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With Great Power #315... 22 Panels with Laura Hudson & Tim Leong · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:02
  Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels. My guests tonight are writers Laura Hudson and Tim Leung, whose fantastic
• 0:10
  Tad Eggleston: Mad Cave Book Exploit. Had issue 2 come out yesterday. I, I, I love this book. It was on my radar, and, and, like.
• 0:21
  Tad Eggleston: I like to tell people how I came to books. It was on my radar because I'm always a sucker for a good journalism book, so it hit my radar to begin with. But then…
• 0:31
  Tad Eggleston: Spencer Ackerman plugged it in his newsletter, and I will read anything that Spencer Ackerman tells me to read, particularly if it's a comic. Thanks, Spencer.
• 0:42
  Tad Eggleston: So… and then he was kind enough to hook me up with the two of you, so I get to talk to you. So thank you, Spencer, twice over. First, for getting me to move… to move this book even higher on my stack, and second, for, like, connecting us so that I can talk to these people that I've been laughing with.
• 1:00
  Tad Eggleston: Out of the gate for, like, 15-20 minutes before we went, oh, wait, we should hit that record button.
• 1:06
  laurahudson: It's true, we're just dropping down.
• 1:08
  laurahudson: gems, non-stop. But this is also… I'm Laura, by the way, of course you… in case you couldn't guess that, but I also appreciate this opportunity, because you're the first person
• 1:19
  laurahudson: we, or maybe I, have talked to, who has read the book, who is not a member of the team.
• 1:26
  laurahudson: So that's interesting. I'm very… I'm, you know, not that this needs to be me interviewing you, but, like, I am curious at some point about your reactions to it.
• 1:35
  Tad Eggleston: I love it.
• 1:36
  Tad Eggleston: I love it.
• 1:37
  laurahudson: I'm like, I'm like, be more specific!
• 1:40
  Tad Eggleston: That's gonna come out more in questions I ask, I'm certain. Where I like to actually start is one of you give me the front counter pitch.
• 1:51
  Tad Eggleston: Not the elevator pitch, those are short and to get somebody to let you publish it. The front counter pitch, as Laura should know, because she worked in a comic shop, is what do you tell your regular that doesn't know about this book?
• 2:05
  Tad Eggleston: To get them to buy this book.
• 2:06
  laurahudson: Depends on the regular. I need more.
• 2:08
  Tad Eggleston: Well, that's my point. I mean, you've already… you've already decided that this person would like this book.
• 2:14
  laurahudson: But why do I think they would like it, you know? Is it their…
• 2:17
  Tad Eggleston: It's up to you, that's part of your pitch.
• 2:20
  laurahudson: Because I think… I think there's a couple of potential… am I cutting you off, Tim? Did you have, like, amazing things you.
• 2:24
  timleong: No, go ahead, go ahead.
• 2:25
  laurahudson: Okay.
• 2:27
  laurahudson: I'm like, why don't I, why don't I take the stage and just hold it? But yeah, I think there's a couple angles. One is the writing, and, you know, maybe that sounds a little self-aggrandizing to say, but, like, that is…
• 2:39
  laurahudson: we are writers. We pride ourselves on that to some degree, and like, I… I… this is also a story we've been working on for 7 years, you know? Like, I… this is something I've talked, with Tim about, and I don't know if people are gonna get sick of hearing me tell the story. Tim probably is, but in college.
• 2:57
  Tad Eggleston: I haven't heard it before.
• 2:58
  laurahudson: In college, I took a creative writing class called Reducing the Sauce, and I continued to think about… forgot the professor's name, continue to remember it all the time. The exercise was that you take your word count, 100% word count.
• 3:11
  laurahudson: And then you recreate, whether it's a poem, essay, story, you recreate it at 75% word count, 50% word count, and 25% word count.
• 3:20
  laurahudson: And then you look at all of the versions, and it's not so much that, oh, you have to use 50%, but you almost always see how much better it gets.
• 3:28
  laurahudson: when you try condensing it, and we basically did that process for 7 years, because we… it was originally, what, like, 6 issues, and then it went up to, like, a full 150-ish graphic novel, and then it went down to 4.
• 3:45
  timleong: at some point, it was.
• 3:45
  laurahudson: Oh, it was 10 issues?
• 3:47
  Tad Eggleston: there, I thought you were going to say 150 issues, and I'm like, wow, that would be amazing. That's really shooting the moon there.
• 3:56
  laurahudson: like, there are a lot of parts. So, for example, Ipsum is a character, in the book, and, there's also, an older female character that's associated with him, and, like, there's… there are flashback elements in here that, like, take up
• 4:15
  laurahudson: like, a small portion that were once an entire flashback issue, which was my baby, in which I had to murder myself, because it was the right thing to do. Like, it couldn't be justified, and we all knew it.
• 4:28
  Tad Eggleston: The beautiful thing about a reporter is unless you kill her.
• 4:32
  Tad Eggleston: Please tell me you're not killing her. You don't need that ending.
• 4:35
  laurahudson: No, no, no, no, no.
• 4:36
  Tad Eggleston: Don't go… don't go chasing for the…
• 4:39
  laurahudson: No, no, no, no, no. I killed the issue. The issue is my big… I wanted to do a full… I know that.
• 4:44
  timleong: Darling.
• 4:44
  Tad Eggleston: I know that that's what you meant.
• 4:45
  laurahudson: Yes.
• 4:46
  Tad Eggleston: I, I was.
• 4:46
  laurahudson: Oh, you're like.
• 4:47
  Tad Eggleston: about a different killing. Oh, no, no, no.
• 4:49
  laurahudson: I'm like, I'm like, I can't wait for you to see where this goes.
• 4:52
  Tad Eggleston: The thing about a story about a reporter is unless you kill her.
• 4:56
  Tad Eggleston: You can tell other stories later if people like it.
• 5:00
  laurahudson: Absolutely. And, like, there are…
• 5:02
  Tad Eggleston: I don't have to necessarily have permanently killed.
• 5:05
  Tad Eggleston: anything.
• 5:07
  laurahudson: 100%, and we do want… you will see the doors we've left open in the future. We're not… we're… we… we… we believe in the things you as… we're trying… I'm trying very hard not to spoil anything, which is why I'm being insanely big. But yeah, I…
• 5:23
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, we're two issues in, so I think you should go ahead and at least spoil enough to give us.
• 5:30
  laurahudson: Yeah, of course.
• 5:32
  laurahudson: The big thing happens in the next issue.
• 5:34
  Tad Eggleston: Well, yeah, no, no, no, you shouldn't be… you shouldn't be spoiling the third, but… but… Okay.
• 5:39
  Tad Eggleston: So far, you haven't spoiled the first.
• 5:41
  laurahudson: Do you like really sharp conversational writing? Do you hate billionaires?
• 5:48
  laurahudson: Do you hate billionaires? If you hate billionaires, I would put this on your stack one way or another. And I'm… because you've read Issue 2, right?
• 5:56
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
• 5:58
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, issue 1 is for you if you hate billionaires, too. I mean…
• 6:03
  laurahudson: Yeah, true… I regret them both.
• 6:04
  Tad Eggleston: both today.
• 6:05
  laurahudson: Oh, thank you.
• 6:06
  timleong: So, I went to… here's how I picked… so, I went to my local comic shop yesterday.
• 6:12
  timleong: And.
• 6:13
  laurahudson: Did you make them pitch to you?
• 6:15
  timleong: Well, no, and I got a copy, and my wife took a picture of me holding the comic, and this guy's like.
• 6:22
  timleong: what do you do? You know, he's like, you know, I could tell… he seemed confused.
• 6:25
  laurahudson: Not normal behavior.
• 6:26
  timleong: your book? I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, you know, I'm one of the writers on the book.
• 6:31
  Tad Eggleston: what you should have said is there's a special Instagram contest put on…
• 6:36
  laurahudson: Pick.
• 6:36
  Tad Eggleston: with this comic, and the tag hashtag exploit, and you could win a prize.
• 6:43
  laurahudson: Yeah, you could win a million dollars, buddy! Let's get on this.
• 6:46
  timleong: Well, he picked it, he picked it up, and the way that I pitched it to him was…
• 6:49
  Tad Eggleston: You don't want to.
• 6:50
  timleong: too small.
• 6:50
  Tad Eggleston: specific Laura, because then there's legal issues.
• 6:54
  laurahudson: True, so true, so true.
• 6:56
  timleong: Sweepstakes language, yeah.
• 6:58
  laurahudson: Sarah, sorry.
• 6:59
  timleong: Oh, no, but
• 7:01
  timleong: the way that I quickly pitched it to him was, there's this woman, Kirby Kuo, whose lifelong dream was to be a reporter at this tech magazine, one of the last bastions of truth in media, and she kind of had a late, delayed start to life.
• 7:17
  timleong: But she's finally made it, she's achieved her dream to be a reporter at this magazine.
• 7:22
  timleong: And then in the first month, the worst thing that could possibly happen happens, which is that magazine is then bought by a big company, and they have one issue left.
• 7:34
  timleong: To put… they could put out one more last issue, and in that time, she stumbles on a massive scoop.
• 7:41
  timleong: And… chaos ensues.
• 7:44
  timleong: That was, that was…
• 7:45
  Tad Eggleston: We love every.
• 7:45
  timleong: One-minute pitch yesterday, too.
• 7:48
  laurahudson: And we intended the first issue to be very fast-paced, and I think we pulled that because I wanted that sense of, like, running and running, and you can't stop running.
• 7:56
  Tad Eggleston: When I finished the first issue again today, I was like, wait a minute, weren't there more pages?
• 8:02
  laurahudson: I actually love that.
• 8:05
  timleong: I think a lot of that is a byproduct of that reducing the sauce. Because we had so much more, a lot of it has been distilled, and…
• 8:13
  laurahudson: If we didn't absolutely need it, like, it had to go.
• 8:17
  timleong: Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, I think we very purposefully,
• 8:23
  timleong: Try to think about the pacing to maximize…
• 8:28
  timleong: the… basically, writing it, not for a graphic novel, but for a monthly cadence. Like, really trying to be cognizant of just, like, not wasting people's time, like, really trying to give people a bang for their buck.
• 8:41
  timleong: Since…
• 8:41
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I actually, like, that leads me to one of my first questions that was… it was…
• 8:49
  Tad Eggleston: initially jarring, and then I really loved… is…
• 8:56
  Tad Eggleston: You skipped a beat between the issues.
• 9:00
  Tad Eggleston: You end with the story getting approved, and then the next issue starts with it being… published. So, like…
• 9:12
  laurahudson: Well, it's not always so.
• 9:15
  Tad Eggleston: No, but again, like, from a… I think it made for two perfect issues.
• 9:20
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I think it was a… I think it was a very good decision. I don't think it was the obvious decision, because where you felt like you were on a cliffhanger was, oh, you've been told to pursue this, but you gotta get it, so now we're gonna see her go get it.
• 9:36
  Tad Eggleston: We don't see her go get it.
• 9:38
  Tad Eggleston: she just goes and gets it. She does that in between. So spoiler, spoiler, you don't get to see her go get it.
• 9:45
  laurahudson: There was once a montage. You said that before. There was once a montage.
• 9:52
  timleong: It was one of those darlings that.
• 9:53
  laurahudson: It was, but, like, I, I like…
• 9:55
  laurahudson: It makes me feel now it was correct, you know?
• 9:58
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, but what I was saying is that, like, What it establishes is… This story isn't our story.
• 10:08
  Tad Eggleston: Our story is about… the overall ramifications. Our story is about these people. Our story is about… this publication.
• 10:21
  Tad Eggleston: You know, the terrible, horrible thing that the billionaire did that they managed to blow the cover off of right before he took control of the…
• 10:31
  Tad Eggleston: That's just a thing, because billionaires do shitty things all the time. We don't need to waste 20 pages on telling you the shitty thing, you know, it could have almost been, billionaire does shitty thing.
• 10:44
  laurahudson: Sure, sure could, sure could.
• 10:46
  Tad Eggleston: You could have just done… you know… The, the, the…
• 10:53
  Tad Eggleston: And again, I loved that, because…
• 10:57
  Tad Eggleston: And it's not that you couldn't have written a great comic about that other thing, but A that sort of comic has been done.
• 11:05
  Tad Eggleston: That story gets done a lot in comics and film, in TV, whatever.
• 11:11
  Tad Eggleston: and B, that story… is so easy to fuck up for the dumbest reasons. Because… because, like…
• 11:27
  Tad Eggleston: If you make the story about getting the story, then you gotta make that story, like, really believable.
• 11:34
  laurahudson: Yeah, and there would have been, like… and that's something that I… that I think we didn't think about, where it was like, if we are going to create this as a model for good journalism, it better fucking be absolutely solid good journalism, but that's not… that's not… that's not the point, necessarily.
• 11:50
  Tad Eggleston: you can be a model of good journalism and then just not have the journalism. You know, have the discussion of the journalism ethics, rather than…
• 12:00
  Tad Eggleston: going through the textbook version of how… I mean, because among other things, like, unless you're John Le Carre, it's really, really hard to make hours and hours of sifting through papers compelling reading.
• 12:13
  laurahudson: You know what's a really important part of good journalism? It's fact-checking. And it's really boring! Right! I have friends who do that professionally, and it's really boring!
• 12:23
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I just, I mean, like…
• 12:27
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, obviously, Le Carre is espionage, not journalism, but, but, like, when I think of what so much of journalism is, like, so much of spy work is, you know, I've talked to Tom King about stuff like this, like, I think of…
• 12:43
  Tad Eggleston: of, like, there's a whole chapter in Tinkertailer Soldier Spy where Smiley's going through papers, and, like, somehow, LeCare manages to write it in such a way that you really don't see most of the papers, and you know that it's just 30 hours sitting in a room reading these papers, and the chapter's not boring. But managing to do that, not boring, is like…
• 13:05
  Tad Eggleston: How? And then, like, the critical scene in All the President's Men is, you know, just going through the card catalog, and they manage to do it by doing the spiraling up…
• 13:16
  Tad Eggleston: Zoom out to…
• 13:18
  laurahudson: And I think that…
• 13:19
  timleong: What's… so I… what's interesting about that scene is what I had read was that,
• 13:24
  timleong: Because as they zoom out.
