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With Great Power #262... 22 Panels with Russ Dugger · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

0:01
Tad Eggleston: Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels. My guest this afternoon is Russ Duggar, whose upcoming comic Ninja Penguin caught my attention from a
0:15
Tad Eggleston: From probably 20 feet away at… at, insert name, ZineFest.
0:24
Tad Eggleston: what, a month ago, roughly? A few weeks ago? Something like that. Whenever it was, regular listeners to the show know when it was, because, you know, we're sponsors, and we've been plugging the hell out of it, going up to it, and I talked about it after I came back, but…
0:40
Tad Eggleston: But I feel like the world has aged 70 years since then, so, like, time no longer has any meaning.
0:49
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, so… so actually, to be totally fair, I somehow missed it while I was…
0:57
Tad Eggleston: Buying stickers from you.
1:00
Tad Eggleston: And then saw it from 20 feet away and came back.
1:07
Doodlehoff: Excellent, the display worked.
1:09
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and I love the mini-comic, like…
1:14
Tad Eggleston: And that's where… first, give us, like, the front counter pitch for Ninja Penguin, but then I want to talk to you about what I think is one of the cooler marketing
1:25
Tad Eggleston: things I've, I've, ever seen done on an upcoming comic. Yeah.
1:32
Tad Eggleston: So pitch us Ninja Penguin, tell us how it's working. You know, if it's crowdfunding, you know, definitely let us know. We'll plug the hell out of it. If it's not crowdfunding, let us know where we can buy it. That sort of thing.
1:47
Doodlehoff: Sure thing. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. It was a real surprise and a true pleasure to have this opportunity, so thank you so much for inviting me on.
1:57
Tad Eggleston: I like talking comics. I love it.
2:00
Doodlehoff: You know? It makes the world a more beautiful place, I think. I think so.
2:05
Doodlehoff: But yeah, Ninja Penguin, it's kind of an all-ages comic about a lonely penguin in the Antarctic.
2:14
Doodlehoff: who, gains, superpowers from a meteor from space. Where else do meteors come from? I mean, they…
2:24
Tad Eggleston: It could come from the ocean, it would just be weird, and we might call them something else.
2:28
Doodlehoff: A seedier.
2:32
Doodlehoff: But yeah, he, you know, gains these powers and, kinda…
2:40
Doodlehoff: struggles against a villain, a lost duck that finds its way in Antarctica. So, a very silly premise, very kind of, I was describing it to some people yesterday I was at,
2:56
Doodlehoff: blanking on it, all of a sudden, Eau Claire Comic-Con, chatting with some folks, and I realized I've kind of been explaining it as very, like, early 2000s Nickelodeon is kind of the vibe that I went for. But yes,
3:12
Doodlehoff: Silly penguin gaining superpowers, and some alien friends from a… from a meteor in outer space.
3:20
Tad Eggleston: That… That is a, a, a, a succinct…
3:27
Tad Eggleston: plug, and I'll just say that, like, just the… the… the… the… the…
3:33
Tad Eggleston: The… the ninja-kicking penguin is all it took to sell me.
3:40
Doodlehoff: Yeah, big eyes, and…
3:43
Tad Eggleston: The feet flying through the air.
3:46
Tad Eggleston: you know…
3:47
Tad Eggleston: That works. Maybe I'll manage to get a picture somewhere in our notes or whatnot, but otherwise, people just… just Google Ninja Penguin, hopefully it will come up.
3:59
Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna do that right now to see if you're the first thing that comes up with Ninja Penguin, or whether we're gonna wind up with a different… a different Ninja Penguin, in which case you gotta…
4:08
Tad Eggleston: Make sure.
4:09
Doodlehoff: There's…
4:10
Tad Eggleston: You know, you know, there is a different ninja… there is a surprising number of ninja penguins.
4:15
Doodlehoff: No.
4:17
Doodlehoff: I will say, I think that there is just a weird…
4:21
Doodlehoff: confluence between… I think… one, penguins, I think, are universally adored. A lot of people love penguins. They were, like, huge in…
4:32
Doodlehoff: I wish I knew the exact dates, but, like, there was a time and… a space of time where, like, penguins were just…
4:39
Tad Eggleston: Well, probably right around March of the Penguins.
4:43
Doodlehoff: March of the Penguins, Happy Feet.
4:46
Tad Eggleston: A little bit, yeah.
4:47
Doodlehoff: Club Penguin, that online,
4:50
Doodlehoff: thing which I think there was actually, like, a… one of their mascots was, like, a ninja,
4:58
Doodlehoff: So, yeah.
4:59
Tad Eggleston: Well, this is where I'm also gonna say that I do like, as I look at all of these other Ninja Penguins, I do like your decision to go blue.
5:08
Doodlehoff: Yeah.
5:09
Tad Eggleston: The black ninja penguins aren't as funny.
5:13
Doodlehoff: It was, it was a lot of, trial and error with some color palettes, and I, I really liked the blue. It made it, especially compared to the, the villain of the story.
5:24
Tad Eggleston: Which is more greenish.
5:26
Doodlehoff: Yeah, which, I mean, you know, comics history, that's…
5:30
Tad Eggleston: Blue, no, no, it works. And unfortunately, we can't… we can't Google Ninja Penguin and get the right one yet, but we'll have to work on that.
5:38
Doodlehoff: there.
5:38
Tad Eggleston: We'll, we'll work on that.
5:41
Tad Eggleston: In fact, right now, tell us where we might find it now or in the future.
5:47
Doodlehoff: Certainly, so I, I do have an Instagram, it's at Doodlehoff. Doodle, as you'd expect it, as you'd expect it with H-O-F-F at the end. I've been posting stuff there, hopefully in the future, I'll get a website put together, I don't even have that yet.
6:05
Doodlehoff: Where maybe I'll be a bit better about sharing my things,
6:11
Doodlehoff: I'm not the best when it comes to social media and sharing.
6:15
Tad Eggleston: Totally understand. We now have an Instagram presence because my wife started doing it for us.
6:25
Doodlehoff: It… it…
6:26
Tad Eggleston: I mean, that…
6:27
Doodlehoff: I feel like it takes…
6:28
Tad Eggleston: Really what it came down to.
6:30
Tad Eggleston: we have a much more significant Instagram presence than we did, like, Three weeks ago, because… My wife has…
6:41
Tad Eggleston: Started doing it for us.
6:45
Doodlehoff: Excellent.
6:46
Tad Eggleston: That's… it's unfortunately… It's the entire difference.
6:49
Doodlehoff: Yeah.
6:52
Tad Eggleston: The entire difference is, is, you know… So thank you, Kelly.
6:56
Tad Eggleston: Thank you, Kelly, for… for making it so that, that, that, like.
7:01
Tad Eggleston: Probably even, when this episode goes up, there will be a picture of the appropriate
7:09
Tad Eggleston: Ninja Penguin with it.
7:11
Tad Eggleston: Because she does things like that.
7:15
Doodlehoff: Excellent.
7:16
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Yeah.
7:17
Tad Eggleston: So, this is… this is where I gotta, I gotta, like…
7:23
Tad Eggleston: asked the question just because, like, as I read this.
7:30
Tad Eggleston: And I know plenty of people who, like, write great kids' books who don't have kids or whatnot, but it just read like the book that came about
7:43
Tad Eggleston: as the, like, sitting next to the kid, no, Dad, you tell this story tonight.
7:49
Tad Eggleston: You know, where it's simplistic, but it's got enough detail and enough, you know, to move it along, and it's not…
7:58
Tad Eggleston: dumb, but it's not hard. Does that make sense?
8:03
Doodlehoff: It absolutely does, I appreciate that. I will say, no, I don't have, I don't have kids, but I will say the original idea for Ninja Penguin
8:14
Doodlehoff: came about when I was in 8th grade.
8:17
Doodlehoff: And I…
8:20
Doodlehoff: I honestly can't even remember, like, where the character was born from, maybe it was, like, chatting with some friends, but I did make a series of, like, two-page comic books.
8:31
Tad Eggleston: Of Ninja Penguin.
8:33
Doodlehoff: Gotcha. And I had found… I'd found them recently, and was like, I've always kind of wanted to make an actual comic book, and I kept…
8:42
Doodlehoff: trying ideas that didn't, like, move me or didn't excite me, and I found that, and I went, yeah, this moves and excites me.
8:50
Tad Eggleston: Well, so I'm…
8:51
Doodlehoff: like.
8:51
Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna make a comment, and then that'll take us perfectly into your preview. But, like, you're behind the eight ball. The first appearance of the Bone Cousins, Jeff Smith put in a mini-comic he made when he was, like, 8. You were in 8th grade. That's, like.
9:08
Doodlehoff: Yep.
9:09
Tad Eggleston: Five years later, man, you gotta pick up your game.
9:14
Doodlehoff: I gotta, I gotta. You know, I've always been a late bloomer, what can I say?
9:17
Tad Eggleston: But, you know, when you brought up the two-page, what I love about
9:23
Tad Eggleston: how I discovered Ninja Penguin, and this is, like, a brilliant marketing tool, it would be even better if you had… well, you do have the follow on Instagram, so you maybe just didn't know when you were
9:37
Tad Eggleston: writing the back of it and might not know yet. But, you have the first 6 pages here.
9:43
Tad Eggleston: And they're in black and white to make…
9:47
Tad Eggleston: But, but they're… they're… it's the one-page, folded and cut, eight-page comic.
9:52
Tad Eggleston: with a cover and a way to follow you and your upcoming appearance at FallCon, and then just so that, like, we still get the color experience, you were kind enough to tape a sticker to the front.
10:10
Tad Eggleston: So, like, free sticker.
10:13
Tad Eggleston: Free comment, just enough to really hook people. If anything, we learn more about the duck than the penguin, which in some ways is perfect, because, like, you get your introduction to the penguin just in time.
10:29
Tad Eggleston: To go, I gotta go find out more about this.
10:34
Tad Eggleston: And again, it's something that, like, you can walk away from in the form that… that…
10:43
Tad Eggleston: those of us who are comics geeks will recognize from Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics when he says.
