Latest / 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast / With Great Power #313... 22 Panels with Sarah Gailey

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With Great Power #313... 22 Panels with Sarah Gailey · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

0:02
Tad Eggleston: Good… I never know what to call 5 o'clock. Is it afternoon? Is it evening? It's afternoon for Gailey, so we're gonna say good afternoon, everybody.
0:10
Tad Eggleston: I insist on starting this way, even though people listen to podcasts whenever the hell they feel like it. I still, like, give away what time I'm recording.
0:22
Tad Eggleston: Roughly, anyway. So, good afternoon, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels. My guest today, returning for… I forgot to check out how many times, at least the… at least the fourth.
0:33
Tad Eggleston: is, Sarah Gailey, who has a new comic on the shelf this week called Neighborhood Watch, and a book…
0:41
Tad Eggleston: right around the corner that I failed and didn't go look up the title of, so introduce the book really quick before I forget again.
0:49
Sarah Gailey: It's called Make Me Better, and it comes out on May 12th.
0:53
Tad Eggleston: Oh, so that's right around the corner, too.
0:57
Tad Eggleston: You're one of the few people that I read prose for quickly, or at least listen to prose for quickly.
1:03
Sarah Gailey: I'm so honored.
1:04
Tad Eggleston: always listening to books, but, like, most of them aren't the books that just came out, because I have such a backlog of books, because…
1:11
Tad Eggleston: Somewhere along the lines, I got really bad at reading pros.
1:16
Sarah Gailey: I don't like.
1:17
Tad Eggleston: And I don't like… Listening on advanced speeds?
1:24
Tad Eggleston: So now books take as long as it takes to listen to, and as many car rides to and from work as that equals, because…
1:33
Tad Eggleston: Most of the time, I don't continue listening at home. Sometimes, if it really grabs me. Just, like, sometimes, if it really, really grabs me, I'll come home and, like, buy a digital copy, or whatever, so I can continue reading.
1:48
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, I got really bad at reading… I mean, I remember a time in my life where, like.
1:54
Tad Eggleston: Putting away a 1,000-page book in 24 hours was something that, like… I did.
2:01
Sarah Gailey: Yeah.
2:02
Tad Eggleston: Even semi-regularly.
2:04
Sarah Gailey: Yeah, I think everyone I know is in that same boat.
2:08
Sarah Gailey: Pros is really tough right now.
2:12
Tad Eggleston: Well, I think part of it's just that, like…
2:16
Tad Eggleston: for me, anyway, like, I don't make pictures in my head.
2:20
Tad Eggleston: So… There's always been a challenge to certain kinds of pros.
2:26
Tad Eggleston: I do better with them. It took me forever to discover audiobooks, and then it took me…
2:32
Tad Eggleston: Like there's a different literacy to comics, there's a different literacy to listening.
2:37
Tad Eggleston: It's not quite the same. You have to develop a listening literacy. And it took me a while to develop that, but once I did, it's like, oh, there are certain books that I'm gonna do way better audio.
2:49
Sarah Gailey: Yes.
2:49
Tad Eggleston: There's still some that I have to read, like, I've tried Alan Moore's Jerusalem a couple of times now on audio, and…
2:57
Tad Eggleston: It's actually one that, like, the only way that I make any headway, and I haven't finished because it does involve reading, is if I listen to it and read it at the same time.
3:07
Sarah Gailey: Oh, interesting.
3:10
Tad Eggleston: Cuz… cuz if you think Alan Moore's comics are dense…
3:15
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah. At least Jerusalem. I haven't read… I haven't read the other stuff, like… and I love what I've read.
3:22
Tad Eggleston: he's a brilliant writer, and if anything, I…
3:26
Tad Eggleston: think he might be a better prose writer than a comic writer. I know that's a,
3:31
Tad Eggleston: One of my, my, my minority opinions
3:35
Tad Eggleston: I both think Alan Moore is one of the most brilliant comic writers ever, and far and away the most overrated comic writer ever.
3:43
Sarah Gailey: A little controversial.
3:44
Tad Eggleston: Well, I don't think he's hands down the best comic writer ever.