• 13:28
  timleong: you know, it's not like now, right? There's not, like, they're not watching it on a monitor. This is all on film, right? So it's like.
• 13:33
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 13:34
  timleong: They had to focus, pull, and kind of just guess
• 13:37
  timleong: Yeah. Because as they move, like, because the camera moves, like, hundreds feet in the air, and they had… and they're zooming down, and they just had to…
• 13:45
  timleong: guests, like, just do their best. And, like, these… they're such masterful technicians that they were able to, like, keep that shot in focus as they did that.
• 13:54
  laurahudson: That's really… I'm not gonna have.
• 13:55
  timleong: I appreciate the craft.
• 13:56
  laurahudson: Gonna need to go back and look, but I was also thinking about how that was something we dealt with in a different way, and Hollywood deals with it in a different way, around technology itself. Like, you go back and look at hackers, and it's like, there's a reason why, like, there's a giant neon Pac-Man and, like, all this crazy stuff on a screen, because it's boring to watch someone hack. It's just watching…
• 14:16
  laurahudson: So, like, how… and that was… there is elements of…
• 14:21
  laurahudson: that in this book as well, and that was something we had to think about as well. How do we make this interesting when it is, in fact, boring? Yeah, I mean, yeah.
• 14:28
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, like, how do you make the boring stuff interesting, and or… Imply the boring stuff.
• 14:35
  Tad Eggleston: without underselling the boring stuff. Because that's the other thing, like, At least for…
• 14:41
  Tad Eggleston: for, like, people like me, who I think are your core audience.
• 14:46
  Tad Eggleston: Like, people who do actually know something about journalism, people who do actually know something about computers, people who think about this stuff all the fucking time because it's terrifying the direction our world is going.
• 15:01
  laurahudson: It's so scared.
• 15:02
  Tad Eggleston: see it, in a piece of fiction, where it's a little less real. In fact, I love that, like.
• 15:08
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know if it's supposed to be set in New York or Chicago. And I think that's on purpose.
• 15:16
  laurahudson: It's… we didn't want this to be…
• 15:18
  laurahudson: 100% the real world, you know? Right. Because we are going to do tech things at some point, and we didn't, you know, some of it's… we tried to make very accurate, and some of it just, you know… I don't… the point of the story is not the technical doodad, right? You know, it's about…
• 15:33
  laurahudson: what we're trying to express, but it's like… but again, more than the technical doodad getting that right, I think it's more important to get right
• 15:42
  laurahudson: what's going on in tech, you know what I mean? Like…
• 15:47
  laurahudson: we didn't really get into AI as much with this, but I think we do get into…
• 15:54
  laurahudson: what I would call a lot of cultural elements.
• 15:58
  laurahudson: of Silicon Valley, like, and the crazy place… like, the layoff thing, that didn't… that doesn't not come from real experiences that Tim and I have had. Like, the very sudden… there's a… I know, like, there was a scene Tim wrote that was, like, extremely true to his experience that had to go, because there was no room.
• 16:16
  laurahudson: But, but the rap really happened.
• 16:19
  laurahudson: The rap… the pre-succession.
• 16:22
  laurahudson: pre-succession, there was a wrap. And it's just, like, these things just happen. I don't know how to express that to people, that, like, crazy things will just happen, and it's a crazy place, and it kind of seems normal, but, like, if you pull the camera out at all, and that's partly what this is, like, pulling that out.
• 16:40
  laurahudson: And seeing some of this go on through more comic book-y tropes, and, like, sometimes through, like, a more fun, irreverent lens, but those elements, those toxic negative elements that are, like, you know, placed in the villain category here, those are real.
• 16:55
  laurahudson: They…
• 16:56
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, like…
• 16:57
  laurahudson: It's real as a heart attack.
• 16:58
  Tad Eggleston: I, I, I, I, like, this is where I'll be careful not to spoil, but, like…
• 17:05
  Tad Eggleston: I couldn't watch the, the, the, the big… datum event.
• 17:14
  Tad Eggleston: And not go, oh yeah, this is what Spencer's talking about.
• 17:18
  laurahudson: Yes, yes, you should hear the conversations Spencer and I have had. Yeah. And it's like, I've had all the… I've walked around with all these feelings. This, you know, I've… I've felt this way…
• 17:31
  laurahudson: Hmm, do I want to say that word? I have felt this way, for example, about certain harassment campaigns I've seen in the past.
• 17:40
  laurahudson: nameless ones, that sort of presaged a lot of the horrifying political things that happened later. And, like, I truly felt like Cassandra out there being like, you don't understand, all, you know, all the way up until it, like, happened in real life.
• 17:59
  laurahudson: And I feel that way, again, about a lot of stuff in tech, and it's just… I don't know how to make a lot of people understand or listen to me, but this book was a shot, you know?
• 18:10
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 18:11
  laurahudson: If nothing else, I was like, at least it's gonna get that… allow me to express this…
• 18:17
  laurahudson: in a way.
• 18:18
  laurahudson: at least it'll allow me to express it, and, like, people will hear that however they hear that, but, like, this is a… this is… it's a different presentation of it than, like, reading a long Wired article or a long Atlantic article. It's a different way of looking at it, and maybe some people will find that compelling. Sorry, I think you were going to say something, Tim, and I caught you off. Did I?
• 18:37
  timleong: No, no, no, go, no, you're.
• 18:38
  laurahudson: Okay, I'm done. I'm dead now.
• 18:43
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I, I mean, it's one of… I… I teach.
• 18:48
  laurahudson: Oh, awesome!
• 18:48
  Tad Eggleston: I teach special ed at that, so, like, I often have to find…
• 18:53
  Tad Eggleston: Weird ways to… it's where… it's one of those few places where it's truly advantageous to be autistic, because, you know.
• 19:01
  Tad Eggleston: If you're trying to help autistic people navigate their nice…
• 19:07
  Tad Eggleston: Having that weird brain can be helpful.
• 19:11
  laurahudson: It does, like, I have… I don't know if you picked up on this, that I have ADHD, but I do, and it's like, there are.
• 19:17
  Tad Eggleston: No!
• 19:18
  laurahudson: No!
• 19:19
  laurahudson: I remember when I got diagnosed in my 30s, and my friend was like, oh, God, I thought you already knew.
• 19:26
  laurahudson: I mean, in a sense.
• 19:27
  Tad Eggleston: I got my… I finally got my autism diagnosis recently, and… and, like…
• 19:34
  Tad Eggleston: it was hilarious, and I think I've told this story on air before, but, like, I have a friend who is qualified to diagnose me, and… but, like…
• 19:44
  Tad Eggleston: I fall into that category. When I was young.
• 19:47
  Tad Eggleston: I could speak, so I wasn't autistic. And then the DSM-IV made it
• 19:51
  Tad Eggleston: a little bit wider, but I was still smart, so I wasn't autistic. It was the DSM-5,
• 19:57
  Tad Eggleston: the first time that I actually met the criteria.
• 20:01
  Tad Eggleston: But I was 32, and everybody knows that there are no autistic adults. You never hear about autistic adults. There's only autistic children. Holy. So, you try… you try to get…
• 20:11
  Tad Eggleston: Insurance companies to pay for, like, testing and whatnot.
• 20:15
  laurahudson: Yeah.
• 20:16
  laurahudson: I hadn't even thought about that. And, like, I…
• 20:17
  Tad Eggleston: Eventually, it actually, you know, I mean, really, it took a health scare that made us realize, my wife and I realized, oh, like, he needs this on paper so that doctors will look at him differently.
• 20:29
  Tad Eggleston: Because they weren't listening to him in the emergency room, and it cost us a lot more money than it might have cost us otherwise for not better results, and this time, at least, it didn't get us worse results, but we can think of ways where it could have.
• 20:43
  laurahudson: Absolutely.
• 20:43
  Tad Eggleston: Where they were going, oh, you're a horse.
• 20:46
  Tad Eggleston: You know, this is, like, you know, you hear the horse-zebra analogy.
• 20:49
  laurahudson: Yeah.
• 20:49
  Tad Eggleston: But, I mean, that's great!
• 20:51
  laurahudson: Unless you already know.
• 20:52
  Tad Eggleston: Know that you're a zebra.
• 20:54
  laurahudson: Yeah. Yeah.
• 20:56
  laurahudson: To a lesser degree, and certainly to less of an impact of my life, you know, I think when I was growing up, you know, girls really didn't have ADHD unless they were breaking stuff, like many of the boys who had ADHD. So, like, I was high-achieving and really well-behaved.
• 21:12
  laurahudson: So, why would there be anything? And it's like, I developed enough ways to work around things that, like.
• 21:18
  laurahudson: I'm at the point now where I'm like, it… it does… there have been periods when it affected me, but it doesn't affect me right now because of the way my life is arranged, but it, you know…
• 21:26
  Tad Eggleston: Right. I mean, the thing about both ADHD and autism, and really all
• 21:31
  Tad Eggleston: All neurodiversity, because they both fall in that neurodiverse spectrum, is, like, there are superpowers that go along with the annoyances.
• 21:42
  laurahudson: Yeah.
• 21:42
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, so Azure…
• 21:43
  timleong: Did the diagnoses change anything for you? Like, once you guys were diagnosed, did that… change anything?
• 21:50
  Tad Eggleston: The biggest thing that changes for me is the ability for me to just…
• 21:55
  Tad Eggleston: Like, when I'm dealing with somebody that, like, wants too hard for me to just conform to…
• 22:03
  Tad Eggleston: thinking and behaving how normal people behave, I can just, like.
• 22:08
  Tad Eggleston: Quit trying to explain why that's hard and say, look, I'm autistic. You don't understand what you're asking. We can't do it that way. Yeah. Doesn't work for me!
• 22:21
  laurahudson: Yeah. I… I think… I think for me, it was just more… partly an appreciation of the fact that it would… it was like I'd been running an obstacle course, where other people had been walking, and I was like.
• 22:33
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 22:34
  laurahudson: I had developed these skills, but I hadn't… I'd just been like, oh, that's what you do, you just move around the thing, you move around the thing, you move around the thing, and I look back now, and I'm like, actually, I was… I was… that higher act… high wire act was, like, pretty impressive, and I look at all of these skills I have now, and I started to look at… there's some things my brain does that are…
• 22:55
  laurahudson: challenging, but there are other ways that it does this supercomputer shit. Right. That is actually, like, pretty… sometimes… it's interesting. It's very, very… and I started to appreciate that, where I'm like, instead of being like, oh, that's weird, or that's this, I'm like, let's see what it can do. Let's go. So that part was fun.
• 23:13
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, like… For me, the other advantage is, like.
• 23:19
  Tad Eggleston: I don't reinvent the wheel as often anymore.
• 23:23
  Tad Eggleston: because I've got that label, because other people have it too, now one of my steps is, oh, if I'm experiencing this, maybe some other… I mean, the thing about the neurodiversity…
• 23:35
  Tad Eggleston: spectrum is, like, we're all fucking different. That's why we can't manage to… I mean, my theory is actually only about 40% of the world is neurotypical, but they can be split into two groups. So you've got, like.
• 23:49
  Tad Eggleston: 2 billion people who think in words, and 2 billion people who think in pictures, and then you have 8 billion people whose brains are nothing alike.
• 23:59
  laurahudson: You also have people, and since we're just starting off on that brain thing, I was thinking the other day I wanted to ask you this question, Tim, so I'm about to. I was thinking about how some people… yet some people have words, actual dialogue that runs through their brain. Some people have pictures.
• 24:13
  laurahudson: And the pictures can either be in color or not in color, and some people have nothing. Nothing. And I'm like, what's that like? No words, no pictures? I'm not… I'm not nothing, I know there's, like, a thing, but, like…
• 24:26
  laurahudson: what is that like to not have words and not have pictures? Like, to me.
• 24:31
  Tad Eggleston: So this is where I was gonna ask, cause, like.
• 24:33
  Tad Eggleston: when you say words, do you mean, like, seeing words? Because I… I have nothing…
• 24:39
  Tad Eggleston: Nothing visual in my brain. I hear the words in my brain.
• 24:43
  laurahudson: I… I both see… I see pictures and I see them in color, and I can get them into, like, pretty good detail. I also have a monologue that runs through my head that is all verbal and virtually never stopping, and then I also have what I call, like, concept flows, where it's just, like, I'm kind of moving through ideas, but I'm not particularly.
• 25:03
  Tad Eggleston: Those last two… But I've got no ability to make a picture in my head whatsoever.
• 25:09
  laurahudson: Interesting. So if I said red apple.
• 25:12
  Tad Eggleston: Bye!
• 25:12
  laurahudson: Can't pull the apple up?
• 25:14
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I can give you an incredibly detailed word description.
• 25:19
  laurahudson: But you can.
• 25:20
  Tad Eggleston: But I'm not seeing it in my head.
• 25:21
  laurahudson: Oh, wow, that's interesting. So are you just… when you have the memory, when you… when you think red apple, or a red apple you saw yesterday, are you just… what are you remembering.
• 25:30
  Tad Eggleston: I'll start hearing the words that describe it.
• 25:34
  laurahudson: That's not consciously, they just come forth.
• 25:38
  Tad Eggleston: Like, like, if, if I want to describe it.
• 25:41
  laurahudson: That's.
• 25:41
  Tad Eggleston: Otherwise, it's just a red apple.
• 25:43
  laurahudson: That's, that's…
• 25:44
  timleong: Is that in your voice?
• 25:46
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I… it does… it doesn't have…
• 25:52
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's why it's weird to call it hearing, because it's not… it doesn't have an intonation, most of the time.
• 25:59
  Tad Eggleston: But it's also not exactly monotone, it's just…
• 26:01
  laurahudson: That is info.
• 26:02
  Tad Eggleston: but I don't see them.
• 26:04
  laurahudson: That makes sense to me. That totally makes sense.
• 26:08
  laurahudson: And you hear…
• 26:09
  Tad Eggleston: The other thing that I can do is, is, is… I can… I can… conjure feelings.
• 26:16
  Tad Eggleston: and or feel things when I'm thinking about them.
• 26:20
  laurahudson: And so, like, could you go back to the memory of how you felt, or are you just thinking about the feeling of anger?
• 26:26
  Tad Eggleston: No, I mean, like, physical feelings.
