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With Great Power #351... 22 Panels with Kyle Starks · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:00
  Kyle Starks: Of course.
• 0:02
  Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody! Welcome back to 22 Panels. My guest again tonight is Mr. Kyle Starks, whose newest Kickstarter, Luis Sprouse, stole my heart, and I've got 2 hours to get it back.
• 0:14
  Tad Eggleston: launched at 10 AM this morning, and is already across the finish line, so now you're essentially just ordering the book.
• 0:21
  Tad Eggleston: I got to read it today, and…
• 0:27
  Tad Eggleston: in typical Kyle fashion, it was… it was… it was… it was…
• 0:31
  Tad Eggleston: Funny and bloody and, and, and, and all of the good stuff.
• 0:37
  Kyle Starks: That's what we're going for.
• 0:39
  Tad Eggleston: How's it going?
• 0:40
  Kyle Starks: It's going good, man, how are you?
• 0:41
  Tad Eggleston: I'm doing… I'm doing okay. I pinched a nerve in my back, so… so a little bit of pain in my leg, but other than that…
• 0:48
  Tad Eggleston: Good.
• 0:51
  Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, Luis Sprouse, I noticed in the, the, the…
• 0:56
  Tad Eggleston: Indicia at the beginning, that, Copyright Night 2021, did I miss this before, or was it on your Patreon, or, or, or, like…
• 1:07
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, so this, like, so, over COVID, everything shut down, we didn't have Free Comedy Book Day, nothing was good. You might recall the COVID shut down, it was bad.
• 1:18
  Tad Eggleston: I do. I didn't get to shut down as much, because I work in special ed, so… so, you know, my kids got to go back to school early, because we have a school big enough for 5,000 kids, and so, like, letting 30 kids be in the building
• 1:36
  Tad Eggleston: wasn't that hard to socially distance. We, like, each got a room.
• 1:41
  Kyle Starks: Sure. Well, so, for the comic creators, it was bad, because we weren't putting out books, and there weren't conventions anymore, and generally, for most people, it was pretty stressful, because you're like, well, what's next? I think a lot of people got the benefit of working from home, et cetera, et cetera, like, I work from home anyway.
• 1:56
  Kyle Starks: Right. But I felt like not having Free Comic Book Day felt bad, so I was like, I'm gonna do a digital comedy, I'll do free, pay what you want.
• 2:04
  Kyle Starks: This was 2020.
• 2:06
  Kyle Starks: And what I did was I said, Twitter, suggest a title for the next book I do, whichever gets the most likes is the name of the book I'll do.
• 2:13
  Kyle Starks: And the winner was, Karate Prom, which was suggested by Chris Schweitzer, actually, but Karate prom was…
• 2:18
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 2:18
  Kyle Starks: I… I was going to do a 10 or just a 10 or 12 page throwaway, and I did something like 36 pages in 7 days. I just forgot how much I like drawing comics and making… I write comics every… constantly, but I don't get to draw as much as I'd like to, so… Karate Prom, I ended up doing two more chapters, and we put it out from first, second, a couple years.
• 2:35
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I love… I love karate prom.
• 2:37
  Kyle Starks: Second place…
• 2:38
  Tad Eggleston: book.
• 2:39
  Kyle Starks: Thank you. Second place was, title suggested was WrestleHeist. Of course, WrestleHeist came out the end of last year.
• 2:45
  Tad Eggleston: Also a great book. And I noticed, I think, number 9 on last month's Image Top 10 Selling Graphic Novels list?
• 2:54
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, we love that.
• 2:57
  Tad Eggleston: You beat out Liam Sharps?
• 2:59
  Tad Eggleston: Starhenge.
• 3:03
  Kyle Starks: I think Starhenge beat me out. I don't remember what number 10 was, but I think Starhenge was number…
• 3:06
  Tad Eggleston: No, Starhenge was 10. It was Liam that sent the list out, or at least I saw the list because.
• 3:11
  Kyle Starks: him was happy.
• 3:12
  Tad Eggleston: Happy to be on it. Dude, I can't…
• 3:14
  Kyle Starks: That… that book sold so poorly in single issues, like, I'm so blown away that either June was a terrible month, or…
• 3:21
  Kyle Starks: Word of mouth, which is critically important to all of us little guys, finally have it. Anyway, so…
• 3:26
  Tad Eggleston: I hope it's… I hope it's the word of mouth, because… because that's a great book. I loved that book.
• 3:30
  Kyle Starks: Thank you. So…
• 3:32
  Tad Eggleston: And I'm not a wrestling guy.
• 3:35
  Tad Eggleston: Which I know you hold again.
• 3:37
  Kyle Starks: Are you a heist… are you a heist guy?
• 3:38
  Tad Eggleston: I'm definitely a heist.
• 3:39
  Kyle Starks: Look, we're gonna tangent real hard here from the story that I was telling you, but I figured…
• 3:44
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that's true.
• 3:45
  Kyle Starks: When I was gonna do that book, after it's such a great title, and I've been wanting… my first book, which was a Kickstarter, The Legend of Ricky Thunder was a wrestling comic, because I love wrestling, and I've been resisting the urge to do a full-blown wrestling comic for a long time, and…
• 3:59
  Kyle Starks: The long story short of Wrestle Heist is that I was… I was unhappy making comics for a while there, just by the industry, and Wrestle Heist I'm made out of love. I think it's a really good book, but I thought everyone on Earth either likes wrestling or heists. Everyone falls into one of two categories.
• 4:15
  Tad Eggleston: That feels fair.
• 4:17
  Kyle Starks: But I think with the way the single-issue sales look is that people who like heists don't like the word wrestling at all, because the single-issue did not do great, but I think it's
• 4:25
  Kyle Starks: I think it's a book anyone would.
• 4:26
  Tad Eggleston: I bought them all.
• 4:27
  Kyle Starks: Excellent. I appreciate that. So yeah, so I was saying, so I did karate prom as basically this, this…
• 4:33
  Kyle Starks: suggested by my fans book, like, the title is suggested by my fans. I had a lot of fun doing it. I said, I'm gonna do it again next year, which is 2021. And in 2021, I did a 48-page comic called The Winning Title, which is why it's such a mouthful. Louise for I Stole My Heart, and I have 2 Hours Feed It Back, was the winning title. We're actually going to do that again this month.
• 4:51
  Kyle Starks: on my Patreon, where they're gonna make suggestions for titles, and your dear listeners could.
• 4:56
  Tad Eggleston: I wasn't.
• 4:56
  Kyle Starks: At the $2 tier, you can suggest a title. At the $6 tier, which is Sticker Club, you get two stickers.
• 5:02
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I was about to say, you should be giving Kyle $6 a month for your stickers, because his stickers are amazing.
• 5:08
  Kyle Starks: And the $6 people will get to vote on.
• 5:11
  Tad Eggleston: My wife was very happy with the tick sticker.
• 5:14
  Kyle Starks: Oh, yeah, it's very popular. Ticket's a good one.
• 5:17
  Tad Eggleston: Your stickers are one of the handful of pieces of mail that my wife always opens for me.
• 5:24
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, she wants to see.
• 5:24
  Tad Eggleston: And sometimes, and sometimes claims for me.
• 5:29
  Kyle Starks: We do have a… we do have a get-a-two sets option, you know, so…
• 5:34
  Kyle Starks: But yeah, so, I mean, so that's where… so Luis Bros came out in 2021, it was a digital pay-what-you-want, which is what Karate Prom was until 20…
• 5:40
  Kyle Starks: 24, when First Second put it out. So, the problem is, is with Louise Price, it's a 48-page comic.
• 5:46
  Kyle Starks: there's nothing to do with that. The direct market does not have any interest in a 48-page comic. There's just… there's no value to them.
• 5:53
  Tad Eggleston: European market, man.
• 5:54
  Kyle Starks: Well, we don't live… That's totally banned.
• 5:56
  Tad Eggleston: Major Snack.
• 5:58
  Kyle Starks: We don't live there. Probably a little bit… probably needs closer to 80 pages for that, too.
• 6:02
  Kyle Starks: And so we did…
• 6:04
  Tad Eggleston: A lot of them weigh in at 50-plus covers, yeah.
• 6:08
  Kyle Starks: So we… we've been sitting on it for a long time. I really like it. It's one of my better books. I think it's very charming, I think it's very sweet. It's also my goriest book, which I think is a lot of fun, because I do a lot of action stuff, and I really liked it. I feel like it's very similar in vibe. It's somewhere between Praddy Prom and End of Life, I think, and I think especially End of Life.
• 6:25
  Tad Eggleston: Sounds about right.
• 6:26
  Kyle Starks: I think if people… it just seemed like a good time to, you know, another Hitman book I've been sitting on for a long time, but… so I toned it, because it was just black and white, pure black and white, I toned it, I did spot red.
• 6:35
  Tad Eggleston: That's right, you do have 3 Hitman books now, don't you?
• 6:39
  Kyle Starks: I have, no, I have a bunch. Sex Castle, Sass.
• 6:44
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah?
• 6:44
  Kyle Starks: End of life, kill them all.
• 6:48
  Kyle Starks: Louis Price… at one point, my wife was like, do you only do Hitman books? And then I did Assassination, which is about 75 Hitman, and I was like, I'll take a little break after this one. So I took a short break.
• 6:59
  Kyle Starks: But, you know, I like Hitman, they're class… we love… we love Hitman.
• 7:03
  Kyle Starks: do a bunch of them. So yeah, so that's the deal. Like I said, we're gonna do it again sometime this month.
• 7:10
  Kyle Starks: But yeah, I've been sitting on it for a long time, and it just seemed like a shame, and people before, like, are you gonna print it? And I'm like, eventually… and I talked to people about getting it colored, like, I… when I had a little bit of extra money, I was trying to get people to color it, and it just never worked out for whatever reason, so, like.
• 7:25
  Kyle Starks: that never happening has pushed it back year after year, and I was like, you know, because I'm not a good colorist, I'm just… I'm good at toning, I'm good at monochromatic, and I'll do this spot red thing, because I think it looks cool, and there's…
• 7:35
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I thought it… I thought that was brilliant.
• 7:38
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, yeah, the frequency of it, I think, is great in the book, too.
• 7:42
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, well, I mean, it's your bloodiest book.
• 7:45
  Kyle Starks: It's my most… it's my most glory one that I've drawn, for sure.
• 7:49
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 7:51
  Kyle Starks: And I do famously have the devil kicking someone so hard in the nuts they split in half and wrecking him out, so it's saying something.
