Johnson was a self-professed… historian.
1:56:26
David F Walker: And he clipped out… Every article he could find, every, you know.
1:56:33
David F Walker: And he, and he typed copious amounts of notes.
1:56:36
David F Walker: And, there are…
1:56:41
David F Walker: 12 reels of microfiche, each one is an average of 700-800 pages, so you do the math on that. Nice, right.
1:56:49
David F Walker: And… but none of it was digitized. It was… you had to go to UCLA.
1:56:54
Tad Eggleston: microfilm.
1:56:55
David F Walker: And so I… I went to UCLA, and I was looking at the microphone, and I was like, holy shit. And I said to the… all of the…
1:57:04
David F Walker: people that would listen to me, I was like, I don't think you understand what you have here.
1:57:09
David F Walker: And they were like, oh, well, this is the Johnson collection, this thing's a nightmare. And I was like, I get it, it's a nightmare, because he typed stuff on, like, index cards. And so, sometimes there's just a single index card, and it will say, like, you know.
1:57:24
David F Walker: Darby Jones.
1:57:26
David F Walker: plays the carriage driver in whatever 1933 movie. There's stuff like that.
1:57:31
David F Walker: But I was like, How much will it cost to digitize this stuff?
1:57:36
David F Walker: And they told me the price, which was out of my…
1:57:40
David F Walker: you know, budget, but I didn't care, and so I began the process of paying to have it digitized so that, A,
1:57:49
David F Walker: It would be easier for other people to… you know.
1:57:53
David F Walker: access it, but I get PDFs of all of it, right? So now I have the last of the reels, just got an email from UCLA a couple days ago, and they said there were some… there were some… some of the reels were damaged.
1:58:09
David F Walker: And they didn't know if they'd be able to digitize them.
1:58:12
David F Walker: But they were essentially done, and they asked me, I was like, what the hell are you asking me for? They said, do you want us to do a restoration?
1:58:19
David F Walker: And I was like, I said, how much will it cost me?
1:58:23
David F Walker: and… And as I've been going through it, I still haven't… I've…
1:58:28
David F Walker: barely cracked. It's the tip of the iceberg.
1:58:31
David F Walker: But what I have… come to understand about George Johnson was
1:58:36
David F Walker: He understood how important this stuff was going to be.
1:58:40
David F Walker: Nobody else around him believed it, and…
1:58:43
David F Walker: He saved history that, if it wasn't for him, It would have been lost.
1:58:50
David F Walker: And then I stumble across it. And so now I'm in the process of figuring out what to do with some of this stuff. But there is…
1:58:57
David F Walker: I, I hired somebody to help me
1:59:01
David F Walker: break each one of the reels into smaller PDFs, and she's a total film freak.
1:59:07
David F Walker: And she's saying to me.
1:59:10
David F Walker: None of this stuff, there's… none of this stuff is even listed anywhere on the internet.
1:59:14
David F Walker: There's people who, you know… and because what he was doing was he was keeping track of stuff. Watch any movie from the 1930s or 40s, and the credits are very short.
1:59:26
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
1:59:27
David F Walker: You know, it's.
1:59:28
Tad Eggleston: They're, like, a… a standing title card. Yeah. Rather than, like, a…
1:59:33
David F Walker: That's that 10-minute scroll.
1:59:35
David F Walker: And… and so, especially when it comes to, like, Black performers, most of them…
1:59:42
David F Walker: you don't know what they've done, right? And there's a handful that you can go, okay, I know that…
1:59:50
David F Walker: I… we have a good idea of everything, what Clarence Muse did, even when he doesn't have a speaking part in a movie. But there's… there's a couple actors out there where people don't even know for sure if it's them in the movie, right?
2:00:02
Tad Eggleston: Right.
2:00:02
David F Walker: And… and so I've become sort of obsessed with that, and…
2:00:06
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
2:00:07
David F Walker: And I've started to uncover things that I suspect might contradict
2:00:15
David F Walker: Things that we… that are taken to be the gospel truth.
2:00:19
Tad Eggleston: Right?
2:00:19
David F Walker: In, in, in film history, and so…
2:00:22
Tad Eggleston: I, I, I feel a whole other conversation at some point, because this sounds fascinating. This, this actually…
2:00:29
Tad Eggleston: I mean, to have a comics tangent, are you familiar with Bill Blackbeard?
2:00:34
David F Walker: Bill Blackbeard? No, I'm not.
2:00:37
Tad Eggleston: There's a similar collection.
