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With Great Power #342... 22 Panels with Mark Mosedale & Si Smith · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:01
  Tad Eggleston: Good morning, everybody!
• 0:05
  Tad Eggleston: afternoon, early evening in the UK, where, where we're joined by, Cy Smith and Mark Mosdale, whose new book, Gigs, is
• 0:17
  Tad Eggleston: My early frontrunner for, for Graphic Novel of the Year, and one… one of the… I mean…
• 0:26
  Tad Eggleston: Unfortunately, like, Jesse Lonergan's Drone came out last year, so I can't say one of the best books I've read in years, because, like…
• 0:36
  Tad Eggleston: That one… One good book.
• 0:37
  Tad Eggleston: It's just too damn good for… so, so…
• 0:40
  Mark Mosedale: Definitely one.
• 0:41
  Tad Eggleston: Among the best books I've read since Jerome. How about that?
• 0:45
  simonsmith: Well, I'm very happy with that, because drone is brilliant. I love drone.
• 0:49
  Tad Eggleston: Exactly, exactly.
• 0:51
  simonsmith: Yeah, yeah.
• 0:51
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's part of the problem right now, like, you can't get too crazy hyperbole with how good even the great, great books are, because there are a lot of great comics coming out right now.
• 1:04
  Tad Eggleston: But yours is…
• 1:06
  Phil: Oh, yeah.
• 1:07
  Tad Eggleston: Absolutely, positively one of them.
• 1:11
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I was just flipping through pages again before, and, like, any book that, like, I… I love just flipping through quickly, too, where I'm like, oh, yeah, that's… oh!
• 1:24
  Tad Eggleston: And I remember, like, that's, that's my sign that, like, this is.
• 1:29
  Tad Eggleston: You know, the books I love are the ones that I can read fast, slow, close, Far.
• 1:36
  Tad Eggleston: And everything in between, and yours is definitely one of those books. So,
• 1:40
  simonsmith: That was…
• 1:41
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 1:42
  Tad Eggleston: thank you so much for gifting it to us, and, the world in general, and the world should read it. And B, who wants to give me the front counter pitch so that,
• 1:55
  Tad Eggleston: Our listeners can know a little bit more what we're talking about.
• 1:59
  Mark Mosedale: Before Si volunteers me, I guess I'll jump into the fray myself, even though I still feel like I'm pretty terrible at doing this, but here we go. So, in a future where AI has covered up everyone's jobs, the people of the world of gigs are stuck working at the moment.
• 2:19
  Mark Mosedale: We love swear on this.
• 2:21
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
• 2:22
  Mark Mosedale: Yeah, it's stuck doing dog shit.
• 2:26
  Mark Mosedale: you know, gigs.
• 2:27
  Mark Mosedale: Closing the name so that they can earn our.
• 2:30
  Mark Mosedale: Qualify for a universal basic income. So someone has sort of solved the problem of.
• 2:40
  Mark Mosedale: They've done it at the kind of crappiest.
• 2:42
  Mark Mosedale: Possible way.
• 2:43
  Mark Mosedale: And we've got 6 interlocking stories.
• 2:47
  Mark Mosedale: about different characters navigating this world. We've got like a punk who's stuck in a care home.
• 2:54
  Mark Mosedale: We've got an aged-out detective who's sort of eagerly waiting for his phone to ping so he can hopefully get some sort of law enforcement gig, but he had to try to solve a crap video game.
• 3:05
  Mark Mosedale: Got street artists, who…
• 3:07
  Mark Mosedale: Paints at night and then has to paint over it to earn his basic income through the day.
• 3:13
  Mark Mosedale: We've got a writer who's supposed to be chronicling the next steps of mankind into the stars, but she's actually stuck cleaning toilets on the space station.
• 3:26
  Mark Mosedale: For gigs, but for a basic income. We've got a drug runner, a literal runner.
• 3:32
  Mark Mosedale: On a very, sort of, one strange delivery, and…
• 3:36
  Mark Mosedale: a sixth story, which I don't want to say too much about, but I thought about this oil rig.
• 3:42
  Mark Mosedale: Got it.
• 3:45
  Mark Mosedale: And that's… that's what it is. It'
• 3:47
  Mark Mosedale: I guess the thing I'm trying… when I'm trying to be more… Ideasy about it is,
• 3:54
  Mark Mosedale: I like to say that it's about ordinary people stuck.
• 3:57
  Mark Mosedale: Trying to eke out a living in the cracks between.
• 4:01
  Mark Mosedale: It's quite inhuman forces of tech and capital.
• 4:05
  Mark Mosedale: Culture.
• 4:07
  Mark Mosedale: You know, I think that's
• 4:09
  Mark Mosedale: How a lot of us feel. I was going to say hopefully how a lot of us feel today. Hopefully it's not how a lot of us feel today. I think it is.
• 4:15
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 4:16
  Phil: It feels like where we're going, if anything. I'd say for, you know, comparison to other graphic novels, this is probably like the most stimulating look at the future since The Private Eye, if you're familiar with that one.
• 4:31
  Phil: Yeah.
• 4:32
  Mark Mosedale: Okay, don't mark it.
• 4:33
  Phil: Yeah, yeah. And it's. It's one of those books that.
• 4:38
  Phil: for, you know, just under 300 pages. It felt like a
• 4:44
  Phil: breezy read, and I could have kept going for 300 more, you know? I could have seen every facet of this world just because of how, like.
• 4:56
  Phil: The humanist eye that you guys have for portraying everyone as their own person and pointing out that, hey, everyone's going through their own struggles.
• 5:07
  Phil: In.
• 5:08
  Phil: Different ways, but also very similar ways of, like.
• 5:12
  Phil: The way loneliness is so much more prominent despite how densely people are packed together.
• 5:18
  Phil: And even the way that you use the, you know, a lot of nine panel grids to kind of show that too, where like every panel is a close up on someone's face, but it's still very confining and.
• 5:32
  Phil: Like, claustrophobic feeling.
• 5:36
  simonsmith: Yeah, yeah.
• 5:38
  Mark Mosedale: Thank you, we were very, careful. Savory.
• 5:43
  Mark Mosedale: Side mostly, but I'll say we, the royal we, we're very careful about how we use the grid.
• 5:51
  Mark Mosedale: At what points we've allowed the page to break out so it's a bit bigger.
• 5:58
  Mark Mosedale: We want to answer.
• 6:00
  Mark Mosedale: Feel like how?
• 6:02
  Mark Mosedale: A lot of fiction tends to show you the big moments of most of your life.
• 6:10
  Mark Mosedale: Let's all mark up on that.
• 6:12
  simonsmith: Yeah, and that 9-panel grid just does allow you to go bang, bang, bang, bang, and the repetition at,
• 6:20
  simonsmith: Just… In a lot of the compositions in those grids, we were trying to
• 6:26
  simonsmith: To sort of hem the characters in, and there's stuff over the top of them.
• 6:30
  simonsmith: So that, you know, so that when, when there is a bit of space above them.
• 6:36
  simonsmith: It, it, it really sort of sings, you know.
• 6:40
  Phil: Absolutely.
• 6:41
  simonsmith: It doesn't give you that… when it opens up…
• 6:44
  simonsmith: You know, it really, it really properly opened up.
• 6:47
  Phil: Absolutely. The cityscapes were breathtaking, honestly. And, yeah, I felt like the structure of it really fell.
• 6:59
  Phil: It felt like it worked with the pacing and it felt super natural without ever feeling forced or tiring. You know, like I've definitely read.
• 7:08
  Phil: some stuff that's like, oh, okay, can you… can you put down the grid for a minute? But I felt like you guys did a really great job of… of… it fit. It really fit both the story, the art style, the… the storytelling setting. It…
• 7:23
  Phil: It was just, it really blew me away, this, this book. So it, you know.
• 7:28
  Phil: Absolutely fantastic.
• 7:31
  Phil: I had a question of how did the two of you meet and start working together?
• 7:37
  simonsmith: So, well, okay, so, so Mark used to work in OK Comics in Leeds, which I think must have been where we first met.
• 7:46
  Mark Mosedale: I'm not sure anyone remembers that.
• 7:48
  simonsmith: Yeah, I don't think we remember our first meeting.
• 7:52
  Mark Mosedale: We mostly cross paths, yeah.
• 7:53
  simonsmith: Yeah, yeah. And then, and so then Mark also ran, a comic book group, which I joined. And so that's when we, that's when we had a proper conversation, I think, for the first time. And I'd been making, comics that I was…
• 8:13
  simonsmith: You know, I was writing as well, and I'd sort of reached the end of my… I'd reached the point that my writing
• 8:22
  simonsmith: could get me to, and I, you know, and they were fine, but I, you know, I knew I needed to collaborate with someone. I knew Mark was a writer.
• 8:30
  simonsmith: He, he's a good bloke. I thought, I, I knew, I, I kind of.
• 8:37
  simonsmith: I don't think I knew that you wanted to write comics, but I kind of thought you must do, because you're a writer, and you used to work at a comic shop. It was a good bet, wasn't it? Anyway, so I sent him an email and said, I'm looking to collaborate, do you want to…
• 8:52
  simonsmith: Make a comic.
• 8:54
  simonsmith: And, yep.
• 8:57
  Mark Mosedale: I'm gonna pull Sai up on a couple of things there. First is, it was a Facebook message, not an email.
• 9:03
  Mark Mosedale: And the second is, his comics were better than ours.
• 9:08
  Mark Mosedale: Yeah, they were, they were good.
• 9:10
  simonsmith: Yeah. Yeah.
• 9:11
  simonsmith: But they're not… anyway. Yeah, yeah.
• 9:14
  Mark Mosedale: yeah, when I got the message off site, I was like, you know, I…
• 9:20
  Mark Mosedale: I think this is probably quite a common experience for people who like editing comics, is that, yes, they would like to write comics, but…
• 9:28
  Mark Mosedale: The opportunities to do it are… Limited, or at least…
• 9:34
  Mark Mosedale: Challenging, you know, you either have to find someone who
• 9:40
  Mark Mosedale: Sort of get on with and fart with well enough.
• 9:43
  Mark Mosedale: to make something.
• 9:44
  Mark Mosedale: Completely unexpected, right? Oh yeah, thanks.
• 9:48
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 9:49
  Mark Mosedale: I've never quite had the money.
• 9:52
  Mark Mosedale: Pay someone.
• 9:53
  Mark Mosedale: Or at least not, not at the moment when I want to spend it anyway.
• 9:58
  Mark Mosedale: Yeah, just never quite, sort of, met that special someone.
• 10:02
  Mark Mosedale: Who turned out to be Cy. So when Cy popped up, I just kind of picked his hand up really.
• 10:09
  Mark Mosedale: Oh, great.
• 10:10
  Mark Mosedale: I didn't quite realize what we were getting into.
• 10:14
  Mark Mosedale: Obviously, 270 pages, 7 ideas, like.
• 10:18
  Mark Mosedale: Yeah, finally off.
• 10:20
  Mark Mosedale: But yeah, it's it's our work. We For a steady
• 10:26
  Mark Mosedale: Kind of R and D phase, really, with Stanford.
• 10:29
  Mark Mosedale: 2 years, kind of, knocking ideas about building the pitch.
• 10:34
  Mark Mosedale: Oh.
• 10:35
  simonsmith: Well, we, yeah, we did, but we, we, when we first met, we both brought.
• 10:40
  simonsmith: some ideas, didn't we? And I think I'd pitch mine to you first.
• 10:45
  simonsmith: I thought Martin were pretty good and Martin pitched.
• 10:48
  simonsmith: What became gigs? And it was like, oh, we'll do that.
• 10:53
  simonsmith: I'm going to do that, but, you know, forget mine. Yeah.
• 10:58
  simonsmith: So, so we weren't…
• 11:00
  simonsmith: It was, it was research and development, but, I think it was quite focused from quite a, quite an early stage. We weren't sort of thrashing around, but I, I didn't feel like that anyway.
• 11:14
  simonsmith: I think my recollection is that the kernel of the idea was there from the get-go, really.
• 11:23
  Mark Mosedale: Yeah, I, I think I had a fairly strong sense of,
• 11:29
  Mark Mosedale: Where we ought to be in terms of.
• 11:32
  Mark Mosedale: what I would like to ride.
• 11:34
  Mark Mosedale: And what I would like to draw.
• 11:36
  Mark Mosedale: Because, you know, the, the, you know, it's sort of in the middle of the Venn diagram.
• 11:41
  Mark Mosedale: And, and there's definitely a fair amount of crossover, but there's definitely, we have interests that definitely do not really cross over. Yeah. If I'd have been left to right, but
• 11:51
  Mark Mosedale: Script. Entirely off the back of the office.
• 11:53
  Mark Mosedale: It will be.
• 11:55
  Mark Mosedale: It'd probably look more like a high-concept image book.
• 11:58
  Mark Mosedale: Like, with something with a… thrillery component Sort of action.
• 12:04
  Mark Mosedale: Maybe it would lead superheroing, maybe it wouldn't.
• 12:08
  Mark Mosedale: But it would definitely be more in that vein, and the comic aside would make you before.
• 12:13
  Mark Mosedale: We.
• 12:14
  Mark Mosedale: So I collaborated with Gigs Word.
• 12:16
  Mark Mosedale: Small.
• 12:17
  Mark Mosedale: Social realist kind of.
• 12:20
  Mark Mosedale: Literary sort of feeling.
• 12:23
  Mark Mosedale: Comment.
• 12:24
  Mark Mosedale: And gigs is the sort of, the… The middle ground really, but.
• 12:30
  Mark Mosedale: I feel like I was pretty.
• 12:32
  Mark Mosedale: But…
• 12:35
  Mark Mosedale: I had a strong idea of what I thought my interest side that I would like to do. You know what I mean?
• 12:41
  Mark Mosedale: It would have been no good, sir pitch the other thing.
• 12:46
  Mark Mosedale: So.
• 12:46
  simonsmith: Yes.
• 12:47
  Mark Mosedale: That's fine
• 12:48
  Mark Mosedale: That's how we would have spent ages brushing about trying to find them. Probably failing to find the idea to buy them.
• 12:54
  Mark Mosedale: But if it's Superman, but it's in medieval period.
• 13:00
  Phil: Okay.
• 13:01
  Mark Mosedale: I don't think I did.
• 13:03
  simonsmith: Yeah, that would have been a very short relationship.
• 13:06
  Phil: Okay.
• 13:06
  Mark Mosedale: That'.
• 13:11
  Tad Eggleston: So, the… the world… In this book, really hinges on one
• 13:19
  Tad Eggleston: To me, anyway, hinges on one terrifying possibility, which is the idea that we
• 13:29
  Tad Eggleston: we could be given the universal basic income that… that so many progressives are… have been seeing as necessary for a while, only it's not really a universal basic income, because it's… it's…
• 13:45
  Tad Eggleston: It's…
• 13:46
  Tad Eggleston: decoupled from capitalism. It's… it's… it's… oh, and because you have this, now we can just tell you to do stuff, so… so…
• 13:55
  Tad Eggleston: which unfortunately is way too like as soon as I saw that I'm like oh that's devious and so so so real.