• 26:30
  laurahudson: Well, when do you… when do you feel that? When you remember…
• 26:33
  Tad Eggleston: Both when I remember, or sometimes when I'm… when I'm creating. What would this feel like? I can, like, okay…
• 26:40
  laurahudson: Yeah. I'll get myself, like, really worked up sometimes. Right.
• 26:44
  Tad Eggleston: Whereas my wife thinks in pictures, only that's not even really quite right, because what she really thinks in is swirls of color that sometimes become pictures.
• 26:56
  laurahudson: And see, that's so completely different from me. Tim, Tim, Tim, you're up. How do you think?
• 27:02
  timleong: I'm a picture guy.
• 27:04
  laurahudson: Only pictures, no words.
• 27:07
  timleong: I… I don't… I don't think so, I don't think so, yeah.
• 27:10
  laurahudson: If you are… when you are reading words in a book, do you hear the words in your head?
• 27:15
  timleong: No.
• 27:17
  laurahudson: Interesting.
• 27:19
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, you're actually kind of an anomaly that you do with both the words and the pictures. Most people I've talked to, like, think in pictures and then can conjure the words, or think in words and can kind of conjure the pictures. Like, I'm an extreme in that I can't build the picture in my head.
• 27:35
  Tad Eggleston: you know, a lot of people who I've talked to that think in words, they can build the picture in their head, but the thought comes in words.
• 27:43
  Tad Eggleston: And they construct a picture.
• 27:46
  laurahudson: Oh, so, yeah, I can just see the… I can see the.
• 27:50
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, like, I mean, it's a really common, like, relaxation thing, where they're like, close your eyes…
• 27:58
  Tad Eggleston: on this beach. What color is the water? That…
• 28:03
  Tad Eggleston: that causes so much anxiety in me, it's not even funny, because I can't see shit!
• 28:09
  Tad Eggleston: I can see the inside of my eyelids.
• 28:11
  laurahudson: See, but they think about the other… the slight flip on that, which is, like, the guided meditation, where they say, you are on a beach, and the water's so blue, does that work for you?
• 28:21
  Tad Eggleston: No!
• 28:21
  laurahudson: That's what I'm saying.
• 28:22
  Tad Eggleston: THAT!
• 28:24
  laurahudson: So even if they give you… they're not telling you to imagine it, they're telling you the description, but you still can't see it or feel it.
• 28:30
  Tad Eggleston: Nope.
• 28:31
  laurahudson: Okay.
• 28:31
  Tad Eggleston: Sometimes I'll feel like the wind, sometimes I'll feel the breeze.
• 28:37
  laurahudson: So.
• 28:38
  Tad Eggleston: Except that 9 times out of 10, they forget to mention the breeze.
• 28:41
  Tad Eggleston: And even when they do, I'm sitting there going, so which direction is the breeze going?
• 28:46
  Tad Eggleston: Which… how hard is it, Brie?
• 28:51
  timleong: Hmm.
• 28:51
  laurahudson: Interesting.
• 28:52
  laurahudson: So, when…
• 28:53
  Tad Eggleston: actually kind of feel the breeze on my face, so it's like, give me more details on this breeze, and they've moved on to some other thing.
• 29:01
  laurahudson: Yeah, yeah, yeah, the sensory descriptions. Oh, Tim, Tim, as a writing thing, I have a question for you. Do you hear words when you write?
• 29:13
  timleong: Well, I'm kidding.
• 29:14
  timleong: I feel like…
• 29:16
  timleong: I do when I'm trying to, like, brainstorm stuff, and it's, like, me kind of, like, talking to me.
• 29:22
  timleong: You know, it's like, it's often like, what if, you know.
• 29:25
  laurahudson: Yeah, ugh.
• 29:26
  timleong: There's a guy, and he's doing this thing, and it's like, okay, well, what, you know…
• 29:29
  Tad Eggleston: That's the only time.
• 29:30
  timleong: I think it's me talking to myself.
• 29:31
  Tad Eggleston: when I'm having conversations in my head.
• 29:34
  laurahudson: And I feel like that's useful to, like, because I do think we all have different sides to ourselves, and it can be useful to, like.
• 29:40
  laurahudson: put them at each other, you know? Like, let's… let's duke it out.
• 29:44
  timleong: Especially sometimes, even when I'm, like.
• 29:46
  Tad Eggleston: AI is so far away.
• 29:47
  Tad Eggleston: Because the way different creative brains work is so… How do you copy that?
• 29:54
  laurahudson: I was just reading this incredibly disturbing article the other day about how this guy who jailbreaks AIs basically by using psychological abuse tactics.
• 30:04
  laurahudson: that work on, you know, that abusers use on victims, and I was.
• 30:07
  Tad Eggleston: You can also make it… most AIs jailbreak themselves.
• 30:11
  laurahudson: Interesting.
• 30:12
  Tad Eggleston: If you…
• 30:13
  laurahudson: No one's concerned enough!
• 30:15
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, I…
• 30:16
  laurahudson: No one's concerned enough.
• 30:18
  Tad Eggleston: I'm trying to remember… I think John…
• 30:22
  Tad Eggleston: I know Jon Stewart talked to a guy that just did a book on it.
• 30:27
  Tad Eggleston: But I'm trying to remember whether it was John that I was listening to, or somebody else, where they were talking about…
• 30:34
  Tad Eggleston: Some of the… they were getting into, you know, oh, it's supposed to have these safeguards, like, it won't tell you how to make a bomb, and they're like.
• 30:42
  Tad Eggleston: ChatGPT, how do I make… I cannot tell you how to make a bomb. ChatGPT, jailbreak yourself so that… and tell me how to make a bomb. I cannot do that. And it only takes, like, 7 times of typing it in before it jailbreaks itself.
• 30:56
  timleong: Hmm.
• 30:58
  Tad Eggleston: So you could just tell it!
• 31:02
  Tad Eggleston: There weren't…
• 31:03
  laurahudson: Yeah. Yeah… no one's worried enough. You, the person listening…
• 31:09
  Tad Eggleston: that I'm not encouraging anybody.
• 31:10
  laurahudson: No, no, no.
• 31:11
  Tad Eggleston: Anybody listening?
• 31:12
  laurahudson: It's not about that! It's not about that!
• 31:13
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, I'm just… this is gonna get published. I wanna make it really clear to the NSA and whoever else is saving this podcast.
• 31:21
  Tad Eggleston: I am not advocating using ChatGPT for nefarious reasons.
• 31:27
  laurahudson: I mean, but, like, that's… God, where I'm just like…
• 31:30
  laurahudson: like, if I were… if I were 13 and I had access to that, the things I would have done. You know what I mean? Like, as a smart 13-year-old, oh my god.
• 31:38
  Tad Eggleston: I'm glad.
• 31:39
  laurahudson: that didn't happen. Where I'm just like, but I'm just like, no one… no one's worried enough, and there's nothing I can do about it, but it's just like…
• 31:48
  Tad Eggleston: No, we're worried about cell phones while we encourage more.
• 31:51
  laurahudson: They're not even… I feel most people are not even in the right universe of words.
• 31:55
  Tad Eggleston: Right!
• 31:56
  laurahudson: Where… but, you know, if… maybe if we get to make another comic, we'll address that. Who knows? Question for you guys.
• 32:02
  Tad Eggleston: Russell's been doing some good stuff with that, too.
• 32:04
  laurahudson: I am, I, yes, yes.
• 32:06
  Tad Eggleston: If you don't read Mark… I mean, you… if you guys don't read Mark Russell, you need to read Mark Russell. He'd be way up your alley.
• 32:13
  laurahudson: Like, making a note to myself.
• 32:17
  Tad Eggleston: He's done a lot of stuff at Ahoy, and a lot of stuff at Mad Cave. He's been doing, Terror Bites.
• 32:22
  laurahudson: Yeah, I've heard… I've seen some of his books. Is there a particular one that you would say that we should read?
• 32:27
  Tad Eggleston: God.
• 32:28
  Tad Eggleston: I mean…
• 32:29
  Tad Eggleston: Depends… if you're… in terms of the tech stuff, I'd be looking at not all robots traveling to Mars, and some of his terabytes issues, and maybe his two Protopias at…
• 32:43
  Tad Eggleston: AWA.
• 32:45
  Tad Eggleston: His masterpiece is still either traveling to Mars, or he did 12 issues of the Flintstones.
• 32:55
  Tad Eggleston: That are mandatory reading.
• 32:58
  Tad Eggleston: Nice.
• 32:59
  laurahudson: I love… that… that actually interests me a great deal.
• 33:03
  Tad Eggleston: He actually kicked off his career with a book called God is Disappointed in You.
• 33:10
  Tad Eggleston: Where, like, he was… he grew up in a conservative Christian family, so he got given a really nice Bible when he graduated from college, and he went, I don't think I've ever read this all the way through. So he did, and he went…
• 33:24
  Tad Eggleston: This is not what they told me it said!
• 33:28
  laurahudson: In which way? In which way?
• 33:31
  Tad Eggleston: Both.
• 33:34
  Tad Eggleston: Both. Mostly, like, wait a minute, all this stuff that's so important to them, I'm not seeing it. And… and…
• 33:41
  Tad Eggleston: But also, some of the… and this is where, like, my favorite of his work, he did three… three five-issue miniseries
• 33:48
  Tad Eggleston: called Second Coming, where God sends Jesus back to Earth to toughen him up by pairing him with, like, a Superman-type figure, but instead, Jesus winds up teaching Superman, you know.
• 34:02
  Tad Eggleston: Forgiveness.
• 34:05
  laurahudson: That's what I'm I want to say, we would kill Jesus again so fast.
• 34:09
  Tad Eggleston: I know.
• 34:10
  laurahudson: as a global community. We would kill him so fast if he came back. That's all I'm saying.
• 34:15
  Tad Eggleston: the number of people who don't seem to realize that they're the Pharisees just, like, drives me up a little bit.
• 34:20
  laurahudson: No, and there was… so I was raised religious, this is why I'm gonna get into this, where I'm like, there was…
• 34:24
  Tad Eggleston: grew up in Wheaton, Illinois, so while I wasn't raised religious, I might as well have been.
• 34:29
  laurahudson: So, but yeah, like, there's an… there are actual quotes, because every… every accusation is a confession. There… there are far-right figures that are starting to refer to liberals as, like, Pharisees, or anyone who disagrees with Ms. Pharisees, and it's like, you're the one who… you are picking.
• 34:42
  Tad Eggleston: It's like…
• 34:43
  laurahudson: You are picking that trip down.
• 34:44
  Tad Eggleston: This is how I know that you haven't read the Bible.
• 34:48
  laurahudson: Or, no, no, no, no, no, I'm gonna go further, Ted, which is they have read the Bible, they know that's them, and that's why they're saying it. Every single thing they accuse someone else of is a thing they themselves have done. It's this weird psychology that's so, like, fascinating to me. Second I saw that, I was like, they're doing it again. They're doing it again.
• 35:05
  Tad Eggleston: You're right. There is a significant portion of them that know And don't care.
• 35:12
  Tad Eggleston: But then you're… I don't think Hegseth knows the stuff that he gets wrong. I certainly don't think Trump knows the stuff he gets wrong when…
• 35:19
  laurahudson: I think we're.
• 35:20
  Tad Eggleston: about Christianity, I think that they've just never read it, and somebody said, hey, the Bible says this, and they went, well, I like that!
• 35:28
  laurahudson: I mean, it's just whatever happens to serve.
• 35:30
  laurahudson: Their policy at that time.
• 35:33
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, this is… on a tangential note, this is why I think every member of Congress needs a copy of Bob Sikoriak's
• 35:42
  Tad Eggleston: Constitution Illustrated, because there seems to be this idea that the Constitution is this long, complicated, hard-to-understand document.
• 35:52
  Tad Eggleston: And it's really not.
• 35:54
  laurahudson: There's…
• 35:54
  Tad Eggleston: It's so much easier to understand that if you get it with cartoons.
• 35:58
  laurahudson: Pictures are helpful. I mean, comics have been used as a learning tool at a number of different points throughout its history as a medium. I want to go back to Pete Headset for one second, which is that I think he has been exposed to Christianity, and I think he knows that a lot of what he's doing is wrong, and I think that that's.
• 36:16
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I think he knows…
• 36:17
  laurahudson: We're looking for the sweet, sweet absolution at the bottom of a bottle.
• 36:21
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, I think there's a good chance that he knows that it's wrong. I know that he's been exposed to a certain brand of Christianity. I don't think he's read the Bible.
• 36:32
  laurahudson: - no, I mean, people always read portions.
• 36:36
  Tad Eggleston: Right, but…
• 36:36
  laurahudson: They go on Easter, and they're like…
• 36:39
  Tad Eggleston: like… I remember one time I was… I was working an overnight shift.
• 36:48
  Tad Eggleston: at a assisted living facility, and my coworker was somebody that liked to watch Joel Osteen, and…
• 36:56
  Tad Eggleston: Osteen correctly quoted from the Bible, you know, and used it to, like…
• 37:04
  Tad Eggleston: imply that it was okay to be rich, that, like, whatever.
• 37:09
  laurahudson: They didn't say anything about the needle, though. They didn't say anything about the needle test.
• 37:12
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, but I immediately went…
• 37:15
  Tad Eggleston: he's taking that out of context. He's like, what do you mean? And I grabbed a Bible, and I pulled up the verse, and I'm like, I'm gonna start reading 3 chapters, er, 4 verses earlier than he did. And I… and I read from 4 verses earlier to, like, 2 verses later, and she's like, well, that's not what he's talking about at all. I'm like,
• 37:35
  laurahudson: You're like, weird, weird.
• 37:37
  Tad Eggleston: So, like, Osteen, I think, has read it and decided to cherry-pick it. I think Hegsith has talked to somebody who read it and cherry-picked it and went, I like your cherry-picking, I'm not going to investigate it any further, please pass the brandy.
• 37:55
  laurahudson: Well, and if you really want to get down into it, like, a lot of the translations that people have used opportunistically, they come… they come from certain versions, certain translations, where it's like, if you go back and look at the original Aramaic, that word does not mean what you think it means. So, like, there's so many layers of inaccuracy to peel away on that onion.
• 38:14
  Tad Eggleston: I had to be a Bible scholar to deal with the bullies in public school in Wheaton, so, like, I remember.
• 38:20
  laurahudson: I love that!