2:00:39
David F Walker: Okay.
2:00:39
Tad Eggleston: at the Billy Ireland Museum.
2:00:41
David F Walker: Oh, is he the guy from San Francisco that had…
2:00:43
Tad Eggleston: Yes.
2:00:44
David F Walker: Yes, okay, I do, I just…
2:00:45
Tad Eggleston: When they started… when they started putting all newspapers on microfilm, he went.
2:00:50
David F Walker: Yeah.
2:00:50
Tad Eggleston: That doesn't work for cartoons. Yeah. So he sent whole teams of people out all over the country to…
2:00:57
Tad Eggleston: You know, they've had the collection for 20 years, and they're like.
2:01:01
Tad Eggleston: Less than a quarter of the way through cataloging it all.
2:01:04
David F Walker: Yeah, I, I didn't realize I…
2:01:06
Tad Eggleston: trucks that showed up.
2:01:07
David F Walker: Yes.
2:01:08
Tad Eggleston: take it seriously. They're not, like… they know what they have, they just have limited funds, resources, time.
2:01:15
David F Walker: Well, because I've talked to them about this. I've talked to the Billy Ireland about this. I didn't realize the guy's name, but…
2:01:22
David F Walker: One of the things he didn't do, at least as near as anybody can tell, is he didn't… he wasn't…
2:01:28
David F Walker: cutting out the comics from the Black-owned newspapers.
2:01:32
David F Walker: And that's what's lost to history, right? And so…
2:01:37
David F Walker: I'm… that's another thing, but it's… I don't know if I've got the time, and I try to talk.
2:01:42
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
2:01:42
David F Walker: But there's, I want to say the Pittsburgh Courier, I think, was.
2:01:46
Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, Chris Ware…
2:01:50
Tad Eggleston: Curated, a couple years ago, there were… there were dual exhibits of Comics in Chicago.
2:01:59
David F Walker: Yeah.
2:02:00
Tad Eggleston: At the Museum of Contemporary Art, it was, like, 1963 to the present, and then Chris Ware curated the one at…
2:02:09
Tad Eggleston: the cultural center that was, like.
2:02:11
Tad Eggleston: 1890-something to 18… 1963, and, like.
2:02:16
Tad Eggleston: Obviously, it's just an exhibit, but he managed to dig up a fair amount of history, so…
2:02:22
David F Walker: It's amazing, the stuff that's out there, and there's a lot of the Black cartoonists were…
2:02:27
David F Walker: Based out of the Chicago area.
2:02:29
Tad Eggleston: Yep.
2:02:29
David F Walker: And… Well, and…
2:02:30
Tad Eggleston: And then the… I mean, if you… if you don't have it, and I'm trying to remember the name of the book, I think I have it right over here, give me just a second.
2:02:38
David F Walker: Okay?
2:02:47
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, don't have it right over here.
2:02:49
Tad Eggleston: Must be downstairs, but, but the, the…
2:02:53
David F Walker: I probably have it, whatever it is.
2:02:55
Tad Eggleston: New York Review Comics put out the… essentially the… the…
2:03:02
Tad Eggleston: On one hand, it was, like, the catalog for the show, but it was exclusively, like, the black cartoonists that were in the shows. I do have that. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing.
2:03:13
David F Walker: And I got…
2:03:14
David F Walker: There's the book that came out a few years ago called Invisible Men, I've got that, I've got the Bungleton Green collections, I've got… whenever I hear about them, I grab them, and I'm like, okay, because who knows how long they're going to stay in place.
2:03:27
Tad Eggleston: Ben, I mean, I mentioned briefly earlier, I'm a massive baseball guy, too, and, like, in my lifetime, the number of…
2:03:37
Tad Eggleston: Negro League box scores that have been dug up.
2:03:41
Tad Eggleston: has… Like, grown exponentially.
2:03:47
David F Walker: Yeah.
2:03:48
Tad Eggleston: So…
2:03:50
Tad Eggleston: If they exist in anybody's collections, if there's a library that kept, you know, that didn't go microfilm or whatnot, no matter how big or small, eventually somebody's gonna find them.
2:04:01
David F Walker: It's… and a lot of it, and I talk to people all the time, it's like, okay, you need to…
2:04:08
David F Walker: Talk to your parents and your grandparents.
2:04:11
David F Walker: Grandparents are alive, and… and…
2:04:13
David F Walker: Like, I get it, yeah, you want to clear out the basement, you want to clear out the attic, but you might… you need.