• 14:07
  Phil: Universal basic minimum wage.
• 14:09
  Mark Mosedale: Right.
• 14:09
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. No, no. Universal basic set minimum wage.
• 14:14
  Phil: Yes.
• 14:14
  Tad Eggleston: Because because like you can only have money taken away. You don't get money added for the jobs you do. You lose money if you if you don't do the gigs. And I'm sitting there going, no, no, like universal basic income is supposed to be you also get paid well to do stuff because you have the option of saying no. Yeah.
• 14:35
  Phil: Right.
• 14:36
  simonsmith: Yeah.
• 14:37
  simonsmith: I mean, there's a history, isn't there, of governments taking a great idea, and then,
• 14:42
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and there's definitely a history of oligarchs taking great ideas.
• 14:50
  simonsmith: Absolutely. Yeah.
• 14:52
  Mark Mosedale: At the time we started working on it, Boris Johnson was Prime Minister over here. It's sort of the way you can imagine him.
• 15:01
  Mark Mosedale: implementing it, like, an idea that would be quite popular, and then he just did it.
• 15:09
  Mark Mosedale: Possible.
• 15:10
  Mark Mosedale: Why?
• 15:11
  Mark Mosedale: I, I, I struggle too much if you guys ever get great speaker, really, although I gather it was,
• 15:17
  Mark Mosedale: I think it was, you know, quite a popular idea in the 70s.
• 15:22
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, every, every test of it, like anywhere has been a.
• 15:27
  Tad Eggleston: Resounding success on, like, every level except the ability to control people.
• 15:33
  Mark Mosedale: Okay.
• 15:35
  Tad Eggleston: Well.
• 15:37
  Tad Eggleston: But we'll take it back.
• 15:39
  Mark Mosedale: Please, please.
• 15:39
  Tad Eggleston: It pays for itself.
• 15:44
  Tad Eggleston: Because the money gets spent, that sort of thing, like.
• 15:48
  simonsmith: Yes.
• 15:48
  Tad Eggleston: It it causes higher wages in in the jobs that are out there, you know. It's been tested on small scales all over the place, and.
• 15:57
  Tad Eggleston: Been successful, not just for the people, but for the businesses.
• 16:01
  Tad Eggleston: Because like the the thing that that seems to be forgotten by so many large corporations is that like you need consumers and your workers and your consumers are the same people.
• 16:15
  simonsmith: Yes, yeah.
• 16:18
  Phil: I think.
• 16:19
  Tad Eggleston: So if you're doing everything you can to keep wages down.
• 16:23
  simonsmith: Yeah, yeah.
• 16:24
  Tad Eggleston: Well, this…
• 16:25
  simonsmith: I mean, there's been, what's been interesting for me and Mark is, is how sort of prescient it's become. The long, the longer it's taken, the more, so, so at the start it, it felt like quite a nice sort of.
• 16:39
  simonsmith: future science fiction-y concept. And unfortunately, as we've gone on, it's gone, oh, actually, you know, this is…
• 16:49
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, now it feels like, like, like, now I'm glad that it came out now, because, like, it's the one that I can, okay, they're talking universal basic income now, we need to pay attention to the details.
• 17:02
  simonsmith: Yeah. And we've spent the last month pinging newspaper articles and things you've seen on the internet and just going, look, look at this. This is what we've written.
• 17:14
  simonsmith: Because I think there was one article in the — just going back to what you said before, there was one article in The Guardian that was saying that since the advent of ChatGPT, there's been like a 32% loss of entry-level jobs and apprenticeships.
• 17:34
  simonsmith: And…
• 17:35
  simonsmith: they were interviewing… in the article, they were interviewing someone who was going, oh, it's great, because, you know, we don't have to spend money on these wages, and you're going, well, yeah, but then, as you say, those people don't have money to spend on your product, and actually, you know, you're not bringing people through.
• 17:53
  simonsmith: So you clean out that whole tier of work.
• 17:56
  simonsmith: And then you don't have a qualified workforce to take the higher level
• 18:02
  simonsmith: Jobs in your company on, you know, when you retire, no one's thought it through, it's, it's.
• 18:08
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Well, and that's even before you start thinking about, like, before long.
• 18:14
  Tad Eggleston: You know, bad AI will be training on itself.
• 18:20
  simonsmith: Yeah. What's our.
• 18:21
  Phil: already happening. Right.
• 18:22
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. I know, but it will quickly reach a point where more of what it's reading is AI-generated.
• 18:30
  simonsmith: Yep.
• 18:31
  Phil: Well, and…
• 18:32
  Tad Eggleston: Not quite right.
• 18:34
  Phil: So it's funny the other, so the two things that come to mind for me is one, I saw a post on Blue Sky recently pointing out in terms of text and archives that most of human historical knowledge is not digitized.
• 18:50
  Phil: You know, there's so many works and archives that you have to read and would need someone to transcribe. So like.
• 18:58
  Phil: This machine has only stolen what's online. How can it possibly, you know, answer things to, to the completeness of the human experience?
• 19:09
  Phil: As well as I, I am absolutely feeling the effect of that. Oh, no more entry level jobs. I'm, I'm, you know, attempting to, to, you know, look for a new job right now. And I'm seeing that, oh, there's, there's a lot out there. A lot of people are hiring for senior level.
• 19:26
  Phil: Positions.
• 19:27
  simonsmith: Okay.
• 19:28
  Phil: And so for me, I'm like, okay, I feel like low mid level, you know, I've got like at least five years or well, five years if I stretch it experience and all these places.
• 19:37
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but they're bloated stuff, so just.
• 19:39
  Phil: They are.
• 19:40
  Tad Eggleston: like, shoot the moon, and that's loading titles now.
• 19:43
  Phil: It's terrifying. It is terrifying to look at a job and be like, okay, I can do maybe like a third of what they're asking for. I can figure out another third and then I'll bullshit the last third in the hopes that, you know, they'll deign me with a paycheck.
• 19:59
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, half the people with 10 years experience can't do that much.
• 20:03
  Phil: That's right.
• 20:04
  Tad Eggleston: because half of it didn't exist when they were starting, and they were in management positions by the time it did exist, so they didn't have to learn how to do it. I mean, that's the other problem that you're having right now, is… is, like, the managers that want to use AI to… to…
• 20:19
  Tad Eggleston: to help them figure out what their employees are doing, because they don't understand it, but AI may or may not
• 20:26
  Tad Eggleston: Like.
• 20:27
  Phil: That's feeling that at my current place, too.
• 20:30
  Tad Eggleston: Beach.
• 20:31
  Phil: Just they want data. The other thing that the line that jumped out at me as much, everything's for spying.
• 20:38
  Phil: Is like, oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, we've, we've been going in that direction easily for the past 25 years. And yeah, it's probably the.
• 20:49
  Phil: The child's toy with cameras in its eyes.
• 20:52
  Phil: Was like, oh yeah, okay, yeah, we're not far off from that, probably.
• 20:58
  simonsmith: Yeah, it'.
• 20:59
  Tad Eggleston: I But yeah, no, so talk to me about, I mean…
• 21:06
  Tad Eggleston: You said a little bit that that.
• 21:09
  Tad Eggleston: You know, every good thing that the powers that be find a way to twist it, but, like, how did that…
• 21:17
  Tad Eggleston: that twist pop into your head, and where did it wind up leading you? Because again, I feel like that element, the fact that gigs are essentially slave labor now.
• 21:30
  Tad Eggleston: You know, because it's not, we'll pay you to do this, it's we'll take away the money that you would make otherwise.
• 21:38
  Tad Eggleston: and there's no… there's no knowledge for… for, okay, who in the algorithm gets given what, you know, there's… you know, so… so, like…
• 21:50
  Tad Eggleston: There's this over, overarching feeling that, like, not, things are not necessarily equal in terms of how, how things get.
• 22:00
  Tad Eggleston: Spread out.
• 22:02
  Tad Eggleston: Hahaha!
• 22:05
  Mark Mosedale: Thank you.
• 22:06
  Mark Mosedale: Just, you know, at the time we started working on it.
• 22:10
  Mark Mosedale: There was, you know, that was when the chat about the birthplace kickoff just sort of got going. It was that initial kind of flurry of interest.
• 22:20
  Mark Mosedale: That's, you know, And… I just
• 22:26
  Mark Mosedale: It sounded like, yeah, that might be necessary one day, but also there's absolutely no way we're going to get a nice, like a good version of it.
• 22:37
  Mark Mosedale: the version of it that we came up with. I think it's just that.
• 22:43
  Mark Mosedale: 20 odd years of the current Politics that was.
• 22:48
  Mark Mosedale: It just feels, the idea of having some good poked glug just feels kind of impossible, really, I think.
• 22:56
  Mark Mosedale: A silence.
• 22:58
  Mark Mosedale: Film me as the more optimistic, if that will bear it.
• 23:05
  Mark Mosedale: Sort of how I… See,
• 23:08
  Mark Mosedale: It's our call.
• 23:09
  Mark Mosedale: It would be.
• 23:11
  Mark Mosedale: That was the worst possible version of it.
• 23:14
  Mark Mosedale: I mean… You know, governments do have to do a sort of minimum amount to keep people happy.
• 23:23
  Mark Mosedale: Just, maintain the the social order and and it and maybe they do have to sign but.
• 23:29
  Mark Mosedale: We need to be flexible.
• 23:32
  Mark Mosedale: Figure out how to fund it, but It just sinks.
• 23:37
  Mark Mosedale: It, it, it makes you quite vulnerable as well, you know, even if someone works with you
• 23:42
  Mark Mosedale: It's quite idealistic.
• 23:46
  Mark Mosedale: Yeah, it was quite an idealistic bet on that.
• 23:50
  Mark Mosedale: the next couple months.
• 23:51
  Mark Mosedale: Bye, Susan
• 23:53
  Mark Mosedale: And one of the problems with the idea of a universal basic, it replaces all your other benefits, and it's a lot easier to
• 24:00
  Mark Mosedale: Target for single benefit.
• 24:03
  Mark Mosedale: That I will get tonight.
• 24:05
  Mark Mosedale: You know, all these sort of multitudes of different.
• 24:09
  Mark Mosedale: You know, a lot of people really do need.
• 24:11
  Mark Mosedale: So… Yeah, that's the the notion that some more… Introduce the equivalent.
• 24:20
  Mark Mosedale: resist the urge to fuck around with it. Just… Quite, oh, really.
• 24:27
  Mark Mosedale: And, you know, and it makes a good story.
• 24:32
  Mark Mosedale: You know, it's an opportunity to tell stories. There's part of me that has an urge to do, like.
• 24:38
  Mark Mosedale: we did briefly talk about having at least one story that would set maybe somewhere else, you know, maybe in Fitment or something, where someone's done the good version, you know, the good timeline version, universal basic income, and everyone's having that.
• 24:52
  Mark Mosedale: Hopefully time.
• 24:53
  simonsmith: Bye.
• 24:54
  Mark Mosedale: Making great stuff, but…
• 24:56
  Tad Eggleston: Definitely be Scandinavia somewhere.
• 24:58
  simonsmith: I see.
• 24:59
  Tad Eggleston: Finland, Sweden, Norway.
• 25:03
  Mark Mosedale: Maybe one day we'll do that, I the We just didn't have any.
• 25:09
  simonsmith: That would involve me doing a happy comic.
• 25:12
  Tad Eggleston: Thank you.
• 25:14
  simonsmith: Could I bear to do that, Mark? I don't know.
• 25:18
  simonsmith: I mean, you definitely are the optimist in the, you know, so my spiel is that I'm sort of.
• 25:25
  simonsmith: Cheerfully pessimistic and Mark's a bit gloomily optimistic.
• 25:29
  simonsmith: But that also then goes back to that Venn diagram thing, you know, because I think Giggs sits in… there's a tension there between the way that I would want to pull it, and the way that Mark would want to pull it. When, when,
• 25:42
  simonsmith: When we were talking to Chris Staros at Top Shelf about it at the start, there was one story in it that I think he just had the synopsis or the summary. And he said to us, we were on a Zoom call with him, and he said, can I just clear up, does that character die at the end?
• 26:00
  simonsmith: Simultaneously, I went, oh yeah, and Mark went, oh no.
• 26:06
  simonsmith: So that's, you know, yeah, that's, that's where we come at it from.
• 26:10
  simonsmith: You know.
• 26:11
  simonsmith: Yep.
• 26:12
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, and and that that is also.
• 26:17
  Tad Eggleston: I mean.
• 26:19
  Tad Eggleston: What makes this book so striking to me is it's both this incredibly bleak, incredibly believable, near future.
• 26:30
  Tad Eggleston: But also, it's centered on the concept of people continuing to just To that next right thing.
• 26:40
  simonsmith: Yeah.
• 26:40
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 26:41
  Tad Eggleston: You know, the people themselves… Refuse to give up.
• 26:48
  Tad Eggleston: Refuse to, to, and, and obviously not all of them, but the characters that you center on, refuse to go, oh, the world sucks and everybody has to fight for.
• 27:00
  Tad Eggleston: What's theirs blah blah blah that you know and and and still believe in kindness still believe in.
• 27:09
  Tad Eggleston: In… helping each other.
• 27:12
  Tad Eggleston: in beauty, you know, I loved the graffiti artist, though the end of that story was so, so…
• 27:23
  Tad Eggleston: And also, so real…
• 27:28
  Mark Mosedale: Yeah, I was quite proud of that one.
• 27:31
  Mark Mosedale: I think, I think the, the central work.
• 27:35
  Mark Mosedale: Potential.
• 27:37
  Mark Mosedale: Functions in it is.
• 27:38
  Mark Mosedale: The world might suck, but we don't have to.
• 27:42
  Mark Mosedale: Right. Systems that we kind of live in.
• 27:46
  Mark Mosedale: Might be pretty terrible, the… Political forces that are shaping the world might be oppressive.
• 27:55
  Mark Mosedale: authoritarian or just That's the book.
• 27:58
  Mark Mosedale: still… For spawn.
• 28:02
  Mark Mosedale: In a hopeful way.
• 28:05
  Mark Mosedale: Anything like that.
• 28:06
  Mark Mosedale: the situation.
• 28:10
  Mark Mosedale: Kind.
• 28:11
  Mark Mosedale: It has, I think, the book.
• 28:13
  Mark Mosedale: It doesn't… I have a ton of faith in the world, but it has so much faith.
• 28:19
  Mark Mosedale: I hope.
• 28:20
  simonsmith: Yeah.
• 28:22
  simonsmith: Absolutely. And I think early on, we also had a conversation about… and I think we had this conversation with Chris Starks again, Mark, correct me if I'm wrong, but,
• 28:32
  simonsmith: is it… is it gonna be a kind of, you know, the rebels defeat the evil alliance, and they, you know, is it… is it gonna turn into that story? And I think, pretty early on, we were like, no, it has to be about…
• 28:45
  simonsmith: It has to be about people.
• 28:48
  simonsmith: Surviving more than a kind of triumphal victory over the forces of evil.
• 28:54
  Tad Eggleston: Don't get me wrong, Ewoks would have been cool.
• 29:02
  Phil: And you know they'd be gigging too, they'.