3:48
Tad Eggleston: I think he… I think he belongs in that discussion.
3:51
Tad Eggleston: But so many people act like it's Alan Moore and then a fight for second, like, a thousand miles away, and I don't buy that argument.
4:00
Tad Eggleston: Part of that is that it's just, like…
4:04
Tad Eggleston: It's hard to compare writers, period.
4:08
Tad Eggleston: I mean, how do you compare you to Nick Hornby?
4:12
Sarah Gailey: Yeah. Yeah.
4:14
Tad Eggleston: Other than the fact that you're the two people that I'll read your book immediately.
4:19
Tad Eggleston: -
4:20
Sarah Gailey: I mean, I'm happy to be in that category with him then.
4:23
Tad Eggleston: Right, you know, but you don't write similar books.
4:27
Tad Eggleston: Other than… well… The one comparison I can make is you both write Character Center books.
4:35
Tad Eggleston: I love Nick Hornby books because they're… they're funny and human. I love your books because they're human and weird.
4:43
Tad Eggleston: You know? But the human is the…
4:48
Tad Eggleston: But, I haven't even let you talk. I'm sorry. It's one of the… Rush me home from school.
4:57
Tad Eggleston: Let's have the front counter pooch for Neighborhood Watch, which everybody, if they haven't already picked it up from their comic shop, needs to go out and get it right now, because it is ridiculously amazing.
5:08
Tad Eggleston: And it has… see, I don't do this often, but… but…
5:14
Sarah Gailey: Ugh, wow.
5:16
Sarah Gailey: Oh my goodness, you've got those gorgeous variants.
5:20
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, you got my money multiple times this time.
5:24
Sarah Gailey: Amazing. I mean, I'm so lucky the artists that I get to work with are incredible, and these covers are, like, some of my favorites ever.
5:31
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. No, no, that's part of why you got… like…
5:37
Tad Eggleston: I'm more likely, when it's a friend and a writer that I love, to buy at least a variant of Issue 1, just to juice your sales, but, like.
5:47
Tad Eggleston: if… if… All of the covers are pretty?
5:51
Sarah Gailey: You're helpless.
5:55
Sarah Gailey: What are you supposed to do? Of course you have to have them all!
6:00
Tad Eggleston: Well, and I can justify it, because it's like, well, Sarah's a friend of mine.
6:04
Tad Eggleston: Just helping out.
6:05
Sarah Gailey: Yeah. You're just helping out.
6:10
Tad Eggleston: Don't do anything crazy, like 20 covers on a book, please.
6:14
Sarah Gailey: Yeah, I'll bankrupt you.
6:16
Tad Eggleston: That's what I'm saying.
6:18
Sarah Gailey: Yeah.
6:19
Tad Eggleston: Okay, give the neighborhood watch pitch.
6:22
Sarah Gailey: Okay, so the Pitch for Neighborhood Watch is this is a community thriller that takes place across two communities that are near each other, one of which is a gated community with an HOA and lawn-length
6:34
Sarah Gailey: rules, and the other one of which is a cooperative collective called Open Arms. And these two communities are connected by history and by secrets, and in this comic.
6:43
Sarah Gailey: they get connected by an attempted murder, that the vice president of the HOA and the kitchen steward of the collective have to try together to solve.
6:56
Tad Eggleston: I love the color scheme, too. The fact that you've got, at least for…
7:03
Tad Eggleston: Until they are together, you know, we've got our blue-gated community, our orange HOA, and then our page with the panels that kind of merge.
7:17
Sarah Gailey: Rebecca Nalty is on colors for this, and I've gotten to work with Rebecca before. They're incredible. The… the color story here…
7:26
Sarah Gailey: I mean, first of all, getting colors in the gutters, such a thrill. You know, I'm always looking to play with form, and, like, break the formal conventions of comics, and a lot of editors, historically, have been like.
7:41
Sarah Gailey: we can't do that, it's expensive, it's complicated. Calm down. You know, like…
7:47
Sarah Gailey: chill out. But with this one, we just got to run straight for the fence, and Rebecca's colors are, I think, in this…
7:57
Sarah Gailey: revolutionary.