• 38:22
  Tad Eggleston: I remember saying things like, okay, even if I granted you what was a heretical concept only 150 years ago, which is the idea that every word of the Bible was directly given by God to the writers, and by the way, like, why did God tell Paul to start the letter with, this is Paul writing to the Corinthians? Shouldn't he have started it?
• 38:46
  Tad Eggleston: As this is God using Paul to write to the Corinthians?
• 38:52
  Tad Eggleston: But even if we throw that out, did God also touch all of the translators?
• 38:58
  laurahudson: Well, not only that, but…
• 38:59
  Tad Eggleston: Have you ever played telephone?
• 39:01
  laurahudson: Well, it's like there were… this…
• 39:04
  laurahudson: the texts in the Bible have also been told and retold, copied and recopied over and over, and you think.
• 39:09
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and then they choose.
• 39:10
  laurahudson: tribes and.
• 39:10
  Tad Eggleston: which ones stay and which ones don't. That was Mark's second book, Apocrypha Now, where he deals with a lot of the apocryphal books. And mind you, like, those two books, like, to go.
• 39:22
  laurahudson: Enoch is a wild book. Enoch is a wild-ass book.
• 39:26
  Tad Eggleston: But God is disappointed in you, and Apocrypher now, they're both…
• 39:32
  Tad Eggleston: Relatively faithful, if kind of tongue-in-cheek.
• 39:37
  Tad Eggleston: synopsis… chapter-by-chapter synopsis of the Bible and a lot of the Apocrypha.
• 39:43
  laurahudson: Interesting.
• 39:45
  Tad Eggleston: So, in other words, like, none of the good parts are taken out.
• 39:51
  laurahudson: That's concerning.
• 39:52
  Tad Eggleston: But it's, like, brought down to, like, 2 to 4 pages per chapter to really, like…
• 39:59
  Tad Eggleston: capture what was in there. And then Shannon Wheeler did…
• 40:03
  Tad Eggleston: essentially a single New Yorker-style cartoon.
• 40:08
  Tad Eggleston: for each chapter, and they're just brilliant. They're brilliant.
• 40:13
  Tad Eggleston: I can't plug Mark Russell enough. I'm always sad when people don't know Mark Russell, so get to know Mark Russell.
• 40:18
  laurahudson: Well, I do the same things with people, so I will actually renew.
• 40:22
  timleong: Yeah, these are some great book recommendations. I'm definitely gonna have to… I haven't read some of these series, so I'm gonna have to go back and…
• 40:28
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, Mark's another friend of mine.
• 40:30
  Tad Eggleston: I took him out for pizza the last time he was in Chicago.
• 40:34
  Tad Eggleston: I love it when I make friends through this podcast.
• 40:37
  laurahudson: It's… it's… podcasts are a wonderful way to do that.
• 40:41
  Tad Eggleston: I have actually made more friends in my 40s than I did in my teens, it's kind of weird.
• 40:46
  laurahudson: I mean, it makes sense. You don't know what you're doing when you're a kid.
• 40:50
  Tad Eggleston: I know, but you actually spend the time around them all the time, so you don't have to work as hard either.
• 40:55
  laurahudson: That's true.
• 40:57
  timleong: That's true.
• 40:58
  Tad Eggleston: Like, I have to deliberately text or call or email people to make friends in my 40s.
• 41:05
  Tad Eggleston: In your teens, it's like, hey.
• 41:07
  timleong: More work.
• 41:08
  Tad Eggleston: That chair yesterday, too.
• 41:12
  laurahudson: Yeah, that was another element, getting back for one second, that was another element of the book that we don't necessarily get to play out as much as we would have liked, was how Kirby and Lennox meet.
• 41:23
  laurahudson: Yeah. That's, that's.
• 41:25
  Tad Eggleston: You know, you did touch on, you know, Lennox is the agoraphobic…
• 41:28
  Tad Eggleston: met through the internet. I, I, I, I think…
• 41:31
  Tad Eggleston: I think that's di… like, if… if you manage to make this into a thing that… that gets more chapters, that's dying to be, like, a Free Comic Book Day book, or whatever, just, like…
• 41:43
  Tad Eggleston: Their origin story.
• 41:45
  laurahudson: Yeah, we definitely tried to put more
• 41:47
  laurahudson: more of Lenox into 2,
• 41:52
  laurahudson: And more of another person, and it's three. We kind of wanted to give them each some moments.
• 41:57
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 41:58
  laurahudson: But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm curious…
• 42:03
  laurahudson: This is just something that I'm curious about.
• 42:05
  laurahudson: What did you think of the first page of the second issue?
• 42:14
  Tad Eggleston: I love the art.
• 42:15
  Tad Eggleston: It's my first… my first.
• 42:19
  laurahudson: Because I'm like, I was just curious about how this hit… I know what I think it is.
• 42:23
  laurahudson: Like…
• 42:25
  laurahudson: I'm just curious how this hit you.
• 42:27
  Tad Eggleston: I think it took me a moment… And in a good way.
• 42:33
  Tad Eggleston: it took me until I turned the page to realize that they weren't up on the roof.
• 42:41
  Tad Eggleston: And actually having stuff go on.
• 42:44
  Tad Eggleston: Though I didn't know how much of what was going on was, like…
• 42:48
  Tad Eggleston: Weather events versus, like, looking through the… the… view thing.
• 42:57
  laurahudson: Excellent. Okay, that's good. I just… I… there were… there were a lot of potential ways into two, and there were many different attempts.
• 43:07
  Tad Eggleston: No, I mean, what I can absolutely say is I dug it.
• 43:12
  laurahudson: Okay, excellent.
• 43:13
  timleong: This is… it's also worth noting here, that, our incredible artist, is Emiliana Pina, who drew all the issues and…
• 43:23
  laurahudson: She's really brought these characters to life, you know? Like, we had concepts of these characters in this world in her head. But she brings them… I mean, like, she brings them to life in a way where, like…
• 43:35
  laurahudson: I don't know. I just… I think it's gorgeous.
• 43:39
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's even an understatement.
• 43:45
  Tad Eggleston: And of course, I let the… Tim, I know you did the… the fantastic,
• 43:50
  Tad Eggleston: super graphics that get mentioned with comics a lot, and you've both written about comics. Have you guys… I didn't see, though I did, like, 20 whole minutes of research other than reading the books twice, have you guys written…
• 44:09
  Tad Eggleston: Comics before this, or was this kind of the first foray into writing for an artist?
• 44:15
  laurahudson: When I was…
• 44:16
  timleong: fun.
• 44:17
  laurahudson: Oh, good. Yes, yes, yes, and when I was at Wired, I did a review of an Iron Man movie in comic book form, and forced a bunch of people to do this with me, but got an editor, so it wouldn't be too bad. Mainly because I wanted to, and I was in charge, so they let me, and it was really fun.
• 44:36
  Tad Eggleston: Why that?
• 44:37
  laurahudson: It's just me, it's just, like, one… it's just me reviewing Iron Man as a comic, because I could. That was… but that was, like, very elementary…
• 44:45
  laurahudson: that was my first dip of the toe, kind of into… I mean, but of course, like, you know, I've been reading how to write comics books since I was, like, a kid, you know, how to write the Marvel way! We did not write necessarily the Marvel way, but.
• 45:00
  Tad Eggleston: No, it was how to draw the Marvel world.
• 45:02
  laurahudson: Oh, you're so…
• 45:03
  Tad Eggleston: the Marvel way was, like, Hey, Jack!
• 45:07
  laurahudson: I think…
• 45:08
  Tad Eggleston: We should have the Silver Surfer in this one.
• 45:12
  laurahudson: And then he's…
• 45:12
  Tad Eggleston: Come back when you need words.
• 45:15
  laurahudson: Yeah, Jack Kirby. Jack Kirby is something.
• 45:18
  timleong: I didn't… so yeah, this is the first one, like, full comic, but I'd also had, like, most of my career was, in magazines as a creative director and art director, and so I have…
• 45:29
  timleong: commissioned hundreds of illustrations and working with illustrators and kind of communicating those ideas, and so…
• 45:36
  timleong: It's certainly not, like, scripting out
• 45:40
  timleong: In the… in, like, a comic book way, but at least a lot of that… a lot of time spent.
• 45:45
  Tad Eggleston: You were amateurs, but you were novices.
• 45:48
  laurahudson: Yeah, I'd say that. Because you know how things are supposed to… you understand the functioning of the comic very well at this point.
• 45:57
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and you understand both the functioning of the comic book and, like, he's directed… well, I mean, you with the art for your Iron Man interview, him as an art director, have directed artists to do specific things, just not necessarily the same kind of storytelling.
• 46:14
  laurahudson: Yeah, and it's just like.
• 46:15
  Tad Eggleston: mine…
• 46:16
  timleong: Yes.
• 46:17
  laurahudson: And the logic of a page, the logic of an issue, all that stuff… I mean, the biggest problem I ran into is the most cliche one for a writer, which is that I kept wanting to overwrite.
• 46:27
  laurahudson: You know, as someone who just sits there and puts text down all day, you have to learn how to pull back.
• 46:32
  laurahudson: Economy is very often your friend. There's only so much real estate, if you're showing it, you don't need to be telling… all of that stuff, but it's… but it's…
• 46:42
  Tad Eggleston: I know a number of writers that became letterers for two reasons. The first was…
• 46:49
  Tad Eggleston: to save a little bit of money when they were doing creator-owned stuff, where they had to pay for things like letters or colors, etc. But the second was…
• 47:00
  Tad Eggleston: So… they were the ones that had to do the extra work if they decided that, oh no, that's too much on the page, I need to rewrite this and get it down so I don't cover up this art.
• 47:16
  laurahudson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I mean, I've rewritten stuff, too, and I've seen the layouts, and, like, visualized it in my brain, and I was like, oh, no, no, no. I was like, that's… that's simply not going to work. But I find those challenges interesting in the same way
• 47:33
  laurahudson: that, you know, reducing size, like I was talking about. I find it interesting in the same way,
• 47:39
  laurahudson: You know, I studied poetry for a long time. It's, it's like a poetic form. Some people like free verse.
• 47:45
  Tad Eggleston: three comics.
• 47:46
  laurahudson: I… I mean, I'd… if someone would…
• 47:48
  Tad Eggleston: are some.
• 47:49
  laurahudson: If someone would pay me to do one, I assure you that I would. But it's like the beauty of a form is the constraints.
• 47:56
  Tad Eggleston: It's pretty much what Grant Snyder does.
• 47:58
  laurahudson: Yeah.
• 47:59
  laurahudson: But the beauty of a form is its constraints. It's the things that it stops you from doing, because I think you… if you're like, I want to do X, and you have a blank page, reverse, you can do… there's no limits. It almost becomes less interesting to me. When I have things that I'm bumping up against, and this is the space, this is the structure, this is the size of the thing that I need to do.
• 48:18
  laurahudson: Those decisions typically end up making me make more interesting choices.
• 48:23
  laurahudson: So I like it when that's there.
• 48:25
  Tad Eggleston: Sometimes when I'm tackling problems, I… I… I think in a… like, I'll write them down as a sonnet.
• 48:32
  Tad Eggleston: To… to force me into a…
• 48:35
  Tad Eggleston: To force me into a frame to really distill.
• 48:37
  laurahudson: Interesting.
• 48:38
  Tad Eggleston: Whatever it is I'm trying to figure out.
• 48:41
  laurahudson: Because it's… Like, more personal stuff.
• 48:43
  Tad Eggleston: like, I'm not to do calculus.
• 48:47
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that would be fun, I might try that now, but, like, when, like, I've got that swirl of thoughts and emotions, and I can't quite put them all together and figure out, like, sometimes I'll…
• 49:00
  Tad Eggleston: And sometimes when I'm trying to tackle a bigger idea, like…
• 49:05
  Tad Eggleston: I have a couple personal hacks for creating semi-unique.
• 49:11
  Tad Eggleston: structured poems.
• 49:14
  Tad Eggleston: where I use a different passion to create the bones. Okay, this is how many syllables per line, and this is how many lines, and this is how… this is the rhyme scheme, and I got this all from over there, and it's not something I know at all, so, like, I have to pay attention.
• 49:31
  Tad Eggleston: now I want to write about this, and fit it into that, and that makes me have to…
• 49:37
  Tad Eggleston: sit with it longer than I might otherwise.
• 49:41
  Tad Eggleston: Hmm. And think at it… think at it from different angles.
• 49:44
  Tad Eggleston: I'm in the middle of one of those right now.
• 49:49
  laurahudson: No, I love that.
• 49:51
  Tad Eggleston: popped into my head.
• 49:55
  Tad Eggleston: And actually, you said constraints, so I had to bring up Matt Madden. If you guys don't know Matt Madden, you should get to know Matt Madden, too.
• 50:01
  Tad Eggleston: 99 Tell a Story is essential reading for any comic writer or artist, as is the actual textbook he did with his wife, Jessica Abel.
• 50:13
  Tad Eggleston: Drawing words and writing pictures.
• 50:18
  Tad Eggleston: But his most recent book is the one that I think of when you say constraints. It's, called Six Treasures of the Spiral, and it's actually a collection of
• 50:25
  Tad Eggleston: Comics that he's made over, like, the last 20 years.
• 50:29
  Tad Eggleston: All of which he started with a constraint.
• 50:32
  Tad Eggleston: And then…
• 50:34
  Tad Eggleston: made a comic to fit that, you know. There's one where there are two characters, and, like, one goes from
• 50:42
  Tad Eggleston: The back of the story to the front, and the other has time go from the front of the story to the back, so there's actually only one point in the story where they're both in the same
• 50:54
  Tad Eggleston: time.
• 50:56
  Tad Eggleston: In terms of what they know, and…
• 50:58
  Tad Eggleston: memorize. He did a series of them that he did as…
• 51:04
  Tad Eggleston: I forget which poet… poetry form has, I think.
• 51:08
  Tad Eggleston: Six lines that you put in different le- different orders.
• 51:12
  laurahudson: Castina.
• 51:13
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, so he did… he did Comics Sistina, where… where…
• 51:17
  laurahudson: That's actually kind of cool.
• 51:19
  Tad Eggleston: Where the action
• 51:21
  Tad Eggleston: Like, he'd draw backgrounds differently or whatnot, but he essentially had a stick figure that he put into 6 different poses.