10:50
Tad Eggleston: You know, anybody can make a comic, all you need is one sheet of paper.
10:55
Doodlehoff: Yep, absolutely.
10:57
Doodlehoff: Absolutely.
10:58
Tad Eggleston: So, so, I mean, is that a marketing strategy you've used before, or did it pop into your head?
11:05
Tad Eggleston: For insert zine, or insert name, I mean, like, where… where'd that come from?
11:11
Doodlehoff: Yeah, so it really did kind of… Come a little bit from…
11:16
Doodlehoff: like, being under the gun. I knew that I was set up for Insert Name Zine Fest. I would have loved to have had the comic, like, ready in time for that.
11:28
Doodlehoff: But I was still putting some, like, final touches on it to, ship it out, because I got it printed through,
11:37
Doodlehoff: Comics Wellspring.
11:38
Doodlehoff: So I was, you know, just kind of putting those finishing touches before I put it out to print.
11:44
Doodlehoff: And I was like, I really… like, I have stuff here I'd love to be able to share at least a little bit, get, you know, some people excited about this idea, because I feel like the people that are gonna be at Insert Name Zine Fest are also a lot of the people that will, you know, that would…
11:59
Doodlehoff: at least stop by FallCon, or, you know, some of the bigger cons,
12:04
Doodlehoff: Around here, so, I just thought, you know what, I have the first… I can take the first 6 pages, I think, especially with page 6 landing on kind of a nice little,
12:18
Doodlehoff: you know, cliffhanger,
12:23
Doodlehoff: Like, you know something's gonna happen, it's kind of setting it up for… for the main event, or the, like, a major reveal.
12:29
Doodlehoff: But also, it has enough, you know, kind of goofs and gags and funny characters to hold its own, at least a little bit.
12:39
Doodlehoff: And it was quick and easy, you know, keep it black and white for, simplicity's sake, for cost.
12:46
Doodlehoff: And then, yeah, you kind of hit the nail on the head. I had these… I printed out a bunch of, color stickers that I was planning on giving, you know, having as, you know, promotional giveaway for free. That's what I did at Eau Claire yesterday.
13:02
Doodlehoff: But, tacking it to the front so you get a little bit idea of what the color of this penguin is, some, more…
13:09
Tad Eggleston: Well, I think you, you know…
13:10
Doodlehoff: to it.
13:11
Tad Eggleston: Same.
13:12
Tad Eggleston: The same actual image for the front cover of the mini-zine, so, like… Yeah, no, it was…
13:20
Tad Eggleston: I… I… I… I was impressed at, like… I appreciate that. I've seen… I've seen lots of different cool things done
13:28
Tad Eggleston: to promote comics. So…
13:33
Tad Eggleston: it's… it's, like, anytime I see something that I hadn't quite seen that before, I, like, go,
13:40
Tad Eggleston: So, yeah. And of course, I'm saying this as I also fall down the comics wellspring.
13:51
Doodlehoff: Yes, excellent.
13:52
Tad Eggleston: rabbit hole.
13:54
Tad Eggleston: So I'll stop with that and look at that more later. This is… my audience knows that I'm autistic and find rabbit holes fascinating, but I should warn you, you say certain things that, like, trigger me, and you might have to start filling some dead air because I'm going.
14:10
Doodlehoff: Alright, alright, noted, noted, I'm ready.
14:15
Tad Eggleston: So…
14:17
Tad Eggleston: This is a good point, you know, and this is one of the questions I forget to ask sometimes with some of our more experienced creators. I'm not trying to denigrate your experience, you've clearly been making comics on some level since you were in 8th grade, but, like.
14:35
Tad Eggleston: When you can dive into
14:37
Tad Eggleston: huge amounts of published work, I sometimes forget to ask one of my favorite questions, which is, give me your comic's history. And I don't mean your bibliography.
14:45
Tad Eggleston: I mean, your biographies. Start with, like, the comics that you first remember reading, like, the comics that you first remember buying for yourself, comics that changed the way you looked at comics, comics that…
15:00
Tad Eggleston: that…
15:01
Tad Eggleston: Made you decide that maybe you could make, or wanted to make comics, and or decided that you could make comics, because sometimes those are different books.
15:10
Tad Eggleston: You know…
15:12
Doodlehoff: Yeah, certainly. I don't remember…
15:19
Doodlehoff: So I have a, I have, like, a core memory, Of having some common… so… maybe… mid-90s?
15:30
Doodlehoff: I have some memory of, you know, getting some comic books at, like, a yard sale or something like that. But honestly, the earliest…
15:41
Doodlehoff: thing that I remember reading was,
15:46
Doodlehoff: My grandparents would send me this, you know, harem romance comic that I really loved. It's called Archie, maybe you've heard of it.
15:58
Tad Eggleston: I have, I have, I have.
16:00
Doodlehoff: Yeah, you know.
16:04
Tad Eggleston: I mean, funny aside here, the first time Tom Kiggs' kids gave a damn that he wrote comics was when he did an Archie issue.
16:12
Doodlehoff: Oh, wild. Yeah. No, I… my grandparents would send me Archie Digest, and I loved those, loved those.
16:21
Doodlehoff: Of course.
16:23
Tad Eggleston: It took me too long to get into them, but I have been… I have been won over, and I've been…
16:28
Doodlehoff: Yeah, they're…
16:29
Tad Eggleston: Trying to fit more of them into my, reading.
16:33
Tad Eggleston: time.
16:33
Doodlehoff: And…
16:34
Doodlehoff: And their history is really fascinating, you know, not to set you up for another rabbit hole, but .
16:39
Tad Eggleston: I'm all for it. I like rabbit holes.
16:42
Doodlehoff: Yeah, but I… I… I wish I could remember, like, specifics, but there's so much about, like, the… the publishers, and everything they went through, and who owned Archie Comics, and, like, where their attentions went. It's… it's actually, like, a really, kind of.
17:01
Doodlehoff: fascinating… .
17:04
Tad Eggleston: I have not.
17:04
Doodlehoff: That's hold up to you.
17:05
Tad Eggleston: Apache Comics Wikipedia article, just to start with later.
17:10
Doodlehoff: But yeah, those for sure, loved reading those. Newspaper comics, you know, the weekly Sunday funnies,
17:19
Doodlehoff: Always…
17:20
Tad Eggleston: Did you have favorite newspaper strips?
17:23
Doodlehoff: Oh, man.
17:26
Tad Eggleston: I mean, you see…
17:27
Doodlehoff: I definitely went through, like, my Garfield phase. I… I loved, I loved zits when I was growing up.
17:35
Tad Eggleston: deposits, too.
17:36
Doodlehoff: I thought that was a great one. Man.
17:43
Doodlehoff: I really kind of… I really didn't discriminate. I read each and every comic that was on there.
17:49
Tad Eggleston: Oh, I did too.
17:49
Doodlehoff: You know.
17:50
Tad Eggleston: I did too, but I still had my favorites.
17:53
Doodlehoff: Yeah, for sure.
17:55
Tad Eggleston: Beetle Bailey?
17:57
Doodlehoff: Beetle Bailey.
17:58
Tad Eggleston: There's a cool collection of that coming out.
18:01
Doodlehoff: Yeah.
18:01
Tad Eggleston: Really soon. And or just came out? Oh, really? Yeah, give me a second.
18:05
Doodlehoff: Keep an eye out.
18:05
Tad Eggleston: I feel like, I feel like,
18:08
Tad Eggleston: I feel like a fan of graphics. I also think that, I think it's New York Review of Books is reprinting Mort Walker did, like, a,
18:18
Tad Eggleston: Keep telling the story. I'll look up the stuff, and then we'll tell it for… tell it properly.
18:27
Doodlehoff: Yeah. No, the Beatle Bailey was kind of interesting, because both my parents were, Army, and so I think that I just kind of…
18:36
Doodlehoff: That one just kind of attracted me to it, simply being based on,
18:42
Doodlehoff: a bunch of people in the army, maybe saw some… some humor in, or…
18:49
Doodlehoff: maybe understood my parents a little bit better, seeing, like, you know, a drill sergeant and the comedy there, but…
18:57
Doodlehoff: trying to think of what else… I mean, like, you know, I had that stuff growing up, but it wasn't until maybe…
19:06
Doodlehoff: mid-high school that I really, of course, you know, that was around the era that manga started to become way more prevalent, way more available. Got into reading manga.
19:16
Doodlehoff: and then I kind of fell…
19:20
Doodlehoff: off. Well, no, I'll take that back. It transitioned to webcomics. Like, I really, you know, fell hard for webcomics. So, you know, it was… I had my favorites folder, and every morning.
19:36
Doodlehoff: I would wake up and I'd open up, you know, was it Salmon Fuzzy was one that I remember, Least I Could Do was one that I remember reading. Of course, I think the,
19:51
Doodlehoff: Oh, am I blanking on the name now?
19:56
Doodlehoff: Anyway, I… there… I couldn't start my morning without reading through all of the updated webcomics.
20:02
Doodlehoff: And then, you know, start my college courses.
20:07
Tad Eggleston: Gotcha.
20:08
Doodlehoff: And then when I joined the workforce, it was the DC's New 52 that kind of brought me back into comic books, especially, you know, Batman with,
20:24
Doodlehoff: Oh, why am I blanking on his name now, of course?
20:26
Tad Eggleston: Gus Snyder's?
20:28
Doodlehoff: Scott Snyder, absolutely.
20:29
Tad Eggleston: Morrison was still doing Batman going into that.
20:33
Doodlehoff: Yeah, so Scott Snyder's was the first one… first time that I, like, started with number one, and was, like, reading through the issues, and keeping up, and, like, buying the single.
20:44
Tad Eggleston: Corda owls, and then the…
20:46
Doodlehoff: Yep, yep, yup.
20:47
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
20:49
Doodlehoff: And so, you know, that was, you know, one of the big ones. I also enjoyed, The Flash, during that time.
20:55
Tad Eggleston: It's too annoying.
20:56
Doodlehoff: And then, you know.
20:56
Tad Eggleston: string them.