• 8:01
  Tad Eggleston: That's right. Yup!
• 8:04
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 8:07
  Tad Eggleston: So, so yeah, no, I, I, I, I'm, I'm happy to, to, to… To see this.
• 8:15
  Tad Eggleston: sorry that I wound up missing it, like, when you were doing it before. I'm not online enough. I'm so much of a… oh, and here it is, it even says, like, like, if I had bothered to read about the project, rather than just clicking and saying, take my money, please.
• 8:34
  Kyle Starks: No, we like that.
• 8:35
  Tad Eggleston: I would have known that it was…
• 8:39
  Tad Eggleston: Some of this history, because it is… it is here on,
• 8:43
  Tad Eggleston: On the, the, the Kickstarter page, Matt Kint?
• 8:49
  Tad Eggleston: Did a variant for you that's…
• 8:50
  Kyle Starks: It's cool there.
• 8:51
  Tad Eggleston: list.
• 8:53
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, so far, I'm going with yours.
• 8:56
  Tad Eggleston: Because I also like yours. If you actually manage to make me buy two graphic novels, I'm gonna be impressed. I'm very tempted.
• 9:05
  Kyle Starks: Well, I don't know if you saw, we have a tier, which is that, it's a limited number, where
• 9:11
  Kyle Starks: For Matt's cover, him and I will both sign it. The other one.
• 9:14
  Tad Eggleston: I can't see that.
• 9:15
  Kyle Starks: So the thing is, you can do that one, and there's so many cool add-ons, you can do some… you can do the extra stuff later, so…
• 9:22
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, the tier that I really want, though… Er, it's probably already sold.
• 9:29
  Tad Eggleston: is the Kent original cover art.
• 9:32
  Kyle Starks: gone, yeah, that's gone. Yeah, his original art.
• 9:34
  Tad Eggleston: Probably, like, 30 seconds.
• 9:37
  Kyle Starks: His actually sold after mine, but I think that is the nature of it's my Kickstarter, it's not his Kickstarter. Right. And his is also a little bit more expensive, because he does sell a lot of originals, and I just… my first original I've done since The Legend of Breaking Thunder, so that's awesome that it sold.
• 9:52
  Kyle Starks: like, right away, because I… like, what's it worth? We were actually talking before we started recording, like, what's the value of… of a thing? Right. But yeah, they sold… they both sold within the first hour, which is awesome, which is… which is real cool.
• 10:05
  Tad Eggleston: And I do love that we've got, we've got notepads, and door hangers, and calendars, available as add-ons, or, or, or as the, the, all the add-ons best deal.
• 10:18
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, we gotta… we buy all of them. We're doing, I'm doing remarks as an add-on, we're doing, for… I just did a Kickstarter, you know, for We're Monsters Live, which was the last time I was on your show, and I had a… this very nice crap envelope I sent everything out. It's very sturdy, but…
• 10:34
  Kyle Starks: I had… let's say if I sent out 500, 600 patches, 10 people were like, mine got messed up, like, I would have paid extra for, like, a Gemini mailer. So I'm like, you know what? It's an option. If you want to pay extra for a Gemini mailer, like.
• 10:46
  Tad Eggleston: Pay extra for a Gemini mailer.
• 10:48
  Kyle Starks: you know, it's… it's a… it's a very small additional, but all of a sudden, it's like, it just seemed like doing the add-ons.
• 10:53
  Tad Eggleston: I actually…
• 10:54
  Kyle Starks: I don't know that I…
• 10:54
  Tad Eggleston: See, I don't know that I've seen that before, and I actually kind of like it.
• 10:58
  Kyle Starks: I've never seen it either. That's the thing, there's just a lot of stuff, and it's like, why… why wasn't I doing this before?
• 11:04
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Because, because, like.
• 11:07
  Tad Eggleston: I'm always kind of annoyed when shipping is really high, even when it comes in the nice packaging and whatnot, because…
• 11:15
  Tad Eggleston: I'm someone that doesn't always care if it's a little dinged up, so it's like…
• 11:21
  Kyle Starks: No, I, I…
• 11:22
  Tad Eggleston: You just charged me 20 bucks for shipping rather than 5 bucks for shipping, so it could be… so I could have more stuff to throw away once it got here.
• 11:33
  Kyle Starks: that also… that… and the same thing with, you know, the stretch goals, is that things… things that in the past I probably would have done as a stretch goal, I was like, let's just make it an add-on.
• 11:40
  Kyle Starks: Because I think one of the great things about Kickstarter is everything is such a personal touch, and it's like if you went to go to your comic shop, and like, I'm gonna buy the absolute, you know, here's $20, but they also, like, here's stickers, and here's a… like, that is cool. It's cool to get all these little extra things.
• 11:55
  Kyle Starks: But you don't necessarily want them, you know what I mean? So it's like, a lot of this stuff we made optional. We're doing a lot of hookup rates, because that way even the digital people benefit.
• 12:04
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 12:04
  Kyle Starks: So it's like, we just broke our first goal, which is Schweitzer doing a little postcard print. That's the only postcard print I'm doing, because you don't want to stack… I just don't want a stack of stuff. I'd rather have more pages in the comic. We're going to do a magnet, like a little vacation magnet, because the center of the book
• 12:20
  Kyle Starks: sort of circles around, like, this vacation beach, which is the coming-of-age part for our, our protagonist, Hitman.
• 12:28
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 12:28
  Kyle Starks: There's a bunch of motel bits that I think are very funny, but also, it's like, that's… like, a magnet's useful. You know what I mean? Yeah. A magnet's useful.
• 12:36
  Tad Eggleston: Well, a lot of your add-ons are useful. I mean.
• 12:38
  Kyle Starks: Yeah.
• 12:39
  Tad Eggleston: calendar and the notepad are useful, the door hanger can be very useful.
• 12:43
  Kyle Starks: I think if you have a roommate.
• 12:44
  Tad Eggleston: Do you want to describe the door hanger for everybody?
• 12:47
  Tad Eggleston: Cause…
• 12:48
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, I don't have the text right in front of me, so I might…
• 12:50
  Tad Eggleston: I don't either, I'm looking for it.
• 12:52
  Kyle Starks: wrong, but, it's a door hanger that looks like a motel, like a motel, like, privacy, please, but it says,
• 12:58
  Kyle Starks: I'm doing it by hand, like, if this… if this sign's a hanging, I'm a busy bangin'. Something… something along those lines. I think that's very funny, and especially, like, I just think of people who have roommates, like, that's a funny… that's a funny thing to have if you have.
• 13:11
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I can see it being big in the college market.
• 13:14
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, yeah, cohabitate. So yeah, just.
• 13:16
  Tad Eggleston: Better than the sock on the door handle.
• 13:19
  Kyle Starks: Sure, absolutely. Yeah, so the motel stuff's fun, but I also think it's use, like.
• 13:24
  Kyle Starks: a notepad, you know, they're just fun things, they're just fun things.
• 13:28
  Tad Eggleston: Damn.
• 13:31
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean, it was a fun book, so, so, like, doing fun stuff. I mean, I love swag stuff.
• 13:37
  Tad Eggleston: But… but again, I think you hit it. It's way more… way more interesting when it's, like.
• 13:45
  Tad Eggleston: Somehow useful and fun?
• 13:48
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, yeah. I just think… I don't…
• 13:50
  Tad Eggleston: You know, a stack.
• 13:51
  Kyle Starks: I'm gonna.
• 13:51
  Tad Eggleston: Postcards eventually becomes a stack of postcards.
• 13:54
  Kyle Starks: So, here's my… so, yes, so my…
• 13:58
  Kyle Starks: I take Kickstarter very serious, like, this is my sixth one, and so, like, my policy is never anything bigger than the size of the book.
• 14:06
  Kyle Starks: there… it doesn't make any… I've done shirts before, and then you're like, okay, maybe a shirt. But a shirt and a book, you can't…
• 14:12
  Kyle Starks: sort of easily mail together. It's so complicated. Anyway, so the thing about postcard prints is that they are postcards. Like, you can use them as postcards. That's what I like about them. It's like, you can… if the art's great, then you have cool…
• 14:26
  Kyle Starks: little pieces of art that don't take up a lot of space that look cool, or you can literally use them as a postcard. So I've always done postcard prints because they're the size… they're smaller than the size of the book. They don't add… they don't add costs to the shipping or the weight, but, like.
• 14:38
  Kyle Starks: I know peers who are doing, like, large folded posters. No one knows what your thing is. They probably don't actually want a poster. They like the idea of getting more stuff. It's like, do you think they're gonna hang up your poster of the book they've never read?
• 14:52
  Kyle Starks: that arguably wasn't good enough to be made outside of Kickstarter, you know what I mean? So it's like, no one wants a folded up poster anyway. I think people get very mad about that. Like, maybe if it's coming out of, like, your Xbox 360 boxes, there's a fold, you know what I mean? Like, maybe that's okay.
• 15:09
  Tad Eggleston: No, I mean, I think…
• 15:10
  Kyle Starks: Evening.
• 15:11
  Tad Eggleston: I think my two favorite things that I see added are…
• 15:17
  Tad Eggleston: Usables. So, like, stickers, notepads, that sort of thing.
• 15:21
  Tad Eggleston: or… donation copies.
• 15:24
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, and I hadn't seen that before. Schweitzer did that, so I'm doing… we both did it at 40, so hopefully we get to 40, but he did his in not the smartest way. I'm doing mine very smart, of course. That's the difference between me and Chris Schweitzer, is that I'm very, I'm very… I'm always thinking ahead, and he just has an idea.
• 15:41
  Tad Eggleston: Well.
• 15:42
  Kyle Starks: I do like the idea, especially because it's self-published. How else would the library get it? Like, it's a… Right. The library distributors and stuff changed recently, too, so…
• 15:49
  Tad Eggleston: Well, but, but I also, I also like the option to, to buy, like, like, like, Andrew Iden with his, his Islands in the Storm.
• 15:59
  Tad Eggleston: a handful of other ones, like, you have the option… actually, one of the first… one of my favorite ones, with the last issue of Lab.
• 16:07
  Tad Eggleston: Ronald Wimberley.
• 16:08
  Tad Eggleston: called it the barbershop copy. He's like, for this amount, I will send 30 copies, because it was like a newspaper-type thing, to the organization of your choice. School, library, barbershop, whatever.
• 16:25
  Kyle Starks: That was a… that was a tier, that's a tier that they had?
• 16:28
  Tad Eggleston: That was an add-on that he had.