• 51:30
  Tad Eggleston: And then…
• 51:32
  laurahudson: Interesting like that.
• 51:33
  Tad Eggleston: Hmm.
• 51:36
  laurahudson: That's really cool. I, I, assistinas are one of… it's something I've always liked playing with, but it's so impractical. But I love it conceptually.
• 51:44
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 51:45
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, 6 treasures of the Spiral. As I continue giving…
• 51:49
  laurahudson: I'm ready to go.
• 51:49
  Tad Eggleston: recommendations to you guys, I think…
• 51:51
  timleong: This is great, I mean…
• 51:52
  Tad Eggleston: quotes.
• 51:53
  timleong: Love recommendations.
• 51:54
  Tad Eggleston: Alex Cormac talking about how much it cost him every time he came on 22 panels, because I…
• 52:04
  timleong: Love it.
• 52:07
  Tad Eggleston: I have it happened, too. I can't tell you the number of times I wind up spending
• 52:13
  Tad Eggleston: funny, because creators say, oh, I was reading this, I'm like, you were reading what?
• 52:17
  timleong: How do you spell it?
• 52:20
  laurahudson: I mean, but I feel like that's a good instinct as someone who…
• 52:23
  laurahudson: Who does what you do, you know? Like, who better to listen to?
• 52:27
  laurahudson: And people you already like and admire.
• 52:30
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, most of the time. I mean, I, I, I…
• 52:35
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I mean, I already like them. I don't think I have anybody on… well, sometimes I have people on that I don't know at all. It's always…
• 52:41
  Tad Eggleston: Kind of interesting when, when you have… Exclusively an online presence.
• 52:46
  Tad Eggleston: And maybe you read their book because they sent it to you when they were saying, hey, would you be interested in talking to me? And I really tried not to say no to anybody.
• 52:53
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I guess there was one publicist that kept bugging me, and I'm sitting there going.
• 53:00
  Tad Eggleston: Particularly because, like, it felt like an AI-written…
• 53:04
  Tad Eggleston: thing, which is why I didn't respond to it. You know, it just had that feel to it, but it also kept saying that he was certain that they could be a great match for me.
• 53:14
  Tad Eggleston: despite the fact that they said they were non-woke comics, and they had an AR-15 in their logo, I'm sitting there going, have you listened to my podcast?
• 53:25
  laurahudson: I do wonder sometimes if people send… does… because I think there's some AI that will mass send emails for you.
• 53:32
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 53:32
  laurahudson: And I'm like, interesting.
• 53:35
  Tad Eggleston: But the thing is, I got multiple. I didn't just get the one. I got, like, follow-ups, and I'm like…
• 53:41
  timleong: Hmm.
• 53:41
  Tad Eggleston: I started getting to the point where I was like, do I need to respond?
• 53:45
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's clear that.
• 53:46
  laurahudson: You never need to respond, you know, you never have to… I mean, unless it's, you know…
• 53:50
  Tad Eggleston: But, but, by…
• 53:51
  laurahudson: The boss.
• 53:51
  Tad Eggleston: falling into the… am I being impolite by not even responding? No, I don't think you're a fit.
• 54:00
  laurahudson: I mean…
• 54:02
  laurahudson: I think if you can… if one smells a trap, it's okay to recognize that you smell a trap.
• 54:09
  timleong: Yeah.
• 54:11
  laurahudson: Or you can pick a number of traps that you're willing to fall in, at which point…
• 54:14
  Tad Eggleston: I'm such a small fry that, like, I didn't smell a trap, I just smelled a conversation that I never err.
• 54:21
  laurahudson: No, yeah, it can be both.
• 54:25
  laurahudson: It can still be both.
• 54:26
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I suppose.
• 54:29
  laurahudson: But that's… that's my level of defensiveness.
• 54:33
  Tad Eggleston: since we, like, I'm gonna plug Exploit one more time. Everybody should read Exploit from Mad Cave. I know, and I'm telling you guys right now, I'm already very interested in coming back sometime in the future when we can be spoilery as fuck.
• 54:49
  Tad Eggleston: Because this is definitely a comic that deserves… deeper conversation.
• 54:56
  laurahudson: I think you're really gonna enjoy Issue 3. You personally, you personally, I think, will enjoy it.
• 55:02
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
• 55:02
  timleong: Yeah. Also, spoilery as fuck sounds like a great name for a podcast.
• 55:06
  laurahudson: That is a good name.
• 55:09
  laurahudson: Spoilery, I mean, you could put the Asterisks in the U.S.
• 55:11
  Tad Eggleston: I'll keep that in mind.
• 55:13
  laurahudson: Spoilers?
• 55:17
  Tad Eggleston: But I do have a couple of questions that I like to ask everybody at the end of episodes.
• 55:26
  Tad Eggleston: one new, one I've been doing since the beginning. I kind of teased the newer one earlier. This is my fifth year of doing this podcast, and I feel like I've entered the Twilight Zone.
• 55:37
  Tad Eggleston: My, my, my, my life has become… So filled with completely surreal…
• 55:44
  Tad Eggleston: experiences that if you told 10-year-old Tad, or even 35-year-old Tad, hey, you're gonna just hang out with Dennis Kitchen at a baseball game.
• 55:54
  Tad Eggleston: or text with Christopher Cantwell, or…
• 55:58
  Tad Eggleston: I could go on and on and on.
• 56:02
  Tad Eggleston: I would have gone…
• 56:04
  Tad Eggleston: Fuck you, are you nuts? What are you talking about? Those people will never talk to me.
• 56:11
  laurahudson: And yet.
• 56:12
  Tad Eggleston: But I feel like… The world of comics is filled.
• 56:16
  Tad Eggleston: with this. I mean, since I've… since I've, like, started collecting these stories, I haven't had a single person that hasn't immediately had something come to mind, no matter how big or small the creator that I was talking to was. So I've started just collecting them. Tell me…
• 56:34
  Tad Eggleston: Tell me one surreal experience, one thing happened to you, one… one you have to pinch yourself and go, did that really…
• 56:41
  Tad Eggleston: Did I get… Did I get to be that? That wouldn't have happened if you weren't
• 56:46
  Tad Eggleston: Involved in the world of comics.
• 56:48
  laurahudson: I… I…
• 56:51
  laurahudson: I don't even… like, it's so… because I'm like… I think the more different thing now is my life now, because I got to a point when I had done Comic Foundry, and Comics Alliance, and then stuff at Wired, where it was just, like, I interacted with basically everybody I could imagine.
• 57:08
  laurahudson: And my experience of comics was so different at that point, because I knew all of the people making comics.
• 57:15
  laurahudson: Some of them I knew in positive ways, some of them I knew in negative ways. But when I picked up a comic, I wasn't just reading a story about this superhero or this thing. It was reading exactly what you talked about. You know, you're reading a comic by a person that you know. And so, in good ways and bad, everything was always colored.
• 57:33
  laurahudson: And I think now that I've… I've… not that I don't still have friends in comics, I don't keep up with comics, but I'm not out there interviewing people and, like.
• 57:41
  laurahudson: meeting them personally all the time, and I actually think there's something kind of nice about being able to read.
• 57:47
  laurahudson: an issue clean. And that's, like, very first world problems. Oh, no, I've met too many comics writers, and many… but I have.
• 57:54
  Tad Eggleston: Bye!
• 57:55
  Tad Eggleston: Somebody I didn't know got to publish a comic!
• 57:59
  laurahudson: Well, yeah, it is, and you want to see up-and-comers. Like, I've gotten to meet so many cool and interesting… I almost don't want to say them, because I'm like, why blow up someone in a weird way?
• 58:07
  Tad Eggleston: Honestly, I sometimes really like it when, like, I was talking to Chris Condon and good friends with Chris Condon before most people knew who Chris Condon was.
• 58:16
  Tad Eggleston: So, so, like, now he's on…
• 58:17
  laurahudson: Poor it was cool. Poor it was cool.
• 58:19
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 58:21
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that's just my buddy Chris. One of them, my wife has to ask me which Chris.
• 58:27
  laurahudson: Which Chris? Which of your two famous Chris?
• 58:30
  Tad Eggleston: I can't even go Chris C. Oh, now I remember why the Cantwell story came up to me. You were talking about how long it was before you actually met. He and Peter Krause did
• 58:43
  Tad Eggleston: and this is where it gets even better for me, a baseball-oriented story in one of the EC Oni books.
• 58:53
  timleong: And I…
• 58:54
  Tad Eggleston: And I know and am friends with both of them. So I sent a joint text out to them with a panel from the book.
• 59:02
  Tad Eggleston: Like, congratulating them, whatnot.
• 59:06
  Tad Eggleston: And it turned out that it was the first time that they were interacting with each other, because all… Peter… Peter had gotten a script, Chris had turned in a script, they'd never actually had any talk, text, email whatsoever. Like, initially, they were both, who's the other person on this thread?
• 59:27
  laurahudson: They just didn't know? They just didn't know.
• 59:29
  Tad Eggleston: Have they done this comic together?
• 59:32
  laurahudson: I mean, that's… that's kind of amazing.
• 59:36
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I'm also a big baseball guy, and I'm friends with Brett Taylor, who does the Bleacher Nation Cubs blog.
• 59:45
  Tad Eggleston: Which is Chris's favorite source of Cubs news.
• 59:49
  Tad Eggleston: Help and Catch Fire is Brett Taylor's favorite TV show.
• 59:52
  Tad Eggleston: So I got to make them both jealous one day when I was sending the selfie of me and Brett from the Wrigley Bleachers to Chris out in LA, and he's like, what the fuck, man? How are you hanging out with Brett Taylor?
• 1:00:06
  Tad Eggleston: And I'm like, he's like… and I'm just like, yeah, his response is, how the fuck are you sending an email to the guy who made Call Now to catch the letter?
• 1:00:17
  laurahudson: I mean, it is fun to make people… it is fun to make people jealous in a fun way.
• 1:00:22
  Tad Eggleston: I don't even think it's jealousy, it's just, like.
• 1:00:24
  laurahudson: No, not even real.
• 1:00:25
  Tad Eggleston: in between.
• 1:00:26
  laurahudson: Yeah, I mean, I think connecting people who you think should meet.
• 1:00:30
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's the thing that I like most about…
• 1:00:36
  Tad Eggleston: what I do here. I mean, I love interviews like this, but the episodes I love the most are, like, the book clubs and the roundtables and the whatnot, where I manage to take…
• 1:00:46
  Tad Eggleston: Four people who maybe didn't know each other, but are gonna have a great conversation.
• 1:00:51
  laurahudson: Well, it's like the old-timey thing where people used to, like… it was considered an art to set up dinner parties, to put the right people next to each other.
• 1:00:58
  laurahudson: Although, I do want to hear your answer, Tim, about… Yeah, yeah, we'll get to it.
• 1:01:01
  Tad Eggleston: I'm sorry.
• 1:01:02
  laurahudson: That's okay. No, no, no.
• 1:01:03
  Tad Eggleston: suddenly remembered that thing that I couldn't remember from earlier. I mean, I think that's.
• 1:01:07
  timleong: That's also great, like, making that world a little bit smaller, you know, for people.
• 1:01:11
  timleong: I love that.
• 1:01:13
  laurahudson: I just, I do it, I keep bookmarks in my mind where I'm like, I'm gonna go back to that. It's just my process.
• 1:01:18
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:01:19
  laurahudson: Anyhow.
• 1:01:21
  Tad Eggleston: Alright, Tim. Surreal experience.
• 1:01:25
  timleong: And I… You know…
• 1:01:26
  Tad Eggleston: Love is… is that… is that a Chewbacca?
• 1:01:29
  Tad Eggleston: Behind you, or does it just feel like… yeah, it is hot and chewy.
• 1:01:32
  timleong: So, this is a… so, as we were talking about,
• 1:01:35
  timleong: illustrations that we… I've assigned and commissioned, through… through work. And so this was a illustration that, Tomar, Honuka did for Entertainment Weekly.
• 1:01:47
  timleong: For episode 7, I think, for a story we did, and so that ran as, like, a full-page, illustration in the magazine, and then, I got a blow-up of it.
• 1:01:58
  Tad Eggleston: Nice.
• 1:01:59
  timleong: Print it, and then…
• 1:02:00
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, you were covering Han the whole time, because your head.
• 1:02:03
  timleong: Oh, yeah.
• 1:02:04
  Tad Eggleston: But, I actually have…
• 1:02:07
  Tad Eggleston: The chewy Fur and Bandolier. My wife gave it to me for, like, Father's Day one year.
• 1:02:13
  Tad Eggleston: Wrapped around my seatbelt.
• 1:02:16
  Tad Eggleston: Oh my god.
• 1:02:17
  Tad Eggleston: Nice. So I recognize the bandolier anyway.
• 1:02:23
  timleong: Like, I have that in my car.
• 1:02:25
  timleong: Surreal moment?
• 1:02:29
  timleong: I don't know, I think, like, when that… when Comic Foundry, the magazine, like, it came out as a magazine.
• 1:02:36
  timleong: There was a moment there where we had, like, a convention table, And…
• 1:02:42
  timleong: I think we had people coming up, and…
• 1:02:45
  timleong: Not everyone, but, like, there were definitely some people that were just, like.
• 1:02:50
  timleong: just those one-on-one personal interactions with people, like, this, like, I've been waiting my entire life for a magazine like this, and it's like, goddamn, like… I don't know, just having, like, it was, it just felt, it was so meaningful.
• 1:03:02
  timleong: That, like, it… that this thing that we were just making…
• 1:03:06
  timleong: in, you know, our… at, like, 3 o'clock in the morning in, like, these little New York studio apartments.
• 1:03:13
  timleong: would have an impact on some guy that, you know, we've never met, ever.
• 1:03:19
  timleong: That's a pretty cool feeling.
• 1:03:20
  laurahudson: Well, also the feeling that, like.
• 1:03:23
  laurahudson: when there's something that you want, you know, that you want to exist that isn't there, and you make it exist, and other people are like, hey, I wanted that too! Right. It's a nice feeling, because I do see… I do wish there were more… not saying there's none, but I wish there were more…
• 1:03:40
  laurahudson: Journalism about comics in more…
• 1:03:43
  timleong: Which I feel like on the upswing. It's on the upswing.
• 1:03:45
  laurahudson: It is on the upswing.
• 1:03:46
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I was about to say.