20:58
Doodlehoff: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
21:00
Tad Eggleston: Trying to remember who was doing the flag.
21:01
Doodlehoff: That was…
21:02
Tad Eggleston: him.
21:03
Doodlehoff: I'm terrible with names, is the unfortunate thing.
21:06
Tad Eggleston: I'm pulling it up right now, though.
21:09
Doodlehoff: Yeah, that was the Godspeed.
21:19
Tad Eggleston: Francis Manapool, Brian Bucoletto, Robert Bandidi, Van Jensen.
21:24
Doodlehoff: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
21:24
Tad Eggleston: booth.
21:28
Doodlehoff: So yeah, new 52 kind of brought me back into weekly, monthly comics, and…
21:36
Doodlehoff: from there, I just kind of kept up regularly, specifically with DC. I… I…
21:44
Doodlehoff: like the Marvel world, I just, for some reason, I gravitate towards DC more.
21:48
Tad Eggleston: You're a DC guy.
21:50
Doodlehoff: I'm a DC guy.
21:51
Tad Eggleston: I know that I'm an anomaly, because I… I like both worlds, and I'm more picky about who's writing it than, like, what the characters are. You know, almost everybody tends to gravitate one way or the other.
22:06
Tad Eggleston: Oh, for sure.
22:09
Doodlehoff: Well, and I'm also one of those people where I…
22:12
Doodlehoff: Maybe it's a fear of commitment, but I…
22:16
Tad Eggleston: I hope I did.
22:18
Doodlehoff: Well, I, I love, like, the… the short-run issues.
22:25
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
22:26
Doodlehoff: Anything that, you know, where…
22:29
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, I, particularly with my superhero stuff, I tend to be more of a miniseries guy. So here is the Beatle Badley book that I was talking.
22:37
Doodlehoff: Oh, that's so cool!
22:38
Tad Eggleston: 75 years of smiles.
22:40
Doodlehoff: Oh my goodness.
22:41
Tad Eggleston: It's a coffee table career retrospective of Beatle Bailey by Mark Walker, and it comes out on Tuesday.
22:49
Tad Eggleston: So.
22:49
Doodlehoff: Interesting.
22:50
Tad Eggleston: Tuesday from Fanta Graphics is Mark Walker's Beetle Bailey.
22:55
Tad Eggleston: And then, this is the other one I was talking about, The Lexicon of Kamikana by Mort Walker.
23:00
Doodlehoff: Okay.
23:01
Tad Eggleston: With a forward by Chris Ware.
23:03
Tad Eggleston: Where, where, like, he broke down…
23:10
Doodlehoff: Wow.
23:11
Tad Eggleston: parts.
23:13
Tad Eggleston: of…
23:15
Tad Eggleston: Like, how comics are made, etc. Yeah, I love that stuff. Sweat drops, the… right. So that is coming from New York Review Comics. It might be out now, because I can add it to my cart already, so it might… it might not be coming. It might be the one that's already out. So yeah.
23:32
Tad Eggleston: You said… you said Beatle Bailey, and those immediately popped in my head, because remember, autistic brain, I make.
23:37
Doodlehoff: Yep.
23:41
Doodlehoff: Nope, I getcha.
23:41
Tad Eggleston: Okay, and definitely the Lexicon of Comicana is on my list of things that I, like, want. Beatle Bailey I go back and forth on, but enough people love Mort Walker that, like, getting that one book that I really like.
23:57
Tad Eggleston: dive in, and that's where I actually really love it, when they put out, like, a best of a comic strip.
24:04
Tad Eggleston: Right. Rather than just the year-by-year collections. Don't get me wrong, I love, like, the Peanuts year-by-year collections. I have my complete Calvin and Hobbes, you know. If I fell in love with Beatle Bailey, I might still want the year-by-year collections as well, but, like, having that one book to explore and lend to…
24:24
Tad Eggleston: You know, I've got, like, 3 or 4 peanuts collections that are the perfect way to say.
24:30
Tad Eggleston: You haven't figured out the magic of peanuts yet? Here, read this.
24:35
Doodlehoff: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
24:36
Tad Eggleston: You know… Just the hits. Just the hits. Well, well, and generally laid out in such a way that it's not just the hits, but, like.
24:44
Tad Eggleston: It's a good exploration of what the comics…
24:50
Doodlehoff: Yeah.
24:51
Tad Eggleston: What the comics encompassed.
24:54
Tad Eggleston: Like, one of my favorite Nancy books is the one
24:59
Tad Eggleston: And he did it over, over,
25:03
Tad Eggleston: He did it over single issues.
25:06
Tad Eggleston: A kitchen sink, but then they got collected
25:09
Tad Eggleston: at New York Review of Books recently, but Dennis Kitchen… Right.
25:13
Tad Eggleston: collected Nancy strips by, like, theme, so that he put out, like, an issue on food, an issue on…
25:21
Doodlehoff: Yes, gotcha.
25:22
Tad Eggleston: And those are what were collected in.
25:25
Tad Eggleston: So, so you've got to have this collection of Nancy through the years, and Nancy took on a couple of different forms through the years, you know? I mean, we know the three panel Nancy the best, because, you know, that's the one that…
25:38
Tad Eggleston: The sink… God. This is how cool comics is, like, like, Paul… Paul… I don't know, there are too many Pauls. Why can't… why can't I remember? I've had him on the show, too.
25:51
Tad Eggleston: How to read Nancy.
25:55
Tad Eggleston: Paul Karasek and Mark Newgarden wrote an entire 300-page scholarly book on how to read one Nancy strip.
26:09
Doodlehoff: That's, that's, that's my, that's…
26:12
Tad Eggleston: August 8th.
26:14
Doodlehoff: I love it.
26:14
Tad Eggleston: 59 Nancy Street.
26:17
Tad Eggleston: If you haven't read it, you should. How to Read Nancy.
26:19
Doodlehoff: Alright!
26:19
Tad Eggleston: is, like, -
26:21
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm quite serious, like, You know, to me.
26:27
Tad Eggleston: like, your 100-level comics reading is McCloud's…
26:33
Tad Eggleston: Understanding comics. Your 200-level comics reading is the actual textbook from Jessica Abel and… and…
26:41
Tad Eggleston: Matt Madden,
26:47
Tad Eggleston: Drawing words and writing pictures, right?
26:52
Tad Eggleston: Which is, like, literally the textbook to their… to their comics class.
26:59
Tad Eggleston: The 300 level is when you start splitting off into little things, like how to read Nancy, or… Yeah. I feel like the Mort Walker will probably be a 300 level. And then, to me, the 400 level is,
27:13
Tad Eggleston: Nick Susanis' Unflattening, which is actually, in many ways, an allegory for teaching, but… but really is, like, how pictures work, how comics work, how the mind works, how thinking works, all rolled into one. It was his doctoral thesis at
27:31
Tad Eggleston: Columbia, it was printed by Harvard University Press, And it's just wonderful.
27:38
Doodlehoff: Right, it's called the unflattening?
27:41
Tad Eggleston: It's called Unflattening. And for that matter, let me drop… let me drop his website into the notes here, and I'll plug it again on the air, and one of these days, Nick and I'll actually have our schedule,
27:56
Tad Eggleston: Nick was one of the first people I reached out to, and he still hasn't been on the show, because we just haven't managed to make it work. But he teaches, and he makes.
28:06
Doodlehoff: Let's do it, it's so much fun! This is a blast! Right!
28:11
Doodlehoff: Priorities.
28:12
Tad Eggleston: We, we, we, no, we've, we've, we've had a, a, a, a very, a very,
28:18
Tad Eggleston: At times, prolific, and always, always, healthy, back and forth on,
28:28
Tad Eggleston: Via email, we just haven't managed to…
28:31
Doodlehoff: Yeah.
28:33
Tad Eggleston: I managed to… I managed to stick my head in on one of his symposiums.
28:39
Tad Eggleston: So I have kind of met him, so that was cool.
28:43
Doodlehoff: Nice.
28:44
Tad Eggleston: There we go. But no, here is his website. His website is spinweavingCut.com.
28:51
Tad Eggleston: Where he puts up his… his… his…
28:58
Tad Eggleston: The syllabi for his most recent comics class is done as a mini-comic, so that's what's on top of
29:07
Tad Eggleston: the… the, website right now. He's had…
29:12
Tad Eggleston: A couple of great political one-pagers recently.
29:17
Tad Eggleston: That are also up there.
29:19
Doodlehoff: it now.
29:20
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, he's… he's got… Like, massive lists of other websites or, educational papers written on comics.
29:30
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, this is… this is one of my favorite comic resources on the web, is… is Nick Susanis' spin, weave, and Cut. But it is definitely for a particular type of comics fan that, like.
29:48
Tad Eggleston: likes to get seriously nerdy. That, like, you say the words, they wrote a 300-page scholarly book about one Nancy strip, and the eyes go big, rather than, why would anybody do that?
30:09
Doodlehoff: Oh, excellent. No, that's cool. I've got that saved to check out.
30:15
Tad Eggleston: You know, and like, I mean, that's one of my favorite things about doing this podcast, is I've definitely started to deconstruct what I like about comics more, why they've always been my favorite medium, why more and more I view them as the perfect medium.
30:32
Tad Eggleston: I…
30:34
Doodlehoff: I'm… I'm in that same boat.
30:37
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it might… I used to describe
30:40
Tad Eggleston: Chicago… Chicago's called the Second City, and… and I used to… and I used to say, but… but that doesn't… that doesn't tell the whole story, because it's, like, the second city in population, and it's the second city in theater, and it's the second city in…
30:55
Tad Eggleston: In, like, sports atmosphere, and it's the second city in music scene, and it's the second city for parks, and it's the second city for…
31:05
Tad Eggleston: museums, and… None of the first cities are the same city.
31:16
Doodlehoff: True.
31:16
Tad Eggleston: Washington, D.C. has better museums. You probably have a better theater scene, and maybe a better sports scene in New York. You… but with their football teams in New Jersey now, do you really?
31:29
Tad Eggleston: You… you probably have a better music scene?