• 29:05
  Mark Mosedale: Okay.
• 29:05
  Tad Eggleston: He washed my hands.
• 29:06
  Phil: Toilets and…
• 29:07
  simonsmith: On the Death Star. Yeah, yeah.
• 29:12
  Mark Mosedale: The cutest thing in the, well it's not in the book actually, the cutest thing in gigs is in a mini comic that we produced to promote it. It's one of those little delivery robots.
• 29:22
  Mark Mosedale: I think that's enough. That's great.
• 29:24
  Mark Mosedale: Delivery.
• 29:25
  simonsmith: Yeah.
• 29:27
  simonsmith: They're…
• 29:28
  Phil: There weren't a lot of those in the book though, at least the drones.
• 29:31
  simonsmith: Yeah, no.
• 29:31
  Phil: I like the sequence of the one landing to pick up the box.
• 29:36
  Phil: That was a. That was. That was a cute little moment. I was. I was really, you know, intrigued and impressed by the. The history of punk music.
• 29:47
  Phil: And the way that served as like a motif of, hey.
• 29:53
  Phil: We're living in a world that has learned how to digest.
• 29:58
  Phil: rebellion against it.
• 30:00
  Phil: You know, and, and that's, that's something I've been thinking about a lot lately of, of how, you know, punk has become a costume more than an ethos. So I was wondering who, who, who, if I, you know, which of the two you brought that.
• 30:14
  Phil: Side of things. Who's, who's the, the former punk rocker or, or not former?
• 30:21
  Mark Mosedale: So I, leaked a lot of them.
• 30:25
  Mark Mosedale: What's up?
• 30:26
  Mark Mosedale: knowledge and references that are in that story from Bonsai. I've, you know, I've certainly dipped both feet in that.
• 30:35
  Mark Mosedale: It's up early, but I… Definitely would claim to be an expert, but I would say that.
• 30:43
  Mark Mosedale: The whole thing comes from an idea.
• 30:48
  Mark Mosedale: I'm a sort of elder millennial, right?
• 30:51
  Mark Mosedale: I got a bunch of friends who were Gen X.
• 30:55
  Mark Mosedale: You know.
• 30:56
  Mark Mosedale: 50, 20 years older than me and and I have always had.
• 31:01
  Mark Mosedale: This idea that I'd still struggle, struggle to shake off.
• 31:04
  Mark Mosedale: But if, but if you have better taste than other people, you're somehow, like, alternative, or countercultural.
• 31:14
  Mark Mosedale: So, well… You're just buying.
• 31:17
  Mark Mosedale: You know.
• 31:18
  Mark Mosedale: Just find your comics off a different shelf or, you know, you just.
• 31:22
  Mark Mosedale: You know, 15, 20 years ago, you're just buying the CDs from a different rack.
• 31:26
  Mark Mosedale: You know, who cares, like, if you're.
• 31:29
  Mark Mosedale: Taste is rebellious.
• 31:31
  Mark Mosedale: You never do anything with it, you know.
• 31:35
  Mark Mosedale: I only used to feel so like.
• 31:38
  Mark Mosedale: Clearly misplaced sense of self-construction.
• 31:42
  Mark Mosedale: I was into comics and I was into sort of like cult novels.
• 31:47
  Mark Mosedale: Music taste like Vaguely, alternatively.
• 31:52
  Mark Mosedale: Shallow way and I thought that may be.
• 31:56
  Mark Mosedale: Quote, unquote So it's just like a, you know, you just got a different shopping.
• 32:01
  Mark Mosedale: filter.
• 32:02
  Mark Mosedale: Sorry.
• 32:03
  Mark Mosedale: Accidentally.
• 32:05
  Mark Mosedale: yeah, it just sort of doesn't, I mean, that's what I want.
• 32:11
  Mark Mosedale: And all that kind of.
• 32:13
  Mark Mosedale: Johnny Rockton, so… Margarine or insurance? Sorry, I can't remember.
• 32:20
  simonsmith: I think it was butter, wasn't it? But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And going on, I'm a celebrity and yeah.
• 32:27
  simonsmith: I mean, I guess my take on it.
• 32:32
  simonsmith: to counter what Mark said.
• 32:34
  simonsmith: I, I do think that if you like the cool stuff, then, you know, I'm going. No, you, you know, you should, you should like punk music, you should like this. Although, having said that, while we were making
• 32:48
  simonsmith: So towards the end of it, I, my record player had been broken for years. I got a new one and I got all my records out and I thought this would be great. And I sort of started going through the vinyl and my record collection is not as great as maybe I.
• 33:08
  simonsmith: pretended to mark that it wasn't. There's some stuff in there that's like, oh, man.
• 33:15
  simonsmith: Yeah, so…
• 33:16
  Phil: I can't open them.
• 33:17
  simonsmith: No, no, but it's not… it wasn't… I don't know, like… but I think that's also in the… in the story, you know, Sid the Punk, that there's a… she's not the most reliable…
• 33:29
  simonsmith: witness. And that idea that you can sort of rewrite your own history through the music that you listen to, and all the… you know, what music, art, whatever it is, comics, whatever you…
• 33:43
  simonsmith: choose to sort of, express yourself through, or to… whatever you choose to sort of represent who you are, I think there's definitely some of that. I mean, there's a… there's a moment when she's humming along to, Don Henley.
• 34:00
  simonsmith: Which, you know, is very much at odds with her, you know.
• 34:04
  simonsmith: hard-nosed punk thing, and I… well, though Mark made me listen to Don Henley to do that, you know…
• 34:13
  Tad Eggleston: I mean…
• 34:13
  simonsmith: Story.
• 34:14
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, you mean that the Eagles aren't punk?
• 34:18
  simonsmith: I was misinformed.
• 34:22
  simonsmith: I never…
• 34:22
  Phil: I never caught wind of that PR campaign.
• 34:27
  simonsmith: Yes.
• 34:28
  simonsmith: So yeah, so yeah, so the punk, that's where, that's where the punk thing comes. I mean, I think right at the start we had a, we had a few conversations before we'd settled on anything.
• 34:37
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I thought Hotel California was about squatters rights.
• 34:42
  Tad Eggleston: You can check out anytime you want, but you will never leave. I mean.
• 34:51
  Tad Eggleston: I can say this, because I appreciate the Eagles. They're not one of my favorite bands, but I don't dislike them.
• 34:58
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 35:00
  Tad Eggleston: But they're not, they're not punk for, for any of my younger listeners out there, they're, they're, they're very much not, not, not.
• 35:07
  Tad Eggleston: Not punk.
• 35:10
  simonsmith: And there's definitely a version of Sid.
• 35:13
  simonsmith: In the past, that would have absolutely sneered at the idea of the eagles, you know. Yes. Yet, when it comes on in the care home, she knows all the words, she's sort of humming along to it, she knows what it's about, you know, she's got an opinion about it. So…
• 35:30
  simonsmith: Yeah.
• 35:31
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, because… because there's that… that… I mean… It's something that's…
• 35:40
  Tad Eggleston: Not as much in the era of.
• 35:45
  Tad Eggleston: Streaming music and everybody listening to their personal lives.
• 35:50
  Tad Eggleston: Playlists rather than radio and whatnot.
• 35:52
  simonsmith: Yeah.
• 35:53
  Tad Eggleston: But, like…
• 35:55
  Tad Eggleston: There are certain songs, or at least there used to be, that whether you liked them or not, you wound up knowing them.
• 36:02
  simonsmith: Yes.
• 36:04
  Tad Eggleston: And that would generally mean that eventually you… felt…
• 36:10
  Tad Eggleston: Slightly warm about them, not, not.
• 36:15
  Tad Eggleston: Generally, when they were popular, but like… you know, I… I can't… stand most of the, like, Late 90s…
• 36:31
  Tad Eggleston: stuff, be it your Britney, your early Christina Aguilera, your… your boy bands, your NSYNC, you know, particularly because I worked in a music store, so I had to hear.
• 36:40
  simonsmith: Cool.
• 36:41
  Tad Eggleston: Way too much of that.
• 36:44
  Tad Eggleston: On the flip side, When I hear it now.
• 36:48
  Tad Eggleston: Still don't love the music, but A, because I don't hear it as regularly, it's not quite nails on a chalkboard anymore.
• 36:58
  Tad Eggleston: And it kind of takes me back to like.
• 37:01
  simonsmith: Yeah.
• 37:02
  Tad Eggleston: the joy of working in a record store, you know? So it's like…
• 37:10
  Tad Eggleston: And, and like that, that's also something that I really appreciated in terms of this book is, is because, you know, our, our two.
• 37:20
  Tad Eggleston: Main, main characters are from different generations. You, you, you have one that has all of these more.
• 37:29
  Tad Eggleston: Cultural shared experiences and the other one that's kind of learning.
• 37:34
  Tad Eggleston: From them because it feels like.
• 37:37
  Tad Eggleston: it feels like the younger generation is now seeking that. They've realized that that's part of what's been stripped away in this new gig economy, is that, like, they're always on the run so much that
• 37:53
  Tad Eggleston: They share nothing.
• 37:55
  Tad Eggleston: You know, so so like learning about and and figuring out how to.
• 38:01
  Tad Eggleston: Live together again seems to be a purpose and and.
• 38:07
  Tad Eggleston: I appreciate that.
• 38:08
  simonsmith: Yes.
• 38:09
  Mark Mosedale: Thank you.
• 38:10
  Tad Eggleston: I thought a question was going to come out of that, but I didn' Didn't build the one.
• 38:15
  Mark Mosedale: I think it's sort of happening right now, isn't it? You know, that oasis moment. I don't know
• 38:21
  Mark Mosedale: For you guys, but when Oasis, went on top, last…
• 38:27
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I wanted tickets, I didn't mention…
• 38:29
  Mark Mosedale: I didn't get them. I didn'.
• 38:31
  Tad Eggleston: I didn't manage to get them, but I wanted them.
• 38:33
  Mark Mosedale: I was suddenly absolutely busted for a pair of Oasis tickets. Yeah? I thought about it.
• 38:41
  Mark Mosedale: Like, I never bought, I don't think I bought an Oasis album.
• 38:45
  Mark Mosedale: We've got some.
• 38:47
  Mark Mosedale: I'm very excited. They do have massive bankers, but…
• 38:50
  Mark Mosedale: I… I was just suddenly posting for an hour.
• 38:55
  Mark Mosedale: So many people who We're too young to have.
• 38:59
  Mark Mosedale: Yeah, I've been there the first time I was, you know, snapping up tickets at 8:00 to 7:30.
• 39:04
  Mark Mosedale: And I think it's because they were the last
• 39:07
  Mark Mosedale: Something froze in Britain, there was a Biggest problem, I think.
• 39:13
  Mark Mosedale: It was the last, so, biggest fan in the world, but… Everyone.
• 39:17
  Mark Mosedale: Sort of, you would have to be really exposed to.
• 39:20
  simonsmith: Sort of pre-stream it.
• 39:23
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 39:23
  simonsmith: Okay.
• 39:24
  Tad Eggleston: I think that's one of the reasons Pearl Jam keeps their following in the US is, is that, that they
• 39:31
  Tad Eggleston: They they represent.
• 39:35
  Tad Eggleston: that last vestige of Seattle grunge that's still around.
• 39:41
  Tad Eggleston: That pre-streaming…
• 39:44
  Tad Eggleston: And they, they've evolved just enough over time to, to bring, to continue bringing in a new audience. Like, they don't, they don't not work on streaming. They, they just also hit the nostalgia bug.
• 39:58
  simonsmith: Yes.
• 39:59
  Tad Eggleston: Oh.
• 39:59
  simonsmith: We, we were, we were in Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago, me and Mark, the bookstore there, and one of the people in the audience was telling us that,
• 40:10
  simonsmith: Amongst the sort of younger people that she knows, mini-discs were making a comeback.
• 40:15
  simonsmith: Oh, wow. And she was saying, because these kids, they're fed up with streaming, they don't like the idea necessarily that they can have the whole of music there at their fingertips. They want to find something that is theirs, that they've got, that they can hold, that, you know…
• 40:31
  Tad Eggleston: Yep.
• 40:31
  simonsmith: I am.
• 40:32
  Tad Eggleston: My son's been getting into cassettes.
• 40:35
  simonsmith: Fantastic.
• 40:37
  simonsmith: Is he making mixtapes? Because that's… Sometimes.
• 40:43
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, like he, he, he grew up with me making him mix CDs, so, so like.
• 40:50
  simonsmith: Yeah.
• 40:51
  Tad Eggleston: Actually, actually, I… the last mixtape I made…
• 40:55
  Tad Eggleston: You know, we brought her up already. I made a mixtape for Shelly Bond.
• 41:01
  Tad Eggleston: the…
• 41:02
  simonsmith: Fantastic.
• 41:02
  Tad Eggleston: Cause, cause, cause Philip gave her a boombox with a tape.
• 41:06
  simonsmith: Yeah. With the.
• 41:07
  Tad Eggleston: Deck, so she got it.
• 41:10
  simonsmith: And then you have to break the tabs off, so you can't record over it.
• 41:14
  simonsmith: You put the pencil in and wind it on.
• 41:18
  Tad Eggleston: No, I was actually just looking at…
• 41:21
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I still have my good stereotype deck, but I was actually just…
• 41:25
  Tad Eggleston: That there there are a couple of actually pretty high-end.
• 41:31
  Tad Eggleston: Discman or like Walkman type.
• 41:34
  simonsmith: Yes.
• 41:35
  Tad Eggleston: Tape decks that have been put out recently.
• 41:38
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 41:39
  Tad Eggleston: That's like, Oh.
• 41:42
  Tad Eggleston: Am I geeky enough that I want to drop that kind of money on that? I might be.
• 41:47
  Mark Mosedale: I think you're having fun drawing some of those videos for the gig site.
• 41:50
  simonsmith: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 41:52
  simonsmith: Yeah.
• 41:53
  simonsmith: Yeah, I've spent a lot of time happily researching Walkman. Just going, you know, Google images, just pages and pages of Walkman's just sat there happily.
• 42:06
  simonsmith: staring at them.
• 42:08
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I… All of the mixtapes I ever made were CD… to tape.
• 42:15
  simonsmith: Yeah.
• 42:15
  Tad Eggleston: But I've got enough vinyl now that there's a part of me that wants to, like, do the vinyl to tape, mixtape just.
• 42:24
  simonsmith: Got.
• 42:25
  Tad Eggleston: Just, just to do it. Yeah. It's beautiful.
• 42:29
  simonsmith: Clear.
• 42:30
  simonsmith: It's brilliant, because you have to sit there, and physically listen to the thing, and press the button, and then…
• 42:36
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 42:37
  simonsmith: Pause and then line it up, you cut.
• 42:39
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 42:39
  simonsmith: You get a list on Spotify, and you just type the things in, and there it is, and bash, and.
• 42:44
  Tad Eggleston: No, I mean.
• 42:44
  Phil: They're still.
• 42:45
  simonsmith: So.
• 42:45
  Phil: There's still a skill to song selection and pacing, like when I…
• 42:50
  Tad Eggleston: There is.