2:04:19
Tad Eggleston: Take a look at that scrapbook.
2:04:20
David F Walker: To make sure, yeah.
2:04:21
Tad Eggleston: Was it a family scrapbook, or was it…
2:04:24
David F Walker: Yeah.
2:04:24
Tad Eggleston: I love this cartoon. I mean, like, before, before things got bound, if somebody loved a cartoon.
2:04:32
David F Walker: You cut it out, you can…
2:04:33
Tad Eggleston: out and put it in their own book.
2:04:36
David F Walker: Yeah.
2:04:36
David F Walker: So…
2:04:37
Tad Eggleston: You know…
2:04:38
David F Walker: Yeah, I talk about this sort of stuff all the time.
2:04:40
Tad Eggleston: I know you do. I know you do, which is why I had to make certain we brought it up pretty quickly on the show.
2:04:45
Tad Eggleston: Because I know that there are a couple of librarians that listen, that sort of thing, like…
2:04:51
Tad Eggleston: Be inquisitive, people. So…
2:04:53
David F Walker: You have to be inquisitive, yes.
2:04:55
Tad Eggleston: Be inquisitive.
2:04:57
Tad Eggleston: That's what I… like… So much, so much that frustrates us in the world.
2:05:03
David F Walker: Yeah.
2:05:04
Tad Eggleston: It's just because people aren't inquisitive.
2:05:08
David F Walker: And… or the… and this is the other thing, too. There are the people who are inquisitive.
2:05:13
David F Walker: And some of them suffer from social anxiety, or they're somewhere on the spectrum, they… they're.
2:05:19
Tad Eggleston: Oh, most of us are on the spectrum.
2:05:21
David F Walker: Yeah, exactly. Everyone's on the spectrum.
2:05:24
Tad Eggleston: Well, no, no, I meant, I meant on the spectrum, on the spectrum, because, like, I'm pretty certain the spectrum…
2:05:30
Tad Eggleston: is actually closer to 60% of the population, the difference being that the 40% of the population that are neurotypical really fall into two groups, think in words, think in pictures, and otherwise they're pretty much the same. And there are even brain scans at this point. Like, neurotypical brain scans? Yeah.
2:05:46
Tad Eggleston: look really similar.
2:05:48
David F Walker: Yep.
2:05:48
Tad Eggleston: You take two autistic people?
2:05:50
Tad Eggleston: And their brain scans not only look nothing like the neurotypical people brain scans, they don't look anything like each other.
2:05:57
David F Walker: Yeah.
2:05:59
Tad Eggleston: So you've got, like, 40% of the population, mostly the same brain. 60% of the population, like, 3 billion different brains.
2:06:08
David F Walker: Yeah, yeah, and… and so I just… but what I try to tell people is that, you know, there's a re… like, don't be afraid to share.
2:06:17
David F Walker: The things that you're interested in, the passions that you have, because.
2:06:20
Tad Eggleston: I try not to be.
2:06:21
David F Walker: It's, it's,
2:06:23
David F Walker: you don't know what's gonna come out of it. I mean, I built an entire life and career out of the things I'm passionate about, and… and…
2:06:33
David F Walker: And it saved my life, you know? I mean, I hated the movie Blackenstein, but Blackenstein…
2:06:39
David F Walker: Has saved my life.
2:06:41
Tad Eggleston: Right.
2:06:41
David F Walker: You know?
2:06:42
Tad Eggleston: Well, and there… Is another perfect segue to one of my closing questions, and this is my newer one.
2:06:48
David F Walker: Okay.
2:06:49
Tad Eggleston: This is… this is my fifth year of this podcast now.
2:06:51
Tad Eggleston: And… I won't quite say… say it saved my life, because… because…
2:06:59
Tad Eggleston: I've been on more even footing for, like, 10 years, but it's absolutely changed my life. I feel like I live in the Twilight Zone right now. Like, I come home from work, and I get to talk to David Walker for 2 hours.
2:07:14
Tad Eggleston: Like, we talked about Will Eisner, and it reminded me that, like.
2:07:17
Tad Eggleston: Dennis Kitchen is a friend of mine, and I've had him on a few times, and we've talked that, like, at some point, we need to do just an Eisner show, and at some point, we need to do just a Harvey Kurtzman show, because he was the one that kinda…
2:07:30
Tad Eggleston: Nudged them back into the scene, and had them doing stuff, and then managed their artwork, and…
2:07:37
David F Walker: Yep.