31:34
Tad Eggleston: I don't know if you have a better music scene in Seattle anymore, maybe LA. There's almost always at least one town, and sometimes as many as three, that I would say
31:43
Tad Eggleston: a better music scene than Chicago. But those towns change…
31:47
Doodlehoff: Because they're almost always whatever.
31:51
Tad Eggleston: music scene.
31:54
Doodlehoff: Yeah, it's, it's based on the…
31:56
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Whereas Chicago's got…
31:58
Doodlehoff: jeez.
31:59
Tad Eggleston: Chicago's got blues, you know, Chicago's got folk, Chicago's got country, Chicago's got classic rock, Chicago's got a fantastic symphony, fantastic opera house.
32:12
Tad Eggleston: You know.
32:14
Doodlehoff: Yeah.
32:15
Tad Eggleston: Which is why, like, and I still haven't visited them all, but, like, even…
32:21
Tad Eggleston: You know, I like New York way more than I wanted to.
32:25
Tad Eggleston: Because I hate the Mets, I hate the Yankees. Actually, I'm starting to like the Mets, which is really weird for me, and I apologize to Ron Sano on a daily basis. I have been… I have been assured by one of my friends who's an older Cubs fan that it's now been long enough that Ronnie will forgive me, rather than rolling over in his grave.
32:48
Tad Eggleston: But, like, Love San Francisco, love Seattle, love Boston.
32:56
Tad Eggleston: I really love that the city that I live within driving distance of is Chicago.
33:01
Tad Eggleston: Because… There's nothing that I can wanna do.
33:06
Tad Eggleston: That isn't there.
33:07
Tad Eggleston: Excellent.
33:08
Tad Eggleston: Except maybe certain…
33:09
Doodlehoff: It's been yet, so…
33:10
Tad Eggleston: I don't really want to surf.
33:12
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I kind of want to surf some days.
33:14
Tad Eggleston: I bet you… I bet you… I bet you, actually, Lake Michigan might be more my speed of surfing, if I could manage to get the board to float.
33:22
Doodlehoff: Yeah.
33:25
Doodlehoff: Oh, for sure, for sure.
33:28
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, someday…
33:29
Doodlehoff: Someday I'd like to get to Chicago, I've never been. Never been.
33:32
Tad Eggleston: No. Where are you?
33:34
Doodlehoff: And I assumed you were Midwest, okay. Yep, yep. So you're in Minneapolis and haven't made it to Chicago.
33:40
Tad Eggleston: We're, like, the next closest city, dude. I know! I mean, look, at least, like, maybe a smidgen closer?
33:47
Doodlehoff: Yeah, never been there either.
33:49
Tad Eggleston: Oh, wow. Well, we got.
33:50
Doodlehoff: attitude.
33:51
Tad Eggleston: excuses, particularly because both… Chicago's got a couple of good small press…
33:57
Tad Eggleston: slash independent cons, and Milwaukee has a good one.
34:02
Doodlehoff: Well… well, I will say, I… I didn't start…
34:05
Doodlehoff: doing cons or any sort of selling until, like, middle of last year.
34:10
Tad Eggleston: So it's a new thing.
34:11
Doodlehoff: Yeah, yeah, my first one was actually… 2024's Insert Name Zine Fest.
34:17
Tad Eggleston: Oh my god.
34:18
Doodlehoff: First ever time, like…
34:19
Tad Eggleston: So, so…
34:20
Doodlehoff: pointing out myself.
34:22
Tad Eggleston: So I would have met you last year if I hadn't gotten sick, is what you're saying. Yeah, yeah.
34:28
Doodlehoff: But I didn't have anything like Ninja Penguin. It was all still, like, very small, you know, foldable.
34:35
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, I very much… I very much enjoyed Gracie, too.
34:40
Doodlehoff: Oh, yeah. I'm so happy. People… people like picking that one up. She's a… my… my dog, Gracie.
34:48
Tad Eggleston: I had a… I had a male cat named Greasy.
34:52
Doodlehoff: Oh, yeah.
34:53
Tad Eggleston: And Gracie also reminds me of my dog, Potato, who was here a few minutes ago, but has apparently decided to either climb under the bed or go see Mom.
35:04
Tad Eggleston: Particularly, Particularly, the… the… you have two choices, either give me a chip, or we have a problem.
35:14
Tad Eggleston: See, my dog's full name is BBQ Baked Potato Chip Zdarsky.
35:22
Doodlehoff: Beautiful, rolls off the tongue.
35:23
Tad Eggleston: Well, it does, it does. Well, because my wife has…
35:29
Tad Eggleston: As long as she's named her own pets, it's a… it's an artist and a food.
35:35
Tad Eggleston: So, we got potato not long after the passing of Salvador Bologna, which was the dog that she had when we met, whose favorite food was barbecue baked potato chips.
35:51
Tad Eggleston: I mean, man, did you… I mean, like…
35:54
Tad Eggleston: Man, did you have a pro… like, like, it got to the point where it was, like, one for you, two for him, if it was the barbecue baked potato chips.
36:03
Doodlehoff: Oh, that's so funny.
36:04
Tad Eggleston: And when we met this dog.
36:09
Tad Eggleston: At an event, a shelter event.
36:13
Tad Eggleston: His name was Chip.
36:15
Tad Eggleston: Which my wife didn't love, but I said, but, you know, Salvador's favorite food was barbecue baked potato chips.
36:22
Tad Eggleston: And, you know, I love the comic book artist Chip Zdarsky, so, you know, we can throw them all together. So we did, but we call him Potato.
36:32
Doodlehoff: Potato. Wow, that's… I love that.
36:35
Doodlehoff: I love that. Gracie came with her name. We had some names that we were going to, you know, go with. I think, like, at one point, we were gonna go with, like, Harley.
36:47
Doodlehoff: But we… we went to the rescue, and I sat down, and I made the mistake of saying, come here, Gracie, and she came, and she sat in my lap, and I'm like, well, I've said it, it felt right, she, like… I'm like, yeah, you're Gracie, you're Gracie. You're my Gracie goo now.
37:04
Tad Eggleston: Yep, yep.
37:06
Tad Eggleston: But, but yeah, no, my Gracie was actually named for Mark Grace.
37:10
Tad Eggleston: The, the, the longtime Cubs first baseman?
37:14
Doodlehoff: Love that.
37:15
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, so… But yeah, so I really appreciated your dog comic, too.
37:22
Doodlehoff: Thank you, yeah.
37:23
Tad Eggleston: And I love, you know, this is something that I can't emphasize enough, and all the more so, because I now know that you've only been at this even semi-professionally for, like, a little more than a year now.
37:36
Doodlehoff: Yeah.
37:39
Tad Eggleston: If you can put together the one-page comic that you can run off on your printer at home, cut them up, you know, fold them and cut them.
37:48
Tad Eggleston: You're a pro, get yourself a table.
37:51
Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean.
37:53
Doodlehoff: Yeah.
37:53
Tad Eggleston: One of the beauties about… one of the things that makes comics the best medium.
38:01
Doodlehoff: is…
38:02
Tad Eggleston: That it's got the lowest… point of entry.
38:07
Doodlehoff: Testify.
38:08
Tad Eggleston: And it only gets lower.
38:11
Tad Eggleston: You know, it was the lowest point of entry when all you had to do was print off your… or, or for that matter, even just make your one-of-a-kind, or… or…
38:21
Tad Eggleston: Draw it on a piece of paper and then trace it, or draw it on a piece of paper and then find a copy machine, or…
38:30
Tad Eggleston: But now with webcomics, all you need is a phone.
38:34
Tad Eggleston: Hell, I know people who draw their comics on the phone. I mean, it's never the ideal way.
38:42
Doodlehoff: It feels like a true, like, I cannot say the word.
38:49
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
38:52
Doodlehoff: Yeah, it feels like a true, like, boulder up a hill. Right. But it… so I'm endlessly impressed with people who are just like, I'm working with the tools that I got, and.
39:03
Doodlehoff: happen? I'm like, yes, yes, absolutely.
39:07
Doodlehoff: do this at 38, and just deciding to put it out there, like, it's not too late.
39:13
Tad Eggleston: But then you add to that that, like.
39:19
Tad Eggleston: I mean, we touched on this briefly earlier, you know.
39:23
Tad Eggleston: there are mediums… that might do certain things. I mean, I guess you could make an argument
39:31
Tad Eggleston: that movies do action better, though I think it's only an argument. I think a well-drawn action scene can…
39:39
Tad Eggleston: Because sometimes the beauty of the action in a movie is just… it's too fast for you to… to…
39:47
Doodlehoff: Right. Well, it… it…
39:48
Tad Eggleston: Enjoy it all, and or they slow it down so that you can see everything going on, but then it doesn't feel right.
39:57
Tad Eggleston: you know…
39:58
Doodlehoff: Yeah.
39:59
Doodlehoff: I…
40:00
Doodlehoff: I feel like with, and this is, like, a huge pet peeve for me, is… Right. Like, the… for me, the medium is the message. If you decide to tell a story in a particular medium.
40:13
Doodlehoff: then I feel like that story has to be uniquely for that medium. It's why it always bugs me when, when you take, like, animation.
40:23
Doodlehoff: like Disney's been doing with their remakes, they take an animated story, and they move it to live action, but they don't change anything. They try and keep it as.
40:31
Tad Eggleston: As, you know, pitch perfect to what…
40:33
Doodlehoff: And… and I sit there and I go, so you didn't adjust anything, really, for… to… to make the argument of why this is live action. It's still presented in the way that we would expect it to… you want it to be animated.
40:48
Doodlehoff: That's how I saw it. Which is not, like, not to say, like, old man on cloud, or yells at cloud stuff, like, it's different.
40:55
Tad Eggleston: You could certainly do a live-action… You could certainly do a live-action, Snow White that would be completely worth watching, but…
41:04
Doodlehoff: It's not gonna be like that.
41:05
Tad Eggleston: the animated one. And make… make an argument for, like, why you're… you… why it needs to be this way. Right.