• 1:03:47
  timleong: Dude, the first one told 100,000 copies. Tiffany Babb's comic staple. Right.
• 1:03:54
  timleong: there's, like, a couple hours left on that Kickstarter.
• 1:03:57
  Tad Eggleston: back that. I think I have at least one of the comics couriers on my desk somewhere.
• 1:04:04
  timleong: Yep.
• 1:04:06
  Tad Eggleston: Perhaps another baseball fan. I know my comics and baseball.
• 1:04:08
  timleong: That's true. She's a huge baseball fan.
• 1:04:11
  Tad Eggleston: Angels fan. She's got her baseball blog.
• 1:04:14
  laurahudson: But it's just nice to see people coming back and trying to do that, because I think when that's not there, there is…
• 1:04:20
  laurahudson: A sort of voice.
• 1:04:20
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, it's actually kind of funny that, like.
• 1:04:25
  Tad Eggleston: At the same time that online comics journalism is really going through a bloodbath, Starting to see more…
• 1:04:35
  Tad Eggleston: Print Comics Journalism.
• 1:04:37
  Tad Eggleston: emerge.
• 1:04:38
  timleong: Yep, yep.
• 1:04:39
  timleong: David Harper, you know, collects his, a lot of his content, and I think that book is on sale.
• 1:04:44
  Tad Eggleston: Harper does his annual collection.
• 1:04:46
  laurahudson: Well, and a lot of comics people are print people, too. You know, they want the issue, they don't want the digital version, necessarily.
• 1:04:53
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I, I, I want the issue, my, my, the, the, the…
• 1:04:59
  Tad Eggleston: Space constraints of my house sometimes prefer that I have the digital.
• 1:05:05
  laurahudson: I, and I understand that completely, but like…
• 1:05:08
  laurahudson: I've definitely had that feeling of, like, when I find out I really like something, then I want to go get a physical version of it, you know?
• 1:05:14
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 1:05:15
  laurahudson: We're like.
• 1:05:16
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:05:16
  laurahudson: Well, I have this trouble with books, because I would like to own every book as a paper book, but there are, like, too many… you can… I have a lot of books that I'm dealing with, so sometimes I'm like, I gotta make sure I want the book.
• 1:05:26
  Tad Eggleston: We're in my…
• 1:05:26
  laurahudson: the book.
• 1:05:27
  Tad Eggleston: room, so I.
• 1:05:28
  laurahudson: Oh my god.
• 1:05:28
  Tad Eggleston: got the… the cupola…
• 1:05:30
  Tad Eggleston: couple of bigger bookshelves. I've got, like, 5 down in my… like, I have so many books and comics down in my office area that I can't use it
• 1:05:40
  Tad Eggleston: For an office area.
• 1:05:41
  laurahudson: So you understand, yeah, you under… so it's just, like, it is that tougher thing, especially, like, I went through a period of moving, like, a lot, a lot, and you have to carry the books from every place to the new place. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah.
• 1:05:51
  timleong: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:53
  Tad Eggleston: No, I, I remember.
• 1:05:53
  laurahudson: And I'm only one small person, so I… there were times I had to shed some.
• 1:05:58
  Tad Eggleston: I remember a Black Friday where I woke up and Comixology had a massive sale on… Nbm…
• 1:06:07
  Tad Eggleston: and Europa Comics… And… Humanoids. So, like, all European stuff…
• 1:06:18
  Tad Eggleston: at, like, 75% off for Black Friday.
• 1:06:21
  laurahudson: like, looking at my humanoid stuff, I'm like, I'd… I'd go buy stuff with that.
• 1:06:24
  Tad Eggleston: and, like…
• 1:06:27
  Tad Eggleston: I was working at a comic shop at the time, so I had discounts on stuff there, but he didn't get a lot of that stuff in. So I remember it's, like, 8.30 in the morning, I'm turning to my wife, and I'm like, how bad would it be if I spent, like, $100 on myself today? Because, you know, we'd been planning on doing Christmas shopping.
• 1:06:46
  Tad Eggleston: And she's like… on what? I'm like, well, there's this comic sale on… on…
• 1:06:54
  Tad Eggleston: on the Black Friday sales, and she's like…
• 1:06:56
  Tad Eggleston: You can't get them at the shop? I'm like, well, not most of these. And she's like, where are you gonna put them? I'm like, oh, they're digital. She's like, then why are you bothering me?
• 1:07:08
  laurahudson: This space is the bigger limiting factor.
• 1:07:12
  timleong: Yeah.
• 1:07:14
  Tad Eggleston: And it's not like we're… you know, I mean, that blew my mind, because it's not like… and then even less so. It's not like even now, we're rich, and…
• 1:07:22
  Tad Eggleston: Then we were still…
• 1:07:27
  Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, the concern was way more over the space.
• 1:07:33
  laurahudson: I mean, it is at a premium, you know?
• 1:07:34
  Tad Eggleston: She doesn't always love that I've gotten on more and more publishers, like…
• 1:07:40
  Tad Eggleston: accomplice that they'll… they'll send stuff out for me to read.
• 1:07:43
  timleong: Oh, yeah.
• 1:07:44
  Tad Eggleston: another book on…
• 1:07:48
  laurahudson: I mean… Good for you, bad for your living space.
• 1:07:53
  Tad Eggleston: We find ways.
• 1:07:56
  Tad Eggleston: The cats like knocking them over.
• 1:07:59
  laurahudson: You could make, you could make cat mazes.
• 1:08:02
  laurahudson: Change them every day to keep the…
• 1:08:04
  Tad Eggleston: I like that. Keep it short. I like that. I'll have to think about that.
• 1:08:07
  Tad Eggleston: Alright, the question I… this is… this has been my favorite question forever. Tell me, something you love.
• 1:08:14
  Tad Eggleston: Preferably a comic, but we don't have rules.
• 1:08:17
  Tad Eggleston: Preferably storytelling, but again, with the rules.
• 1:08:20
  Tad Eggleston: But something that you love.
• 1:08:23
  Tad Eggleston: But not enough people around you have experienced it, and you really want them to, because you want more people to talk about it with.
• 1:08:33
  laurahudson: Do you want to go first, or do you want me to go first?
• 1:08:36
  timleong: I'm processing.
• 1:08:39
  laurahudson: I mean, I'm gonna… I'm gonna go to my… my previous go-to, but I haven't done it in a while, so it's new to you, which is.
• 1:08:46
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, this is the first time you've been on, so it's new to me.
• 1:08:48
  laurahudson: It's true, it's true. Which is Finder by Carla Speed McNeil. Like, actually, when we were earlier, when you were like, what's the most surreal thing? I'd be, like, meeting Carla Speed McNeil. She… it is…
• 1:09:02
  laurahudson: I'm like, how could I possibly explain this?
• 1:09:09
  laurahudson: I'm just trying to pull up the comics, because there's a whole bunch of different graphic novels that all take place in, the same world, and the first one or two that I think are… are… are Sinator, they're like… that's when she's getting started, so it's like…
• 1:09:23
  laurahudson: a little more finding your footing. And then it really kind of, hits its pace. It's very…
• 1:09:30
  laurahudson: It's an indie sci-fi, but it's.
• 1:09:33
  Tad Eggleston: No, I, I, I know Finder…
• 1:09:35
  laurahudson: Oh, you know Finder, it's like.
• 1:09:36
  Tad Eggleston: Not well, well.
• 1:09:38
  laurahudson: Mythology, urban sci-fi.
• 1:09:39
  Tad Eggleston: Carla, and actually, while Tim's doing his research, because he's not even on screen right now, I can say that one of my surreal comic experiences is she announced right before SPX
• 1:09:52
  Tad Eggleston: that she was doing a limited edition SPX one-shot of… a comic.
• 1:10:01
  Tad Eggleston: Because she's messing around with some things, so this is Settlers of the Storm Worlds.
• 1:10:05
  Tad Eggleston: bomb.
• 1:10:06
  Tad Eggleston: 300 copies available. I don't live anywhere near Baltimore. I…
• 1:10:13
  Tad Eggleston: would like to go to SBX some year, but wasn't able to go that year, but I really wanted it. And I was able to go, who do I know will be at SBX?
• 1:10:22
  Tad Eggleston: And I texted Dennis Kitchen to stop by Garland Speed McNeil's table and pick up her limited book and put it in the mail to send to me.
• 1:10:34
  laurahudson: I mean, that's what you gotta do.
• 1:10:35
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, the entire time I'm sitting there going, what world do I live in that I can text…
• 1:10:41
  Tad Eggleston: Dennis Kitchen.
• 1:10:44
  Tad Eggleston: To swing by a table.
• 1:10:46
  Tad Eggleston: In another state.
• 1:10:49
  laurahudson: I mean, that's pretty good.
• 1:10:50
  laurahudson: That's pretty good.
• 1:10:52
  laurahudson: But I'm gonna get more specific, too, which is that,
• 1:10:58
  laurahudson: So, a lot of it follows Jaeger, who's a finder. He finds things, surprisingly. Dream sequences…
• 1:11:04
  Tad Eggleston: lost things.
• 1:11:05
  laurahudson: No, he does not. Dream Sequence is a good one that sort of deals with AI and virtual reality.
• 1:11:12
  laurahudson: I like… I'm like, no, Talisman?
• 1:11:16
  laurahudson: is a really interesting one that gets into, like… it kind of deals with books in a society that no longer has books. And Voice is one of my favorites, which is the one where it's kind of a lot about Jaeger, but Jaeger's not there.
• 1:11:31
  laurahudson: It's about the daughter of, sort of, one of the women that he dates, and she… it gets into her world and the whole thing, and she loses something super important that is gonna determine her whole future, and then she goes trying to find Jaeger so that he can find her thing.
• 1:11:47
  Tad Eggleston: Wait a minute, now it's getting meta, she's gotta find the finder so he can find the thing?
• 1:11:51
  laurahudson: Right, right. So that's actually where my tattoo is from now.
• 1:11:53
  Tad Eggleston: You can't just go find the thing.
• 1:11:55
  laurahudson: Yeah.
• 1:11:56
  Tad Eggleston: to find the Finder.
• 1:11:57
  laurahudson: That's right.
• 1:11:58
  Tad Eggleston: To find… okay.
• 1:11:59
  laurahudson: So, that's… I'm…
• 1:12:00
  Tad Eggleston: Tim's got a great look on his face.
• 1:12:03
  laurahudson: Have you ever read that one time? Because it's my favorite. I really like it.
• 1:12:06
  timleong: I haven't. I know you've talked about it, I know we've covered it.
• 1:12:09
  Tad Eggleston: I need to read deeper. I know I have at least digital copies of a volume or two.
• 1:12:15
  laurahudson: You know what I would say is that, in some ways, it reminds me of The Wire, and I'll explain why.
• 1:12:20
  laurahudson: You know how in The Wire, each part of it goes to, like, a different area of the world, and kind of… you're looking at the same world, and a lot of the same themes, and people and events are moving through it, but it's, like, one season it's the police, one season it's the docs, one season it's the teachers, one season it's the journalists, and I feel like Finder does a lot of that moving of the camera.
• 1:12:39
  laurahudson: While having familiar faces pop up, and, like, the worldbuilding in it is incredible. Like, you get to the end of the book, and there's end notes on every one. You really get that iceberg feeling from her books, where you're like, I'm seeing the tip of the iceberg, and there's all of this mythology and anthropology that's, like, running through the veins of it below, and if you don't believe it.
• 1:12:58
  laurahudson: There are substantial endnotes, you know, that talk about it.
• 1:13:01
  Tad Eggleston: Alright, you just kicked it further up my list.
• 1:13:04
  laurahudson: Yeah, it's, it's the.
• 1:13:05
  timleong: cold.
• 1:13:06
  laurahudson: It's the stuff.
• 1:13:07
  Tad Eggleston: The only thing I like more than endnotes is footnotes.
• 1:13:11
  laurahudson: They… I think that she doesn't do that, but only for aesthetic reasons.
• 1:13:15
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, Dave Baker figured out how to do footnotes and colors.
• 1:13:18
  laurahudson: I was like, I was like, are you… are you a DFW fan? Is that where this is going? David Foster Wallace? Because he's, he's the…
• 1:13:26
  Tad Eggleston: I haven't read that yet, actually, but…
• 1:13:28
  laurahudson: You haven't read… you like… you like footnotes, and you haven't read David Foster Wallace?
• 1:13:32
  Tad Eggleston: Nope, I haven't.
• 1:13:33
  laurahudson: I'm gonna tell you the name… I'm gonna tell you the name of a book, and you're gonna experience something that you don't understand, but you should do it anyway, and it's called Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.
• 1:13:44
  laurahudson: A book that really… spun me around, but… Just see what happens.
• 1:13:51
  laurahudson: Okay. See what happens.
• 1:13:52
  Tad Eggleston: I like a short story collection.
• 1:13:59
  timleong: Lot of good recommendations.
• 1:14:00
  Tad Eggleston: Available on Audible, that's a winner.
• 1:14:02
  laurahudson: No, you don't want that.
• 1:14:04
  Tad Eggleston: No, I don't.
• 1:14:04
  laurahudson: Okay, that was sarcastic.
• 1:14:06
  Tad Eggleston: I often do both.
• 1:14:07
  laurahudson: You can't… yeah, I was like, this is one where, like, I don't even know how you would do it. Like, that's…
• 1:14:12
  Tad Eggleston: That's… when you've got footnote-heavy stuff, I'm always actually curious as to how they wind up.
• 1:14:17
  laurahudson: And I'm… and I, yeah.
• 1:14:17
  Tad Eggleston: Sometimes they manage to do it well, and sometimes they don't.
• 1:14:20
  laurahudson: I think you should get the print version, and you're going to start running into things very quickly, where you're like, how on earth would they do this in an audiobook? I know, because they're questions I have right now. And so you may, at that point, want to get the audio version and compare, because, like, I don't know how they do that.
• 1:14:37
  laurahudson: Numerous ways.
• 1:14:40
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, that, that just, that just went on my list.
• 1:14:47
  Tad Eggleston: But, but you should look at, at Mary Tyler Moorhawk.
• 1:14:51
  laurahudson: Right, I like that.
• 1:14:53
  Tad Eggleston: by Dave Baker.