2:07:39
Tad Eggleston: Like, the story… I mean, like, sitting at lunch with Dennis Kitchen is…
2:07:45
Tad Eggleston: Completely surreal, which is where this question is. Yeah.
2:07:50
Tad Eggleston: I've discovered that I'm not at all alone in comics, in terms of my life being some sort of
2:07:57
Tad Eggleston: Weird, wonderful version of the Twilight Zone.
2:07:59
David F Walker: Okay.
2:08:01
Tad Eggleston: Everybody in comics has surreal stories from their time in comics. Things that have happened to them, or experiences that they've gotten to have, or whatever, that never would have happened if they hadn't chosen
2:08:14
Tad Eggleston: This life, this medium, this group of people.
2:08:19
Tad Eggleston: You've actually related a number of them already.
2:08:21
David F Walker: Yeah.
2:08:22
Tad Eggleston: But I'm gonna ask for one more.
2:08:24
Tad Eggleston: Give me just a surreal experience from your time in comics that sticks out to you. Something that, like, every time you think about it, you, like.
2:08:33
Tad Eggleston: Pinch yourself a little, because you're like.
2:08:36
David F Walker: Yeah.
2:08:36
Tad Eggleston: Did I really get to do that?
2:08:38
David F Walker: Well, you know, the Will Eisner one is up there, but the one that is the biggest one was Dwayne McDuffie and my relationship with Dwayne McDuffie. The first time I met him was in the late 90s. I was self-publishing Badass Mofo, my fanzine, but I wasn't
2:08:57
David F Walker: really trying to make comics. I was doing little comic things here and there, but I was keeping my love of comics secret, because I figured it was never going to happen for me. But I met him at a convention, I met him at San Diego Comic-Con, this is back when you could, like, just walk up and buy a ticket, but…
2:09:12
Tad Eggleston: I think I went to the last year that you could do that. I went in 98.
2:09:16
David F Walker: And so, yeah, this was around 98, 99, and I already knew Reggie Hudlund at this point from a whole other host of
2:09:26
David F Walker: ways, but Hudlin had shared Badass Mofo with a bunch of other people.
2:09:32
David F Walker: So I walk up to Dwayne, and I said, I said, hello, Mr. McDuffie, I, you know, I just want to introduce myself, I'm a big fan, my name's Dave Walker. And he just looked at me and said, yeah, I know who you are, come on, walk with me.
2:09:43
David F Walker: And that was the beginning of my relationship with Dwayne.
2:09:46
David F Walker: which never got much bigger than that. Every now and then, I would email him, I would, I did do an interview with him, that was in one of the Two Morrows publications, I can't remember which one.
2:09:58
David F Walker: And our… most of our relationship was based on seeing each other at San Diego, but he always…
2:10:05
David F Walker: would… he would always say the same thing. He would always say, yeah, come on, walk with me.
2:10:10
David F Walker: And then we would have a conversation while you're walking, which, is the best way to have a conversation at San Diego. So I now.
2:10:17
Tad Eggleston: I knew that.
2:10:18
David F Walker: Right? But he was…
2:10:21
Tad Eggleston: It's the best way to have a conversation anywhere where there's good stuff to look at.
2:10:25
David F Walker: Yeah, and… and… and I… I want to say that, you know.
2:10:30
David F Walker: he treated me from the moment he met me, he treated me like a peer. He didn't have any reason to treat me like a peer, but he was respectful.
2:10:38
David F Walker: And… and… and I…
2:10:41
David F Walker: between my experience with him, my experience with Walt Simonson, and my experience with Will Eisner. Those are the three.
2:10:50
David F Walker: who… I… Keep that in mind with everybody that I meet.
2:10:56
David F Walker: and my interactions with them have guided me through everything, but it was… it was really Dwayne, and… and the thing was, is that, you know.
2:11:06
David F Walker: like, I remember…
2:11:09
David F Walker: I remember the day he died, because about 2 days before he passed, I was looking for his phone number, because I needed…
2:11:18
David F Walker: I was at a point where I really needed advice. I really needed career advice. I was trying to really break into comics, and it wasn't working at all.
2:11:28
David F Walker: And…
2:11:30
David F Walker: And so I'm looking, and I can't find the card, and it's nowhere to be found, and I was like, it's okay, I'll be able to get in touch with them next week, I'll find it. And then…
2:11:41
David F Walker: I found out he died, and it was like…
2:11:46
David F Walker: I don't want to go so far as to say that he was a mentor to me, but he…
2:11:50
David F Walker: And he wasn't quite a friend, right? I can't go that far.