• 16:30
  Kyle Starks: Oh, no, no, yeah, so you're paying, you're paying for it, though. Yeah, yeah. Right.
• 16:33
  Kyle Starks: For self-published stuff, it's… it's… that's… it's just smart, but you want to make sure you don't lose money on whatever your generosity.
• 16:39
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, no, no, no, that's my point, is it wasn't, it wasn't, it was, it was a, if you want to support this book more, and don't necessarily want more stuff coming to your house, tell me where to send it.
• 16:51
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, that's pretty great, I like that.
• 16:53
  Tad Eggleston: You know.
• 16:54
  Kyle Starks: I like it.
• 16:55
  Tad Eggleston: What, like, like, a friend of mine recently did a…
• 16:59
  Tad Eggleston: a book called Nerd Emergencies, it's all… all… neurodivergent stories and…
• 17:07
  Tad Eggleston: freakouts and whatever, and he did the tier, and I… I have two, going to various places. It's like, I know two people, or two organizations, that I want to get this book, plus the one to me!
• 17:21
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, that's awesome.
• 17:22
  Tad Eggleston: You know.
• 17:23
  Kyle Starks: There's more of that, or some way that makes sense for everything, too.
• 17:26
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I, I just, I, I think, I think that, it's a way…
• 17:32
  Tad Eggleston: it's a way both to allow people that, like, we were talking a little bit about pricing off the air, but I'll bring it up again here. I think one of the reasons that people are willing to pay more on a Kickstarter is they're not thinking of it as a comic shop purchase.
• 17:49
  Tad Eggleston: They're thinking of it as a… as a support Kyle Starks purchase.
• 17:53
  Kyle Starks: Sure. It's…
• 17:54
  Tad Eggleston: You know.
• 17:55
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, exactly.
• 17:56
  Tad Eggleston: They have a certain amount that they do want to get for their money, but…
• 18:01
  Tad Eggleston: But it's not just, I need to get maximum value for my money, because, like, we're all hoping that this goes well enough that you are able to put it in stores too, at which point we could probably get it cheaper, but…
• 18:18
  Tad Eggleston: I, A, want to make certain I get it, and B, want to make certain that you keep making comics for a living.
• 18:25
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, and that's… well, I hope it… I hope it does well for that reason, because I would like to keep doing that.
• 18:30
  Tad Eggleston: I, I mean, that, that, that's, that's why I, I…
• 18:33
  Tad Eggleston: on a teacher's salary, put way too much into Patreon.
• 18:39
  Kyle Starks: Yeah.
• 18:39
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 18:40
  Kyle Starks: Well, I think there's just…
• 18:41
  Tad Eggleston: Well, do I want to keep making comics?
• 18:44
  Kyle Starks: I think people pay more because it's a bespoke thing, and it's a support thing, but also I do… I think Kickstarter stuff is overpriced. I think there's a lot of single issues. It doesn't make any sense. Single issues on Kickstarter doesn't make a lot of sense, period, which is maybe a different podcast, but… Yeah.
• 18:59
  Kyle Starks: What I… again, the conversation we had is that I think prices should be fair, and the first thing I go is, what would I pay? Like, and I wouldn't pay what anyone else would pay, so…
• 19:10
  Kyle Starks: we… the price is a little bit higher than… than I think, but by all accounts, I'm only hearing that it is the fair and correct price, so… Yeah.
• 19:18
  Tad Eggleston: It's absolutely fair.
• 19:19
  Kyle Starks: sometimes what you think is the best idea is not the best idea, but I will say, like.
• 19:23
  Kyle Starks: I can't remember. $20 for a 20-page comic, like, is insane. You're using the wrong printer, if you think that that's the correct price for that, unless shipping's involved, and…
• 19:32
  Tad Eggleston: Though, honestly, I will totally tell you that, like, every one of your tiers, if it was $5 more, I wouldn't have a problem with it.
• 19:43
  Kyle Starks: Yeah.
• 19:44
  Tad Eggleston: I'd still be plugging the hell out of it.
• 19:46
  Tad Eggleston: And I do look at prices before I start…
• 19:49
  Tad Eggleston: plugging the hell out of stuff, because I do… I do actually agree with you on the single-issue thing. I think that there should be…
• 19:56
  Tad Eggleston: And it's not that I never back a single-issue thing, I certainly back single-issue things.
• 20:03
  Tad Eggleston: But, but I think it works better…
• 20:06
  Tad Eggleston: If you know that what you're gonna get in the mail is a whole story.
• 20:11
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, but you… for a single issue, though, you're not…
• 20:14
  Tad Eggleston: That's my point.
• 20:15
  Kyle Starks: Definitely, yeah. No, this is the conversation we were having with the Discord, is that… and I've always felt that way, I've always feel like you should have a finished product.
• 20:22
  Kyle Starks: when you go to Kickstarter, I don't think you should make people have to wait for you to make something. That doesn't make any sense to me. I think you should treat it like it's a store. And that's also, like, well…
• 20:30
  Kyle Starks: What is it?
• 20:32
  Kyle Starks: 18.
• 20:33
  Kyle Starks: For a single issue, I guess, makes kind of sense, but how many pages it has to be.
• 20:37
  Kyle Starks: We're over 20.
• 20:38
  Tad Eggleston: But then that also… that also… it starts to play into what level in their career that they are, because I also know some creators that are…
• 20:48
  Tad Eggleston: that are just getting going on Kickstarter were, like…
• 20:53
  Tad Eggleston: They can't afford to do a whole graphic novel
• 20:56
  Tad Eggleston: Without getting an influx of cash.
• 20:59
  Kyle Starks: Well, why's that? Tell me.
• 21:02
  Kyle Starks: I did my first… I did my first 3 while I had jobs, you know what I mean? Like, no one… I didn't… the money I made to do them was Kickstarter. That's what made… that was my paycheck.
• 21:13
  Kyle Starks: They put.
• 21:13
  Tad Eggleston: Did you make them… did you make them before you did the Kickstart, or did you kickstart and then make them? Yes. Okay.
• 21:20
  Kyle Starks: No, because it doesn't… you can't, like… when you're starting out, that doesn't make any sense. Before, your value is zero.
• 21:25
  Kyle Starks: Your value per page is zero. Right. And what Kickstarter is, is putting… and sure, if you're like this, I want… people do it, and they do variant covers, a variant cover… listen, these are hot takes. A variant.
• 21:35
  Tad Eggleston: I like hot takes!
• 21:37
  Kyle Starks: A variant covering…
• 21:38
  Tad Eggleston: things, nobody's mastered Kickstarter yet. I mean, everybody's ma- some people have mastered… themselves.
• 21:43
  Kyle Starks: It's a moving target, yeah. It's a moving target, but I think a lot of people use it to make some…
• 21:48
  Kyle Starks: I think that if you're charging 20… so, look, I think there's no collectability to a variant cover, so you're doing 6 covers, that doesn't make any sense. The only value is if people like the artist, which is a completely different conversation. I think, like, if you look at, like, a Jimba Food, Jimba Food did a 48-page,
• 22:03
  Kyle Starks: a 48-page black and white comic that he… I think he charged $20 or $25 for, which it's also arguably a piece of art, but he has great people coming, great artists, you know. Scotty Young did one. Look, if you can charge $45 for a Scotty Young, you should. But I think the people who do it, it's like, it's nothing…
• 22:19
  Kyle Starks: it doesn't make you value, you… it just… variant covers on Kickstarter don't make a lot of sense to me.
• 22:25
  Tad Eggleston: I barely think that variant covers make sense to begin with.
• 22:30
  Kyle Starks: No, no, I think the artist.
• 22:32
  Tad Eggleston: fact that I realized that artists, like.
• 22:36
  Tad Eggleston: my two minds for variant covers are, like, as a consumer, or even as a retailer, I hate them. But then I go, oh, wait, artists often get paid as much for a single cover image as for, like, 3 or 4 interior pages, and I want my artists to get paid!
• 22:55
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, and I think people like the art, but…
• 22:57
  Kyle Starks: This is… we're tangent… we tangent so hard, Tad.
• 23:00
  Kyle Starks: We do, that's smart!
• 23:01
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's 22 panels, so we can.
• 23:04
  Kyle Starks: We're here.
• 23:04
  Tad Eggleston: We've got 22 different directions we can go.
• 23:07
  Kyle Starks: So… so people like the art, but… but I would say, what are we trying to sell? Like, are we not trying to sell stories and characters? And it… it distracts from that, but moot, they sell really well, they make a lot of people a lot of money. I just don't know if they make a lot of sense to have 5 of them on Kickstarter if it's your first comment.
• 23:23
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I know.
• 23:24
  Kyle Starks: That's a lot of sense to me. And so, if you're already charging $20 for a 24-page comic, or whatever, which is crazy.
• 23:30
  Kyle Starks: when it's $6, $5, $6 in a store for the same price, and that's from a proven commodity, I just think you should have the whole thing done, and if not, there's enough… there's other ways to do it, you know what I mean? Right. I just think you should give people something substantial, where you show… for the artist, it's different, but for if you're the writer, it's to go, this is me… this is me showing my ability to tell a full story.
• 23:50
  Kyle Starks: You know what I mean? In a part that no one's ever gonna see.
• 23:54
  Kyle Starks: Are the… the returns are going to be so low on the second.
• 23:57
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 23:57
  Kyle Starks: If you even get to a second one.
• 23:59
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 24:00
  Kyle Starks: It doesn't make sense, and so I think there'.
• 24:01
  Tad Eggleston: No, I understand.
• 24:02
  Kyle Starks: It's a big part of it.
• 24:03
  Tad Eggleston: As we were talking, I suddenly realized that my next interview is a friend of mine doing issue 3 of his series on Kickstarter.
• 24:10
  Kyle Starks: No, that's all. I hope… I hope that they're making enough to justify it, and then you take…
• 24:14
  Tad Eggleston: So, so far they have. So far, they have. It's been working out, but, but…
• 24:19
  Kyle Starks: A lot of the number 3s and stuff that I see are… it's a very, very low amount that's going to cover maybe printing. You know what I see it goes to maybe cover printing.
• 24:27
  Kyle Starks: And that's just my opinion. My opinion is I think we should get people to finish things, like, because we're doing hardcover, this is coming in internationally, so, like, the printer I use for Wear Monsters, I had them in a week. Once it was done, I had them in a week, right? And I feel like when I purchase something, I don't want to purchase something next year.
• 24:43
  Kyle Starks: I don't purchase.
• 24:44
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 24:45
  Kyle Starks: I don't want just the smallest sliver of a thing that I overpaid for, because it's… it's whatever they charge, plus the.