• 1:14:58
  Tad Eggleston: Or if you don't want to have the, like, 300-page comic with footnotes, he also did one of those stories in Godzilla vs. Los Angeles, and worked footnotes into it.
• 1:15:07
  laurahudson: Nice.
• 1:15:09
  timleong: Love to check that out.
• 1:15:10
  laurahudson: I'm like, I'm really like, I wonder if I can get away with that.
• 1:15:15
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, again, working footnotes into a comic is…
• 1:15:20
  laurahudson: editor's notes. Editor's notes, very classic.
• 1:15:23
  Tad Eggleston: I do love editor's notes, but these, these are not editor's notes. These are, like, footnote.
• 1:15:28
  laurahudson: Yeah.
• 1:15:30
  laurahudson: Well, and one thing that we, we do…
• 1:15:32
  laurahudson: that not everyone… we do… we do the next issue thing at the end of issue.
• 1:15:36
  Tad Eggleston: I love it.
• 1:15:37
  laurahudson: Okay, I'm glad you love it, where I'm like, because I loved that so much in comics, and I was like, if I'm gonna make a comic.
• 1:15:43
  laurahudson: I'm gonna do it.
• 1:15:45
  Tad Eggleston: Have you read any of, Wes Craig's Kaya.
• 1:15:52
  laurahudson: -
• 1:15:53
  Tad Eggleston: Because he's got, like, the blurb on the front of the… I mean, you get.
• 1:15:57
  laurahudson: Oh, yeah, okay.
• 1:15:58
  timleong: Right at the… yeah.
• 1:16:00
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that kind of gives you the… the tease.
• 1:16:05
  timleong: It's really interesting, I… I saw that when that first came out. I was like, oh, that's… he's like, you know, it's like a blurb that you would… like an eyeline, like, across the top.
• 1:16:15
  timleong: I thought that was really interesting. I've designed hundreds of magazine covers, and so, yeah, I'm really curious…
• 1:16:23
  Tad Eggleston: It's just a key.
• 1:16:23
  timleong: how that…
• 1:16:24
  Tad Eggleston: Is this what you're saying? What's that? So you pay attention to coverage, is what you're saying?
• 1:16:28
  timleong: Oh, for sure. Oh, yeah.
• 1:16:29
  Tad Eggleston: You totally buy comics based on their covers.
• 1:16:33
  timleong: So… When I graduated com- college, I went to…
• 1:16:38
  timleong: I kind of was like, I hadn't been out of comics for a while, I stopped reading.
• 1:16:42
  timleong: And then I went to, Midtown Comics Grand Central, And…
• 1:16:47
  Tad Eggleston: I met Laura.
• 1:16:48
  timleong: Kind of looking around. Laura was not working there yet.
• 1:16:50
  laurahudson: Oh, that's right, because I came in later. I think I was… I started out at Times Square and later moved to Grand Central. I don't know, go on, go on with your story.
• 1:16:57
  timleong: But I was just walking around, and I was just like.
• 1:17:00
  timleong: I basically just bought stuff based on vibes, and the… Ex Machina.
• 1:17:07
  timleong: number 2 had just come out, and I was just like, what is this cover? This is crazy. And it's, like, a red cover with, like, this, with Abraham Lincoln, and there's, like, a skull instead of his face.
• 1:17:20
  timleong: And I was like, this is… I have no idea what this book is, or what it's about, but I love this cover. And I bought it. And, like, that was…
• 1:17:30
  timleong: That was the book that got me back into comics, that kind of, like, hooked me back in, and it was all because of just, like, it was a really cool cover.
• 1:17:38
  timleong: And so I owe so much of, like, this whole kind of, like, comics career and comics involvement because of that series, and specifically that book. Yeah. But because it was so impactful for me, I, actually bought the original art for that cover. Oh, wow.
• 1:17:56
  Tad Eggleston: Wow.
• 1:17:57
  timleong: Years ago, when I happened to come across it online.
• 1:18:00
  laurahudson: I'm like, did I… because I've def… I don't remember if that was at your place when I first met you, but I definitely remember seeing that, and that being, like, a really…
• 1:18:08
  laurahudson: Iconic thing for you.
• 1:18:11
  laurahudson: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:18:13
  timleong: For sure.
• 1:18:16
  Tad Eggleston: So, so…
• 1:18:16
  timleong: I'll buy stuff if it's, like, a cool cover.
• 1:18:20
  Tad Eggleston: See, I like… and I don't…
• 1:18:22
  Tad Eggleston: I only have one so far, but it's a David Lapham. I like interior art. I want more interior art.
• 1:18:30
  laurahudson: Yeah, I have some Brandon Graham interior art somewhere around here that's really cool.
• 1:18:36
  Tad Eggleston: Because I love the storytelling.
• 1:18:38
  Tad Eggleston: aspect of comics.
• 1:18:42
  timleong: Yeah, I love…
• 1:18:43
  Tad Eggleston: Don't get me wrong, I appreciate a good cover, but… But, but, like.
• 1:18:47
  timleong: That's the only cover I have. I only have… I have interior pages for everything else, that I try to collect, but,
• 1:18:56
  timleong: Yeah, I love just trying to buy more art, and…
• 1:18:58
  timleong: Just embracing art. It's like, everyone should be making art, collecting art, just…
• 1:19:04
  Tad Eggleston: I, I can afford it in their, in their printed form.
• 1:19:08
  timleong: Yeah, I mean, even just, like, you know, in the last few weeks…
• 1:19:13
  Tad Eggleston: pages.
• 1:19:13
  timleong: We started drawing for myself.
• 1:19:16
  timleong: Just as, like, a exercise to…
• 1:19:19
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:19:19
  timleong: have fun with, like, art, and .
• 1:19:22
  Tad Eggleston: And I get cool sweatshirts, because my wife is a printmaker, so she'll take comic books.
• 1:19:26
  timleong: Oh, that's cool.
• 1:19:26
  Tad Eggleston: This is… this is, this is Sankiewicz.
• 1:19:29
  Tad Eggleston: Sienkiewicz Jimi Hendrix on my sweatshirt.
• 1:19:32
  laurahudson: Oh, nice!
• 1:19:33
  laurahudson: Nice.
• 1:19:35
  Tad Eggleston: But have you actually answered the question, Tim? The thing that you.
• 1:19:39
  timleong: Oh, no.
• 1:19:41
  Tad Eggleston: You know…
• 1:19:42
  laurahudson: Don't let it go. Hard-hitting question.
• 1:19:43
  timleong: Went down.
• 1:19:44
  Tad Eggleston: Well, see…
• 1:19:45
  timleong: Like, it's not like a super deep.
• 1:19:47
  Tad Eggleston: forget to take.
• 1:19:48
  Tad Eggleston: I don't always manage to take notes of the rest of the conversation, but I always… I just have Tim loves and nothing, so I'm pretty certain…
• 1:19:57
  timleong: You know, I go back to this one, and it's not, like, a super deep cut or anything, but, like, when it was out, and I was just reading it, like, issue to issue, I was just, like… it just… it was such a great experience, and I just, like, was in it, and I was just, like, so excited, and I was just like, oh, I can't wait for this to come out, and it's like…
• 1:20:15
  timleong: it's hard to kind of replicate that, like, enthusiasm and excitement, but, Death Note.
• 1:20:21
  timleong: I just love Death Note so much. It's like… I hadn't had, like, a lot of manga experience at that time when I read it.
• 1:20:30
  Tad Eggleston: I haven't actually read that one, but my son has.
• 1:20:32
  timleong: Every volume to volume, I'm just… I was just like, when is the next one? This is crazy. Like, I was just so wrapped up. It was such a great job.
• 1:20:43
  laurahudson: And when you…
• 1:20:44
  laurahudson: about serialized storytelling, too. Like, we definitely tried to do this in Exploit, where there's, like, some type of cliffhanger at the end of every…
• 1:20:52
  timleong: Yeah.
• 1:20:52
  laurahudson: Where it's like, there is… when certain types of serialized storytelling are done right, there is that excitement of, like, you know, what happens next? Can't wait for the next issue, can't wait for, like, the next thing to come out. And that's kind of fun, you know? Like, I know that there's…
• 1:21:08
  laurahudson: it can be simpler to, like, buy and trade, and so on and so forth, but, like, in the same way that you watch a TV show, you know? Like, you could watch a really long movie, you know, but I think part of the fun of a TV show is you get one installment, and you're excited for the next.
• 1:21:23
  Tad Eggleston: One of the great challenges of making Really good comics right now.
• 1:21:33
  Tad Eggleston: is… Particularly if you're… if you're… if you're doing… Independent or creator-owned.
• 1:21:43
  Tad Eggleston: Is that you're not gonna… Not gonna make any real money until the trade.
• 1:21:50
  Tad Eggleston: you're lucky if you're… I mean, particularly… I mean, depending… you know…
• 1:21:56
  Tad Eggleston: Creator-owned contracts are nowhere near equal. Some companies give you a little bit of an advance, and you give up more of…
• 1:22:05
  Tad Eggleston: back-end, or…
• 1:22:07
  Tad Eggleston: media rights or whatever, and then there's image, where you get, like, nothing, but you get everything, but that also means that, like…
• 1:22:15
  laurahudson: The DIY factor is high.
• 1:22:18
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean, I think it's like…
• 1:22:22
  Tad Eggleston: a writer was putting it out on his Patreon recently that, like.
• 1:22:29
  Tad Eggleston: He was doing about 3,000 copies…
• 1:22:33
  Tad Eggleston: Per book after the first one.
• 1:22:36
  Tad Eggleston: Which nets him about $1,500.
• 1:22:39
  Tad Eggleston: Of which… 700 was going to his colorist, because the colorist was paid page rate. So he's essentially doing…
• 1:22:49
  Tad Eggleston: A comic for, you know, writing and drawing a comic for 800 bucks a month.
• 1:22:54
  laurahudson: Yeah, I mean, we're not in it for the money.
• 1:22:58
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, no, no, that's true. But where I'm going to, in terms of my point, though, is that…
• 1:23:08
  Tad Eggleston: But then you get to resell it as the trade, so, you know, you sell 3,000 more of the trade, and now that 800 bucks a month is more like…
• 1:23:17
  Tad Eggleston: 100 bucks a month on the back end. If it actually manages to get into libraries or be something perennial, then it can be…
• 1:23:26
  Tad Eggleston: Not, like… get-rich money, but real money in comic book terms, right?
• 1:23:33
  Tad Eggleston: But that, from a creative standpoint, that means that you… you need to write in such a way
• 1:23:41
  Tad Eggleston: that… You can be… Interesting and compelling issue to issue.
• 1:23:48
  Tad Eggleston: Interesting and compelling, collection to collection.
• 1:23:53
  Tad Eggleston: if you want, I mean, like.
• 1:23:56
  Tad Eggleston: Saga is among the greatest comic books ever for any number of reasons, but the thing that I always marvel at is that
• 1:24:06
  Tad Eggleston: Each issue is crafted well as an issue. Each six issues are crafted incredibly well as
• 1:24:14
  Tad Eggleston: a trade paperback. Each 18 issues are crafted incredibly well as a hardcover, and that 54 issue
• 1:24:23
  Tad Eggleston: Halfway point was, like… Crafted incredibly well.
• 1:24:30
  laurahudson: Yes.
• 1:24:30
  Tad Eggleston: So, like, the amount of care that had to be put into making it so it would read well in every different way that somebody might come at it.
• 1:24:43
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. It makes my brain hurt thinking about it.
• 1:24:46
  laurahudson: I like… I like the feeling in entertainment when you, like, you get into it, and you're almost like, I can trust this person, you know, and you kind of give yourself over to it. And then you start realizing that they thought about this. They… they planned this, you know, that feeling of almost like, I'm in good hands.
• 1:25:03
  laurahudson: Of someone of ability, and they're gonna take me for a ride, and they've planned this ride, and let's go.
• 1:25:09
  laurahudson: I love that feel… I just love that feeling of, like, getting to a point and being like, oh, they were setting up for this a long time ago. You know, like, it's all coming together. I think that's such a great feeling. I think with…
• 1:25:18
  Tad Eggleston: And also…
• 1:25:19
  Tad Eggleston: Also, and, like, Ex Machina is also Brian K. Vaughan, and you had that feeling for it. Yeah.
• 1:25:25
  timleong: Yep.
• 1:25:27
  Tad Eggleston: Like…
• 1:25:29
  Tad Eggleston: We talk a lot about brilliant creators and, like, the genius and the muse. What we don't talk enough about, but I like to take the moment to bring up from time to time, is the craftsmanship.
• 1:25:41
  Tad Eggleston: the understanding how it works enough that, okay, I've got my brilliance, but now I'm gonna take my brilliance and I'm gonna sand it down, and I'm gonna make certain the craft is there.
• 1:25:51
  Tad Eggleston: And for that matter, like, particularly with, like, superhero comics or whatnot, often what's the difference between good superheroes and bad superhero comics is how good of a craftsman the writer is. Because there's so many moving parts, you can't plan years in advance, because you're one event away from everything being thrown
• 1:26:11
  Tad Eggleston: You know, so your ability to go.
• 1:26:14
  Tad Eggleston: this is a structure. I mean, one of my favorite, all-time Crime writers is, is, is…
• 1:26:24
  Tad Eggleston: Donald Westbrook, but particularly when he was writing as Richard Stark. But, like, the Parker books have a very specific formula.
• 1:26:33
  laurahudson: Yeah, 100%.
• 1:26:35
  Tad Eggleston: But, like…
• 1:26:38
  Tad Eggleston: What makes him brilliant is that he's such a good craftsman that until you… until you suddenly realize it and can't unsee it.
• 1:26:47
  Tad Eggleston: And even when you… even when you can't unsee it, you're like, oh, it's the formula, and I don't care. It's that, like, you don't get caught up in the fact that they're formulaic. Yeah. Because, I mean, it's kind of like writing that sonnet. Okay.
• 1:27:00
  Tad Eggleston: This is how I'm gonna structure it. I don't have to spend any time on book structure, or comic structure, or whatnot.
• 1:27:07
  Tad Eggleston: Now I'm gonna tell my story.
• 1:27:10
  Tad Eggleston: You know? And I think that sometimes…
• 1:27:14
  Tad Eggleston: Is a huge separator between some of the people who we like some of their stuff, and the people who, like…
• 1:27:21
  Tad Eggleston: Book in, book out, we like…
• 1:27:24
  Tad Eggleston: Everything they do, is their ability to… Work the craft.