41:14
Doodlehoff: And I feel like with, like, fight scenes,
41:18
Doodlehoff: There can be, like, if it's gonna be…
41:21
Doodlehoff: fast and messy and ugly, like, the cinematography has to lean into that. Like, it's fast and ugly because you want the audience to feel like it's fast and ugly. If it's gonna be slow, if it's gonna be, like, you know, big long shots where you're seeing, like, all the movement and action, then it's gonna be more dance-like. It's gonna be like music. So it's less about, like, the feeling of the fight and more of, like, the spectacle of dance.
41:45
Doodlehoff: in my…
41:45
Tad Eggleston: But where I'm going, in terms of the comics being the perfect medium, is they could do either one of those in the same amount of space.
41:55
Doodlehoff: Right.
41:56
Doodlehoff: Yeah.
41:57
Tad Eggleston: They could do either one of those, and at least as well, and maybe better.
42:02
Tad Eggleston: in the same amount of space, just by changing how they do it. There's no medium that does the passage of time better than comics.
42:11
Doodlehoff: I would agree with that.
42:13
Tad Eggleston: You just can't.
42:15
Doodlehoff: Yeah.
42:16
Tad Eggleston: And part of it is the way that comics are, by their very nature, interactive with their readers.
42:28
Tad Eggleston: Their readers, essentially, have the final cut.
42:32
Doodlehoff: Yes.
42:32
Tad Eggleston: Because the readers, Truly decide the pacing.
42:40
Tad Eggleston: Both skipped.
42:41
Doodlehoff: pages if they wanted.
42:42
Tad Eggleston: they spend it. Well, no, but just both in terms of how long they spend with it.
42:47
Doodlehoff: Yes.
42:48
Tad Eggleston: And in terms of… how long… It feels in their head.
42:55
Tad Eggleston: Which don't have to be the same thing.
42:58
Doodlehoff: No. They can look at a page that they know is happening lightning fast, but because of the way it grips them, spend an hour with it.
43:08
Tad Eggleston: Without losing that sense of, it's…
43:12
Tad Eggleston: You know, whereas in a book, the number of words Does a huge amount.
43:19
Doodlehoff: To affect the pacing.
43:21
Tad Eggleston: in a movie, just… The speed of the movie does a huge amount to affect the pacing.
43:29
Tad Eggleston: And it's very, very hard to express a different pace Than you're actually experiencing.
43:38
Tad Eggleston: So it's very, very hard to have a movie that's moving along at a…
43:42
Tad Eggleston: at a brisk rate, but feels like it's longer. It's even harder to have a movie that's not moving along at a brisk rate.
43:52
Tad Eggleston: Do you like it's shorter? That one gets pulled off every once in a while, but…
43:58
Tad Eggleston: You know, more times than not, when people say, oh, that movie didn't feel long, it's not that I'm not aware that it was 3 hours, it's that I didn't get bored for 3 hours.
44:10
Doodlehoff: Right.
44:12
Doodlehoff: Yeah.
44:12
Tad Eggleston: You know.
44:14
Doodlehoff: Critically engaged the entire time.
44:16
Tad Eggleston: Right.
44:19
Tad Eggleston: yeah, that juxtaposition between words, you know, and people will throw things at me, they'll say, well, music, and I'm like, dude, go… go read Dave Chisholm, go read, Stefan Frank.
44:32
Tad Eggleston: you know, music can come oozing out of comics. And they'll say, smell, and I'll go, go read an old mad magazine.
44:44
Tad Eggleston: Tell me you don't… you don't smell those mounds of dog turds.
44:49
Doodlehoff: I was… I… so, I can't remember, a co-worker of mine said something that connects so, so deeply to me, which was something along the lines of, I have, I have strong opinions loosely held.
45:07
Doodlehoff: Which is to say, like… and I think this, this is something that speaks to me, because,
45:13
Doodlehoff: I… I will get, like, excited about a topic, and I will make, like, very, like…
45:19
Doodlehoff: clear-cut statements, black and white, like, this is right, this is wrong, you know, I'm saying… these are my reasonings. And then somebody will come in and be like, well, but you didn't think about it this way, and immediately, like, I can have my mind changed like that. It's very easy.
45:36
Tad Eggleston: Right.
45:36
Doodlehoff: convince me of a lot of things, because I simply get so excited about the topic, and be like, this is…
45:43
Tad Eggleston: Now I have to work much harder on how I phrase my own thing, because I…
45:51
Tad Eggleston: I don't really have weak opinions, but I try to think of them as
45:56
Tad Eggleston: thoughts rather than beliefs, because I want them to be changeable, and they're not unchangeable, but… But…
46:05
Tad Eggleston: the longer I've had it, the more I've thought about it, the more…
46:10
Tad Eggleston: It's not even that it needs convincing, it needs evidence.
46:14
Doodlehoff: Absolutely, yes.
46:15
Tad Eggleston: You know, give me evidence, and I will happily change based on… I mean, like I said earlier, I'm autistic, and one of the things that definitely defines my autism is a resistance to change, but I'm not unchanged. You know, I have people… Right. You change all the time, I'm like, well, yeah, but, like.
46:33
Tad Eggleston: Only kind of. Like, as soon as I go, oh, this is the right way, I change and I change hard until there's something else that says, oh, this is the right way.
46:44
Doodlehoff: Yeah. I mean, it's.
46:46
Tad Eggleston: But if I've got my right way, and you want me to do it your right way, even if I don't think that your right way is wrong, if it's not my right way, and you haven't convinced me that it's better than my right way, it's gonna be very different for me to do… very, very difficult for me to do it differently.
47:06
Doodlehoff: Absolutely. I… honestly, my wife calls me out on this all the time, of how stubborn I can be. I never considered myself a stubborn person. I can be extremely stubborn, especially when it comes to.
47:19
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I think I'm mostly stubborn on things that, like…
47:27
Tad Eggleston: are much more about me than anybody else, where it shouldn't matter to you that I'm stubborn.
47:33
Doodlehoff: S.
47:35
Tad Eggleston: Though I also try really hard, you know, I don't like it when people tell me what shouldn't matter to me, so I try really hard not to say that this shouldn't matter to you.
47:46
Doodlehoff: Absolutely.
47:47
Tad Eggleston: like… it's like, when I solve a problem.
47:51
Tad Eggleston: and then you… you agree that, like, the problem that I solved.
47:55
Doodlehoff: So…
47:56
Tad Eggleston: that needed to be… that, well, that needed to be solved, but you've decided that you don't like the way that I solved it. It's like…
48:04
Tad Eggleston: So now I have to solve the problem, and I have to solve the optics?
48:09
Tad Eggleston: Come on. Right.
48:11
Tad Eggleston: Come on.
48:12
Doodlehoff: Brings me back to struggling in math class, right?
48:14
Tad Eggleston: Sure enough.
48:15
Doodlehoff: work and be like.
48:16
Tad Eggleston: Well, see, I'm the reverse.
48:17
Doodlehoff: to work.
48:18
Tad Eggleston: Well, no, I'm not the Rivers. I didn't like to show my work, but I was… I did reach the point where I was convinced.
48:25
Doodlehoff: Hell yeah.
48:26
Tad Eggleston: I'm seriously… no, no, let me finish. I'm seriously convinced even now, and I teach this way, is…
48:33
Tad Eggleston: The work is the math.
48:38
Tad Eggleston: The answer isn't the math. The answer doesn't matter.
48:42
Tad Eggleston: The process is what matters. The process is what you need to learn. So you're not showing your work, you're showing the calculation.
48:52
Tad Eggleston: And if I was actually the one grading it, I'd say, you know what? I don't care if you show the calculation.
49:00
Doodlehoff: Yeah.
49:01
Tad Eggleston: Show me how you would get there. If you don't want to do any of the calculating, fine.
49:07
Doodlehoff: Get me to the point where I could pump something into a calculator.
49:13
Tad Eggleston: And that would be the answer.
49:16
Doodlehoff: Right, right.
49:20
Tad Eggleston: You know…
49:22
Doodlehoff: Yeah.
49:24
Tad Eggleston: But again, it was a process, because, like, particularly when it was easy on, it's like, I don't need to show you how I get to 17 plus 14, that's just 31, it's not hard.
49:36
Tad Eggleston: You know, and for that matter, I was that kid where it's like, you know, I can do 17 times 62 in my head. I'm not gonna do it right now, because it would be boring on air. I can't do it THAT fast.
49:50
Tad Eggleston: But…
49:53
Tad Eggleston: But as soon as you start using variables, yeah, I can do it in my head, but, like, what you do…
50:00
Tad Eggleston: To manipulate it is way more what matters Than the calculation itself.
50:09
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
50:13
Tad Eggleston: So yeah, I was won over on the Show Your Work, and have… and have, as you just saw.
50:20
Tad Eggleston: worked on how to teach others that, because… Yeah, absolutely. So that's part of my job.
50:27
Tad Eggleston: But you'd be amazed at how many kids in special ed, you know.
50:30
Doodlehoff: I do.
50:31
Tad Eggleston: doing the calculations is their superpower. They can absolutely look at it and just put an answer down.
50:37
Doodlehoff: Right, right.
50:37
Tad Eggleston: But that's not actually what we're doing here.
50:40
Doodlehoff: Right.
50:43
Tad Eggleston: You know, the purpose of math… I mean, math… this is the other thing that pushed me over. Math is a language.
50:51
Tad Eggleston: Math is communication. So, like, if… if you…
50:59
Tad Eggleston: decided to put out a comic called Ninja Penguin, and just put the Ninja Penguin that you have as a sticker here on a piece of paper, and this is my comic, because I thought of Ninja Penguin, and I figured everything out, and this is where it goes to.
51:20
Tad Eggleston: Would anybody want to read that?
51:22
Doodlehoff: Oh.
51:26
Doodlehoff: Yeah, absolutely. So, when you have 5X plus 12 equals…
51:31
Tad Eggleston: 37, and you just put down…
51:36
Tad Eggleston: Now I actually have to do it in my head. Five!
51:40
Doodlehoff: 5. Okay.
51:42
Tad Eggleston: That doesn't mean anything to you.