• 42:50
  simonsmith: Yeah, I…
• 42:51
  Phil: When I make playlists, I try to make them as mix albums, you know, so it's not like, hey, here's 100 songs. I'll try to keep it to like 15 or so.
• 43:00
  Tad Eggleston: I know.
• 43:01
  Phil: Yeah, you gotta, you gotta, you can work with the flow. So there's, it's not like it's a lost art form.
• 43:06
  Tad Eggleston: But it, but it.
• 43:07
  Phil: Something special to ask.
• 43:08
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know. I mean.
• 43:09
  simonsmith: Yeah, I…
• 43:10
  Tad Eggleston: When I was working in the music stores and they were starting to go away because the MP3s were coming and streaming was starting to come, that sort of thing. And I'm sitting there going, yeah, no, it's not going to go away. It's going to go back to vinyl because vinyl is the most fun.
• 43:28
  Mark Mosedale: I bet we're only a Google or two away right now being able to just create a Wi-Fi playlist.
• 43:36
  Mark Mosedale: We called it.
• 43:37
  Mark Mosedale: I'm sure so many mixtapes are done that way. I bet it's a dog.
• 43:45
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, when I'm.
• 43:46
  Phil: Okay.
• 43:47
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I didn't do it with Spotify or anything else because I digitized my own CD collection ages ago. But when I made Shelly her mixtape, I didn't do it old school where I was playing a track off of a CD at a time.
• 44:05
  Tad Eggleston: I did it from my vast.
• 44:09
  simonsmith: There.
• 44:10
  Tad Eggleston: Like.
• 44:11
  Tad Eggleston: 300,000 track MP3 library, where I put together the playlist and played it into the tape deck.
• 44:19
  simonsmith: Yes, yes.
• 44:21
  Tad Eggleston: Step out.
• 44:21
  Phil: Best of both worlds there.
• 44:23
  Tad Eggleston: Yes.
• 44:24
  Tad Eggleston: Cool.
• 44:26
  Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, I mean, that's… I think…
• 44:31
  Tad Eggleston: That's the other thing, though, that makes gigs so real, is as we move to the future, there's always…
• 44:38
  Tad Eggleston: Also… Weird longings for the past.
• 44:43
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 44:44
  Mark Mosedale: One of the things I'm quite proud of, it's just that we have, like, Music in that?
• 44:50
  Mark Mosedale: Italian.
• 44:52
  Mark Mosedale: I mean, correct me if, you know, otherwise you don't get a lot of science fiction Actually.
• 44:58
  Mark Mosedale: Deal, you know, addresses, kind of… Real culture, all that much.
• 45:04
  Tad Eggleston: Not enough.
• 45:06
  Mark Mosedale: Wow.
• 45:06
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, you did have, you know, the, the, the Cantina Band and Max Revo in Star Wars. So, I mean, it's not, it's not unheard of.
• 45:17
  Mark Mosedale: Ha ha I'm sure they were calling back to, what were they calling back?
• 45:23
  Mark Mosedale: I'm not going to keep talking because I'm.
• 45:26
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I…
• 45:28
  Mark Mosedale: I think, I think one of the things that works at gigs is the fact that it is quite grounded in the past.
• 45:35
  simonsmith: Yeah.
• 45:36
  Mark Mosedale: the… A lot of the architecture.
• 45:40
  Mark Mosedale: Could find about reads.
• 45:41
  Mark Mosedale: Where we live.
• 45:44
  Mark Mosedale: There's a lot of cultural references.
• 45:47
  Mark Mosedale: I mean, obviously, we have cheated a little bit. If we were really doing it, we'd figure out what the next 20 is.
• 45:54
  Mark Mosedale: Music would be like, and that would be in there as well. But…
• 46:00
  Mark Mosedale: You know, we made a couple of glancing references.
• 46:03
  Mark Mosedale: Projected.
• 46:04
  Mark Mosedale: Cultural mom.
• 46:06
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 46:07
  Mark Mosedale: But I think, I think it gives it an air of… It grounds it.
• 46:14
  Mark Mosedale: Hey, now… Right.
• 46:16
  simonsmith: Yeah.
• 46:17
  Mark Mosedale: Particularly the first story at work.
• 46:20
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I…
• 46:21
  Mark Mosedale: Sales is using.
• 46:23
  Tad Eggleston: I think what it does really well that that that that also isn't isn't done as much in sci-fi some of the best sci-fi has it but but like the people are
• 46:37
  Tad Eggleston: People.
• 46:38
  Tad Eggleston: you know…
• 46:40
  Tad Eggleston: People have enjoyed music and art for as long as there has been music and art. And people created it because they needed it.
• 46:50
  Tad Eggleston: You know, that's how long we've had music and art. We, we, we needed it sometime long before we had any way to, to.
• 47:00
  Tad Eggleston: Record it, like, like, music is, is older than writing, you know.
• 47:06
  Tad Eggleston: It's all but impossible to figure out how long we've been doing music. Same with, you know, art goes back to cave paintings, you know.
• 47:16
  Mark Mosedale: Our streets are just doing the same thing as those guys.
• 47:20
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 47:21
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 47:22
  Mark Mosedale: But this service that I've seen on cables with.
• 47:25
  Mark Mosedale: Water, what can we use.
• 47:27
  Tad Eggleston: So, like, the fact that your characters are still… So…
• 47:36
  Tad Eggleston: Steeped in and and and driven by.
• 47:41
  Tad Eggleston: a need… To create and enjoy creation.
• 47:46
  Tad Eggleston: of others is part of what makes it very, very, very real. It's like, these things don't go away just because technology changes.
• 47:56
  Tad Eggleston: you know.
• 47:59
  Tad Eggleston: I think… Go ahead.
• 48:02
  Phil: That's the optimism of the book, is the idea that no matter how much the world around us changes, we're still here, and that people are still the same. You know, they're finding the things that they're missing from the world. You know, they're missing the independence and the choice.
• 48:18
  Phil: And. And ownership, you know, I mean, I'm. I. We're already in the era of.
• 48:27
  Phil: you know, A streaming service that purges their own content for tax write-offs, you know, that were…
• 48:38
  Phil: I play a lot of video games, and within the past couple of years I learned from a friend of mine that, oh, well, the game isn't actually on the disc anymore. That's just like a passkey that gets you to download it and like interconnect with their servers. So you know, back in the day with Nintendo cartridges, yeah, the whole game was in the cartridge, but not anymore. It's just like a key to get you into the game.
• 49:00
  simonsmith: True.
• 49:00
  Phil: then if the company shutters, then, oh, this doesn't work anymore because those servers are turned off. You know, it's the idea that.
• 49:08
  Tad Eggleston: We rent these things that we used to buy.
• 49:11
  Phil: And, you know, those… I think that in a future where everything is going to be temporary, we might see a few eras of permanently lost media, because it might…
• 49:23
  Phil: show up and then get torn down just as fast, because we're seeing that happen more and more in capitalism and in entertainment, with a lot of shows only lasting one or two seasons.
• 49:35
  Phil: And these companies so desperate for quick cash that they're not investing in anything. So then physical media is going to be what people fall back on to discover because that, that digital playground is going to be constantly, you know.
• 49:49
  Phil: Paint it on and paint it over and paint it on and paint it over until it becomes just.
• 49:54
  Phil: Corporate chill. So. So, yeah. So, I mean, I. I.
• 49:58
  Phil: yeah, to to mesh the 2 of yours, optimism and pessimism with a broken world and wonderful people. I apologize if my cat is is saying more.
• 50:17
  Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna ask, Simon, I always, I always like to ask artists
• 50:22
  Tad Eggleston: well, actually, before we get to this, how… how do you guys work? I mean, because it sounds like you did a fair amount of, like, in-person brainstorming collaboration.
• 50:36
  Tad Eggleston: But, but like, what level of scripting is Mark doing,
• 50:43
  Tad Eggleston: You know, is he… are you doing panel breakdowns, or are you doing a looser script?
• 50:50
  Tad Eggleston: You're working full-on Marvel style.
• 50:53
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 50:54
  Mark Mosedale: The very short answer to how we work is inefficiency.
• 50:58
  Mark Mosedale: the width
• 50:59
  Mark Mosedale: I was… we do have scripts. We also had a Slack channel that had thousands upon thousands upon thousands of messages on it, all of which just kind of got deleted a few days ago. I was gonna… I was gonna upgrade to Slack Pro, but yeah, to speak to impermanency.
• 51:15
  Phil: Excuse.
• 51:15
  Mark Mosedale: you know, Slack was already hiding a lot of it behind the paywall, but now it's just gone and deleted it, so…
• 51:22
  Tad Eggleston: Well, so much for the special edition with all of them.
• 51:27
  Mark Mosedale: There goes the archive.
• 51:30
  simonsmith: So.
• 51:30
  Mark Mosedale: The way we worked did shift a little bit over time. At the start, I would write
• 51:37
  Mark Mosedale: Not exactly Marvel style, but getting there. I would write, you know, on pages 1 to 3.
• 51:44
  Mark Mosedale: this happens, this happens, this happens, is what I think the dialogue is. And more often than not, the dialogue didn't change all that much.
• 51:51
  Mark Mosedale: And I would sort of work out, I would create comments down the side of the document guide.
• 51:56
  Mark Mosedale: I think this is a problem. I think this is a problem. And then I would delete all that. That was just for my benefit, so that I knew I wasn't asking for something.
• 52:04
  Mark Mosedale: Asking for something inside.
• 52:06
  Mark Mosedale: And then I would send it over the side.
• 52:09
  Mark Mosedale: And he would decide that my 3 pages were actually like 7 pages or 10 pages.
• 52:16
  Mark Mosedale: And that's one of the reasons it took so long.
• 52:18
  simonsmith: Yeah, sorry.
• 52:19
  Mark Mosedale: to do it.
• 52:21
  Mark Mosedale: a time when I was just kind of figuring out how to write this book a lot of the time. Now, this Gigs is my first graphic novel.
• 52:30
  Phil: Makes it more imp.
• 52:31
  Mark Mosedale: Thank you. And also somewhat unwise, you know, your first, my first piece of work being a 270 page.
• 52:39
  Mark Mosedale: Go for it, I will stop shouting But, here we are.
• 52:43
  Mark Mosedale: So I was kind of figuring it out, and Si had already made comic books.
• 52:47
  Mark Mosedale: So, I'm not gonna tell it how to…
• 52:49
  Mark Mosedale: tell the story. Unless, you know, if I had a really strong picture, so say what that was.
• 52:58
  Mark Mosedale: As as time went on, I would.
• 53:01
  Mark Mosedale: Get a little bit more specific and start doing panel breakdowns in some cases, not all cases.
• 53:07
  Mark Mosedale: In some cases, like, if I wanted a particular page to, like, exposure, that's Space station, so…
• 53:15
  Mark Mosedale: That I think is the closest to what I wrote Black.
• 53:24
  Mark Mosedale: I mean, one thing that happened was, as time went on, we kind of found each other's p.
• 53:28
  simonsmith: Yeah, yeah.
• 53:29
  Mark Mosedale: But also, I was quite…
• 53:33
  Mark Mosedale: Specific of where I want it paged, that' Even though it's not… A conventional thriller.
• 53:40
  Mark Mosedale: Paste, like, what?
• 53:43
  Mark Mosedale: So I would.
• 53:44
  Mark Mosedale: And in that case sort of stuck with my page turns really. It didn't have the option of.
• 53:49
  Mark Mosedale: I think extra material.
• 53:52
  Mark Mosedale: Or, not, not there with Addy, more expanding and like, like seeing.
• 53:56
  simonsmith: Yes.
• 53:56
  Mark Mosedale: Sorry, Bri So, yeah, it got a little bit more…
• 54:00
  Mark Mosedale: My script got a little bit off, but… We like to look.
• 54:04
  simonsmith: But I think as well, though, it goes back to what you were saying, Mark, about the Venn diagram. So you've got your, sort of.
• 54:11
  simonsmith: DC, Marvel, superhero, 20-page, you know, end it on a cliffhanger, get in, get out.
• 54:19
  simonsmith: Kind of thing. And then you've got my band, Destinee. You know, why… why have one page when you can have five? You know, when nothing much happens, and you just…
• 54:29
  simonsmith: There's just beautiful things to look at and I, I think over time we, we just worked each other out. It was a little bit of a dance at the start, I felt.
• 54:39
  simonsmith: You know where we were trying to.
• 54:41
  simonsmith: Not tread on each other's toes.
• 54:43
  simonsmith: Well, actually, maybe I wasn't trying too hard, Dr. Trevor, but anyway, you know, I think we worked it out over time.
• 54:52
  simonsmith: But yeah, my tendency is to take a script and…
• 54:57
  simonsmith: See the opportunities for doing more, you know, and go, well.
• 55:02
  simonsmith: And Mark's writing is really good. So you get the script and the characters live in the script. You're not scrabbling around trying to work anything out there. They kind of jump off the page when you get the script. So from that point of view, that was fairly easy.
• 55:22
  simonsmith: I think as well, I mean, we… Wink.
• 55:27
  simonsmith: I think there was a feeling of, this might be the only chance that we get to make a graphic novel of this size, so let's throw the kitchen sink at it, let's really…
• 55:41
  simonsmith: Makeup.
• 55:42
  simonsmith: make a good job of it. And, and, Top Shelf, Chris at Top Shelf.
• 55:48
  simonsmith: didn't hit us with a deadline or any kind of
• 55:53
  simonsmith: Kind of overbearing restrictions. As long as we kept him informed of what we were doing, he was like, well, just, you know.
• 56:01
  simonsmith: Yeah, keep me in the loop. Show me what you're doing
• 56:04
  simonsmith: And when it's ready, we'll talk about publishing dates and all that sort of stuff.
• 56:11
  simonsmith: There was a lot of freedom there for, for me to.
• 56:16
  simonsmith: Just have a whale of a time drawing buildings and space stations and just jester properly go for it.
• 56:25
  simonsmith: So, and yeah, and as Mark says, that's one of the reasons why
• 56:30
  simonsmith: you know, we started in March 2019 talking about it, and we handed it in…
• 56:34
  Tad Eggleston: Wow.
• 56:35
  simonsmith: November 24 to Top Shelf, I think, and then it went through the list of things, but, yeah, so… and like Mark says, it's not… it's not an efficient way to do it,
• 56:47
  simonsmith: But it's the way we did it.
• 56:49
  Tad Eggleston: Efficient. Efficient isn't always the best way to do it.
• 56:53
  simonsmith: Yeah, absolutely.
• 56:54
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 56:55
  Mark Mosedale: I think it's interesting that You know, I…
• 56:59
  Mark Mosedale: I have read and still read about the book.
• 57:02
  Mark Mosedale: the comic Yes.
• 57:05
  Mark Mosedale: A lot of those guys, like…
• 57:07
  Mark Mosedale: writing artists are the people who pop up on podcasts and you see artists saying how much they don't want to draw more than five panels on a page.
• 57:18
  Mark Mosedale: I was, I sort of intensified a lot of that, but.
• 57:22
  Mark Mosedale: It's funny, a lot of the roles that you see from artists who are working with writers, they're not the roles of people who are writing.
• 57:30
  Mark Mosedale: themselves drawing.