7:59
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
8:00
Tad Eggleston: I, I, I sometimes think that, that…
8:05
Tad Eggleston: Too much of the comics industry is… is stuck in the idea that they're… disposable… Monthlies?
8:18
Tad Eggleston: I think every time you allow something crazy, the more eyes it puts on comics.
8:25
Sarah Gailey: Yeah.
8:25
Tad Eggleston: I'm trying to remember who I was talking to recently that's like, I have a book, and, like.
8:31
Tad Eggleston: One of the biggest reasons I haven't sold it yet is, like…
8:36
Tad Eggleston: There is a part of it that… that the way it will work properly is if it's, like, a 6-page fold-out.
8:46
Sarah Gailey: Yeah.
8:47
Tad Eggleston: Yes.
8:49
Tad Eggleston: somebody willing to print that yet.
8:51
Sarah Gailey: I have a pitch that I have been rolling from editor to editor for…
8:57
Sarah Gailey: God, probably 6 or 7 years now, and it's not even… it's not even structurally adventurous in terms of the fold-outs and, you know, I don't need, like, holographic pages or whatever, but the art…
9:10
Sarah Gailey: for it is load-bearingly complicated in a way that editors, who I love and respect and love working with keep just being like.
9:19
Sarah Gailey: we… we're not gonna be able to execute that. And I'm like, I know that we could…
9:25
Sarah Gailey: Execute it, but it's a gamble, and you know, comics operates financially on such narrow margin that it's like…
9:34
Sarah Gailey: Any little extra thing is… is a risk.
9:39
Tad Eggleston: And this is why I'm… I'm… Even though it's… it's causing…
9:44
Tad Eggleston: It's causing… what's the word I'm looking for?
9:47
Tad Eggleston: I don't want to say upheaval, because I think it's more just general weirdness.
9:52
Tad Eggleston: In the industry, the more book publishers get into comics, because they think on different scales.
10:01
Sarah Gailey: lately.
10:01
Tad Eggleston: Like, your average comics publisher is thinking, how many of this can I sell this month? And they're not even always that good at thinking of how many of the trade they'll sell.
10:10
Sarah Gailey: Right? Yeah.
10:12
Tad Eggleston: When… whereas…
10:14
Tad Eggleston: If a book publisher was… was doing the floppies at all, they'd probably still be thinking more, how many of the trade will I sell over 10 years?
10:24
Tad Eggleston: Then they're thinking about… how many of the floppies will I sell a month?
10:30
Sarah Gailey: Or even how many of the trade will I sell over a month, and how do the floppy sales
10:37
Sarah Gailey: add up to that interest? How do we get to the place where what people want is… you know, in book publishing terms, we might think of that as the omnibus.
10:47
Sarah Gailey: So, oh, we're publishing a series, book 2 didn't sell great, but that's okay because we're gonna package books 1 through 3 into this omnibus and get another bump out of it, is a… you're right, a completely different perspective, and honestly.
11:01
Sarah Gailey: I can't really throw my agreement
11:07
Sarah Gailey: fully onto either side. I think both perspectives are valid and grounded in understandings of audience, and what we're seeing more right now, which I'm… I'm… have been
11:19
Sarah Gailey: kind of pushing a lot is an understanding that there is overlap between comics reading audiences and prose reading audiences. The sort of traditional wisdom has been
11:30
Sarah Gailey: these… these don't cross. Like, prose readers aren't reading comics, comics readers aren't reading prose. And personally, as someone who writes both, and quite a lot of both.
11:40
Sarah Gailey: My experience has been opposite.
11:42
Sarah Gailey: I see…
11:43
Tad Eggleston: Honestly, I think… I think…
11:47
Tad Eggleston: And this just popped into my head. We should start pushing for libraries not to have graphic novel sections.
11:55
Sarah Gailey: Oh, interesting. Say more.
12:00
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I've already seen it in bookstores, like, the handful of bookstores that, like, just mix the comics in with the…
12:08
Tad Eggleston: Like, I loved it when I saw
12:11
Tad Eggleston: March in the history section at Barnes & Noble.