• 24:51
  Tad Eggleston: See, see, you're giving me ideas now. I think… I think that you should try to do a comic on Kickstarter a page at a time.
• 24:59
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, I think that's a.
• 25:00
  Tad Eggleston: You can do it very, very reasonably. It's a dollar plus postage per page.
• 25:06
  Tad Eggleston: $5 extra if they want to send it in a T-mailer.
• 25:10
  Kyle Starks: You have to do… you have to do 12…
• 25:11
  Tad Eggleston: Otherwise, it comes in a manila envelope.
• 25:14
  Kyle Starks: You have to do 24 Kickstarters. No thank you. One's hard… one at a time is hard enough.
• 25:20
  Kyle Starks: Wintertime, it's hard enough.
• 25:21
  Tad Eggleston: You'll send the… you'll send the wraparound cover after… if they buy all 24 pages, that they can staple it together themselves.
• 25:36
  Tad Eggleston: No, that's a terrible idea. It's a terrible idea.
• 25:39
  Kyle Starks: Thanks a lot, dear.
• 25:40
  Tad Eggleston: Terrible idea.
• 25:41
  Tad Eggleston: the one-page comics are sometimes cool, so I mean…
• 25:47
  Kyle Starks: That's not… that's not my… that's not my purview. I don't do any one-page comics.
• 25:51
  Tad Eggleston: No.
• 25:51
  Kyle Starks: I mean…
• 25:53
  Tad Eggleston: I have a one-page comic from you up on the wall, I mean…
• 25:58
  Kyle Starks: What is it?
• 25:59
  Tad Eggleston: Gary… what, Gary Marshall wrote it, but… but it's one page of, of, of…
• 26:07
  Tad Eggleston: of Nazis getting their faces melted off.
• 26:11
  Kyle Starks: That is true.
• 26:12
  Kyle Starks: That did not sell well for me, though, so we can't…
• 26:15
  Tad Eggleston: Well, it's sold at least one!
• 26:17
  Kyle Starks: You're in the minority. Yeah, well, I'll tell you, Tad, when we're going to sell something, selling one is not… is a bad number. You think one is somehow…
• 26:26
  Tad Eggleston: Original mark.
• 26:27
  Kyle Starks: But it's not.
• 26:27
  Tad Eggleston: Particularly if it's not original art, yeah, no, no, no. If you printed X number of copies, selling one is bad.
• 26:34
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, yeah. So yeah, you'd almost… you'd rather sell zero than one.
• 26:37
  Tad Eggleston: I mean… I mean.
• 26:40
  Kyle Starks: Is it plant? I'm glad to see that.
• 26:41
  Tad Eggleston: It is, it is. I, I have… it's my, it's my… it's my Schweizer Starks… Indiana Jones Corner.
• 26:49
  Kyle Starks: Hmm… Yeah, I've got…
• 26:52
  Tad Eggleston: His 3 posters in your scene.
• 26:55
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, I wish I sold more of those, but…
• 26:59
  Tad Eggleston: Well, you know…
• 27:00
  Kyle Starks: See it on the wall, and sad to think about what a cataclysmic failure was for me as a piece of merchandise.
• 27:05
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, is it on your website? I can plug it right now.
• 27:09
  Kyle Starks: And you know why it's not? Because it's 11x17, and this millet flat sucks. I don't know how to put in a tube, and you know what people don't like?
• 27:16
  Kyle Starks: World Updosis, yeah.
• 27:17
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, and…
• 27:18
  Kyle Starks: Mailing things flat at that size is a nightmare. It's just that
• 27:22
  Kyle Starks: It's been a nightmare. And the stuff that you use to mail is to take up so much space. For me.
• 27:27
  Kyle Starks: For me, it's not worth it, like…
• 27:30
  Kyle Starks: Prints are tough, man. Like, I have a new one,
• 27:33
  Tad Eggleston: I mean…
• 27:33
  Kyle Starks: for the sake.
• 27:34
  Tad Eggleston: See, here's what I'm gonna toss out, and I'm not gonna… I think the sale's over, so I'm not gonna use the name, but here's one of those crazy, crazy things.
• 27:46
  Tad Eggleston: Hey, I recently bought 3 pages of original art.
• 27:52
  Tad Eggleston: from a… Very well-known artist.
• 27:57
  Tad Eggleston: That he mailed flat for only $5.
• 28:01
  Tad Eggleston: That each page costs less than that print did.
• 28:05
  Kyle Starks: Oh, what size were they?
• 28:07
  Tad Eggleston: Well, they were… they were…
• 28:10
  Kyle Starks: Poster-sized?
• 28:11
  Tad Eggleston: They were at least that size. They were, they were original art pages.
• 28:15
  Tad Eggleston: from comics. So, so… your standard.
• 28:20
  Kyle Starks: It's more than that.
• 28:22
  Tad Eggleston: And it might be bigger than that.
• 28:24
  Kyle Starks: Ship… oh, yeah, there's… it's usually 11 by 17.
• 28:26
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I think 11… I think 11 by 17. No, he only charged me 5 bucks shipping.
• 28:32
  Kyle Starks: That guy's losing money on shipping. I hope he overcharged. I hope he charged you enough to cover his shipping.
• 28:36
  Tad Eggleston: He charged $100 for the 3 pages, and $5 for shipping.
• 28:43
  Tad Eggleston: He… once in a while, I mean, people should be on his mailing list, because once in a while, generally either summer or Christmas, he, like, clears out the backlog of pages dirt cheap, just to get a lump sum to…
• 28:59
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, that's… it might be… I think that's smart if you have… if you do a bunch of pages, because you probably have some you're just sitting on. $5 for shipping is crazy.
• 29:08
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I was shocked.
• 29:09
  Kyle Starks: Have you got him yet?
• 29:10
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 29:11
  Kyle Starks: Okay, it wasn't just in a manila envelope?
• 29:13
  Tad Eggleston: No? No, they were, they, they were, they were in…
• 29:16
  Tad Eggleston: The, the, the box is probably an inch thick, and he, and he packed them with, with…
• 29:22
  Tad Eggleston: Paper around him.
• 29:24
  Tad Eggleston: To keep them in place.
• 29:26
  Kyle Starks: He's doing some hard work for you. Yeah!
• 29:28
  Tad Eggleston: No.
• 29:29
  Tad Eggleston: And not just me, because, I mean, I, like…
• 29:34
  Tad Eggleston: Because it was one of the times where he's like, tell your friends, I immediately told… I think I… I think I arranged for 5 other sales for him.
• 29:42
  Kyle Starks: That's your rate.
• 29:44
  Tad Eggleston: So… but but yeah, no, so I'm always… I'm always fascinated at the different people that are like, oh, this is expensive, and… and the people that just do this, and…
• 29:55
  Tad Eggleston: Sometimes I think it depends on whether they have kids to pack stuff for them.
• 30:01
  Kyle Starks: You can't trust kids with the art.
• 30:04
  Kyle Starks: Mine are adult, they're not packing… they're not…
• 30:06
  Kyle Starks: Yeah. Can't, you can't trust them.
• 30:09
  Tad Eggleston: Yours are adult and you can't trust them?
• 30:13
  Tad Eggleston: Is this supposed to be the other way around? Mine are too young and I can't trust them?
• 30:17
  Kyle Starks: You'll… you'll never trust them, you have to train them.
• 30:20
  Tad Eggleston: You have to train.
• 30:21
  Kyle Starks: They don't respect the art form, you know what I mean, these kids.
• 30:24
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 30:25
  Kyle Starks: expected. There's… They would fold up a poster in a heartbeat.
• 30:29
  Tad Eggleston: Unacceptable.
• 30:32
  Tad Eggleston: So, so you're saying your kids don't appreciate your work?
• 30:36
  Kyle Starks: You know, they haven't read my work, for the most part.
• 30:38
  Tad Eggleston: I haven't read your work.
• 30:39
  Kyle Starks: No, because they're… I'm… it's funny, like.
• 30:42
  Kyle Starks: Years ago, years, years, wife was like, when are you gonna write something that the kids could read? I was like, I guess when they're 18.
• 30:48
  Kyle Starks: like, because I like dirty words, and I like sexual innuendo, and I don't necessarily think, you know.
• 30:52
  Kyle Starks: My 16-year-old daughter should be reading that from their father.
• 30:56
  Kyle Starks: So not that I think that… it's funny, because it's, like, I think it's R-rated, my stuff's R-rated, like, it's not dirty.
• 31:01
  Tad Eggleston: Right?
• 31:02
  Kyle Starks: but I go it's R-rated. In reality, it's probably PG-13 rated.
• 31:06
  Kyle Starks: Right. I'm like, well, in my head, in my head, if it was… if this was in the theater, it would be R-rated. Probably not. So I really probably looked at a lot of it a long time ago, but in my head, I think it's R-rated, so they had to wait until 18. When my oldest started 18, she… what does she care? She doesn't want to… she doesn't… it's too… too far past now.
• 31:20
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 31:21
  Kyle Starks: Something Dad does. No one knows what you're doing.
• 31:24
  Tad Eggleston: That's… it's weird to me how many comics creators that's… I mean, it doesn't shock me as much that so many comics creators have spouses like that.
• 31:34
  Tad Eggleston: But it shocks me the number of comics creators that, like, their kids Don't think it's…
• 31:42
  Tad Eggleston: And I'm sitting there going, how many… how many kids get to have
• 31:46
  Tad Eggleston: parents that have jobs where you can, like, show and tell day, and you can bring in the Ricky.
• 31:52
  Kyle Starks: immortal.
• 31:52
  Tad Eggleston: comic. They don't…
• 31:54
  Kyle Starks: Well, they can't. You can't… I can't talk about Rick and Morty, because that is R-rated, you know what I mean?
• 31:58
  Tad Eggleston: That's fair.
• 32:00
  Kyle Starks: I mean, the fir- I'm… I remember, like, Sex Castle, which was my first book, which was my second Kickstarter, and it was published by Image, was nominated for an Eisner, but it was optioned before it came out.
• 32:09
  Kyle Starks: And it was thrilling, because, like, whoever would think that you would make something that's going to be potentially a movie. Of course, that was…
• 32:17
  Kyle Starks: a long time ago, 10 years ago, so it did not happen. But I remember walking in 10 years ago, my daughter was 6,
• 32:23
  Kyle Starks: My oldest was… 8.
• 32:27
  Kyle Starks: And I was like, oh my god, we optioned Sex Castle.