• 57:32
  Mark Mosedale: will apply. You know, if you look at a lot of cartooning.
• 57:37
  Mark Mosedale: They will happily chuck 16 panels per page. Whereas I think if you handed in a script for, you know, a Batman comic with 16 panels per page.
• 57:48
  Phil: He'd have to be Freak.
• 57:49
  Mark Mosedale: Yeah, I know.
• 57:50
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I think it also depends a lot
• 57:55
  Tad Eggleston: both… what… I mean, because… because Cy brought up the… the bande de snait, so… so, like, it depends on… on the style of the stuff that they've…
• 58:04
  Tad Eggleston: They've grown up on, but it also depends on, like.
• 58:10
  Tad Eggleston: Are they working somewhere with, with,
• 58:14
  Tad Eggleston: Not necessarily universal basic income, but but but but like.
• 58:18
  simonsmith: Yeah.
• 58:18
  Tad Eggleston: Enough services that like they don't need to desperately get this done in a short amount of time to not starve? Or are they working somewhere?
• 58:32
  Phil: That's that's something I'm thinking that a lot of that like 5 panels per page, you know, always put the
• 58:40
  Phil: the you know, the speaker, the 1st speaker on the left. A lot of that like.
• 58:46
  Phil: condensed comic writing advice from Marvel and DC, I think that
• 58:51
  Phil: That comes from the idea of, okay, here's how to consistently
• 58:55
  Phil: Make a 20 page comic that can be drawn in a month. You know, here's, here's how to, here's how to, you know, not ask for too much work to slow down the pipeline. And that's, that's not always the best storytelling. Yeah. You know, I think, I think it is Kieran Gillen is.
• 59:14
  Phil: You know, self deprecatingly joked a couple times about how working for Marvel made him a worse writer.
• 59:21
  Phil: for needing to over explain things and, you know, reiterate plot points and, you know, and it's. There's something to that. But at the same time, I still love his work. So it's. What does that say about us? But anyway.
• 59:35
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, but I think he said it tongue in cheek. I would argue that it changed his writing. Yeah.
• 59:44
  Tad Eggleston: And, and, and some of that is worse and some of that is better like, like not all writing has to be.
• 59:53
  Tad Eggleston: High, high art. Like, like, I mean, I, I kind of agree. I was, I've been reading Frank Miller's.
• 1:00:00
  Tad Eggleston: biography and like he's not big on the high versus low art and I I somewhat agree with him art is art right but but like
• 1:00:10
  Tad Eggleston: You're allowed to make art for a living, and sometimes when you're making art for a living, that means…
• 1:00:16
  Tad Eggleston: That… that not everything is done to the…
• 1:00:21
  Tad Eggleston: Nth degree of your creativity, it's done to.
• 1:00:25
  Tad Eggleston: what can I do in this period of time so that I get paid in this period of time, so that I can pay my bills in this period of time?
• 1:00:37
  simonsmith: And I think it's handy for me because my day job is illustration. Right. So it's handy for me in this context to be able to go, the day job is the thing where I earn the money.
• 1:00:51
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:00:51
  simonsmith: This graphic novel is the thing where I play and really get to do the art.
• 1:00:58
  Tad Eggleston: But the fact that you need to have a day job is right there gonna mean that it's not as efficient as it could be in terms of making it, because it can't be your first priority.
• 1:01:11
  Mark Mosedale: There's a constant.
• 1:01:13
  Mark Mosedale: I'd like to make a living out of doing comics now at the moment. I have a day job too.
• 1:01:19
  Mark Mosedale: And that makes me aware of it.
• 1:01:21
  Mark Mosedale: Should I get to make a virtual colleague?
• 1:01:24
  Mark Mosedale: I probably won't get to make them like gigs, you know, it will happen.
• 1:01:27
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:01:28
  Mark Mosedale: more efficient. The storytelling will have to be different. And it makes you feel a bit greasy, being like, oh, you know, now I want to get paid more to do this. Like, I want to make money from it.
• 1:01:37
  Mark Mosedale: The more money I get, the more of it I can do, right?
• 1:01:40
  Phil: Mmh.
• 1:01:40
  Mark Mosedale: Likewise, I remember seeing, some…
• 1:01:44
  Mark Mosedale: illustrations but a sort of jobbing kind of reliable kind of German comic artist. I won't name anybody.
• 1:01:53
  Mark Mosedale: Put up these illustrations on his website.
• 1:01:57
  Mark Mosedale: Sort of single image stuff, like, oh my god, this is, like, so much better, but…
• 1:02:02
  Mark Mosedale: The stuff that you see in this guy's comic.
• 1:02:04
  Mark Mosedale: You know, I was looking at, you know, bright pictures probably at the
• 1:02:09
  Mark Mosedale: I was at the time, huh We've got an ultimate.
• 1:02:13
  Mark Mosedale: Oh, it's the difference between Brian Hitch.
• 1:02:16
  Mark Mosedale: This other guy, just a Brian Hitch, has managed to get himself paid enough.
• 1:02:21
  Mark Mosedale: That it could take enough time to make it look this good.
• 1:02:24
  Mark Mosedale: You know, I'm not denying that it's a problem at all, because I'm actually putting out stuff much faster now.
• 1:02:31
  Mark Mosedale: qualities.
• 1:02:32
  Mark Mosedale: Software, particularly.
• 1:02:34
  Mark Mosedale: our book.
• 1:02:35
  Mark Mosedale: You know, like, so much of what makes things
• 1:02:38
  Mark Mosedale: Makes art good, it's a function of money, you know, and I would argue that, you know.
• 1:02:44
  Mark Mosedale: people need Kieran Gillen to explain what points to multi-plan. I do, because when you're reading monthly comics, and you're reading a bunch of them, it's really hard to keep up with
• 1:02:53
  Mark Mosedale: We've got.
• 1:02:54
  Phil: That'.
• 1:02:54
  Mark Mosedale: So I gave up reading Criminal One.
• 1:02:58
  Mark Mosedale: because I could never remember who was who and what was what, because they didn't wear, like, colourful masks on their face. I'm half convinced the reason superheroes wear costumes is to make them really identifiable, you know? Yeah.
• 1:03:10
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
• 1:03:11
  simonsmith: I love this idea, Mark, that to make things understandable, you need to slap a K-pop to someone.
• 1:03:16
  Phil: And bright colors.
• 1:03:18
  Phil: And a funny symbol.
• 1:03:21
  Mark Mosedale: But you know, that's the difference. When you're making a graphic novel that someone's going to read over a day or two, like we've been, you can afford to be a little bit, you know, ask a little more of the reader, I think, than perhaps… I'm not saying it's harder.
• 1:03:34
  Mark Mosedale: Okay, caught.
• 1:03:36
  Mark Mosedale: The car.
• 1:03:37
  Mark Mosedale: But you know the the kind of the.
• 1:03:39
  Mark Mosedale: The needs of the… Not just the medium, but the involvement.
• 1:03:45
  Mark Mosedale: Check.
• 1:03:46
  Mark Mosedale: the work It's affordable.
• 1:03:50
  Phil: And I think Giggs is right in that sweet spot of jumping off the page and asking for reader investment, you know, is that you really do have both to it because, yeah, absolutely everything about this book.
• 1:04:07
  Phil: These characters feel real. They feel like actual people as opposed to, you know, signposts of color and symbol, you know, and.
• 1:04:18
  Phil: and that. Yeah, you do need the reader to imagine the rest of the world around them. But but yeah, I think it's I think it goes to show that like.
• 1:04:27
  Phil: Yes, you're absolutely right. It can be hard keeping track of, you know, one out of 20 things that you're reading in a week or a month. But like.
• 1:04:37
  Phil: That's also… that's a different form of enjoying things than sitting down with…
• 1:04:44
  Phil: Almost, you know, 270 pages of the same story and going through that and feeling compelled by it, you know, and I've been, you know.
• 1:04:52
  Tad Eggleston: Though I do like the, the, I do like it when, when.
• 1:04:56
  Tad Eggleston: When the writers can pull off.
• 1:05:02
  Tad Eggleston: Each comic could be somebody's first comic.
• 1:05:06
  Phil: It's a tough job.
• 1:05:07
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I think one of the issues with a lot of our miniseries and whatnot is most miniseries probably would be better to just be a graphic novel because
• 1:05:19
  Tad Eggleston: Like, if you're going to write a miniseries, you're not generally going to have a miniseries where somebody can pick up issue three.
• 1:05:27
  Tad Eggleston: And not have needed to read issue 1 and 2.
• 1:05:31
  Tad Eggleston: Still… Enjoy themselves.
• 1:05:35
  Tad Eggleston: but that's…
• 1:05:38
  Mark Mosedale: Necessary for them.
• 1:05:41
  Tad Eggleston: What?
• 1:05:42
  Mark Mosedale: Besides wondering what a miniseries is at this point.
• 1:05:47
  simonsmith: I'm fine.
• 1:05:50
  simonsmith: Yes.
• 1:05:51
  Tad Eggleston: So, the question that I was gonna ask before I remembered to ask about process first was,
• 1:05:58
  Tad Eggleston: I always like, when I get to talk to creative teams, to find out the ways that they surprised each other in wonderful ways. So I start with the artists.
• 1:06:11
  Tad Eggleston: Was there a scene, a page, something in the book that you got it from Mark and he went, oh, this is going to be so much fun.
• 1:06:20
  simonsmith: Oh, that's so many, so many pages. So, I mean, the, we've talked a bit about the space.
• 1:06:29
  simonsmith: The sort of low orbit story. And I think Mark told me that was… he was thinking about that fairly early on.
• 1:06:38
  simonsmith: So, I kind of knew it was coming down the line.
• 1:06:41
  simonsmith: Maybe about a year and a half before, possibly even longer before it came, so I was really looking forward to that.
• 1:06:49
  simonsmith: And then there was a point when I think there was a bit of doubt whether it would work, and I was really pushing for it. I was like, oh, come on, come on, let's go to space, come on, let's do it, let's do it. So when that whole thing landed.
• 1:07:07
  simonsmith: And I, I think you're right, Mark, I think that was the most.
• 1:07:13
  simonsmith: Complete. Finished.
• 1:07:15
  simonsmith: Script that you gave me.
• 1:07:20
  simonsmith: Yeah, when that landed, I was at my dad's house when it arrived, and I had to use his slightly shonky
• 1:07:27
  simonsmith: Printer to print it off.
• 1:07:29
  simonsmith: And he only had cardboard to print it on, so I had all these thick pages of cardboard coming out of the…
• 1:07:35
  simonsmith: The printer and yeah, the sort of steam coming off it. And yeah, that was kind of, that was kind of great.
• 1:07:42
  simonsmith: And I just sat there reading it, going, whoa! I'm gonna draw a space toilet!
• 1:07:48
  simonsmith: And I'm gonna, you know… yeah, so all of that, yeah, that would… that was a… that was a very lovely…
• 1:07:56
  simonsmith: Moment to receive that script.
• 1:07:59
  simonsmith: But I, I mean, I think the whole thing of working with Mark, because, because, you know, I.
• 1:08:04
  simonsmith: I did. I didn't. I'm not really red.
• 1:08:08
  simonsmith: any of his writing at that point, but like I said before, I knew that he was a good bloke.
• 1:08:14
  simonsmith: And I liked him a lot and
• 1:08:19
  simonsmith: Yeah, so… so every… every time I got something, it was like, oh, this… this is gonna work. This… yeah, this is good. This… you know, so…
• 1:08:29
  simonsmith: Yeah, it was just an ongoing, I mean, I'm making it sound like it was a glorious.
• 1:08:34
  simonsmith: sort of, trouble-free process the whole way through. And we, we, I think we hit a few little bumps.
• 1:08:42
  Tad Eggleston: Isn't that how comics making always is?
• 1:08:45
  simonsmith: Yeah!
• 1:08:47
  simonsmith: Probably. But yeah, so, so all, yeah, I mean, I, I don't know, that's, that's a bit
• 1:08:53
  simonsmith: That's possibly a slightly vanilla kind of answer, but it was just a really…
• 1:08:58
  Tad Eggleston: No, that's a great answer.
• 1:08:59
  Mark Mosedale: Well, I've, I've got a question, Sai, actually. What, what would you plan, Sai, for.
• 1:09:05
  Mark Mosedale: We got, 10 pages in July.
• 1:09:10
  Mark Mosedale: Did you have, did you have an escape one?
• 1:09:12
  simonsmith: No.
• 1:09:14
  Mark Mosedale: You were just going to draw it, whatever it was.
• 1:09:18
  simonsmith: Okay.
• 1:09:18
  Mark Mosedale: I guess I'm joining this for the next five years now.
• 1:09:21
  simonsmith: Well, I don't… I think… I think I probably thought, if it's no good, it'll peter out. It'll just… it'll just drift away into nothingness, and you won't be happy with what I've done, because I can't…
• 1:09:37
  simonsmith: You know, if, if I, if, if you sent me stuff and I couldn't see it.
• 1:09:41
  simonsmith: Then what I gave you back wouldn't have been much good and you would have been dissatisfied with that and I think we'd have.
• 1:09:48
  simonsmith: But… It would have been the opposite of what happened. I think it would have just dwindled.
• 1:09:53
  simonsmith: Whereas, in fact, it felt like it.
• 1:09:56
  simonsmith: It kind of, what's the, what's the opposite of dwindling, whatever.
• 1:09:59
  Tad Eggleston: Balling.
• 1:10:00
  simonsmith: Yes, whatever. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it did that. It did that. So.
• 1:10:07
  Tad Eggleston: So, Mark, the kind of flip of that question I like to ask the writers is.
• 1:10:14
  Tad Eggleston: Was there a scene that came back to you that you looked at it and you're like, oh, this is so much better than I had it in my head.
• 1:10:24
  Mark Mosedale: Yeah, so, the most…
• 1:10:27
  Mark Mosedale: obvious one would be we have a rave scene in which I wrote, they're all wearing digital disability socks. It's a massive rave.
• 1:10:39
  Mark Mosedale: That's, you know…
• 1:10:41
  Mark Mosedale: Couple of minutes work, you know, and then I have to draw this double page spread where you have to figure out what's going on.
• 1:10:48
  Mark Mosedale: And I didn't, most of the time if I wrote something, I would.
• 1:10:54
  Mark Mosedale: I have a strong idea at least of how it could be done, you know, not necessarily how I would do it.
• 1:11:00
  Mark Mosedale: By any search we want to mention.
• 1:11:02
  Mark Mosedale: I would at least have a strong idea of what it could look like as a page of comics.
• 1:11:07
  Mark Mosedale: Because I, I'm with that, right
• 1:11:12
  Mark Mosedale: But I wrote that with a very vague…
• 1:11:15
  Mark Mosedale: I could sort of picture what it would look like in a video game.
• 1:11:18
  Mark Mosedale: Or in a film, perhaps, but not really a comic stage, unless maybe it was
• 1:11:26
  Mark Mosedale: Sort of imagine, maybe not too difficult to imagine, like the Bill Sikarich version of that, you know, someone who's a bit more.
• 1:11:34
  Mark Mosedale: Surreal with that sort of color and stuff, but I, I really didn't know how to.