12:15
Tad Eggleston: And I reached out to Andrew because I was so… he's like, yeah, no, it's always been there, and they sell so many copies of it because of that, because it is, it's a history book. It has every bit as much of appeal to somebody who wants a U.S. history book.
12:30
Tad Eggleston: as it does to somebody who wants a Spider-Man comic.
12:33
Sarah Gailey: Absolutely.
12:34
Tad Eggleston: So why would you put March next to Spider-Man?
12:38
Tad Eggleston: Rather than next to… like… Frederick Douglass.
12:45
Sarah Gailey: Yeah.
12:46
Tad Eggleston: You know, for…
12:46
Sarah Gailey: one of the pleasures of my inbox is I get advanced copies of books from publishers across comics and prose, and sometimes they'll pitch me, you know, they write a little marketing pitch that's like, here's why we want you to read this advanced copy.
13:03
Sarah Gailey: And sometimes they don't tell me what form
13:06
Sarah Gailey: the thing is that they're sending me, they assume that I know, just from their name or whatever, and so I'll open a file, and I don't know if I'm gonna be getting comics or not. And it's such a pleasure to be surprised in that way, because the content is what hooks me, and then I open the file, and it's like, okay, what form
13:26
Sarah Gailey: What are we doing for this? It's really fun.
13:29
Tad Eggleston: I think at the very least, it would be great to see a lot more cross-pollination.
13:34
Tad Eggleston: I mean, obviously, you don't necessarily put Spider-Man in your sci-fi section. You know, you kind of need to have your own superhero section, and that's gonna wind up being comics. There aren't a lot of superhero novels. There are some, so they could go in with the superhero comics, but…
13:51
Tad Eggleston: But, like.
13:52
Sarah Gailey: I'm gonna… I'm gonna just pause for one moment, because my speakers just glitched out. So, you stopped being audible, so sorry about that.
14:01
Tad Eggleston: Technical difficulties are over. No, what I was saying is I think that there should just, at the very least, be more cross-pollination, like…
14:08
Tad Eggleston: I mean, Spider-Man doesn't necessarily belong in sci-fi, so you might have to create a superhero category, and that's gonna be mostly comics.
14:16
Tad Eggleston: But, there are a handful of superhero novels, they could go in there.
14:21
Tad Eggleston: And, like…
14:23
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I am always, like, blown away by how many places your books get put to begin with, and that's… and that's before we start going into comics versus prose.
14:36
Tad Eggleston: like… How much would your sales be helped?
14:42
Tad Eggleston: if more of your stuff was cross-pollinated, and it's like, oh, I love this book, and there's another book by this author that I love.
14:49
Tad Eggleston: You know.
14:52
Sarah Gailey: Well, and this is something that I've been discussing with
14:55
Sarah Gailey: other publishing professionals quite extensively over the course of the last year or so, because I just really, you know, I got into this situation last year where I had an opportunity to go to a major conference, and
15:09
Sarah Gailey: my main comics publisher and my main prose publisher were both gonna be there. I contacted them, and I was like, hey, do you want to send me to this conference? I can do work for both of you while I'm there.
15:21
Sarah Gailey: And I kept hearing this, again, traditional wisdom that was like, well, that type of reader isn't really interested in what we publish. And I finally, this year, sat down with my team and started saying, look, every event I go to, every signing I do, every conference or con or whatever I show up at.
15:40
Sarah Gailey: I get readers coming to me who say, you know, I never read comics before, but I started reading your books, and I decided to check out your comics. Or, I never read prose, but I read your comics, and I had to pick up one of your novels. And then they start reading in this new space, and I'll see them 6 months later, and they're like.
15:59
Sarah Gailey: I've bought all your books. So there's clearly interest, and there's clearly… I mean, this… this readership is so curious and open, and comics readers, especially, are completionists, and they're excited to read everything you've written. So it's like, why not give them
16:18
Sarah Gailey: the easy opportunity, and say.
16:19
Tad Eggleston: Right.
16:20
Sarah Gailey: By the way, I'm here.
16:22
Tad Eggleston: I mean, really, the ideal way to do it…
16:26
Tad Eggleston: Except that nobody ever wants to carry extra inventory. Oh my god, that would be horrible.