2:11:56
David F Walker: But I have so… I have so much respect for him.
2:12:00
David F Walker: And… and when he died, I felt like…
2:12:04
David F Walker: I honestly felt like, oh, I'm alone, right? Like, I need to…
2:12:11
David F Walker: I don't quite know how to describe it, other than to say that
2:12:15
David F Walker: So he passed in 2011, and that year at Comic-Con.
2:12:19
David F Walker: there's two things I did. I made a promise to myself that anybody who I'd been arguing with publicly over the years, I was going to apologize and get that out of the way.
2:12:29
David F Walker: But what happened, and this wasn't intentional.
2:12:32
David F Walker: that was the year that I finally met John Jennings in person, right? And I was meeting other people, and…
2:12:41
David F Walker: I had been looking… I've been hoping to find A mentor or a relationship
2:12:47
David F Walker: to take my relationship with Dwayne to another level, because I needed… I felt I needed…
2:12:54
David F Walker: Guidance or a mentor.
2:12:57
David F Walker: And… but what I discovered after his death And what I found.
2:13:03
David F Walker: was a group of peers that were sort of in the same space that I was career-wise. Making a name for themselves, but hadn't broken
2:13:13
David F Walker: big or anything like that. Right.
2:13:17
David F Walker: but they all happen to turn out to be my friends, right? And so I think about that, and, you know, I don't want to get overly emotional, but…
2:13:28
David F Walker: I sometimes wonder if that would have happened if Dwayne was still alive, right? Like, it's almost, like, it's very difficult to say something positive came out of somebody's passing, right? But…
2:13:41
David F Walker: I know that his death left a void, that…
2:13:45
Tad Eggleston: Something positive came out of his living.
2:13:47
David F Walker: It was how he lived, and not having him there…
2:13:51
Tad Eggleston: Because having… having him have made… made you know that even if you didn't have the relationship beyond… I mean, here I am just putting on my teacher psychologist hat, so, like, tell me to stop if I should, but it, like, helped you see that, like.
2:14:07
Tad Eggleston: The first thing is just talk to the people, and enjoy their company, and if the friendship extends beyond the con, that's even better, but, like…
2:14:16
David F Walker: Yeah.
2:14:17
Tad Eggleston: This weekend, I am… I'm going to make a point of… Making myself vulnerable.
2:14:25
Tad Eggleston: allowing…
2:14:26
David F Walker: And just, and just being…
2:14:28
David F Walker: you know, I tell my students all this all the time, I said, I'm not going to treat you like you're aspiring comic creators, I'm going to treat you like you're comic creators.
2:14:39
Tad Eggleston: Well, and that's one of the things that went through my… I mean, just…
2:14:43
Tad Eggleston: sharing probably too much myself. When you said he had no reason to treat you like a peer, what went through my head is, yeah, but he had no reason not to, either.
2:14:52
David F Walker: That's the ticket, right? And… and so…
2:14:55
Tad Eggleston: I had no reason not to treat you like a peer. That's one of the things I love about the… I mean, it… I mean, that's where this question came from.
2:15:02
David F Walker: Yeah.
2:15:03
Tad Eggleston: Because since day one.
2:15:05
Tad Eggleston: even though I've got this dinky podcast that, like, hi mom, hi Adam, hi John, hi Britt, those are the four people I know who are listening.
2:15:14
David F Walker: Yeah.
2:15:15
Tad Eggleston: And they might be the only four.
2:15:17
Tad Eggleston: I have, like, no guarantee… I mean, I'm pretty certain we've got a whiter, but, like, there's no evidence that we're a really well-known…
2:15:24
Tad Eggleston: But you treat me like a peer. Everybody treats me like a peer. Everybody has been treating me like a peer since…
2:15:30
Tad Eggleston: day one. I mean, we brought up Bone earlier. Jeff Smith was the first person to follow me on Twitter. Nearly made me shit my pants, because I'd made… I'd made a pro… because one of the reasons that I liked Twitter, and finally Blue Sky has set this up this way too, is that…
2:15:46
Tad Eggleston: You couldn't send a direct message?
2:15:48
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Until they followed you.
2:15:50
David F Walker: Yeah.
2:15:51
Tad Eggleston: So that was, like, the invitation to send a direct message. So I'd made a promise to myself, if anybody I want to talk to on the podcast follows me, I have to send them a message. And of course, Jeff Smith was the first one, and I'm like.
2:16:05
Tad Eggleston: Oh, fuck.