• 32:29
  Kyle Starks: like, we just sold it to Hollywood, and my kid… my oldest one, I can't wait to tell everyone at school, I'm like, you can't tell anyone at school that your dad's.
• 32:37
  Tad Eggleston: Title of the book.
• 32:40
  Kyle Starks: So it's…
• 32:40
  Tad Eggleston: It actually…
• 32:42
  Kyle Starks: It's like a double-edged sword.
• 32:44
  Tad Eggleston: It reminds me of an interview Dennis Leary did once, where he talked about getting called in to the principal's office because his kid was singing this raunchy song.
• 32:57
  Tad Eggleston: And he's like, what was… yeah, something about being an asshole, blah blah, and he's like,
• 33:04
  Tad Eggleston: So, here's the thing.
• 33:07
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, that's a daddy's song.
• 33:08
  Tad Eggleston: that song is… is paying his tuition here.
• 33:16
  Kyle Starks: That's funny.
• 33:17
  Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, that's… like, I remember…
• 33:24
  Tad Eggleston: The one… I've talked to Beto Hernandez a couple of times, and the one time he ever got tongue-tied, I had… I had him and Natalia on, because Natalia has stories in the Roy… yeah, but they're doing a comic together, the Roy book that's coming out, they both have stories in…
• 33:41
  Tad Eggleston: And, I asked when she discovered her dad's comics, and she's like, And he's like.
• 33:49
  Tad Eggleston: She hasn't, she hasn't! She's just like, by the time I was in middle school, I'd have kids at school bringing them up to me, going, did you know your dad drew this?
• 34:00
  Kyle Starks: Woof.
• 34:02
  Kyle Starks: They don't… that's not… see, I don't like that, I don't want that. I don't… but of course, I've never drawn those things, so I don't have… I don't have that same concern.
• 34:10
  Kyle Starks: There's a lot of innuendo, but…
• 34:12
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Yeah.
• 34:13
  Kyle Starks: They don't need to read my stuff, there's other stuff, and you know, we try to introduce some stuff. My girls, my youngest likes manga, but…
• 34:19
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, you got Peacemaker? They could read Peacemaker.
• 34:21
  Kyle Starks: Man, it's rated R, man, it's black label.
• 34:25
  Tad Eggleston: That's…
• 34:25
  Kyle Starks: Right now.
• 34:27
  Kyle Starks: But I mean, like, by the time, like, I did stuff like Karate Prom, and Marvel Unleashed, and probably some other sort of big two properties that were a bit…
• 34:35
  Kyle Starks: Tamer, like, they just don't care, it's been too long now.
• 34:38
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 34:40
  Kyle Starks: In fact, I think I gave Adeline, my oldest, a copy of Party Prom, and I think she probably read it, but she wasn't, like, its awesome dad, you know what I mean?
• 34:47
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 34:47
  Kyle Starks: So it's just a different.
• 34:48
  Tad Eggleston: That's true.
• 34:49
  Kyle Starks: my friend.
• 34:49
  Tad Eggleston: It's true.
• 34:50
  Tad Eggleston: I'm… I mean, Tom King told me once about how, his dad… his son came up to him, and very, very seriously told him, like, your Superman story was okay, Dad, but not as good as Dan Juergens.
• 35:07
  Tad Eggleston: Well…
• 35:08
  Kyle Starks: I'm okay, I'd be okay with that too, especially if it's true, you know what I mean? Like…
• 35:12
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 35:14
  Kyle Starks: Like, I'm okay with that, it doesn't matter if my kid says it or not, like, my… they can be as objective about the work as anyone else can. They're like, it wasn't… this is better, I'm like, sure, but was it more fun? That's what I want, like, was it more fun? Like, it wasn't.
• 35:27
  Tad Eggleston: Was it more fun? It wasn't fun.
• 35:29
  Tad Eggleston: Listen.
• 35:33
  Tad Eggleston: Talk to me about end of life! I'm loving end of life, and we haven't gotten a chance to talk about it, so give the front counter pitch for people who haven't listened to me rave about it as it comes out monthly.
• 35:44
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, End of Life is my DC Vertigo book, issue 7 or 8 just came out.
• 35:50
  Tad Eggleston: I think so.
• 35:51
  Kyle Starks: 7? 8? I don't know.
• 35:54
  Tad Eggleston: One of the two.
• 35:55
  Kyle Starks: We are… we are guaranteed 18 issues now, so we're going… there are at least 18. It is an ongoing… it is about this douchebag hitman who screws up, has to go on the run, ends up hiding out in the small, small, dinky little town where it's…
• 36:10
  Kyle Starks: His ex-hitman.
• 36:12
  Kyle Starks: and hates him, who he finds out is dying from stage 4 cancer. And yeah, it's… I think it's fun, I think it's charming, I think it's sweet, I think it deals with a lot of things that we deal with in our lives, which is that
• 36:23
  Kyle Starks: sort of taking on responsibilities of life changes, our parents passing, and also shooting guys, who were chicken masks and be caught. That's how we do it.
• 36:35
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, it's… it's been fun for me, both because, like, you do Hitman well, and because I…
• 36:42
  Tad Eggleston: I spent a decade in senior care, and I appreciate your portrayal of some of the…
• 36:50
  Tad Eggleston: End-of-life stuff, and particularly the… the… the… caregiver in the first…
• 36:59
  Tad Eggleston: you know, I really, really, really appreciated the caregiver being given Like, like,
• 37:07
  Tad Eggleston: Doctors get to be in TV shows and whatever, you… you don't… you don't… the people who…
• 37:14
  Kyle Starks: hospice nurse?
• 37:15
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, the people who do the real work on… on…
• 37:20
  Tad Eggleston: In-home care, or a nursing home, whatnot, are the…
• 37:25
  Tad Eggleston: the nurses' assistants, they're not even the nurses that are doing the heavy, heavy work most of the time, so it's nice to see them appreciated.
• 37:34
  Kyle Starks: We wanted to touch that, we wanted to touch… we really wanted to deal with how challenging it is day-to-day, especially, you know, Eddie's so selfish, but here you're in a situation where it's like your… your dad needs help in the middle of the night, like, no one's so selfish that they don't go help.
• 37:47
  Kyle Starks: And then you're exhausted the next day, and of course, Eddie has hitmen show up, trying to kill him the next day, and he's just tired. So he is different… like, it's hard to go to work, you know what I mean? Like, you have to go work 8 hours after you were up all night, and we all go through that eventually.
• 38:02
  Kyle Starks: And so that's, like, you know, especially because comics, this sort of bulk prior to the last two years was in older people who were now dealing with their parents passing away. It felt like it was very real. My dad died
• 38:13
  Kyle Starks: 4 years ago, 3 years ago.
• 38:15
  Kyle Starks: My mother's elderly now, so I take care of my mother. They're very real things, and you know, the thing is what we like to do with the work, with all the work, is to have this sort of ridiculous premise, or this violent scenario, and then temper it with
• 38:29
  Kyle Starks: With likable characters in… relatable situations.
• 38:33
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 38:34
  Kyle Starks: Like, fighting a bad guy who has boomerang hands is awesome, but, like, it's also awesome if, like, you feel like you can relate to that person, and that there's sort of a greater subtext.
• 38:44
  Kyle Starks: Of being alive, I think. And that's what we always try to do. We try to… we try to do our… have our fun, but we try to do where you're feeling something, hopefully, rather than just a good time, though. Let's be honest. If that's all you have, like, I'd love that. If anything, we can have a good time.
• 39:00
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I think that,
• 39:03
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, this is the defining factor of your work. You have, you tend towards crazy action, often with hitmen, but somehow they're also relatable, even though I've… I've never killed anybody, or intend to. Right.
• 39:22
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, you probably wanted to, though, before, and there's also, like, there's a little bit of a power fantasy in that, which I think, like, that's why we like superheroes, that's why I like wrestling. It's sort of the idea is that you could solve all of your problems with violence if you wanted to.
• 39:34
  Kyle Starks: You know, the hitman… the hitman has carte blanche to solving any of their problems in the easiest way possible, but also
• 39:41
  Kyle Starks: The most visually enjoyable.
• 39:43
  Kyle Starks: I guess, like, to me, maybe?
• 39:46
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, we try to do very relatable things as much as possible, and that's one of my secrets, because I think you want to like these characters, and the best way to like characters is either they're extremely charming, or…
• 39:55
  Kyle Starks: You feel like you can see yourself in them in some way.
• 40:00
  Tad Eggleston: Talk to me about,
• 40:03
  Tad Eggleston: And I'm always terrible at remembering even people's names, much less characters' names, but the… the…
• 40:09
  Tad Eggleston: The service station owner and her son.
• 40:13
  Tad Eggleston: Because I, I really…
• 40:14
  Kyle Starks: Better than Trent.
• 40:15
  Tad Eggleston: Yes.
• 40:16
  Kyle Starks: Lauren and Trent are… so, Lauren and Trent own the only gas station in this town, it's very small, it's basically, like.
• 40:23
  Kyle Starks: Half, you know, like, a block of businesses, and there's probably only, like, 3 businesses there.
• 40:27
  Kyle Starks: It's a… it's a… it's that small town that you know that 60 people live at and doesn't make any sense, and they have, like, a historic…
• 40:34
  Kyle Starks: They have, like, antique stores. Everyone knows that place. That's Pluto, which is the place in the book. So Loretta and Trent, Loretta is a single mom who runs the gas station, and Trent is her…
• 40:43
  Kyle Starks: very, sort of, 6-year-old, 6-year-old boy, I don't know… I don't know how old he is. They say it at one point, but I can't remember. 6 to 8, he's in the 6 to 8 range.
• 40:52
  Kyle Starks: And I like having characters in the books that respond to what's happening in a way that I feel like I would respond to things happening, so they're always very much sort of like the everyman sort of POV character.
• 41:05
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 41:05
  Kyle Starks: And that's Loretta, but also because I think Loretta's a single mom.
• 41:09
  Kyle Starks: Who's working all the time at the only gas station. She's the only person who works there, so presumably she works.
• 41:14
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 41:14
  Kyle Starks: They close at night, I guess. I don't… let's not think about it. Let's not think about my brother's life. Are they… you know what I mean? Like, she's asleep, but if someone shows up, no one goes through. That's also, like, how does it stay in business? No one's driving through there. Neither here nor there. But I think having a single mom
• 41:29
  Kyle Starks: I think if you're at that age where, as a human being, you're starting… which he's not yet, he's now maybe 8 issues in, starting to, where you have to quit being an irresponsible, immature little child, and start to take on, if anything, your life's responsibilities, right? Like.