• 1:11:41
  Mark Mosedale: Sorry, I'll be fast Smash there, but…
• 1:11:47
  Mark Mosedale: And.
• 1:11:48
  Mark Mosedale: So… Because it was… Looking at side path work.
• 1:11:53
  Mark Mosedale: It would.
• 1:11:55
  Mark Mosedale: I knew that he would draw great characters.
• 1:11:58
  Mark Mosedale: all the counties will have to pay.
• 1:12:00
  Mark Mosedale: It was like, Cliff, that's what, what the.
• 1:12:03
  Mark Mosedale: More for a fictional element.
• 1:12:07
  Mark Mosedale: I'll come back out there.
• 1:12:08
  Mark Mosedale: Everything goes fine.
• 1:12:12
  Mark Mosedale: Much stuff.
• 1:12:15
  Mark Mosedale: That was really gratifying.
• 1:12:17
  Mark Mosedale: I took a certain amount of pride of like, oh, I made him draw that.
• 1:12:22
  Mark Mosedale: Look how good it is. I made him draw that. He wouldn't have drawn it otherwise. No way. So he really grumbled at me about that page.
• 1:12:29
  Mark Mosedale: That's right. You know, it's like, what is this? Oh, oh.
• 1:12:34
  Mark Mosedale: I'm gonna have to build.
• 1:12:36
  Mark Mosedale: You know.
• 1:12:37
  Mark Mosedale: And they spent ages figuring out, I love the whole gift, it came back great.
• 1:12:41
  Mark Mosedale: Okay.
• 1:12:42
  simonsmith: Quite a.
• 1:12:43
  Mark Mosedale: Okay, cool.
• 1:12:44
  simonsmith: Not going. You got it.
• 1:12:46
  Mark Mosedale: Oh, there's a, there's Thing that came back up. Oh, great. It was the first time we saw it.
• 1:12:53
  Mark Mosedale: Agent.
• 1:12:56
  Mark Mosedale: Because she just… well, boy, look back on it.
• 1:12:59
  Mark Mosedale: You know, you can really pass it.
• 1:13:02
  Mark Mosedale: makes it out on the top of the phone. So I'm chewing your ear off.
• 1:13:06
  Mark Mosedale: 40 minutes before you protect the job.
• 1:13:09
  Mark Mosedale: Did it work?
• 1:13:11
  Mark Mosedale: The culture would be nice to come on.
• 1:13:12
  Mark Mosedale: She was like, she just looked like she looked a lot, didn't speak to them.
• 1:13:19
  Mark Mosedale: So that was… They both are.
• 1:13:23
  Mark Mosedale: Oh, oh, oh.
• 1:13:30
  Mark Mosedale: So I, I cut you off, so what were you gonna say?
• 1:13:35
  simonsmith: Oh, I was gonna say that there was quite a lot to and fro with those invisibility cloaks as well, wasn't there? I did quite a lot of drawing to try and work out what they'd look like, and I did some that they were in, sort of, these weird costumes that looked like, sort of.
• 1:13:51
  simonsmith: Bed octopuses and the other ones that had sort of.
• 1:13:56
  simonsmith: Look, you know, like, had sort of spheres all over them and stuff.
• 1:14:00
  simonsmith: So I was grateful.
• 1:14:02
  simonsmith: Cause you, yeah, again, it's just playing around, it's like, okay.
• 1:14:06
  simonsmith: So… I know I grumbled a lot, but I kind of enjoyed having a grumble.
• 1:14:11
  simonsmith: As well, and, you know, yeah. Because if somebody says to you, draw this thing that doesn't exist.
• 1:14:18
  simonsmith: And you've got to make it up. It's, you know, it's, it's, it's a fantastic opportunity to.
• 1:14:25
  simonsmith: mess about for a bit, because no one can say, well, that's not right, can they? You know, no one can tell you you've got it wrong.
• 1:14:32
  Phil: Sorry.
• 1:14:34
  simonsmith: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:14:39
  Tad Eggleston: Phil, any more questions on gigs?
• 1:14:43
  Phil: of… I think, I think I asked most of what I wanted, I just, you know.
• 1:14:48
  Phil: Keep raving about it. Keep. Well, I guess the one question is any, any ideas for the sequel or you set to, to move on and do something new?
• 1:14:58
  simonsmith: Well, we started, there were stories that we didn't include in it. And we have got a little Google doc where we just.
• 1:15:09
  simonsmith: swapped a load of thoughts and ideas for future stories and things. So,
• 1:15:16
  simonsmith: I mean, I don't know how many are in there, Mark. Maybe a dozen, maybe.
• 1:15:21
  Mark Mosedale: More than we could do in one book.
• 1:15:23
  simonsmith: Yes.
• 1:15:24
  Mark Mosedale: Whether we're all adults or not.
• 1:15:26
  Mark Mosedale: Not entirely sure.
• 1:15:27
  simonsmith: I think the ones that you've put in there probably are
• 1:15:29
  simonsmith: History would say it's probably best if we looked at them.
• 1:15:34
  simonsmith: Rather than what I'm dropping in there, but…
• 1:15:36
  Mark Mosedale: Yeah, I mean, to be fair though, that's because by the time, if I put something in there, I'm kind of like, I've got an idea in my.
• 1:15:43
  simonsmith: Yeah.
• 1:15:44
  Mark Mosedale: of how that would play out at the start, whereas you can just put something in there and say, blah, blah, blah, and now you figure it out, go on.
• 1:15:50
  simonsmith: Yeah, that's.
• 1:15:51
  Mark Mosedale: There you go.
• 1:15:54
  simonsmith: That's revenge for the invisibility cloak, isn't it?
• 1:15:58
  simonsmith: Yep.
• 1:15:59
  simonsmith: So we've done that, and then we've also just done a thing with Shelley Bond.
• 1:16:03
  Tad Eggleston: That was what, where I was going to take us to.
• 1:16:06
  simonsmith: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:16:07
  Tad Eggleston: You got to do four pages in subculture.
• 1:16:13
  Tad Eggleston: for… The Devil's Arse.
• 1:16:17
  Tad Eggleston: For, for, for quite, quite pretty pages,
• 1:16:26
  Tad Eggleston: Hey, what do you want to tell us about it without, like, winding up?
• 1:16:30
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I guess I can talk about subculture some, and I'll encourage people to go listen to my talk with Shelly and Philip about subculture.
• 1:16:40
  Tad Eggleston: Where where the.
• 1:16:42
  Tad Eggleston: The anthology itself is, like, appreciating in both
• 1:16:49
  Tad Eggleston: Real and and fictional form like the the.
• 1:16:55
  Tad Eggleston: Micro cultures of the world, not, not just the, the, not just the Britpop fan, but the hardcore.
• 1:17:05
  Tad Eggleston: Somebody gave me a band that's, like, Smaller than suede.
• 1:17:13
  Tad Eggleston: You…
• 1:17:15
  Mark Mosedale: Could, but, Will Potter.
• 1:17:17
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, there we go. We'll do cut. Yeah, you know, the hardcore cud fan.
• 1:17:24
  Tad Eggleston: I almost just said geezer, but then I'm like, oh wait, that's fictional too.
• 1:17:31
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 1:17:32
  simonsmith: Okay.
• 1:17:33
  Tad Eggleston: But beyond all of that, she gave, like, one of the tightest assignments that one can give. She gave it as a four-page assignment. So…
• 1:17:43
  Tad Eggleston: Tell me…
• 1:17:45
  Tad Eggleston: As much as you're willing to, cause, cause, you know, I don't want, it's, it's hard to talk about a 4.
• 1:17:51
  Mark Mosedale: Yeah.
• 1:17:52
  Tad Eggleston: Spoiling it.
• 1:17:53
  Tad Eggleston: Well,
• 1:17:54
  Mark Mosedale: I'll tell you about the brief first. She sort of said, oh, I'm doing this subcultural tranthology in the new year. I'll send you out there.
• 1:18:04
  Mark Mosedale: So you can pitch on it if you want.
• 1:18:07
  Mark Mosedale: Oh, yeah, okay, cool, yeah. I mean, not just, yeah, okay, cool, I was like, I'm gonna work on a… I'm gonna get the pitch for Shell
• 1:18:16
  Mark Mosedale: And then she sent it, and I was like, whoa, this is, like, a very specific…
• 1:18:21
  Mark Mosedale: Break, you know, it was,
• 1:18:24
  Mark Mosedale: It had to be about a subculture. I think real or imaginary.
• 1:18:29
  Mark Mosedale: I think there was the opportunity.
• 1:18:30
  Mark Mosedale: I copied the culture.
• 1:18:32
  Mark Mosedale: Oh.
• 1:18:33
  Mark Mosedale: And it has to have, it's four pages, it has to have an element of
• 1:18:39
  Mark Mosedale: Fable of me to it.
• 1:18:41
  Tad Eggleston: Yep.
• 1:18:42
  Mark Mosedale: exhausted.
• 1:18:43
  Mark Mosedale: with.
• 1:18:44
  Mark Mosedale: Ending, and I was like, oh, what?
• 1:18:47
  Mark Mosedale: Extremely focused, you know, 4 pages.
• 1:18:50
  Mark Mosedale: It's got to straddle these two… Whoa.
• 1:18:55
  Mark Mosedale: It's all has to happen
• 1:18:59
  Mark Mosedale: Like, in a way, a lot of it, a lot of it, hold on.
• 1:19:05
  Mark Mosedale: What?
• 1:19:06
  Mark Mosedale: Paige, she had to start today.
• 1:19:09
  Mark Mosedale: That's where the, you know, do you get two page steps or do you get
• 1:19:12
  Mark Mosedale: And when you've only got four pages to work with, that's, that's a.
• 1:19:17
  Tad Eggleston: Mmhm.
• 1:19:18
  simonsmith: Didn't they have to have… didn't they have to have some…
• 1:19:21
  simonsmith: Technological element in it as well, piece of technology.
• 1:19:25
  Mark Mosedale: It has a piece of technology that dated it to a certain specific.
• 1:19:30
  Mark Mosedale: Period. As well.
• 1:19:31
  Phil: Wow.
• 1:19:32
  Mark Mosedale: So, yeah, there was, and yet… From that quite specific brief.
• 1:19:40
  Mark Mosedale: The story kind of.
• 1:19:42
  Mark Mosedale: Emerged barely fully formed.
• 1:19:44
  Mark Mosedale: For me.
• 1:19:46
  Mark Mosedale: Up there, it just sort of, you know, it just kind of emerged out of a lot of the reading I've been doing.
• 1:19:53
  Mark Mosedale: By the location of our story, the real location.
• 1:19:57
  Mark Mosedale: Appears in phone call and it immediately comes destined.
• 1:20:01
  Mark Mosedale: It's sol It's about a young dad.
• 1:20:05
  Mark Mosedale: Trying to stop escaping to.
• 1:20:08
  Mark Mosedale: Oh.
• 1:20:09
  Mark Mosedale: Rape culture and… way that sort of bears out.
• 1:20:17
  Mark Mosedale: And there's quite a strong mythology club.
• 1:20:20
  Mark Mosedale: I can't really say it all the time, so Spoiled the hell the, the other.
• 1:20:26
  Mark Mosedale: thing, I would say, was page 3. I guess you guys would probably like… you probably know.
• 1:20:30
  Tad Eggleston: I'm looking at it right now.
• 1:20:33
  Mark Mosedale: We, we, all we've seen of it is what we did and what Shelley posted on social media.
• 1:20:38
  Mark Mosedale: So you're, you're, you know more about it than we do at this point, but that third page.
• 1:20:44
  Mark Mosedale: Well, that was the one I was feeling nervy about when I came into Latin, because I, like, it had a lot to carry with that third page.
• 1:20:51
  Mark Mosedale: The third page.
• 1:20:52
  Tad Eggleston: which is beautiful.
• 1:20:53
  Mark Mosedale: Yeah, well, I didn't necessarily know, so I was drawing the storyline.
• 1:21:00
  Mark Mosedale: It was, it was still sort of an open question and not knowing who the answer is going to be, I really can carry on.
• 1:21:06
  Mark Mosedale: quieter.
• 1:21:08
  Mark Mosedale: Nervy place to be.
• 1:21:11
  Mark Mosedale: Well, I did know that… So I would be interested.
• 1:21:13
  Mark Mosedale: There, so.
• 1:21:15
  Mark Mosedale: Got him on it Quite a relief though. It's a problem now. I can stop worrying about this.
• 1:21:21
  Mark Mosedale: And he can figure out how to load all this stuff into a package.
• 1:21:29
  Mark Mosedale: Yes.
• 1:21:31
  Mark Mosedale: But it really was the opposite, the experience of working on it.
• 1:21:34
  Mark Mosedale: Bye.
• 1:21:35
  Mark Mosedale: Okay, great.
• 1:21:37
  Mark Mosedale: No for a paid cab.
• 1:21:40
  Mark Mosedale: So.
• 1:21:42
  Mark Mosedale: Black referendum.
• 1:21:43
  Mark Mosedale: And here, we were… it was very… Okay, perfect.
• 1:21:49
  simonsmith: Yeah, and we got, we got sort of,
• 1:21:51
  simonsmith: We got quite a lot of notes back from Shelley about the roofs and the artwork, and so it was quite…
• 1:21:58
  Mark Mosedale: Quite a lot of notes.
• 1:21:59
  simonsmith: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I go Carlo, yeah.
• 1:22:01
  Mark Mosedale: I was… Chris… Chris Starrop had a really hands-off approach, and it was partly because
• 1:22:06
  Mark Mosedale: We were working in parallel, which is not…
• 1:22:09
  Mark Mosedale: particularly advisable. I do think the book came out better for it, because there was a sort of positive feedback loop going on. Yeah. But, you know, not knowing your ending when you've already got an artist working on pages is not the smartest way of doing things.
• 1:22:22
  Mark Mosedale: What? But…
• 1:22:27
  Mark Mosedale: I thought, oh, we're working with Sherry Park, I bet she'll have a firm editorial hand.
• 1:22:33
  Mark Mosedale: And the notes came back and it was just about my format, my page format.
• 1:22:37
  Mark Mosedale: It's like, can you write out panel But it's okay, yeah.
• 1:22:41
  Mark Mosedale: What's that That was it.
• 1:22:43
  Mark Mosedale: So, basically.
• 1:22:44
  Mark Mosedale: So I was looking forward to being vigorously edited.
• 1:22:47
  Mark Mosedale: Yeah, I guess it's nice if
• 1:22:49
  Mark Mosedale: I'm sure if I'm right, she doesn't cover it in ready, but.
• 1:22:54
  Mark Mosedale: Oh.
• 1:22:55
  Mark Mosedale: Where's Sai? Oh, she had a lot to say about S.
• 1:22:59
  simonsmith: I, I quite like getting.
• 1:23:02
  simonsmith: Well, I say I quite like getting artwork back with.
• 1:23:05
  simonsmith: Writing on it and red lines and arrows and you know
• 1:23:10
  simonsmith: When it's Shelley.
• 1:23:12
  simonsmith: But it's someone that you know
• 1:23:14
  simonsmith: Properly knows what they're on about and they're not gonna let you get away with.