2:16:07
David F Walker: Yeah, yeah, no, it's kind of.
2:16:08
Tad Eggleston: I have to write a letter to Jeff Smith now. And he responded in, like, 5 minutes, and he's like, I'd love to come on the show. Here's the email address of my assistant. And I'm like.
2:16:19
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
2:16:20
David F Walker: So, it's all good, you know? It's all… which, as we're saying this, I'll wrap it up, it's reminding me, you know who I haven't.
2:16:26
Tad Eggleston: Well, particularly because there's one more question.
2:16:29
David F Walker: Well, I'll just say this before you ask the question. It's daunting me I haven't talked to Scott McLeod in, like, a month and a half, and he's someone that I interact with.
2:16:38
Tad Eggleston: He had a good time with me, let him know that I'd love to talk to him, because I've never talked to him.
2:16:43
David F Walker: Yeah, he's…
2:16:44
Tad Eggleston: I haven't… I haven't been… I haven't been, brave enough to write an email to him yet either, so… it's not his fault that I've never.
2:16:53
David F Walker: Yeah, no, I get it. I get it, I've been there. I've been there.
2:16:56
David F Walker: So, what's… what's the final question?
2:16:59
Tad Eggleston: The final question is, tell me something you love, preferably a comic, but we don't have rules, preferably storytelling, but again, with the rules, but something that you love.
2:17:08
Tad Eggleston: That not enough people around you have experienced, and you want more of them too, so you have more people to talk about it with.
2:17:16
David F Walker: I always miss the title of this up, but there's a graphic novel, I believe this year is the 10th anniversary of it, The Life and Art of Charlie Chan Hawk Chai by Sonny Liu.
2:17:28
Tad Eggleston: I know this one.
2:17:29
David F Walker: it was… I had an existential crisis after I read it.
2:17:34
David F Walker: Simply because I don't have the ability.
2:17:39
Tad Eggleston: It's just the art of Charlie Chanhock.
2:17:41
David F Walker: The art of Charlie Chen Hawk Chai.
2:17:43
David F Walker: Sunny Liu, And it is everything that is great about this medium.
2:17:49
Tad Eggleston: is.
2:17:50
David F Walker: He is an incredible talent, I've never met him.
2:17:53
David F Walker: I would probably… geek out, fanboy out, if I did meet him.
2:17:59
David F Walker: And, and…
2:18:00
David F Walker: But it was difficult. It was a very difficult book for me, because it's something I can't do.
2:18:07
David F Walker: And I… and I do feel incomplete as a comic creator, because I can't draw what I imagine, right?
2:18:15
David F Walker: part of the reason my relationship with Marcus is so strong is because Marcus draws what I'm imagining, only he draws even better than I'm imagining it, right?
2:18:26
David F Walker: But so yeah, The Art of Charlie Chan Hochai is a book that I tell people
2:18:33
David F Walker: you know, there's other books you could go to that I could point to, but when I think about, like, the absolute endless possibilities of what you can do with this medium.
2:18:44
David F Walker: It's…
2:18:45
Tad Eggleston: That, that.
2:18:46
David F Walker: That's it. That's… it's one of those.
2:18:47
Tad Eggleston: I mean, you immediately… I mean, I have read this one, but A, I've only read it once, B, it's been a while, you immediately put one on my list that's like, oh, I need to go revisit this, this might be one for a book club at some point. Like, one of the reasons 22 Panels has so many book clubs is it gives me an excuse to…
2:19:06
Tad Eggleston: either revisit things that… that… that I wouldn't otherwise be able to fit into my reading schedule, but if they're an assignment, I have to, or… or to read things that…
2:19:18
Tad Eggleston: I wanna make certain I fit into my schedule.
2:19:23
David F Walker: Yeah, no, I… I would re-read it
2:19:26
David F Walker: in a heartbeat, except I can't find my copy, so I'm contemplating buying
2:19:32
David F Walker: a second copy, but then I know I'll… the first one will turn up, and then I'll have two, and then I can always give it to someone else, but…
2:19:39
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it is also available digitally.
2:19:41
David F Walker: Yeah.
2:19:42
David F Walker: I'm a tactile person.
2:19:45
Tad Eggleston: I am too.
2:19:46
David F Walker: So…
2:19:47
Tad Eggleston: I am too.
2:19:47
David F Walker: But yeah, that's.
2:19:48
Tad Eggleston: But I also… they also have space constraints.