16:32
Sarah Gailey: A nightmare.
16:33
Tad Eggleston: It would be to have, like, 4 copies.
16:37
Tad Eggleston: In 4 different places.
16:40
Sarah Gailey: Yeah. You know.
16:43
Tad Eggleston: Because…
16:47
Tad Eggleston: And yeah, that would require upkeep. It'd require, hey, you know, we sold a copy, where did we sell it from?
16:55
Tad Eggleston: But it's not hard to write software that would say, you sold a copy, go check these 3 shelves to see which
17:02
Tad Eggleston: Which one you sold. And then you can start tracking data for, oh, this author sells better.
17:10
Tad Eggleston: through their comics. They're like, we sell more of their prose next to their comics than we do in horror, or in…
17:20
Sarah Gailey: You know, I think also, to what you're saying, one of the great pleasures of a…
17:25
Sarah Gailey: a bookstore experience is…
17:28
Sarah Gailey: a feeling of discovery. I remember when I was a kid, I don't know if there's still…
17:34
Sarah Gailey: in the same place, but there was a bookstore called Gray Wolf Books here in the Bay Area that was basically a labyrinth. It was like…
17:43
Sarah Gailey: Tons of interconnected.
17:44
Tad Eggleston: Wholely the type of… type of store that I like.
17:48
Sarah Gailey: Yeah. Given I was going there as a kid, so it may have been less
17:52
Sarah Gailey: Less of a maze than it felt like at the time, but…
17:55
Sarah Gailey: I remember tons of interconnected groups.
17:58
Tad Eggleston: There's a Gray Wolf Press in Minneapolis, so that's probably.
18:01
Sarah Gailey: Oh, yeah, that's different.
18:02
Tad Eggleston: press.
18:03
Sarah Gailey: Floor-to-ceiling shelves, and used books mixed in with new books, and you would just have this feeling like you might find anything anywhere.
18:13
Sarah Gailey: And that was what made me stay, and it was what made me, you know, get, like, armloads of books, because I would find something and have that feeling of, like, of discovery and… and chance, which I think is lost in some of the more corporate models of bookstore.
18:31
Tad Eggleston: It does look like Grey Wolf Books is closed.
18:35
Sarah Gailey: Very sad.
18:36
Tad Eggleston: It was insanely andro.
18:39
Sarah Gailey: Yes, yeah, San Leandro.
18:41
Tad Eggleston: I, I, I, well, and, and, like, I figured this out because…
18:45
Tad Eggleston: Because the blurb right under Unix Bookstore in Bay Area for a Facebook
18:52
Tad Eggleston: post, is this is not a free advertisement for Gray Wolf Books. The shop has been closed for several years.
19:00
Sarah Gailey: Oh, that's too bad.
19:02
Tad Eggleston: But, if you.
19:02
Sarah Gailey: anything.
19:03
Tad Eggleston: I mean, that says a lot if you… if you have people, like, writing their remembrances of it.
19:08
Tad Eggleston: And I get it, like, it's hard to make retail work, it's hard to make book retail
19:14
Tad Eggleston: Work even more so, because… like… Our capitalism is built on…
19:22
Tad Eggleston: our current… our current version of capitalism. I hate calling it capitalism. There needs to be a better word, because, like.
19:29
Tad Eggleston: what we do in the United States has so little to do with what Adam Smith laid out.
19:36
Tad Eggleston: that, like, it's not capitalism anymore. It's something else.
19:41
Tad Eggleston: But in the current environment, it's really, really…
19:51
Tad Eggleston: Difficult to play any sort of long game.
19:56
Sarah Gailey: Yeah.
19:58
Sarah Gailey: Yes, every… we have no margin.
20:00
Tad Eggleston: Right.
20:01
Sarah Gailey: And so we're operating… On a tightrope at all times.
20:08
Tad Eggleston: And, like, that… I mean, that just has so many… Like, like, the most realistic…
20:16
Tad Eggleston: neo-futuristic tales that I… that I read lately.