• 1:23:18
  simonsmith: A sort of half-arsed bit of… Drawing or it, you know.
• 1:23:24
  simonsmith: Yeah, so that's great. You know, it was rigorous, and it was good. And the strip's a lot better for it, I think.
• 1:23:33
  simonsmith: Yeah. So yeah, so it was great.
• 1:23:37
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, for those listening, I probably have this up tomorrow, so there's a little more than a week to go on subculture with
• 1:23:48
  Tad Eggleston: 3615?
• 1:23:51
  Tad Eggleston: So so so.
• 1:23:53
  Tad Eggleston: A little more than $3,500.
• 1:23:56
  Tad Eggleston: Still needed it in a little over a week. So, well within its… its…
• 1:24:01
  Tad Eggleston: I feel confident that it will be funded, but go out there and make it true, anybody listening, because I have read, I think, she said roughly 60
• 1:24:14
  Tad Eggleston: 60-70% of it is what she put into a PDF for me, because obviously certain parts weren't done yet.
• 1:24:22
  Tad Eggleston: I was blessed enough to get to see the rough version of what Philip is doing.
• 1:24:30
  Tad Eggleston: And the whole thing is just fantastic. I don't know if you guys have gotten to see
• 1:24:36
  Tad Eggleston: Any more than your own stuff and what's on the website yet, but when you get to see this book, you're going to be proud to be a part of it.
• 1:24:45
  simonsmith: Yeah.
• 1:24:45
  Mark Mosedale: looking forward to seeing it. It's launching a Thought Bubble, which is on our home patch.
• 1:24:51
  Mark Mosedale: So if I'.
• 1:24:52
  Tad Eggleston: Nice.
• 1:24:52
  Mark Mosedale: How about your hands?
• 1:24:54
  Mark Mosedale: And there'll be… That's still.
• 1:24:56
  Tad Eggleston: That definitely one of my
• 1:24:59
  Tad Eggleston: one of my bucket list cons. I want to go to Thought Bubble.
• 1:25:05
  Tad Eggleston: But there's the… there's the whole getting to England thing.
• 1:25:11
  Mark Mosedale: And they moved it.
• 1:25:12
  Tad Eggleston: Which would first require a passport.
• 1:25:16
  Mark Mosedale: You're not far.
• 1:25:17
  Tad Eggleston: I don't even have a passport.
• 1:25:20
  Mark Mosedale: Wow.
• 1:25:21
  Tad Eggleston: I should, I should do that sometime.
• 1:25:22
  simonsmith: Yeah.
• 1:25:24
  simonsmith: Yeah, get a passport, come to Leeds.
• 1:25:29
  Tad Eggleston: I mean…
• 1:25:33
  Tad Eggleston: Again, like, there's… like, I'm a teacher, and I don't know… I don't know if teachers are paid as poorly in the UK as they are in the US.
• 1:25:44
  simonsmith: Yep.
• 1:25:45
  Tad Eggleston: It was always kind of, kind of shocked me that it's like, oh.
• 1:25:50
  Tad Eggleston: Like, all of the people who…
• 1:25:54
  Tad Eggleston: Who do things that do make money needed to have good teachers along the way, but those… those teachers aren't…
• 1:26:01
  Tad Eggleston: Actually, valuable.
• 1:26:06
  Tad Eggleston: But I love it, so, like, that's not really a complaint.
• 1:26:10
  Tad Eggleston: Like, in a specific sense, it's not a, oh, I should be doing something different, it's a…
• 1:26:16
  Tad Eggleston: It's weird how society…
• 1:26:18
  simonsmith: Okay.
• 1:26:19
  Tad Eggleston: It's just, it's just weird how society values certain jobs.
• 1:26:24
  simonsmith: Yeah.
• 1:26:27
  Tad Eggleston: the, like, yeah, we could go down way too much of a rabbit hole on that, so I, I, I don't want to. But we, we all work, work jobs that society should, should appreciate more, because, like.
• 1:26:41
  Tad Eggleston: It drives me off the wall that you could make something like this and not have it be something that, like, supported you.
• 1:26:48
  simonsmith: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:26:50
  Tad Eggleston: Yes.
• 1:26:51
  Mark Mosedale: Well, maybe, maybe I'll be spotting up in six months time. We'll see. We'll see when the royalties start coming in.
• 1:26:56
  Tad Eggleston: No, I understand, but, but, but like, again, like, art is of, of benefit to all of society.
• 1:27:04
  Tad Eggleston: You know, so it shouldn't… like, it kind of bothers me that it has to be based on short-term
• 1:27:13
  Tad Eggleston: Sales or like, I think you should have that too, but like.
• 1:27:17
  Tad Eggleston: There should be more artist grants, there should be more… you know, like.
• 1:27:24
  Tad Eggleston: Society is better for these things and and.
• 1:27:28
  Tad Eggleston: like…
• 1:27:29
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I heard Kate Beaton do a talk at CXC a few years ago, and one of the things that she
• 1:27:37
  Tad Eggleston: Pointed out was that.
• 1:27:42
  Tad Eggleston: There really aren't that many lower class.
• 1:27:46
  Tad Eggleston: Stories.
• 1:27:48
  Tad Eggleston: In comics or literature or movies because the people who live those lives.
• 1:27:54
  Tad Eggleston: Don't have the time or the luxury of time.
• 1:28:00
  Tad Eggleston: To be able to tell those stories.
• 1:28:04
  Mark Mosedale: And that was one of the great things about Hogwarts. It was effectively, it was a
• 1:28:10
  Mark Mosedale: At least in England, though.
• 1:28:11
  Mark Mosedale: Not so much about the U.S. but it was a working class.
• 1:28:18
  Mark Mosedale: Art form or to some degree anyway maybe yes I can correct me on this but but it was sort of funded by the fact that you.
• 1:28:26
  Mark Mosedale: I'll play And also you could.
• 1:28:29
  Mark Mosedale: Live, you know, not a great life, but you could subsist.
• 1:28:33
  Mark Mosedale: Comfortably on benefits at the time, whereas now. Right.
• 1:28:38
  Mark Mosedale: Possible.
• 1:28:41
  Mark Mosedale: yeah, we… like, Ireland, I think, has a universal basic income program.
• 1:28:47
  Mark Mosedale: For, for the art.
• 1:28:50
  Mark Mosedale: Now we've got CMAT as a result of that.
• 1:28:54
  Mark Mosedale: Great art, right, culture coming out of art.
• 1:28:57
  Mark Mosedale: And.
• 1:28:58
  Mark Mosedale: You know, you might ask, well, why we predict the…
• 1:29:02
  Mark Mosedale: Artists are not the good nurses.
• 1:29:04
  Mark Mosedale: wire.
• 1:29:06
  Mark Mosedale: Sorry about the question.
• 1:29:08
  Tad Eggleston: And my answer is, why aren't we funding them both?
• 1:29:12
  Mark Mosedale: Exactly. But one of the things that we wanted.
• 1:29:14
  Tad Eggleston: It doesn't have to be an either or.
• 1:29:17
  Mark Mosedale: Exactly. And, and, but one of the things you wanted to do, Gates, was tell.
• 1:29:21
  Mark Mosedale: Bye bye.
• 1:29:23
  Mark Mosedale: I keep wanting to call gigs working class outfits, but I know that my wife strictly off because she's got an actual working class background.
• 1:29:31
  Mark Mosedale: And I'm very firmly middle class, but, you know, we did want to tell stories about
• 1:29:37
  Mark Mosedale: People who have not.
• 1:29:39
  Mark Mosedale: You know, they're not the heroes of anyone else's story, they're not.
• 1:29:44
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:29:45
  Mark Mosedale: you know, people who are struggling. You don't get sort of a lot of science fiction about it.
• 1:29:51
  Mark Mosedale: Right.
• 1:29:52
  Mark Mosedale: I don't care.
• 1:29:54
  Mark Mosedale: If someone starts at the bottom, they don't typically say that.
• 1:29:59
  Mark Mosedale: Yeah, we want it, you know, just talk about ordinary people.
• 1:30:06
  Mark Mosedale: You don't get enough about it.
• 1:30:09
  Mark Mosedale: Sorry.
• 1:30:11
  Mark Mosedale: Panalgia picture.
• 1:30:13
  Mark Mosedale: Shoulder, but yeah.
• 1:30:17
  Mark Mosedale: That is something that we… So it's to go.
• 1:30:22
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:30:23
  Mark Mosedale: It's fine. There's a great line in the back
• 1:30:25
  Mark Mosedale: that Uncle Jimmy says, or he says, everything that brings people joy.
• 1:30:30
  Mark Mosedale: Struggled, you know, restaurants, movies, like art, culture, like all these things.
• 1:30:36
  Mark Mosedale: clicked on.
• 1:30:37
  Mark Mosedale: Like no one can actually.
• 1:30:41
  Mark Mosedale: So maybe didn't show.
• 1:30:43
  Tad Eggleston: which Again.
• 1:30:46
  Tad Eggleston: That says something about the way we've arranged society.
• 1:30:50
  Tad Eggleston: that the things that bring us the most joy often are the hardest for people to Provide.
• 1:31:00
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, but, we're gonna move into closing questions now.
• 1:31:06
  Tad Eggleston: I have a couple of standard closing questions.
• 1:31:10
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 1:31:11
  Tad Eggleston: The newer one is, this is the fifth year of the 22 Panels podcast, and
• 1:31:18
  Tad Eggleston: I feel like I've fallen into the Twilight Zone.
• 1:31:22
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 1:31:23
  Tad Eggleston: the people that I talk to regularly,
• 1:31:29
  Tad Eggleston: or even just get to meet the experiences I've gotten to have, you know, I mean, I got up at 9am, and I got to talk to the two guys that made the book that I just…
• 1:31:38
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, like…
• 1:31:41
  Tad Eggleston: Just the fact that I can finish reading a book and confidently send emails to the people who made it, and say, hey, I'd like to talk to you about your work.
• 1:31:50
  Tad Eggleston: is… is surreal.
• 1:31:53
  Tad Eggleston: But, like, there are all sorts of surreal aspects of my life, from the friends that I've made to the experiences that I've had, et cetera. I find that that's true of everybody in comics.
• 1:32:04
  Tad Eggleston: probably everybody in the arts, but certainly everybody in comics. So I started collecting those stories. Tell me…
• 1:32:12
  Tad Eggleston: Tell me something that has happened because of your experience in comics.
• 1:32:18
  Tad Eggleston: That you just kind of look back and pinch yourself and go, was that really me that got to do that?
• 1:32:27
  Tad Eggleston: it… it… Yeah.
• 1:32:31
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, no limits, it can, it, yeah.
• 1:32:34
  simonsmith: Do I get more?
• 1:32:35
  Mark Mosedale: Yeah, you go.
• 1:32:36
  simonsmith: So, one of the,
• 1:32:40
  simonsmith: one of the… when we were doing the research and development, there's a guy called Liam Young, who is a speculative architect, and that's a sort of futurologist kind of guy. He's brilliant.
• 1:32:53
  simonsmith: And he's done a lot of, he makes films, he's an architect who doesn't make buildings, and he's just fantastic, he's really worth looking at. And I looked at a lot of his work, and,
• 1:33:08
  simonsmith: He's got an exhibition on in London at the moment that we went to see, which has got some amazing content in it.
• 1:33:14
  simonsmith: And about a week and a half ago.
• 1:33:19
  simonsmith: I had a message in Instagram, and it was Liam Young saying, I saw that you mentioned me in an interview. I feel very honored.
• 1:33:33
  simonsmith: And it arrived just before I was going to bed.
• 1:33:38
  simonsmith: So I kind of struggle to get to sleep. But yeah, so things like that, because I'm slightly in awe of him.
• 1:33:46
  simonsmith: I just really like it, like his stuff, and.
• 1:33:51
  simonsmith: You know, kind of, he messaged me out of the blue, and then I had a little
• 1:33:55
  simonsmith: Sort of exchange with him on Instagram. I've sent him a copy of the book.
• 1:34:00
  simonsmith: So, yeah, so that's pretty amazing.
• 1:34:05
  simonsmith: That, that was a, that was a, a lovely moment. A sort of, excitably sleepless night of thinking I've gotta respond to him in the morning. That was the first thing. But yeah, so that's been, that's been a really lovely thing and a slightly surreal.
• 1:34:23
  simonsmith: Because when you make something like Geeks, you spend a lot of time in a room on your own with it.
• 1:34:29
  simonsmith: And obviously me and Mark talked about it and there were a few people that saw it.
• 1:34:34
  simonsmith: So for it to be out in the world and to have people see it and like it and want to talk to you about it, it's, it's a very pleasantly surreal.
• 1:34:46
  simonsmith: Kind of experience, I think.
• 1:34:51
  Mark Mosedale: A similar one for me was when we were reaching out, trying to get
• 1:34:56
  Mark Mosedale: Poor quotes for the call up.
• 1:34:59
  Mark Mosedale: I am
• 1:35:00
  Mark Mosedale: I was talking to Jared at OK Comics. Jared's one of my best friends, and OK Comics is…
• 1:35:05
  Mark Mosedale: One of the best coffee shops in the country, so that's helpful.
• 1:35:10
  Mark Mosedale: He said, what about Adrian Tchaikovsky?
• 1:35:12
  Mark Mosedale: Albert Adrian Tchaikovsky, the… one of the most, sort of, critically lauded science fiction.
• 1:35:19
  Mark Mosedale: in the world.
• 1:35:20
  Mark Mosedale: Yep.
• 1:35:21
  Mark Mosedale: Adrian Tchaikovsky, the guy who goes on the New York Times, Edgeworth New York Times, talk about how an alien mind might think. That's that
• 1:35:30
  Mark Mosedale: Joe was like, yeah, yeah.
• 1:35:32
  Mark Mosedale: He's like, "I'm not sure he's going to like it." You know, how it's sort of a grungy kind of…
• 1:35:39
  Mark Mosedale: Near future, underclass, funky science fiction book, and he was like, well…
• 1:35:46
  Mark Mosedale: Yeah, we could give him a try. Shots are okay.
• 1:35:51
  Mark Mosedale: Bye.
• 1:35:52
  Mark Mosedale: And, so Jared asked it. Oh, they could submit it to the contact form on our website.
• 1:35:59
  Mark Mosedale: That is for his walk, that's right.
• 1:36:01
  Mark Mosedale: That's all for that.
• 1:36:02
  Mark Mosedale: And… So, I…
• 1:36:05
  Mark Mosedale: that's it, through the consultant, because I was, like, not expecting too much, you know, if you've ever had to do one of these things, it's very, sort of, hit and miss, you know
• 1:36:13
  Mark Mosedale: Cold.
• 1:36:15
  Mark Mosedale: Try to get the rejected.
• 1:36:17
  Mark Mosedale: But it was tested.
• 1:36:19
  Mark Mosedale: So I sent it through, didn't think much of it. And then, like, 2 days later, I opened my inbox and…
• 1:36:25
  Mark Mosedale: by the asset.
• 1:36:27
  Mark Mosedale: A message from Adrian Tchaikovsky. They absolutely loved it. It's all about fiction. We need more of it.