51:45
Tad Eggleston: But if you put down 5x plus 12 equals 37, subtract 12 from both sides, 5x equals 25, divide by 5, X equals 5.
51:54
Tad Eggleston: Now it's a story.
51:59
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Now it's repeatable. Now somebody learned something.
52:04
Doodlehoff: Meanwhile, I was the kid who, struggled so bad with my multiplication tables, my mom had to teach me, music.
52:11
Doodlehoff: to, you know, like, the two… the one that I really struggled was,
52:18
Doodlehoff: honestly, 4s. Like, 4s was a big one I had a tough time. My mom would teach me 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, 36, 40, now I know my 4s.
52:28
Doodlehoff: And that was how, honestly, that was how I succeed… how I survived… I believe it! How I survived elementary school. But that's always been the way my mind works, is like, put it to song, put it to, like, like, something I can just, like, hold on to for rote memory, because otherwise, yeah, that may never work.
52:44
Tad Eggleston: That's all the more reason why, like, we should minimize the parts that you have to have rote memory of.
52:50
Doodlehoff: Agreed. Agreed.
52:52
Tad Eggleston: You know, if your math becomes about showing work, then you only need to have the rote memory for, like, your single-digit multiplication.
53:01
Doodlehoff: it's… it's, different subject, but, like, it's the same reason why I hated history in high school. Go to college, start taking history courses, and they start telling it like it's a story. And I go, this is the most intriguing stuff I've ever heard.
53:17
Tad Eggleston: Good high schools also do that.
53:19
Tad Eggleston: That's good. There are definitely high schools where it's like, remember what year this happened, and it's like, who…
53:26
Tad Eggleston: It, it's, it's…
53:27
Doodlehoff: Why? Why does it matter?
53:29
Tad Eggleston: Well, it's somewhat important to kind of know the…
53:33
Tad Eggleston: order of events. Like, you should be… No!
53:37
Tad Eggleston: that Columbus and Fespucci got to America BEFORE the… the Civil War.
53:46
Tad Eggleston: It wouldn't make a lot of sense if they were the other way around.
53:50
Doodlehoff: Exactly.
53:51
Tad Eggleston: But the story… But 1492… Doesn't matter that much.
53:58
Doodlehoff: Right.
53:59
Tad Eggleston: Like, if you know it's the turn of the… 16th century? That's enough.
54:05
Doodlehoff: Yeah.
54:07
Tad Eggleston: Unless you are studying just the 1490s.
54:14
Tad Eggleston: You know, because that's actually one.
54:16
Doodlehoff: story.
54:17
Tad Eggleston: blows my mind is, like, how often… We don't know…
54:23
Tad Eggleston: like, cross-history type stuff. The number of times people are blown away that Beethoven was writing music during the Revolutionary War.
54:35
Doodlehoff: Yeah, it's all interconnected, but we… we gotta focus in on, you know, our, you know…
54:40
Tad Eggleston: And it's good.
54:40
Doodlehoff: Yeah, there's only focus.
54:41
Tad Eggleston: in on the stuff too, but in terms of, you know, way more important than remembering a year would be putting it in a world perspective.
54:50
Doodlehoff: Putting it into context.
54:54
Tad Eggleston: Context is way more important than, than, like.
54:59
Tad Eggleston: And I don't want to say that, like, knowing facts is bad, but facts can be looked up easily.
55:05
Doodlehoff: Yeah.
55:07
Doodlehoff: We have little computers that can do it for us every day.
55:09
Tad Eggleston: And that's the other thing that education should be about, is keeping up with… it made way more sense to have to memorize things…
55:19
Tad Eggleston: When you would have to get up and go to the library to… relearn them.
55:29
Tad Eggleston: Now… The ability to… differentiate fact from fiction.
55:39
Tad Eggleston: On that little device in your hand.
55:41
Tad Eggleston: Is way more important than the ability.
55:46
Doodlehoff: Yes.
55:46
Tad Eggleston: to remember…
55:50
Doodlehoff: Yep.
55:52
Tad Eggleston: But, teachers are human, too. Humans… humans, when they've spent a lot of time becoming experts in things, don't always like to change, and that's…
56:02
Tad Eggleston: Understandable, if sometimes frustrating.
56:05
Doodlehoff: And we also just…
56:06
Tad Eggleston: I say this as a teacher, I'm, I'm like…
56:08
Doodlehoff: Yeah, absolutely.
56:09
Tad Eggleston: I'm the teacher that wants to constantly be changing, and God, do I sometimes piss off some of my coworkers.
56:16
Doodlehoff: And that's… that's the issue, then. You have to, you know, it's not just that…
56:21
Doodlehoff: Teachers don't want to, you know, make changes or adjustments, but then you have the education system that will.
56:28
Tad Eggleston: Right!
56:28
Doodlehoff: them every step of the way and say, no, do it this way, and you're like, well, I guess I gotta do it this way.
56:33
Tad Eggleston: And even, you know, like, even if you're lucky not… lucky to be in a district that doesn't have it, you know, political winds can change, parental wins can change…
56:44
Doodlehoff: Absolutely.
56:45
Tad Eggleston: You know, what… what is expected one day can be taboo a year later.
56:56
Doodlehoff: Absolutely, precisely.
56:57
Tad Eggleston: And expect it… and expect it again 2 years after that.
57:02
Tad Eggleston: You know, which is… which is why I love my teachers.
57:08
Tad Eggleston: I, I, I was, I was so…
57:11
Tad Eggleston: I was… I was blessed enough that I had a letter published in the most recent issue of
57:19
Tad Eggleston: Kelly Suticonik's FML.
57:22
Tad Eggleston: And…
57:23
Doodlehoff: Cool.
57:24
Tad Eggleston: The part that actually struck me the most wasn't, like, her sh…
57:31
Tad Eggleston: strict response to me. I loved her strict response to me, particularly because it was clear that it was actually responding to a few emails that I've sent her over a longer period of time.
57:43
Tad Eggleston: than just the letter that was about FML.
57:46
Tad Eggleston: But, she called out librarians, teachers, and journalists as her heroes.
57:54
Tad Eggleston: Exactly. You know.
57:58
Doodlehoff: Snaps, snaps and claps, love it.
58:00
Tad Eggleston: Cuz… those…
58:05
Tad Eggleston: I mean, there are other jobs, like, if it was gonna… if it was gonna throw in all… all the jobs that are both absolutely vital to our existence, and… and completely underappreciated, you'd definitely have nurses and nursing assistants, and…
58:22
Tad Eggleston: Frankly, anybody working food service at any level, anybody working retail at any level, you know.
58:29
Doodlehoff: Yep.
58:30
Tad Eggleston: Yep.
58:31
Tad Eggleston: But… but in terms of…
58:36
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I… why those 3 jobs jump out to me is because they're… they're not only underappreciated and…
58:45
Tad Eggleston: Incredibly valuable, but the reason they're valuable is that hopefully they're helping inform you and shape the way you look at the world to
58:56
Tad Eggleston: Better appreciate all of those other undervalued people.
59:02
Tad Eggleston: But that's also why they're 3 of the first sets of people that come under attack when people don't want people.
59:10
Tad Eggleston: To notice that, oh, the values you have and the things we're getting you to do aren't actually compatible.
59:22
Doodlehoff: They are so intrinsically connected to growth as human beings that, yeah, if you don't…
59:30
Tad Eggleston: Frankly, also productive growth, but I mean, the dirty little secret is that, like…
59:36
Tad Eggleston: there are two types of economic growth. There's economic growth that's about making
59:42
Tad Eggleston: The rich even more powerful, and there's economic growth that's about Everybody doing better.
59:50
Doodlehoff: Yes.
59:50
Tad Eggleston: And there are certain numbers that look the same for either one of them.
59:56
Tad Eggleston: Your GDP can go up… And it can mean everybody's doing better.
1:00:02
Tad Eggleston: That's what happened during the 50s, 60s, and early 70s.
1:00:05
Tad Eggleston: country. Or your GDP can go up, and it can mean that the average person is doing
1:00:12
Tad Eggleston: at best, the same and possibly worse, and that the really rich people are exponentially richer. That's what it's meant for the last 40 years. This is also why it's really important to have real numeracy
1:00:29
Tad Eggleston: This is another… this is where we go back to doing the work.
1:00:34
Tad Eggleston: If you don't…
1:00:36
Doodlehoff: Comes back around.
1:00:37
Tad Eggleston: You don't understand how the math works. You say, oh, but our GDP's up, and it's like, yeah, but if…
1:00:44
Tad Eggleston: disparity is different than GDP up.
1:00:48
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:00:49
Doodlehoff: You gotta be inquisitive, you gotta…
1:00:51
Tad Eggleston: That's a book.
1:00:52
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:00:53
Doodlehoff: Yep, ask the questions.
1:00:56
Tad Eggleston: I am starting to hit my wall, because this is my third podcast.
1:01:01
Tad Eggleston: Very fair.
1:01:02
Tad Eggleston: My sixth in two days.
1:01:05
Tad Eggleston: So I am gonna, gonna say, first, where are you headed next in terms of the con schedule?
1:01:14
Doodlehoff: Sure, yeah, the only thing that I have currently lined up is FallCon. That's October 11th and 12th, I believe, at the, State Fairgrounds in their… underneath their Coliseum.
1:01:25
Doodlehoff: Stop.
1:01:25
Tad Eggleston: Fairgrounds in which state? Because, you know, we do go out to the entire world.
1:01:31
Doodlehoff: That's very fair. When I say State Fair, I obviously mean the Minnesota State Fair, the greatest State Fair in…
1:01:36
Tad Eggleston: I mostly assumed so.
1:01:39
Doodlehoff: No, that's…
1:01:40
Tad Eggleston: But you said you were in Eau Claire, Wisconsin recently, so you know.
1:01:45
Doodlehoff: Do you have any sexes?
1:01:46
Tad Eggleston: Fair could mean…
1:01:48
Doodlehoff: If you have any Texan listeners, I probably ticked off a few of them, but .
1:01:52
Tad Eggleston: You're right.