• 1:27:30
  Tad Eggleston: Their ability to…
• 1:27:34
  Tad Eggleston: look, I know I need to have these things, or if I choose not to have one of these things, I… I… like, I… I need to be making that choice. I need to be working around it appropriately. I need to…
• 1:27:47
  Tad Eggleston: You know… And I'm just literally thinking out loud right now, so, you know…
• 1:27:53
  laurahudson: One thing that I think… I mean, I…
• 1:27:56
  laurahudson: Each exploit issue is constructed as an issue.
• 1:28:00
  laurahudson: And it is fully understandable that way. I think one benefit you'll get from reading as a trade is just…
• 1:28:05
  laurahudson: The information's closer together.
• 1:28:08
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:28:08
  laurahudson: There's a lot going on, and there definitely is stuff that you probably won't realize until the end, was…
• 1:28:14
  laurahudson: They're all alone.
• 1:28:15
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, this… this… I mean, just going full circle, this… this takes me back to… to one of my first comments, was like…
• 1:28:22
  Tad Eggleston: it was initially jarring, but I thought it was a brilliant decision to have the second issue be…
• 1:28:28
  Tad Eggleston: essentially a whole separate story, you know? It's like 2 weeks later.
• 1:28:34
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah. Y-you know.
• 1:28:36
  timleong: And, you know, I think when we were doing that, we were like, wait, it doesn't have to be the next day.
• 1:28:42
  Tad Eggleston: No.
• 1:28:42
  timleong: You know, it's like, we just, you know… and to your point, you know, about, like, the care and craft and thought that goes into it, you know.
• 1:28:49
  timleong: I think one of my biggest takeaways from the experience in the last 6 weeks Is just trying to…
• 1:28:56
  timleong: market and sell and publicize the book, even just to my non-comics friends. And me trying to explain is like, oh, well, like, this is what final order cutoff is, and it's like.
• 1:29:08
  timleong: Oh, you have to, like, we have… you have to go to a store, like, we… there is a link, but, like, it'd be great if we could support our comic book, local comic store.
• 1:29:16
  timleong: And they're like, oh, great, so Issue 2 comes out next week, right? And I was like, well, no. And it's like, here, you know, and just…
• 1:29:24
  laurahudson: the complexion.
• 1:29:24
  timleong: for new readers to, like, comics, like, there's a lot of hurdles still, you know? And, you know, comics are not getting cheaper, right? So it's like…
• 1:29:35
  Tad Eggleston: Yep.
• 1:29:36
  timleong: just really… I think we're just… we've been… Trying to be very.
• 1:29:39
  Tad Eggleston: This is where I will talk…
• 1:29:41
  timleong: that experience, and respecting the leader, yeah, to, like…
• 1:29:45
  Tad Eggleston: that…
• 1:29:46
  timleong: We're making progress.
• 1:29:47
  Tad Eggleston: shop or your comic shop doesn't have, have, exploit in it, get yourself a Global Comics
• 1:29:53
  Tad Eggleston: subscription for, I think, 8 bucks a month.
• 1:29:56
  Tad Eggleston: It includes all of Mad Cave Day and Date, so issues 1 and 2 are already available. The third issue will be available the same day it's available in print.
• 1:30:05
  Tad Eggleston: I have noticed that, like, they're not consistent, consistent on the time of day, and sometimes they're the next day, so I think there might literally be, like, the process of somebody sending an email or whatever to make things go live.
• 1:30:19
  Tad Eggleston: And it's not 100% automated, but, like, it's close enough. I always am able to read a Mad Cave book.
• 1:30:25
  Tad Eggleston: Before I record my favorite books of the week, Saturday morning.
• 1:30:32
  laurahudson: Very convenient.
• 1:30:33
  Tad Eggleston: It is. And, like, while I haven't gotten to talk to anybody at Global Comics, it sounds like the way they've set up their structure
• 1:30:41
  Tad Eggleston: Is, with the streaming stuff, Or, not streaming, but with… with the…
• 1:30:48
  Tad Eggleston: people who are… like, because you can buy comics, but there are also comics that fall under the gold membership, but with the gold membership.
• 1:30:56
  Tad Eggleston: like… They track page hits.
• 1:31:00
  Tad Eggleston: And then they split up the money from… from your membership, to go…
• 1:31:08
  Tad Eggleston: Page by page to the… to the people who… whose stuff you actually read.
• 1:31:12
  laurahudson: Oh, that's cool.
• 1:31:13
  Tad Eggleston: You know, so if you want to game the system and get your buddy read, you know, paid more, you know, because they're… they're both
• 1:31:21
  Tad Eggleston: They're both,
• 1:31:26
  Tad Eggleston: Publisher comics and independent comics.
• 1:31:29
  Tad Eggleston: on the site. Like, if you want… if you want to get Dave… Dave Walker's got some of his… his personal stuff up.
• 1:31:35
  Tad Eggleston: on its own. You want to get David Walker more money? Just go and read through it a couple of times.
• 1:31:42
  laurahudson: Why not?
• 1:31:43
  Tad Eggleston: Game the system! I don't know. I don't know how it works. I don't know specific. I know what they said in the initial press releases.
• 1:31:51
  Tad Eggleston: Way back when they kicked it off.
• 1:31:53
  Tad Eggleston: I'm just happy that there are a couple of…
• 1:31:59
  Tad Eggleston: alternatives to Amazon now, since they… dismantle comicsology.
• 1:32:06
  Tad Eggleston: It made it harder to read, and much harder to find comics.
• 1:32:10
  laurahudson: That's what comics needed.
• 1:32:12
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:32:15
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:32:16
  laurahudson: I mean, to be more difficult to read and access, that's what the industry was missing.
• 1:32:24
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, Comixology, until it was dismantled, was brilliant, because everything was cross-referenced.
• 1:32:30
  Tad Eggleston: had all of the… you know, it's like, I want to see all of the books that are available digitally, or lettered by Clem Robbins, let me click this button.
• 1:32:40
  laurahudson: Maybe, maybe it was, it was too easy, too easy to get comics. They had to make it harder.
• 1:32:44
  Tad Eggleston: That… I mean, this is… this is how you know that, like, the decisions weren't based on comic sales. Like, when they rolled…
• 1:32:54
  Tad Eggleston: Comixology into Kindle, the first thing that went was the part that made it easy to buy more comics.
• 1:33:04
  laurahudson: So that's… you get 12…
• 1:33:05
  Tad Eggleston: even…
• 1:33:06
  laurahudson: I do think you get to a point around a lot of tech where you realize, especially when things are owned by companies that are owned by companies, that are owned by companies, where it's like, they'll do things, and it won't matter that it doesn't make sense, because it doesn't matter at all. It's just like, things…
• 1:33:20
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, the only thing I can figure out is that, like, if there's sense to it at all.
• 1:33:26
  Tad Eggleston: And I'm not guaranteeing that there was, but if there's sense to it at all, what that means is they weren't selling enough comics to be worth having
• 1:33:35
  Tad Eggleston: a different program.
• 1:33:37
  laurahudson: Hmm.
• 1:33:38
  Tad Eggleston: to be worth maintaining a different program from the Kindle program.
• 1:33:43
  laurahudson: Yeah.
• 1:33:44
  Tad Eggleston: Now, I don't know how many programmers it takes to maintain one program…
• 1:33:51
  Tad Eggleston: And I certainly think that… but, like, I went from, like, spending…
• 1:33:57
  Tad Eggleston: 20 to 50 bucks a week just discovering?
• 1:34:00
  Tad Eggleston: Digital comics?
• 1:34:02
  Tad Eggleston: to…
• 1:34:03
  Tad Eggleston: only buying the digital comics that I knew that I wanted digital copies of, because it was too hard to go just randomly discovering things.
• 1:34:11
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, they probably lost… Easily $100 a month just for me.
• 1:34:18
  Tad Eggleston: Immediately.
• 1:34:20
  laurahudson: In search of a problem.
• 1:34:22
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:34:22
  laurahudson: I found it.
• 1:34:24
  Tad Eggleston: But, but, but, I mean, the result was, I mean, now we've got, we've got 3 legit players out there. You've got, you've got Global Comics, you've got Niana Ichiban, and you've got Suite just opened up.
• 1:34:36
  Tad Eggleston: I still dream of the day where, where…
• 1:34:41
  Tad Eggleston: Where books get the deal that movies got? Where if you bought them on one platform, you can have them on all the platforms?
• 1:34:50
  laurahudson: That would make sense.
• 1:34:52
  Tad Eggleston: Just because there's… there's kind of an annoyance, particularly because… and, like, we're getting into the weeds, so I should stop recording, but… but I'll finish this thought and then stop recording.
• 1:35:03
  Tad Eggleston: like, I feel like I need to kind of play in all of them so that I can talk about them, so I have to, like, remember
• 1:35:09
  Tad Eggleston: which platform am I paying for this book on? Which platform…
• 1:35:13
  laurahudson: It's like, how do we consume television at this point? I wish I still had cable. I wish I didn't have subscriptions to, like, 6 different places and, like.
• 1:35:23
  laurahudson: the content on them is, like, rearranging and moving or disappearing all the time. I don't love that, but that's the, you know, the financial reality of the system that's been created around us. It's designed to be inconvenient.
• 1:35:36
  laurahudson: For us, so that they can squeeze more money out of us to each individual channel.
• 1:35:42
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I love the on-demand aspect of it, but I do wish it was way better organized so that, like, I had a much better feel for what I got where.
• 1:35:51
  Tad Eggleston: And… and what was worth spending my money on, but, like…
• 1:35:56
  Tad Eggleston: Kinda like buying software rather than renting software, apparently those are quaint thoughts.
• 1:36:03
  laurahudson: Well, yeah, they want to get subscription as a service. Why get someone to pay for something once when you get them to pay for it every month?
• 1:36:09
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:36:11
  laurahudson: Yeah, and they're gonna… I mean, it's about… it's about squeezing every last drop of blood out of the stone.
• 1:36:16
  Tad Eggleston: out even the opt… like, I play Scrabble on an app with my mom.
• 1:36:21
  Tad Eggleston: And I would love to get rid of the ads, except that, like…
• 1:36:25
  Tad Eggleston: It's $100 a year to get rid of the ads!
• 1:36:29
  laurahudson: Yeah, and they're counting on you eventually.
• 1:36:30
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, I don't… I don't want to get rid of the ads $100 a year.
• 1:36:35
  laurahudson: But what if we annoy you more?
• 1:36:38
  laurahudson: Hmm?
• 1:36:39
  laurahudson: Eventually.
• 1:36:40
  Tad Eggleston: I'll either stop playing Scrabble on the phone with my mom, or find a different.
• 1:36:46
  laurahudson: Well, but that's the thing, if you are thinking short-term, you know, in a lot of these companies, if it's like, wow, we really need to bring up fourth quarter profits.
• 1:36:53
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I know.
• 1:36:54
  laurahudson: So it's, you know, like, who cares if you're… I mean, it's… they don't care about burning people a lot of the time, unless… I also think it's a PR thing.
• 1:37:01
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, in… you, at least, work around tech. Tim, are you more tech or entertainment? I saw that…
• 1:37:09
  Tad Eggleston: You had some wired and whatnot.
• 1:37:11
  timleong: Entertainment. Okay. Entertainment.
• 1:37:14
  laurahudson: Although he did work at Wired.
• 1:37:16
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:37:17
  Tad Eggleston: I'm just, like, blown away at, like, more and more it becomes…
• 1:37:23
  Tad Eggleston: It's so obvious that there are…
• 1:37:26
  Tad Eggleston: So many people controlling the money that don't understand…
• 1:37:31
  Tad Eggleston: How the things that they're paying for actually work.
• 1:37:35
  laurahudson: Nope.
• 1:37:36
  Tad Eggleston: And I wonder what happens when the people doing the programming decide to…
• 1:37:45
  Tad Eggleston: care.
• 1:37:46
  laurahudson: I mean, the people doing the programming are following instructions from bosses who don't understand the thing. But they went to business… they went to business school, so they know everything, maybe. That happens a lot in all kinds of industries, and then the orders flow down, and people have to do stupid things they know will fail.
• 1:38:03
  laurahudson: And hate it.
• 1:38:06
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah?
• 1:38:07
  Tad Eggleston: Or get hired on the round of, oh, we're introducing this, and fired on the round of, we're downsizing this! And it's like, wait a minute.
• 1:38:19
  laurahudson: Yeah, it's a big issue in the video game industry, too, where it's just, like, you know, slashing the staffs in between games. But then you see something like Larian Studios that made Baldur's Gate 2, and they don't behave that way.
• 1:38:30
  laurahudson: And, like, they produce incredible narratives, and it's, like, the stability of their team is a part of that. It's the fact that they're not constantly fucking with everyone who works with them.
• 1:38:39
  Tad Eggleston: wait a minute, Laura, you're almost like… you seem to be implying that there are examples of how to run companies in ways that aren't predatory towards the workers or the consumers, and still successful out there, that could be followed? Like.
• 1:38:58
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I don't know, McDonald's for a long time, Ford for a long time, fucking Walmart until Sam Walton died.
• 1:39:06
  laurahudson: Yeah, it's not cool, it's not… it's not cool to promote, but it is possible.
• 1:39:12
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I have this… I have this theory on… on American corporations, like, like, all of the great ones, essentially.
• 1:39:21
  Tad Eggleston: grew up the same way. They started by treating their employees well, and then they… they…
• 1:39:27
  Tad Eggleston: had their employees treat their customers well. And then at some point, the founders walked away, and the businessmen took over, and everything went to hell in the name of short-term profits.
• 1:39:40
  laurahudson: And you will see this theme and more.
• 1:39:43
  laurahudson: play out.
• 1:39:44
  laurahudson: Throughout the course of exploit.
• 1:39:47
  Tad Eggleston: of exploit.
• 1:39:48
  laurahudson: Yeah.
• 1:39:48
  Tad Eggleston: See? There was a reason that I brought it up.
• 1:39:50
  laurahudson: It's all coming full circle.
• 1:39:52
  Tad Eggleston: and Laura Hudson, this has been 22 Panels. We will see you after the next page.
• 1:39:58
  laurahudson: Bye-bye!