• 41:46
  Kyle Starks: He's at that point, I think if you're… if you're not just the worst human on Earth, sort of being confronted with
• 41:52
  Kyle Starks: a single mother puts a lot of things in perspective about maybe how easy your life is, and you can respect that person. And so, Loretta…
• 42:00
  Kyle Starks: let me think… there's so many characters. I think she's the only person that Eddie respects, but also he doesn't like anyone, or not even that, that he doesn't take anyone seriously, so everyone's sort of below him, like, they don't matter, so I don't know if he cares about her, but he does sort of.
• 42:14
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, he doesn't see… yeah, he seems to be…
• 42:17
  Tad Eggleston: At least my read so far is he absolutely respects her.
• 42:22
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, yeah.
• 42:22
  Tad Eggleston: I think he does care about her, but that's such an abnormal feeling to him.
• 42:29
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, and I, I think…
• 42:30
  Tad Eggleston: And I actually think he cares about Trent a lot, but again, that's such an abnormal feeling to him. Yeah.
• 42:39
  Kyle Starks: A weird little kid, but maybe he sees himself in that weird little kid, but the thing is, Loretta is probably…
• 42:45
  Kyle Starks: for whatever period that Eddie has been a hitman, and he's been very self-serving, like, he's making a lot of money and doing whatever he wants, and I think Loretta was the first person to sort of call him out on his shit.
• 42:55
  Kyle Starks: And there's something that sucks about that, but also, like, it's kind of cool, like, finally someone besides your dad, who you think he says everything out of 8, right? Like, George has criticized him his entire life. Whether that's true or not doesn't matter, but for this lady.
• 43:09
  Kyle Starks: Who seems kind of cool, in the middle of nowhere, to be like, what's wrong with you?
• 43:14
  Kyle Starks: I think he kind of respects that, so… yeah, he… I like… I like Loretta and Trin a lot, they're two of my favorite characters.
• 43:21
  Tad Eggleston: I gotta ask, just because we deal with a lot of neurodiversity on this podcast, and because
• 43:29
  Tad Eggleston: right before I got on with you, I was on the phone with my friend Britt Payne, who runs the autism scene.
• 43:36
  Tad Eggleston: To me, both.
• 43:38
  Tad Eggleston: Trent, and… and to a lesser extent, and this is… this is where it's really terrible, I read, I read,
• 43:43
  Tad Eggleston: I read today's book earlier today.
• 43:47
  Tad Eggleston: What's your main character, your hitman?
• 43:50
  Kyle Starks: Italian.
• 43:51
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. No, no, no, in, in Louise.
• 43:54
  Kyle Starks: Oh, Archie, Archie Winters.
• 43:56
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Both Trent and Archie read neurodiverse to me, is that…
• 44:01
  Tad Eggleston: On purpose, or is that just you made them weird, and…
• 44:05
  Kyle Starks: Frank's weird, but he's also… he's also at whatever age he is in 2026, so he probably is in some… ADHD, you know what I mean?
• 44:14
  Tad Eggleston: Right, right.
• 44:15
  Kyle Starks: Probably something, but as someone who's had children, it's tough to tell at a certain age of boy, at a certain age.
• 44:21
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, no?
• 44:22
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, yeah.
• 44:22
  Tad Eggleston: That's, that's definitely true.
• 44:24
  Kyle Starks: It could be anything. With Archie.
• 44:27
  Kyle Starks: I could see it. Like, I can see it. It wasn't intentional, but he's an unusual person. But also, he said.
• 44:34
  Kyle Starks: so much tragedy in his life, I think he's tempered more than… than I would say, neurodivergent, but I say that.
• 44:40
  Tad Eggleston: Those could all go together.
• 44:42
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, no, but, like, I can… I can see it…
• 44:46
  Kyle Starks: the only reason… the only reason why I'd even hesitate is that I think… I think, like, young Archie.
• 44:51
  Kyle Starks: early Archie is a very pure sort of teenage boy, which doesn't…
• 44:57
  Kyle Starks: like, reject anything. It doesn't say, like, these other things aren't the case, right? So, I don't see it in young Archie, but in older Archie, like.
• 45:05
  Kyle Starks: Kind of. I can kind of see it.
• 45:07
  Tad Eggleston: Right?
• 45:08
  Tad Eggleston: Well…
• 45:09
  Kyle Starks: Exactly, you know, like, Miles and Six Sidekicks, like, we wrote heavily on the autistic spectrum, and no one ever says anything, and the few people who we got emails from who asked about it, and were like, it's so cool to see, like, you know, that representation, is the best. We always try to do as much representation as possible, even with disabilities.
• 45:27
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 45:28
  Kyle Starks: with, with nationalities and races, like, we try… I try to do as much as I can. So we just put stuff in that, and sort of the spectrum stuff is, like, we're… we're trying to add a little bit more, but it has to be right.
• 45:38
  Kyle Starks: You don't want to end up being… what's that move? The accountant? Like, you don't want to do the accountant, right?
• 45:44
  Tad Eggleston: I love the accountant.
• 45:45
  Kyle Starks: I like the accountant fine, but it does feel like…
• 45:48
  Tad Eggleston: No, but what I mean is, as an autistic person, I still love The Accountant.
• 45:52
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, yeah. No, yeah, yeah, which I just… it's just like, it feels like…
• 45:55
  Kyle Starks: maybe we added that on there, you know what I mean? Like, maybe…
• 45:59
  Kyle Starks: Maybe we're just adding that on there, rather than…
• 46:02
  Tad Eggleston: I, I, I didn't…
• 46:03
  Kyle Starks: No?
• 46:04
  Tad Eggleston: I didn't actually feel that.
• 46:05
  Kyle Starks: Okay, well, I'm glad… I'm glad.
• 46:07
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 46:08
  Tad Eggleston: No, I felt pretty seen.
• 46:12
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, other than the fact that I'm not a…
• 46:14
  Kyle Starks: You're a big man.
• 46:15
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, yeah. If I was a hitman, I would be a hitman like the accountant.
• 46:20
  Kyle Starks: I think with all that stuff, it's a very fine line, especially as someone who doesn't have
• 46:24
  Kyle Starks: those… any of those, right? I'm not gay, I'm not gay, but we, like, we want to have gay characters. It's how far can you do that experience? It's never the character's personality for me, it's… but I can only say so much about it. You know what I mean? Right. I can infer
• 46:39
  Kyle Starks: I will never… I will never do a journey book. I just… in that regard.
• 46:43
  Tad Eggleston: No, I understand not doing the Journey book.
• 46:45
  Kyle Starks: But we want to do as much representation as possible. Yeah, yeah, we want to do as much representation as possible. That's interesting with Arshi, it is interesting…
• 46:52
  Kyle Starks: Because he's definitely Trump, it's interesting, I can kind of see it.
• 46:55
  Tad Eggleston: Because I… I… honestly, I see it as much in the Teenage Archie as I do in the… that particular brand of awkwardness.
• 47:03
  Kyle Starks: His brother?
• 47:05
  Kyle Starks: his, his Yeah.
• 47:07
  Tad Eggleston: That's the other thing, is, is like…
• 47:10
  Tad Eggleston: Neurodiversity and autism are very hereditary.
• 47:14
  Kyle Starks: Sure.
• 47:15
  Tad Eggleston: You know, like, it's less than shocking that you'd have two brothers somewhere on the spectrum together.
• 47:27
  Tad Eggleston: like…
• 47:28
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean, I've spent the last decade working in special ed with a lot of autism. I've been autistic all my life, but I finally got my diagnosis a couple years ago.
• 47:39
  Tad Eggleston: And, and, like, I, I, I definitely felt… kinship to Archie.
• 47:45
  Tad Eggleston: I spelled kinship to his brother as well. But, but there's… there's a special kind of awkwardness, like, particularly the… the, like.
• 47:57
  Tad Eggleston: the, the, the… I don't want to mess up the friendship…
• 48:01
  Tad Eggleston: even as… even as his brother's going, what the hell are you talking about? She's ready for you to… friendship's out the window!
• 48:08
  Kyle Starks: I think… I think that's something that… that everybody goes through, though.
• 48:12
  Tad Eggleston: It is and it isn't. I mean, I felt alone as one of the boys that wasn't…
• 48:19
  Tad Eggleston: Like, immediately, oh, wait, there's an opportunity for… for touching?
• 48:27
  Kyle Starks: I think probably…
• 48:28
  Kyle Starks: again, because there's a world… I think, you know, Archie's really good at baseball. Like, he's really good at baseball, so he's probably very popular.
• 48:35
  Kyle Starks: And I think, like, the… that is… the summer is special. Like, they go here every summer, and it's special, and part of that is Louise. So it's not just…
• 48:45
  Kyle Starks: Like, it's… I think probably he's at that age for that period where it's, like, it's just now becoming a thing that people might do as living creatures, right?
• 48:53
  Tad Eggleston: Right?
• 48:54
  Kyle Starks: His brother, of course, is far more advanced than him.
• 48:56
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 48:57
  Kyle Starks: He's progressed much quicker just as a human being than his brother, but I don't think it's… I don't think it's, like, oh, it's an option.
• 49:05
  Kyle Starks: Though maybe he's at that age where it's just like, oh, my friends are… my friends are doing stuff. I think it's more as, like, the summers are the only happy time they have. I think their parents aren't great, it's kind of implied, but not really, but I think they love.
• 49:18
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I thought that was a cool choice to not actually really show us the parents.
• 49:23
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, you never see any adults, you never see any.
• 49:25
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 49:25
  Kyle Starks: in the summer, because they don't matter. Like, that's a.
• 49:28
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 49:28
  Kyle Starks: that mattered was Louise and the town.
• 49:31
  Kyle Starks: Right. And so I think, like.
• 49:33
  Kyle Starks: it's a very… it's a very authentic thing where you go, this is… it's weird because this is my friend. Of course, you know, when you're 32, like, you marry your… like, there's no questions, like, that's who you want when you're 27, like.
• 49:43
  Tad Eggleston: Alright.
• 49:44
  Kyle Starks: to your best friend, like, I think when you're at that age, it's like, well, I don't have very many best friends. I don't have many people I can talk to about anything, and we can go on adventures, and like, I don't have people like that, and I love that.
• 49:53
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 49:54
  Kyle Starks: she's cute, but he's like… you never know what they feel. Like, there's all that stuff too, but I think it's more… it's a very natural thing that, at some point, someone has a best friend, and they're like, I kind of want to smooch on them a little bit.