1:01:54
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, I… like, yeah, no, we have been listened to on every continent except Antarctica. We have had…
1:02:05
Tad Eggleston: guess… from… every continent except Antarctica and Africa.
1:02:13
Doodlehoff: Well, hopefully the penguins in Antarctica will start listening after this one.
1:02:18
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I would love it. I would love it. For that matter, you know, there are times where I think, I wonder if I, like, sent out cold emails to…
1:02:28
Tad Eggleston: various research scientists in Antarctica, whether any of them would come and talk about Greg Rucka's whiteout with me.
1:02:39
Doodlehoff: Huh?
1:02:40
Tad Eggleston: Just do a white-out ball club.
1:02:44
Doodlehoff: Shoot the shot.
1:02:45
Tad Eggleston: That's… I have an Australian correspondent that came out of… she wrote a letter to Loving Rockets, God, 30 years ago, and I used it to track her down. First, she was a guest.
1:02:54
Doodlehoff: the mouth.
1:02:55
Tad Eggleston: She's part of the Love & Rockets Book Club.
1:02:57
Doodlehoff: I love that. And that's why we have… that's why we have a regular from Australia.
1:03:05
Tad Eggleston: So, I mean, if I found the right person, I could find the regular comics correspondence coming from Antarctica, and you're giving me ideas in rabbit holes to go down.
1:03:14
Doodlehoff: Chase them. Chase them all.
1:03:16
Tad Eggleston: I try to.
1:03:18
Tad Eggleston: I don't always manage to, because eventually I get exhausted.
1:03:21
Doodlehoff: We only have so much energy.
1:03:23
Tad Eggleston: So much energy, so many hours in a day. I, I, like, let me be God for a day.
1:03:30
Tad Eggleston: And the first thing I would do is I would change it so that we had 9-day weeks with 36-hour days, but we still only needed 8 hours of sleep per day, and still only worked 5 hours a week.
1:03:48
Tad Eggleston: or 5…
1:03:48
Doodlehoff: Or 5 days a week.
1:03:49
Tad Eggleston: For 8 hours a day, you know, 40 hours.
1:03:52
Doodlehoff: Yup.
1:03:54
Tad Eggleston: Would still pay for…
1:03:57
Tad Eggleston: our standard of living. Right. And if I was really being a benevolent God, I would make certain to up the minimum wage a little bit, too. But that's kind of a government.
1:04:07
Tad Eggleston: That's… well, that's kind of a government thing, but… but… I mean, the God thing is I'd make it so that we don't… didn't need more calories.
1:04:17
Doodlehoff: Yeah.
1:04:18
Tad Eggleston: you know, the various things that, like, God… Creationally could… could…
1:04:24
Tad Eggleston: Could change to make it so that you didn't necessarily need.
1:04:30
Doodlehoff: You got this thought out. You got it thought out.
1:04:32
Tad Eggleston: Like I said, autism brings…
1:04:36
Tad Eggleston: I don't have half thoughts. I don't have half thoughts, Russ. If I think at all, I start working the.
1:04:42
Doodlehoff: Whole thoughts.
1:04:43
Tad Eggleston: Like, just saying that it's… we have 36-hour days, well, yeah, but… but if you don't… if you don't, like, account for the fact that somehow you could still only work for 8 of them, and only needed to sleep for 8 of them, then it doesn't help you.
1:04:59
Doodlehoff: Doesn't matter.
1:05:02
Tad Eggleston: So, okay, final question, my favorite final question, so much so that I ask it to you as your final question every time you're a guest, not just the first time you… you are.
1:05:15
Doodlehoff: Right.
1:05:16
Tad Eggleston: Tell me something you love.
1:05:18
Tad Eggleston: Preferably comic, but we don't have rules.
1:05:22
Tad Eggleston: Preferably storytelling, but again, with the rules. But something that you love.
1:05:27
Tad Eggleston: That not enough other people have experienced?
1:05:32
Tad Eggleston: Particularly around you, And you need them to, so you have more people to talk about it with.
1:05:41
Doodlehoff: Okay.
1:05:44
Doodlehoff: I think I have something… it's… it is tangentially, connected to comics, cool.
1:05:50
Tad Eggleston: Cool.
1:05:50
Doodlehoff: But… but definitely…
1:05:52
Doodlehoff: something that I don't think a lot of people, or enough people know about. It is a…
1:05:58
Doodlehoff: This is gonna be super fun podcasting, because it's one of those things that's very difficult to, like, describe and explain. It is a form of, like, comedic pseudoscience.
1:06:11
Doodlehoff: called Pataphysics, P-A-T-A Physics.
1:06:15
Doodlehoff: And it is, it was kind of named and formed by this French French playwright.
1:06:24
Doodlehoff: Alfred Jari.
1:06:27
Doodlehoff: who… kind of absurdist playwright, very, very short, very tragic life, absolute wild man. One of those kind of characters where I'm like, I could never be a friend to this person. Their viewpoints and, and things are just too wild to…
1:06:47
Doodlehoff: Like, condone, but they are…
1:06:51
Doodlehoff: truly fascinating as a… as just an individual. But it's, the best, most succinct way that I've heard of explaining pataphysics is that it is the, science of imaginary solutions.
1:07:09
Doodlehoff: And so, like, one of the major tenets is that there's, like, equivalence in all things. So, in science, there's, you know, the exceptions to the rule. There's the things that happen so few times that it's barely worth mentioning, but they do happen.
1:07:27
Doodlehoff: Pataphysics would say that those exceptions, because they happen.
1:07:33
Doodlehoff: bear equal importance, equal, you know, meaning, I guess, to the other outcomes. And so, it kind of will use science to say, well, if
1:07:46
Doodlehoff: A happens, then in this universe, B happens, and if B happens, then C happens, and C happens, and you kind of follow this thread that is absolutely absurd, but it kind of shows the work, and you can kind of follow it.
1:08:01
Tad Eggleston: Yay!
1:08:02
Doodlehoff: It's… it's wild, there's been,
1:08:07
Doodlehoff: There's a College de Petit Physique in France.
1:08:12
Tad Eggleston: Well, and I'm totally thinking that this would be a wonderful thing to make comics out of.
1:08:18
Doodlehoff: It is… so there is, so there's the Ulapo.
1:08:22
Doodlehoff: which I wish I knew French to remember what it stands for, but it basically… it's the… it's a school of, potential literature.
1:08:31
Tad Eggleston: So, so, you… Need to… Read Matt Madden.
1:08:42
Tad Eggleston: Yes, I have, yeah. I brought him up for me, because… He's a member of… okay.
1:08:45
Doodlehoff: Yeah.
1:08:46
Doodlehoff: He's a member of the Ubapo, so the comics, version of the Ulapo of literature. And there's organizations for everything. There's, there's one for porn. Like, there's one… there's, just groups out there that
1:09:02
Doodlehoff: Try and connect this sort of thinking to film, literature, comics, music.
1:09:09
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:09:10
Doodlehoff: But yes, .
1:09:13
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:09:13
Doodlehoff: Fatten is one of them.
1:09:14
Tad Eggleston: I will get the… I'm looking forward, I get to see Matt again next weekend.
1:09:20
Tad Eggleston: Excellent. He's been on the… he's been on the show
1:09:23
Tad Eggleston: times, and I got to see him at Cake earlier this year, and I'm gonna see him again at…
1:09:30
Tad Eggleston: at Comics Crossroads.
1:09:32
Tad Eggleston: Next weekend, which… I'm gonna… I'm gonna throw this on your list, whether you're going as a fan or tabling. Cartoon Crossroads in Columbus is a must-go…
1:09:44
Tad Eggleston: Con, particularly for comic nerd-type people.
1:09:50
Doodlehoff: Right.
1:09:52
Tad Eggleston: I mean, just to give you an idea of…
1:09:54
Tad Eggleston: the… the… one year when I was at Comics Crossroads, you had…
1:10:02
Tad Eggleston: Ohio State students that had literally stapled their comics together at one table.
1:10:08
Tad Eggleston: Next to Shelly and Philip Bond.
1:10:12
Tad Eggleston: So, you know, legendary… legendary Vertigo editor, legendary Vertigo artist, slash 2008D artist, slash… across the way from Dennis Kitchen.
1:10:26
Tad Eggleston: And, like, everything in between. That sounds great. Right.
1:10:33
Tad Eggleston: All in a public library for free.
1:10:36
Doodlehoff: Excellent.
1:10:38
Doodlehoff: Yes, big ups to accessibility, I love that.
1:10:42
Tad Eggleston: Well, and part of this is because… It's… it's a joint venture.
1:10:49
Tad Eggleston: It was, I don't know if you know who Tom Spurgeon was?
1:10:54
Tad Eggleston: The name sounds familiar, I… It was one of the…
1:10:57
Tad Eggleston: He was one of the Comics Journal…
1:11:01
Tad Eggleston: early writers, maybe even one of the founders, if he split off and had his own thing. He and Jeff Smith of Bone Fame.
1:11:09
Tad Eggleston: started this con in conjunction with the Billie Ireland Cartoon Art and Museum.
1:11:15
Doodlehoff: Gotcha.
1:11:16
Tad Eggleston: at Ohio State, which is, like, THE…
1:11:20
Tad Eggleston: biggest repository of comic art in the United States, in part because
1:11:28
Tad Eggleston: Milt Kniff went to Ohio State, so he gave all their papers, all those papers.
1:11:33
Tad Eggleston: Bill Watterson went to Ohio State and has famously never sold a Calvin and Hobbes. He's given them away, but he's never sold any. And the ones that he hasn't given away are on permanent loan until his death when they become
1:11:52
Tad Eggleston: the property of the Billy Ireland. So, like, he can…
1:11:55
Doodlehoff: I'm still gathered.
1:11:56
Tad Eggleston: one and give it away, but… but, like…
1:12:00
Doodlehoff: all intents and purposes.
1:12:01
Tad Eggleston: Aww.
1:12:01
Doodlehoff: cool.
1:12:01
Tad Eggleston: So, so, like…
1:12:03
Tad Eggleston: and Jeff Smith was a student after it had become the Billy Ireland, so he knew when he was drawing the first page of Bone, the first official page of Bone, because… because… because, like, he recently put out Thorn, the… the… the proto-Bone, which is all of his Ohio State.