• 1:36:32
  Phil: Wow.
• 1:36:33
  Mark Mosedale: saying how great it was, and I just can't resist it.
• 1:36:38
  Tad Eggleston: And I believe the quote is a sharp, funny look at where the future's heading and what we can do about it. Emotive, thought provoking, beautifully drawn and written with wit. This is the sort of science fiction we need more of.
• 1:36:55
  Mark Mosedale: And it was just.
• 1:36:57
  Tad Eggleston: Sure.
• 1:36:58
  Mark Mosedale: Big moment. And like, he, you know.
• 1:37:02
  Mark Mosedale: No one had read it. You know, we'd read it.
• 1:37:05
  Mark Mosedale: Kristalis had read it.
• 1:37:07
  Mark Mosedale: I make, I'll make down a dress like.
• 1:37:11
  Mark Mosedale: 90 pages of it on top there.
• 1:37:13
  Mark Mosedale: I think that might be it. I think that might have been all the people in the world who have read.
• 1:37:18
  Mark Mosedale: Gigs like even our wives haven't bothered to reach at this point.
• 1:37:22
  Tad Eggleston: It was just…
• 1:37:23
  Mark Mosedale: Oh.
• 1:37:25
  Phil: Hopefully they.
• 1:37:25
  Mark Mosedale: I waited for them.
• 1:37:27
  Mark Mosedale: They eventually got to it.
• 1:37:29
  simonsmith: That's the story.
• 1:37:30
  Mark Mosedale: Excuse me.
• 1:37:31
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, let's be fair, there are lots of comic writers whose wives don't read their stuff.
• 1:37:39
  Mark Mosedale: I don't know.
• 1:37:40
  simonsmith: Lift it. They lift it, didn't they.
• 1:37:42
  Mark Mosedale: Yeah, yeah, of course.
• 1:37:43
  simonsmith: Yeah, yep.
• 1:37:44
  Mark Mosedale: But yeah, and then suddenly, one of them… Oh, in person.
• 1:37:49
  Mark Mosedale: writers in the English language tells you that he loves it. It was quite an overwhelming moment.
• 1:37:56
  Mark Mosedale: People thought that maybe it was
• 1:37:58
  Mark Mosedale: There was something that, you know…
• 1:38:00
  Mark Mosedale: Top Shelf picked it up, so that was the first sort of sign of validation.
• 1:38:05
  Mark Mosedale: You know, you're just working away.
• 1:38:07
  Mark Mosedale: On your own, or together.
• 1:38:09
  Mark Mosedale: But also on your own, thinking, is this anything? Like, is this good?
• 1:38:14
  Mark Mosedale: You know, and then when someone like that comes back and says, yes, this is good, like that.
• 1:38:19
  Mark Mosedale: It's just such an incredible power.
• 1:38:25
  Mark Mosedale: I'm not
• 1:38:27
  Mark Mosedale: I'm not sure if he realised quite the impact that had, but he did, so I watched it.
• 1:38:33
  Tad Eggleston: Yes.
• 1:38:34
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:38:36
  Tad Eggleston: All right, closing question, my favorite question to ask. Tell me something you love.
• 1:38:43
  Tad Eggleston: Preferably a comic, but we don't really have rules.
• 1:38:46
  Tad Eggleston: Preferably storytelling, but again, with the rules. But something that you love.
• 1:38:52
  Tad Eggleston: That not enough people around you have experienced, and you wish that more of them would, so you had more people to talk about it with.
• 1:39:02
  simonsmith: You can go first, Mark.
• 1:39:04
  Phil: Okay.
• 1:39:05
  simonsmith: Yep.
• 1:39:08
  Mark Mosedale: Okay, I will go with In Pursuit of Professor.
• 1:39:14
  Mark Mosedale: Which is a VR experience.
• 1:39:17
  Mark Mosedale: that is… Sort of like an immersive documentary about the rave thing.
• 1:39:24
  Mark Mosedale: up.
• 1:39:25
  Mark Mosedale: I seem to have written about that.
• 1:39:27
  Mark Mosedale: Obviously, quite a bit at this point.
• 1:39:30
  Mark Mosedale: What?
• 1:39:31
  Tad Eggleston: I totally missed the title.
• 1:39:33
  Mark Mosedale: In pursuit of repetitive beats. So, it's named after a government act, in the early 90s that was aimed at outlawing
• 1:39:42
  Mark Mosedale: Oh.
• 1:39:45
  Mark Mosedale: rates basically in the countryside. It made them illegal.
• 1:39:49
  Mark Mosedale: And so they named this VR experience after it, and it's, yeah, it's.
• 1:39:53
  Mark Mosedale: Kind of immersed you in that process of.
• 1:39:57
  Mark Mosedale: Finding out about a… a rave.
• 1:40:00
  Mark Mosedale: The way the police are looking for them going out, you know.
• 1:40:05
  Mark Mosedale: Got the flyer, you go to the phone booth, you make the call. A lot of the stuff that we put into the double bars
• 1:40:11
  Mark Mosedale: You know, getting to the, there was, there were a couple of moments in it, like one where you're driving in air quotes along this country lane.
• 1:40:20
  Mark Mosedale: And the police are chasing you and it sort of lift you up.
• 1:40:24
  Mark Mosedale: Vehicle.
• 1:40:25
  Mark Mosedale: Music. And it's not my type of music. I'm a guitarist, so I've got very boring music.
• 1:40:33
  Mark Mosedale: But the, the music's got flipping you out of the car.
• 1:40:37
  Mark Mosedale: The psychedelic effects are kind of streaking around you and it just lifts you up and lifts you up and lifts you up.
• 1:40:43
  Mark Mosedale: I just… And that's really functional, I felt,
• 1:40:49
  Mark Mosedale: this.
• 1:40:50
  Mark Mosedale: It's what dying feels like.
• 1:40:52
  Mark Mosedale: And then again, later on, there's a moment where you
• 1:40:56
  Mark Mosedale: People dancing all around you and the light just goes up and up and up and up and up.
• 1:41:00
  Mark Mosedale: I was sort of trying to get at that.
• 1:41:02
  Mark Mosedale: Double thought.
• 1:41:04
  Mark Mosedale: But there's a pretty good reason not a lot of people make good at that, is that you have to go to the place that's hosting it. You know, it's quite expensive. It can only be in one place at once.
• 1:41:14
  Mark Mosedale: Not that self-wounded. I'm like, in the fall, I know it seems without you.
• 1:41:21
  Mark Mosedale: Much more comfortable.
• 1:41:23
  Mark Mosedale: But that was amazing. I would highly recommend that to anyone.
• 1:41:26
  Tad Eggleston: The website looks very cool.
• 1:41:29
  Phil: Oh yeah.
• 1:41:31
  Mark Mosedale: So hopefully that's given you enough time, Sai, to… Thank you.
• 1:41:36
  simonsmith: Bye.
• 1:41:37
  simonsmith: Yeah, no, yes.
• 1:41:38
  simonsmith: Okay.
• 1:41:40
  simonsmith: Oh, I mean, I was going to say pluribus, but Is it? Is it Netflix?
• 1:41:47
  Tad Eggleston: you're allowed to say that apple plus you would even you would even be in good company because that that was the joint recommendation of Mark Russell and Bryce Ingman the last time they were on.
• 1:42:02
  simonsmith: Okay, so yeah, well, I'm happy to be in that company. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that. I mean.
• 1:42:09
  simonsmith: Mark mentioned our wives, and my wife hated it, but…
• 1:42:15
  simonsmith: That kind of increased the joy for me.
• 1:42:19
  simonsmith: Somehow, there was a kind of like, this is great, this is my thing, you know, so, and it's very in keeping with the, with the…
• 1:42:28
  simonsmith: sort of, character in it as well. Yeah, so I would say Pluribus. I loved it. And what I loved about it was,
• 1:42:38
  simonsmith: You couldn't quite tell where it was going. You, every time you thought, oh yeah, I've got, I've got a handle on this. I know what's happening next. And then it didn't happen.
• 1:42:48
  simonsmith: I, I love that. I absolutely love that. So yeah, I would say Pluribus. That's, that's mine.
• 1:42:57
  Phil: Have you seen Vince Gilligan's other series, "Better Call Saul" and "Breaking Bad"?
• 1:43:03
  simonsmith: No, you see. -H.
• 1:43:05
  Phil: Okay.
• 1:43:07
  simonsmith: I have a problem with big long series if I don't get on early enough.
• 1:43:13
  Phil: Oh, okay.
• 1:43:13
  simonsmith: There's just too much of it to watch. So like The Wire is another thing that I've got on my list. I've got to watch The Wire. Yeah. It's like, wow.
• 1:43:22
  Phil: It's a little bit like homework.
• 1:43:23
  simonsmith: Yeah. Well, and it's also, yeah, you've gotta, you've gotta invest the time, haven't you? So, yeah. And I, I was, I think I was quite fortunate with Blue Ribos 'cause I caught it nearing of the start. So, so I, I'm in for season two now. I'm, I'm in for the long haul with that.
• 1:43:42
  simonsmith: Oh yeah. Yeah, so yeah, Breaking Bad is definitely, you know, it's, it's on the list.
• 1:43:49
  Phil: They're good. They're good. What you've heard is, is definitely right.
• 1:43:53
  simonsmith: Yeah, yeah, yeah. When I retire. The other problem is I've got, I've got two.
• 1:43:58
  Tad Eggleston: I haven't watched either of them either.
• 1:44:01
  simonsmith: You see, I have two adult sons as well, and one of them's a bit of a film buff, so he's always… have you seen this? Have you seen this? And I go, no, I'll put it… put it on my list. I'll put it on the list.
• 1:44:12
  Tad Eggleston: My, my, my son keeps me very, very…
• 1:44:17
  Tad Eggleston: I have adult children, too. I have grandchildren.
• 1:44:21
  Tad Eggleston: And yeah, my son, my son's always like, have you seen this? Have you seen that? You got to watch this.
• 1:44:27
  simonsmith: Yeah, actually, that's just reminded me, though, the other, the other film, the other, yeah, the film that I would recommend is The Ballad of Wallace Island.
• 1:44:37
  Tad Eggleston: Valid.
• 1:44:38
  simonsmith: A pilot event.
• 1:44:39
  Tad Eggleston: Aw.
• 1:44:39
  simonsmith: Oh man, it's just the greatest film. Honestly, it's.
• 1:44:46
  simonsmith: It's so kind and heartwarming, and probably not what I would normally go for, but it's just a beautiful film. But yeah, it's comedy.
• 1:44:59
  simonsmith: Yeah, it's great.
• 1:45:01
  Mark Mosedale: That's one in the middle of the Venn diagram of things that we like.
• 1:45:05
  simonsmith: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:45:07
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 1:45:08
  simonsmith: Yeah, and it, yeah, it's, it's just a lovely film.
• 1:45:12
  simonsmith: I think it must be on Netflix, or… On some streaming service.
• 1:45:17
  Tad Eggleston: It's on Prime Video.
• 1:45:19
  simonsmith: Yeah. Yeah. Watch that. It's not long either. It's about an hour and 40, is it, or something like that.
• 1:45:25
  Tad Eggleston: 1 39.
• 1:45:26
  simonsmith: Yeah, there we go. So.
• 1:45:29
  simonsmith: Is that me?
• 1:45:30
  Tad Eggleston: Eccentric lottery winner who lives alone on a remote island tries to make his fantasies come true by getting his favorite musician to perform at his home.
• 1:45:39
  simonsmith: Yeah. Oh, it's just, yeah, it's, it's just a beautiful film.
• 1:45:45
  Mark Mosedale: If it can warm the icy chill of CyTOF, then you know it must be nice.
• 1:45:53
  simonsmith: Okay.
• 1:45:53
  Tad Eggleston: See, I, I love, I love how you, you guys keep talking about him as the, as the, the pessimist, but he's also like the jolly smiling, smiling one, so like.
• 1:46:03
  Mark Mosedale: Complete. My…
• 1:46:04
  Tad Eggleston: Visual doesn't fit in.
• 1:46:08
  simonsmith: Okay.
• 1:46:08
  Phil: Yes.
• 1:46:08
  Tad Eggleston: Typing.
• 1:46:09
  simonsmith: We've had all these photographs taken of us, and it's like, here's the duo who created this dystopian thing, and we're like, hey!
• 1:46:20
  simonsmith: It's a mark. We've got to stop browning. We've got to.
• 1:46:24
  Phil: Early swearing sunglasses.
• 1:46:26
  simonsmith: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:46:26
  Mark Mosedale: Soul tree, off the front side, or something.
• 1:46:29
  simonsmith: Big letter.
• 1:46:30
  Tad Eggleston: Exactly Yeah, I was about to say, you gotta get the punk thing going.
• 1:46:34
  simonsmith: Yeah, I'.
• 1:46:35
  Tad Eggleston: Your official photo.
• 1:46:37
  Tad Eggleston: Or just, like, you're an artist, don't do the photo. Draw the version of you, the two of you, that's the one that you want to put out in the world.
• 1:46:48
  Mark Mosedale: Bai's got a brothel in miserable.
• 1:46:52
  Mark Mosedale: picture that he did of himself that shows up as his avatar. And we made him get a real buzz out.
• 1:47:00
  simonsmith: Yes.
• 1:47:01
  Mark Mosedale: Over the press materials, IDW, Top Child sent out, because…
• 1:47:05
  Mark Mosedale: Nobody wants to buy a coffee drawn by that guy.
• 1:47:09
  Tad Eggleston: Well, thank you again so much for your time. Thank you for your work.
• 1:47:15
  Tad Eggleston: I really, really, really enjoyed this book.
• 1:47:18
  Tad Eggleston: And I'm certain that I will enjoy it many more times. It's the type of book that
• 1:47:24
  Tad Eggleston: I know that I'll revisit over and over again.
• 1:47:29
  Tad Eggleston: Thank you.
• 1:47:29
  Phil: Who to gift it to.
• 1:47:31
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Pretty clear.
• 1:47:32
  Mark Mosedale: Give it to as many people as you can. Oh yeah. Right.
• 1:47:35
  Tad Eggleston: Right, and I can't wait for the next excuse to talk to you. So, like, make more books, or just drop me an email and say, hey, have you read this? You want to talk about it? Because, like, we do that. We're all about just having random conversations about,
• 1:47:54
  Phil: You get the chance to do… Good books.
• 1:47:56
  Phil: the… what Shelly… what Shelly did for you of saying, Tad, go read this immediately, you can now do that for something else. You're like.
• 1:48:03
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, particularly if you're agreeing to come talk to me about it afterwards. I will prioritize anything that means that I get to have a conversation about it with somebody else that loves it.
• 1:48:17
  Tad Eggleston: Because, you know, that's my favorite thing about this podcast is I get to talk to cool people about cool stuff.
• 1:48:26
  Tad Eggleston: you know.
• 1:48:27
  Tad Eggleston: So.
• 1:48:29
  Mark Mosedale: Ready, ready it to read parlor.
• 1:48:32
  Tad Eggleston: It has been an absolute pleasure for Cy Smith and Mark Mosdale. This has been 22 Panels, and we will see you after the next page.