• 50:04
  Kyle Starks: And you have that…
• 50:05
  Kyle Starks: I think everyone goes through that. Maybe I hope that everyone goes through that, because it's kind of great. Like, it's kind of great. That's why it happens in Louis Browse, because I think it's a very relatable thing, and for diff… probably for different reasons, like we've been saying here, it's like, what it was for you is different than it was for me.
• 50:18
  Kyle Starks: Which was sincere, like, do I want to ruin this friendship? Because once we.
• 50:21
  Tad Eggleston: No, I mean, it was definitely that way for me, too. I just think that the two of us are not as representative of the norm as you seem to feel like.
• 50:31
  Kyle Starks: Hmm.
• 50:32
  Kyle Starks: maybe… I… I was like.
• 50:35
  Tad Eggleston: Maybe you've got the hidden spectrum thing going on, Kyle.
• 50:38
  Kyle Starks: There's a lot of it in…
• 50:41
  Kyle Starks: You know, I've been told things, and I go, I don't know. I mean, I do, like, trains a lot. I did a book on them.
• 50:48
  Kyle Starks: You know, let's be honest.
• 50:50
  Tad Eggleston: I mean… more and more, I actually, like, I saw… my favorite recent thing that I've learned
• 50:58
  Tad Eggleston: is I saw a paper last year comparing brain scans of neurotypical people and neurodivergent people.
• 51:08
  Tad Eggleston: Like, just looking at adult brains, and which parts had, like, pruned, and which parts had fleshed out, you know, because that's how the brain works, you know, the pathways that get used flesh out, and… and, like…
• 51:23
  Tad Eggleston: Neurotypical brains?
• 51:25
  Tad Eggleston: Are… are nearly identical.
• 51:29
  Tad Eggleston: Like, 90% similar to each other.
• 51:31
  Tad Eggleston: And neurodivergent brains are not only nothing at all like neurotypical brains, they're nothing at all like each other.
• 51:39
  Kyle Starks: Hmm, that's interesting.
• 51:40
  Tad Eggleston: So my working theory right now is, you know, that the autism spectrum keeps getting redefined because it's relatively new. I mean, the word autism is less than 75 years old? Maybe 80 years old now?
• 51:57
  Tad Eggleston: But my working theory is now that only about 40% of the population is neurotypical. The problem is the other 6 billion of us are all unique.
• 52:09
  Tad Eggleston: So putting us into, like, individual… or grouping us becomes really, really hard.
• 52:18
  Kyle Starks: Oh, that's really interesting.
• 52:19
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I know.
• 52:22
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, like, it's always been fascinating to me, as I realize how much it's…
• 52:29
  Tad Eggleston: Actually guided huge portions of my life without me realizing it.
• 52:35
  Tad Eggleston: It's become that much more fascinating to me.
• 52:39
  Tad Eggleston: So, I do appreciate it, but I know we're running up against time, so I'm gonna ask you my two final questions. I've got two now.
• 52:46
  Kyle Starks: Oh, Lord, okay.
• 52:47
  Tad Eggleston: I know. I know. I don't know if you've gotten… I don't know if you've gotten one of them before. You might have, because it hasn't been that long since the last time you were on.
• 52:59
  Tad Eggleston: I've been doing this podcast for, like, a little less than 5 years now. We're coming up on our 5th anniversary.
• 53:05
  Kyle Starks: COVID.
• 53:07
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, post-COVID is when it started.
• 53:10
  Tad Eggleston: And I feel like I've fallen into the Twilight Zone.
• 53:13
  Tad Eggleston: the conversations that I get to have, the people that I consider friends, that, like, 5 years ago, if you told me this was gonna be my life, I would have been like, fuck you. You're insane. You're insane.
• 53:25
  Kyle Starks: Absolutely, sure.
• 53:26
  Tad Eggleston: And that's exactly it. I've found that that's true of, like, everybody in comics, to a certain extent, everybody in the arts. So I've started collecting stories. Tell me one of your surreal, oh my god, how is it Kyle Starks in this room? Or Kyle Starks that got to do this?
• 53:45
  Tad Eggleston: That, like, the 10-year-old you would have been like.
• 53:48
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, this, this is, this is actually fairly timely, because when DC Vertigo was announced, and of course, I was one of, basically, the three new teams that are gonna be rolling out, like, James Simon doesn't… of course, he's on Vertigo.
• 54:01
  Kyle Starks: Right. And, like, how did… like, how did it make you feel? And I'm like, I don't… I don't know how to answer that. Like, it's… it's just worked to me, though I love DC Vertigo, and it makes me go, well, like, what the heck? Like…
• 54:13
  Kyle Starks: should I care more about this? And I think the reason why I… I don't is because… and I… I don't have, like, any… there's no one I'm gonna meet that I'm gonna get…
• 54:22
  Kyle Starks: tongue-tied by, outside of maybe some very few exceptions, but no one in comics, you know what I mean? Like…
• 54:27
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 54:28
  Kyle Starks: We're all just people, I'm not impressed with celebrity, none of that, but…
• 54:32
  Tad Eggleston: I got tongue-tied with Klaus Jansen.
• 54:35
  Kyle Starks: He does some inking.
• 54:37
  Tad Eggleston: He does really good inking.
• 54:39
  Kyle Starks: Well, I wonder…
• 54:40
  Tad Eggleston: I did better the second time I met him.
• 54:43
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 54:44
  Kyle Starks: I don't, like, I don't… that's not something I have inside of me.
• 54:47
  Tad Eggleston: No, I don't generally either. I… that… I was just… I was just being honest. The one time that I really…
• 54:52
  Kyle Starks: Right, right.
• 54:54
  Kyle Starks: There are… there are people on Earth who I'd be like.
• 54:57
  Kyle Starks: But in general, I'm not, so it's not even like, oh, when I did, like, Ron Lim drew my Thanos story, like, that's awesome, but it didn't.
• 55:04
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 55:04
  Kyle Starks: I was like, that's just good luck, like, it's not like Ron Limb came to me and said he went, like, that would be cool. So all the things, like, man, am I so… because I never thought I would do big two comics anyway, you know what I mean? So there's been things, like we mentioned earlier when Six Castle got opt-in, like, that was cool and unbelievable. Like, the idea, like, I love movies and TV,
• 55:21
  Kyle Starks: And never in all my life up to when I started making comics, even when I started making comics, even early on when one got optioned, like, the idea of seeing, based on a comic by Kyle Starks, when that happens.
• 55:31
  Kyle Starks: that would be unbelievable, because I love movies and to have, like, that sort of touch, but I will say this. When I did Lobo, I was doing Lobo, I was doing my job, I was doing the best Lobo I can, I think I did a very, very good Lobo, because I love Lobo, because I think Keith Gibbon and I have very similar aesthetics, but when I had it in my hands, I was like, oh, wait.
• 55:49
  Kyle Starks: 17-year-old me would think that this is cool. Like, this is finally the thing that I did, and that's probably why when Vertigo came along, and also, like, End of Life is kind of maybe next to, like, Sea Guy, the first sort of humor-forward Vertigo book, so it's sort of on its own island, like, it's not a high art, it's not a very mature thinking man's…
• 56:06
  Kyle Starks: comic, it's just another fun comic by, you know, it's a very, very meekai comic, which I love, and I love more people to get to see it. But it's like, because it doesn't feel like I'm doing Swamp Thing, right? It doesn't feel like I'm doing… Right.
• 56:18
  Kyle Starks: Morrison's Animal Man, I'm just doing a really good comic that has vertigo on it, but Lobo was the one where I went, man. And Kyle, the artist did so good, I'm blanking on Kyle. Kyle?
• 56:30
  Kyle Starks: It doesn't matter. Oh, I'm sorry, Kyle, he's very good. He's perfect, too.
• 56:34
  Tad Eggleston: I will know soon.
• 56:35
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, I'm… Keep going.
• 56:37
  Kyle Starks: But yeah, that was it. That was the one where I go, man, this is the one that younger me would think is really cool. And so now, I think I got that out of me.
• 56:46
  Tad Eggleston: Kyle Hotz.
• 56:47
  Kyle Starks: How hot's ya, huh.
• 56:47
  Tad Eggleston: I'll stop.
• 56:49
  Kyle Starks: Two Kiles. Too many cows on one book, but two perfect Kiles for a Lobo. But that was the… that was the book. You know, when I first started, people were like, do you have, like, a dream?
• 56:59
  Kyle Starks: character, and I was like, oh, I'd love to do Great Lakes Avengers. I do Great Lakes Avengers for the… for Marvel's web… web series thing, and, like.
• 57:06
  Kyle Starks: it felt cool, but it just didn't feel like you'd think it's gonna feel, you know what I mean? Like, it wasn't… it wasn't the, like, wow, I finally did it. And I still don't have in my mind, like, a, wow, I finally made it. So it's not like I've been at…
• 57:18
  Kyle Starks: a panel, you know what I mean? Like, I was there for when we announced for it to go, like, it was a big panel, and it was cool, it's just like… it's not for me, it's for other things. Whereas Lobo, I was like, this is the one…
• 57:28
  Kyle Starks: that young me would have thought was cool. That's my answer to that question.
• 57:31
  Tad Eggleston: I love it. I love it. Alright, this one you've had to answer before, but I don't remember your other answers, so you might get away with using the same one, unless I remember it when you say it.
• 57:41
  Kyle Starks: -
• 57:42
  Tad Eggleston: Tell me something you love.
• 57:44
  Tad Eggleston: Preferably a comic, but we don't have rules. Preferably storytelling, but again, with the rules. But something that you love.
• 57:52
  Tad Eggleston: That not enough people around you have experienced, and you really want them to, so that you can…
• 57:57
  Tad Eggleston: To have more people to talk about it with.
• 57:59
  Kyle Starks: Did I do Freerun last time? I think I did.
• 58:01
  Tad Eggleston: You did, and I read some.
• 58:04
  Kyle Starks: Nufrein's great.
• 58:04
  Tad Eggleston: Watch them, yeah.
• 58:05
  Kyle Starks: For everyone who's also, like, it's… so, I feel like it's time, because, like, what do we love that story right now? I will say, the thing…
• 58:11
  Kyle Starks: I've read so many good… good stuff lately.
• 58:14
  Kyle Starks: But I, like, I… man, it's such a tough question, because then you go.
• 58:20
  Kyle Starks: do I want to talk about? Dungeon Crawler Carl is, I think, as good as promised. It's really fun. I've been reading it for several years, so I get to brag, like, how I wasn't there with the early people, but, like, I was there before the current wave, and that is a fun, flighty.