1:12:21
Doodlehoff: Yeah, yeah.
1:12:22
Tad Eggleston: Lantern news strips that had Thorn and the Bone Brothers in them, and as I pointed out, like, for the Kickstarter, he also had the three mini-zines
1:12:32
Tad Eggleston: from age 8, age 12, and age 16, where you get to see the Bone Brothers…
1:12:39
Doodlehoff: Yeah.
1:12:40
Tad Eggleston: But when he was drawing the first page of what would become bone number one, he knew that he was donating to Ohio State. It's on permanent display, even.
1:12:51
Doodlehoff: That's cool.
1:12:53
Tad Eggleston: So, every year, they have… this… this thing that actually officially starts on…
1:13:00
Tad Eggleston: Wednesday at the latest, though I think this year they've got a couple things going on the previous Sunday and Tuesday?
1:13:08
Tad Eggleston: And like, Wednesday, Thursday, and during the day on Friday, all of the…
1:13:15
Tad Eggleston: panel-type things are more class-type panels, and they're held in the building that the Billy Ireland Library is in, which is also one of the art buildings.
1:13:27
Tad Eggleston: I think most of them are held in what they call the Will Eisner Room.
1:13:34
Tad Eggleston: Friday evening is when they have their keynotes at the Arts Center.
1:13:40
Tad Eggleston: You know, this year, it's… Charles Burns?
1:13:47
Tad Eggleston: And… I don't know the other guy's name as well, because… He's actually an animator,
1:13:58
Tad Eggleston: He was behind, the Little Mermaid.
1:14:05
Tad Eggleston: I'm filling space while I go find his name.
1:14:09
Tad Eggleston: Special guest, there we go.
1:14:18
Doodlehoff: No, this sounds amazing, I'm looking it up right now, too.
1:14:20
Tad Eggleston: John Musker is the other.
1:14:23
Doodlehoff: John Musk.
1:14:23
Tad Eggleston: keynote on Friday. In between those two, they have their… their… like… reception?
1:14:34
Tad Eggleston: That the public is invited to, so, like, you can… can hobnob and have…
1:14:40
Tad Eggleston: hors d'oeuvres put together by the Ohio State Culinary School, and a cash bar, and whatnot.
1:14:46
Doodlehoff: Oh.
1:14:47
Tad Eggleston: Call it the, like, creator-type people.
1:14:49
Tad Eggleston: And they… and they hand out a handful of their awards.
1:14:53
Tad Eggleston: And then Saturday is mostly at the library.
1:14:57
Tad Eggleston: where they have 3 different panel rooms going on at any given time, one of which is always a kid-oriented panel room, so often… I mean, I remember my friend Chris Schweiser, like, did a panel where he taught the kids how to create their own hero.
1:15:15
Tad Eggleston: you know…
1:15:16
Doodlehoff: Dad.
1:15:17
Tad Eggleston: That sort of thing. You know, both from a drawing standpoint, it's like, okay, and now we gotta give them accessories.
1:15:24
Doodlehoff: Yeah.
1:15:25
Tad Eggleston: But it wasn't even, like, you know, because Schweizer… Schweizer loves doing, like.
1:15:32
Tad Eggleston: Historical fiction, so, so he didn't…
1:15:35
Tad Eggleston: He didn't stop them from doing superheroes, but, do you want a swashbuckler? Let's draw an… let's draw a sword!
1:15:41
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:15:44
Doodlehoff: Very cool.
1:15:46
Tad Eggleston: And then, Sunday…
1:15:50
Tad Eggleston: in the morning, at the art school, they have another keynote, or no, I'm sorry, not a…
1:15:56
Tad Eggleston: I'm sorry, Saturday night at the art school, they have another keynote, often a mangaka, that they bring in from Japan.
1:16:04
Tad Eggleston: Sunday morning, they have a keynote at the Art Museum.
1:16:10
Tad Eggleston: This year, it's Ann Telnes, the… the…
1:16:13
Tad Eggleston: the recently Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartridges. Gotta love it when you get a Pulitzer Prize, like, two weeks after you resign in protest from the newspaper.
1:16:26
Doodlehoff: Yeah.
1:16:27
Tad Eggleston: And again, open to the public, I mean, like…
1:16:31
Tad Eggleston: Chip Zdarsky was there last year, so, like, they get superhero people, but they don't chase them.
1:16:37
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:16:39
Tad Eggleston: And otherwise, like… If you applied, you would probably be at the lottery level, but, like, they've got…
1:16:51
Tad Eggleston: I don't know exactly how it all gets split up, but I think there's, like, 10 to 20 tables that are pure lottery. If they decide you're qualified at all, and there's a relatively low bar
1:17:03
Tad Eggleston: For, for your qualified to, to come table.
1:17:08
Tad Eggleston: you're in the lottery. I mean, to give you… I mean, I think Emily didn't even get it through, but Emily Mayer tabled there.
1:17:16
Doodlehoff: Awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:17:17
Tad Eggleston: You got to do it in part because she pitched a panel with it.
1:17:20
Tad Eggleston: Because she and M.S. Harkness did a panel together.
1:17:23
Tad Eggleston: So cool.
1:17:25
Doodlehoff: She's great.
1:17:26
Tad Eggleston: But, but again, so, like, it's…
1:17:29
Tad Eggleston: The only other con I've heard of that's as comic-centric is HeroesCon in…
1:17:36
Tad Eggleston: North Carolina, which I want to get to, too. But that tends to be more mainstream comics. It handles everything. Yeah. And I want to get to it, because even though it's more mainstream comics, it's mainstream comics, it's not like, oh, come meet Chris Evans! Yes.
1:17:53
Doodlehoff: Yes, it's about… it's still about the comics. Right.
1:17:57
Tad Eggleston: There you go.
1:17:58
Tad Eggleston: But this is, like, the nerdy Comic Con.
1:18:04
Doodlehoff: No, I got it on my list.
1:18:05
Tad Eggleston: And the accessible that, like, all… I mean, you said you didn't have kids, but, like, this is the one that I… you got kids? Take them out.
1:18:13
Doodlehoff: You know, because it's free, so if they don't like it, you go to the zoo.
1:18:17
Tad Eggleston: But there's also stuff that goes to them. You're at a public library, so go spend some extra time at the kids' section, or…
1:18:26
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's just…
1:18:28
Tad Eggleston: Jeff and Tom and… and Caitlin, and those are the ones that I… well, Tom, I just know his name. But Jeff and Caitlin are the ones that I know personally, but the other people that… that are involved, they've just done such a good job. This will be the 11th… 11th edition of it.
1:18:46
Doodlehoff: Excellent.
1:18:48
Tad Eggleston: It's, like, the one con that I now go out of my way to travel to every year.
1:18:52
Tad Eggleston: Just mark it off on the calendar as soon as they… and, added bonus.
1:18:57
Tad Eggleston: Because Ohio State is a major college football town, but the con is never on a home weekend.
1:19:05
Tad Eggleston: There are LOTS of rental properties and hotel rooms.
1:19:09
Doodlehoff: Oh!
1:19:10
Doodlehoff: Okay.
1:19:12
Tad Eggleston: that are priced
1:19:14
Tad Eggleston: as if nobody will be in town, because as cool as this is, compared to Ohio State football, it's barely a blip.
1:19:25
Doodlehoff: Right.
1:19:25
Tad Eggleston: So, I mean, you've got the place that, like, Has enough places that, like.
1:19:32
Tad Eggleston: They can rent them out, you know, accommodate 50,000 extra people at premium rates on some weekends, but, like, they're literally paying for the existence of these places in, like, the, what, 6 weekends a year?
1:19:49
Tad Eggleston: But Ohio State football is in town, and all of the extra money they make is gravy, so they're not particularly high-priced. They're priced at whatever will get them actually rented. So, it's actually pretty easy to, like, find lodging.
1:20:05
Doodlehoff: Sounds like a good time. I'll for sure check it out, yeah.
1:20:08
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. I mean, you got 10 days, I don't know how flexible your scheduling ability is for this year.
1:20:13
Doodlehoff: Yeah, I don't know if it'll be this year, but I am starting to chat with some of my.
1:20:19
Tad Eggleston: I'm actually not 10 days, you've got 4 days.
1:20:22
Doodlehoff: Oh, yeah.
1:20:23
Tad Eggleston: That day. Yeah.
1:20:24
Doodlehoff: Definitely can't defend this shit.
1:20:25
Tad Eggleston: But, I mean.
1:20:27
Doodlehoff: chat about next year, so…
1:20:29
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, that's become my thing, is I try to find a group.
1:20:33
Tad Eggleston: You know, it's like, let's rent a place together, or rent rooms in the same hotel, or whatever, and… I mean, in my dream world, where I make much more money than a teacher, I would just rent out a house every year and say, who wants to come?
1:20:49
Doodlehoff: Yeah.
1:20:51
Doodlehoff: That sounds like a dream, I love that.
1:20:53
Tad Eggleston: Cause, cause it is, it's just, it's… It's a fun weekend.
1:20:57
Tad Eggleston: And there you go, CXC, I plugged you again.
1:21:04
Tad Eggleston: For Ross Duggar, who can be found as atDoodlehoff online, primarily Instagram, but when I put it in, I saw a couple other places, I think, but maybe those were other ones.
1:21:15
Doodlehoff: Pretty much Instagram and Blue Sky right now.
1:21:17
Tad Eggleston: Okay, okay. That's right, because I initially put in at Doodlehoof, and I found somebody else, and then I realized I had two O's rather than two Fs.
1:21:29
Doodlehoff: Gotta find this doodle hoof.
1:21:32
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, the crazy thing is it was also Ninja Penguin… no.
1:21:36
Tad Eggleston: So it was…
1:21:38
Doodlehoff: No, all their stuff is cow-based. It's all cow-based, doodle hoof.
1:21:44
Tad Eggleston: So, for Ross Duggar, this has been 22 Panels. We will see you after the next page.