2:19:51
David F Walker: Oh, yeah, so do I. And…
2:19:53
Tad Eggleston: I read everywhere. Yeah. So it's sometimes… it's like an iPad or 50 pounds of books in the backpack.
2:20:00
David F Walker: Well, it's… it's… yeah, no, I have a… I have a comic I need to read as soon as we're done, because I'm meeting with someone this evening to advise them on their Kickstarter, but I need to read the comic first, so that's… I'm like, okay, I gotta go make sure my… my tablet is charged, and… and I can… I can read it, so yeah.
2:20:19
Tad Eggleston: Well, David, it has been an absolute pleasure.
2:20:22
David F Walker: Thank you, it's been great to be back on, I appreciate it.
2:20:24
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, hopefully we make this a semi-regular thing, because…
2:20:28
Tad Eggleston: It's always a pleasure, but I know you're a busy guy, you're always writing, you teach a lot, your class sounds amazing now. I mean, every comic class sounds amazing, but, like, again, I can't emphasize enough
2:20:39
Tad Eggleston: like… The word that's used in, in, like.
2:20:46
Tad Eggleston: teacher studies is the hidden curriculum. Yeah. The things that we teach
2:20:51
Tad Eggleston: Either on accident or on purpose, but that aren't, like, the.
2:20:56
David F Walker: In the syllabus, yeah.
2:20:58
Tad Eggleston: Right.
2:20:58
David F Walker: rubric, yeah.
2:21:00
Tad Eggleston: And, like…
2:21:03
Tad Eggleston: I think for most people who actually dedicate themselves to education, and, like, one of the few things I'm dedicated more
2:21:11
Tad Eggleston: to… than…
2:21:14
Tad Eggleston: comics, storytelling, arts, whatever, however you want to frame that is… is… is teaching. I don't… I don't… I don't…
2:21:24
Tad Eggleston: I feel like I'm teaching when I do this show, I feel like I was teaching when I was selling records, and… and…
2:21:31
Tad Eggleston: oh, you like that? Let me… let's talk about this, and, like, I have a very broad version of what teaching is, but… but…
2:21:40
Tad Eggleston: I'm also a strong believer in, like.
2:21:44
Tad Eggleston: The stuff is almost never as important as… like…
2:21:55
Tad Eggleston: the… humanity.
2:22:00
Tad Eggleston: the…
2:22:01
David F Walker: Yeah?
2:22:03
Tad Eggleston: Ways you, you know, I mean…
2:22:05
Tad Eggleston: I was blessed or cursed to be really good at math, so I find myself tutoring math or teaching math a lot.
2:22:14
Tad Eggleston: And people will say, when am I ever going to use this? And for that matter, I get really upset when other teachers will say.
2:22:19
David F Walker: Look, I…
2:22:20
Tad Eggleston: I know you're never gonna use this again, but we gotta get through it. Because I'll sit there going, okay.
2:22:26
Tad Eggleston: Like, a football player. Yeah. Do they bench press on the field?
2:22:31
David F Walker: Is that…
2:22:32
Tad Eggleston: Part of the game? Is bench pressing part of the game?
2:22:35
Tad Eggleston: But is there any football player that doesn't bench press to prepare to play the game?
2:22:41
Tad Eggleston: when you're doing math at school, you're flexing your problem-solving muscles. You might not do the specific things.
2:22:49
Tad Eggleston: But you need to learn how to look at things from a different angle.
2:22:52
David F Walker: I teach my students, and we'll get into this next time I come on.
2:22:57
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
2:22:57
David F Walker: what I call the math of comics.
2:23:00
David F Walker: And how you have to know math.
2:23:02
Tad Eggleston: You know what?
2:23:03
David F Walker: to make comics. You simply can't do it otherwise. And most people don't think about it that way. I was terrible at math.
2:23:12
David F Walker: comics taught me how to love math, right? It really did. And it was like… because… and because it's so applicable to this… so many mediums, right?
2:23:22
Tad Eggleston: But also, even in teaching comics, you're like, it's a way of looking at the world, it's a way of…
2:23:28
Tad Eggleston: like… I brought up Jim…
2:23:31
Tad Eggleston: Jim Terry's movie, Shank, that I saw last night, way back at the beginning of the podcast.
2:23:36
Tad Eggleston: And one of the things that I also thought about as I was driving home is, like.
2:23:41
Tad Eggleston: You can see how the director
2:23:45
Tad Eggleston: Had experience as a comic creator.
2:23:47
David F Walker: Yeah.