• 58:34
  Kyle Starks: just nothing, good time book, that I like, but I think everyone's starting to read it, or thinking about reading it, so I don't know.
• 58:41
  Tad Eggleston: I'm not yet, so it counts for me.
• 58:43
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, I really like, I really like that book specifically. I've tried to read other lit RPG books, and I don't think they hold up at all, but it feels to me
• 58:52
  Kyle Starks: like a Harry Potter, like a Hunger Games, it's very flighty, it's very easy to read, it's a very good story, and it's fun. And there's a lot to be said about just being able to sit down and just read a book and
• 59:02
  Kyle Starks: burn through a book and not feel like you're fighting it, or… it's a hard work, you know what I mean? You will not have to look up any words, you will not be… there's no point.
• 59:12
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I don't often have to.
• 59:14
  Kyle Starks: Yeah.
• 59:15
  Kyle Starks: No, no.
• 59:15
  Tad Eggleston: I know.
• 59:16
  Kyle Starks: I don't mean you, I don't mean you, I mean…
• 59:17
  Tad Eggleston: I read the dictionary when I was in middle school. I'm saying that kid. I'm saying nobody.
• 59:25
  Kyle Starks: Nobody, not you, Tad. Nobody will have to look up a word, is what I'm saying. The royal you.
• 59:30
  Tad Eggleston: I re…
• 59:31
  Kyle Starks: I really like that. I've found recently, which I just feel like can't possibly be true, but I'm on several Discords, and it seems like a lot of people, for one reason or another, are not reading the Ghost Machine books, and I can't understand that, because I think the Ghost Machine books, which is Geoff Johns imprint.
• 59:47
  Kyle Starks: are all super fun comic books. Like, I don't understand if it's something against Jeff directly. I don't understand it. I think they're all good. I just read The Hyde Streets. I think they're really fun. They're, like, they're all him rubbing the serial numbers off of DC properties.
• 1:00:02
  Kyle Starks: Which doesn't make sense why DC wouldn't just let him do these super fun versions of their minor characters, but Hyde Street's like a Mr. E book, that's done really well. Junkyard Joe.
• 1:00:11
  Tad Eggleston: Mr. E is what I go by at school.
• 1:00:14
  Kyle Starks: you should check out Hyde Street if you haven't checked it out yet. Because I thought the Mr. ebooks that they did during, like, the Books of Magic and stuff were very challenging. Right. I didn't think they were very fun or very good. Not good, but I mean, I didn't enjoy them. They didn't… they weren't fun. Whereas this Hyde Street book is really fun.
• 1:00:29
  Kyle Starks: Junkyard Joe is G.I. Robot, Geiger, which is great, is The Atomic Nights, like, they're really just pure, fun comics. I don't… so I throw this out there because I feel like maybe a lot of people have not read them for one reason or another, and what I say is that they're fun. Maybe read the fun book.
• 1:00:43
  Tad Eggleston: Yep.
• 1:00:44
  Tad Eggleston: That's the first time I've heard them described as fun, so they went higher on my list.
• 1:00:48
  Kyle Starks: Can I… can I tell you? I don't know how else you would describe them. They're just fun. Like, they're not…
• 1:00:53
  Tad Eggleston: I… I…
• 1:00:54
  Kyle Starks: You know what I mean?
• 1:00:56
  Tad Eggleston: what I've been most shocked by, like, like, I'm… I'm, and, and, and I, I, I, I, I, I say this with, with, like.
• 1:01:05
  Tad Eggleston: Absolute deference.
• 1:01:07
  Tad Eggleston: I've always been mid on Jeff Johns to begin with. I appreciate why people love him, but he's just not always my cup of tea. So I was waiting to see…
• 1:01:17
  Tad Eggleston: Like, reaction to the books, and there just hasn't been much reaction, period.
• 1:01:21
  Kyle Starks: I know they're selling great, but it seems.
• 1:01:24
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I know.
• 1:01:25
  Kyle Starks: I can't remember my… because I've seen, again, it's on my Discord, people are like, oh, I don't know why people read them. And I'm like, why was I not supposed to read them? Is there something that I don't know? I don't know it. I think they're a lot of fun. And I think when Geoff Johns is on, it's pure Kurt Busiak superhero stories.
• 1:01:40
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and that's why I'd been waiting for, like, because, like, there are a handful of people that…
• 1:01:49
  Tad Eggleston: Even the stuff that everybody loves, Of theirs, I'm…
• 1:01:54
  Tad Eggleston: I know why everybody loves it, but I'm… it's just… it's just not my cup of tea. John's is one of the ones that the more people like it, the more likely I am to like it.
• 1:02:03
  Tad Eggleston: You know, but I don't necessarily like… and… and I just hadn't heard enough. But, like, now I got Kyle Starks telling me that Hyde Street's great and whatnot, so it just went higher on my list.
• 1:02:16
  Kyle Starks: Read the first volume of Geiger, and then the first volume, because everything ties together, but doesn't tie together at all, which I think is also fun. It's a very sort of valiant universe, you know what I mean? Whereas they all exist, but they haven't… they don't exist in the same room.
• 1:02:27
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:02:28
  Kyle Starks: Read the first volume of Geiger, read the first volume of Junker Joe, they're on Hoopla.
• 1:02:33
  Kyle Starks: And then if you like Mr. E, you gotta read Hyde Street. It's a lot of fun. And it's a horror thing, it's like a fun horror anthology that's a smart premise. I think they're fun. So, again, those are the two things. Everyone's gonna read Dungeon Crawling Carl, or else we're all gonna know about it, because it's…
• 1:02:45
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:02:46
  Kyle Starks: project, and I think, like, it's… I think… I thought the Ghost Machine was…
• 1:02:50
  Kyle Starks: I know it sells really well, but it just seems like maybe, sort of, the intelligentia don't want to check it. I thought they were fun.
• 1:02:55
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:02:55
  Kyle Starks: I don't like period pieces, and one is… Redcoat is set, like, during World War II. I don't even know… I don't like history. I hate that shit. And, I really enjoy.
• 1:03:03
  Tad Eggleston: I love that shit!
• 1:03:04
  Kyle Starks: I thought it was funny, you know what, you know what Redcoat feels like? It feels like a new take… it feels like a more modern take on, like, Eternal Warrior, which I loved, I loved Valiant's Eternal Warrior. I loved the premise of that. Good book!
• 1:03:16
  Kyle Starks: The way that they pass through time, that's what Redcoat is, but it's, like, Civil War is great. I really liked it. I really like… I like this stuff, I like this. I thought it was gonna… eventually was about to do something that would make me angry in terms of the story choices. It never did it.
• 1:03:31
  Kyle Starks: I think they're just fun books, I don't know why people are hating on them, so mine's my Rex.
• 1:03:35
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and I haven't heard anybody hate on him yet, but I'm not as wired into some of the discussions.
• 1:03:41
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, yeah. I'm not… I'm not waving the flag of, like… like, if you ever read Absolute Batman, read that first, Jesus. But, like, I'm just thinking, I've heard some hate, and I'm like, man, I don't… but they haven't read it, they're like, why would people read that? I'm like, I don't know, I read them… I guess I read them on accident. I think it's fine.
• 1:03:55
  Kyle Starks: Like, I think they're fun, I read them, I've read them all now, I like them. Right. So that's my thing, what people should check out. Freerun, if you haven't read it, that's still a good one that we recommend Freerun a lot.
• 1:04:03
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah, no, that… that… I… I will second that. I haven't read enough of it, because, you know.
• 1:04:08
  Tad Eggleston: with this podcast, I read…
• 1:04:11
  Kyle Starks: A lot of the eggs.
• 1:04:12
  Tad Eggleston: A lot, a lot of stuff.
• 1:04:13
  Kyle Starks: For a middle-aged white guys, I feel like, for your… you are not going to check it out, because it's manga, so you should check it out, especially, like, the first eight episodes or whatever. Oh!
• 1:04:22
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I…
• 1:04:23
  Kyle Starks: The first 8 episodes are, like.
• 1:04:24
  Tad Eggleston: I've watched the first two episodes.
• 1:04:27
  Tad Eggleston: And I've read the first 3 volumes.
• 1:04:28
  Kyle Starks: And…
• 1:04:30
  Kyle Starks: There's two… so there's what I've learned, because I… that is a flag that I wave. The thing with Furrit is there's two types of people who like furrid. It's older people, because it's very much about
• 1:04:40
  Kyle Starks: maybe have missing parts of your life passing by. Right. Regret you have when you're older, because Freerun is thousands of years old, so she was very cold to people coming and going out of her life, and now she's aware, like, maybe she's
• 1:04:51
  Kyle Starks: Missed opportunities, emotional.
• 1:04:53
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, and also, you immediately made me cool with a couple of my students.
• 1:04:58
  Kyle Starks: Yeah, we love that. Well, the other type of person who likes a Tad, I found, especially with young people, is neurodivergent people.
• 1:05:05
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yes!
• 1:05:06
  Kyle Starks: She's wildly autistic. She is super autistic.
• 1:05:09
  Tad Eggleston: Yes.
• 1:05:09
  Kyle Starks: So those are the two people, and I found, like, for young people who don't like it, they go, it's very slow, and I'm like, oh, you can't relate to this character at all. You cannot… the reason why it's slow to use is because you are none of the things necessary.
• 1:05:19
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:05:20
  Kyle Starks: to look at this character, but this particular podcast, I know some older men, and I know now also, apparently, a lot of newer divider people. So if you're not looking for, that might be my answer every time, on accident, but man, it's… especially the first…
• 1:05:33
  Kyle Starks: Half of the first season is… I think that's right, I think it's 8… the first 8 episodes, if you watch it, are so.
• 1:05:38
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, to be fair, my mom listens to this podcast, so there's one…
• 1:05:42
  Tad Eggleston: We're not gonna call her older, because we're gonna be nice. There's one woman who listens to the podcast regularly.
• 1:05:48
  Kyle Starks: Well, she'll like it too, because it is women's.
• 1:05:50
  Tad Eggleston: And I know… and some of my students listen to the podcast, so there are some younger people that listen to the podcast.
• 1:05:56
  Kyle Starks: watching for her, and the young people are already doing it, they're cool.
• 1:05:58
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, pretty much.
• 1:06:00
  Kyle Starks: Yeah.
• 1:06:00
  Tad Eggleston: So, Kyle, thank you so much, it's always a pleasure, and for 22 Panels, we will see you after the next page.
• 1:06:09
  Kyle Starks: Thanks, brother!