2:23:48
Tad Eggleston: Some of the decisions on what was important, what angle to do. Like, the number of times where it was a slightly lower angle, but actually, if you thought about it.
2:23:58
Tad Eggleston: More realistic to what it was supposed to be, even if it wasn't
2:24:02
Tad Eggleston: As visually pleasing as the angle that you would normally see.
2:24:07
Tad Eggleston: You know, it's like… it's like, it's supposed to be the… you're supposed to be seeing from the character's perspective. And it made me realize, oh, this angle is seeing from the character's perspective. The angle that we normally see in movies is, like, from 5 feet above the character's head.
2:24:23
David F Walker: Yeah.
2:24:24
David F Walker: So… Yeah, it's all crazy, but we've been at it, so I'll…
2:24:31
Tad Eggleston: It's been added.
2:24:32
David F Walker: You're black.
2:24:33
Tad Eggleston: Yes, I…
2:24:33
David F Walker: And I'm getting ready to go…
2:24:35
Tad Eggleston: dinner.
2:24:36
David F Walker: Eat a little dinner, and then get ready to…
2:24:38
Tad Eggleston: Two hours later for me, and I need to teach in the morning.
2:24:41
David F Walker: Oh my goodness.
2:24:42
Tad Eggleston: Spring break!
2:24:44
David F Walker: Well, have fun with both! Have fun with teaching, and have a good spring break!
2:24:47
Tad Eggleston: I got 4 panels at C2E2 this year.
2:24:50
David F Walker: Oh, there you go, okay.
2:24:51
Tad Eggleston: They're my first 4 panels.
2:24:54
David F Walker: Yeah.
2:24:54
Tad Eggleston: I finally decided to, to, to, like, throw my hat into the ring to moderate a panel.
2:24:59
Tad Eggleston: And I had 4 of the 5 of them accepted.
2:25:02
David F Walker: Okay.
2:25:02
Tad Eggleston: Not to be too nervous.
2:25:04
David F Walker: So, what I will tell you is don't be nervous.
2:25:07
Tad Eggleston: down.
2:25:08
David F Walker: Just keep in mind, this is the one thing I tell everybody.
2:25:12
David F Walker: the panels are over in a second. Oh, yeah. And, and, and so…
2:25:19
David F Walker: If you prepare more than 3 questions, you've done too much. That's all.
2:25:23
Tad Eggleston: I've already… I've already got that, like, like, and… Okay.
2:25:27
Tad Eggleston: It's like… I mean, I have in the… I mean…
2:25:33
Tad Eggleston: I've got these two questions that I can just pull out if I have to.
2:25:36
Tad Eggleston: Right? I've got a handful of podcast questions that are just evergreen that I can pull out if I have to, but it's like, okay, who are you?
2:25:45
David F Walker: Yeah.
2:25:45
Tad Eggleston: And then this, and then this, and then… anybody else got any questions?
2:25:52
David F Walker: And so just, you know, again, it's okay to be nervous, but just enjoy yourself.
2:25:56
Tad Eggleston: But they also… and I'm equal parts excited and nervous about this one, because they approved what I thought was so batshit crazy of an idea that they would never approve it.
2:26:09
David F Walker: Okay.
2:26:09
Tad Eggleston: And that's that… I will have cool people talking about comics.
2:26:14
David F Walker: Yeah.
2:26:14
Tad Eggleston: Which is, we will be projecting
2:26:19
Tad Eggleston: pages, or maybe a scene, certainly no full comics, right? Yeah.
2:26:24
Tad Eggleston: I've got a couple of actors who will certainly help read them, and any other people, but…
2:26:29
Tad Eggleston: I mean, so far, we have 8 people on the panel. I'm literally inviting anybody I already know, and my wife's gonna put together invitations that I can give to… because she's an art teacher and visual designer, so I'll have invitations to literally just hand to people saying, hey, come join this, because the…
2:26:45
Tad Eggleston: what I put it, like, the description is essentially, comics is the greatest medium for storytelling. We're gonna appreciate it. We're gonna bring as many people who make or love comics into the room as we can humanly fit. We're gonna read some comics together and talk about why they're awesome.
2:27:00
David F Walker: Okay, so…
2:27:00
Tad Eggleston: Audience participation is encouraged.
2:27:03
David F Walker: Let me know how that goes, because I have a similar idea percolating, and so I want to compare notes with you, but I am going to let you go, because you gotta eat, I gotta eat, but I will talk to you as soon as a bit of time.
2:27:14
Tad Eggleston: This has been David Walker, and we will see you after the next page.