20:20
Tad Eggleston: you know, I mean, other than you and having the carceral system create the richest people, are the ones that, like… I mean, I've read a few things lately that it, that, like.
20:33
Tad Eggleston: Forced consumerism.
20:35
Tad Eggleston: Like, if you're not buying this much, then you're a blight on society.
20:41
Sarah Gailey: Huh.
20:42
Tad Eggleston: Because, like, when you have a system that requires constant growth, like…
20:51
Tad Eggleston: It's not good if people decide, no, no, I like where I'm at.
20:56
Tad Eggleston: Right. I'm gonna buy some new books from time to time, but, like, I bought good clothes, and they haven't worn out, I don't need new fashion, and my feet stopped growing, and I bought good enough shoes that, like.
21:08
Tad Eggleston: I mean, how many things can you even get fixed anymore?
21:12
Sarah Gailey: it's very difficult. I… I… Had a pair of shoes, a pair of boots that were my…
21:19
Sarah Gailey: Everywhere boots for years and years and years, and I wore down the soles all the way, and got them resold, and then I wore down those soles again.
21:28
Sarah Gailey: And I needed to get them resold, and I had, like, 2 weeks to do it before I needed to travel. And I couldn't find a cobbler.
21:37
Sarah Gailey: Who could take on the job within that period of time, because there's so few of them left, that all of them have, like, a 3-4 week waitlist for resoling a pair of fucking shoes.
21:49
Tad Eggleston: I mean, with, with, like, cars… I mean, don't get me wrong, I like some of the bells and whistles…
21:56
Tad Eggleston: But… but, like…
21:58
Tad Eggleston: Your car shouldn't die based on an electronic system, and it shouldn't be impossible to learn how to fix your car without learning computers.
22:06
Sarah Gailey: Yeah.
22:07
Sarah Gailey: I mean, even just… even just the small repairs. My… my rearview window… rearview mirror got broken, and I went to try and get it fixed, and they said, we can't actually fix this, we have to order a whole new rearview mirror, it's gonna cost, like, $800 because it's a computer.
22:25
Tad Eggleston: Right.
22:25
Sarah Gailey: And it's like, you can't just put a new piece of glass in there? No.
22:30
Tad Eggleston: Right.
22:31
Tad Eggleston: That's…
22:33
Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's bad design unless you want it to be bad design. I mean, this is one of the things that drives me up the wall. I'm sitting there going, there's so many billionaires that say they want to make a difference, and like.
22:45
Tad Eggleston: If they really did, they could upend so many industries so fast, just making
22:54
Tad Eggleston: reliable… I mean, how easy would it be to upend the publishing?
22:57
Tad Eggleston: industry, if you were willing to drop a billion dollars. How easy would it be to upend the car industry if you were willing to drop a billion dollars? You know, the amount of money that they're spending to try to shift politics, even if they're the handful of…
23:15
Tad Eggleston: There's no such thing as a good billionaire, but you know what I mean. Even if they're the ones that, like, say that they're trying to do good things, like, they could do it so much.
23:24
Tad Eggleston: better by… Actually going, oh, The things that made me a billionaire are part of the problem.
23:32
Sarah Gailey: Yeah, huh
23:33
Sarah Gailey: And I will say, you know, to your point, unfortunately, there are billionaires who are aiming to upend the publishing industry, but they aren't altruistic.
23:41
Sarah Gailey: They aren't thinking about the good of publishing and the good of art, and so when they upend the publishing industry, which is a really serious issue we're dealing with right now in publishing, they do it by fucking everyone over.
23:55
Tad Eggleston: I was about to say, they're not trying to upend the publishing industry as much as they're trying to, oh, wait, there's money to be made here, I want to get it.
24:05
Sarah Gailey: Yes, they're trying to juice it.
24:07
Tad Eggleston: That's different from… You know, like…
24:13
Tad Eggleston: If a billionaire decided that they really wanted to support the arts, it could be as simple as…
24:18
Tad Eggleston: I'm taking on most of the risk of putting out the book, the…
24:24
Tad Eggleston: The artists get paid up front.
24:27
Tad Eggleston: they get… Less residual, but not no residual.
24:32
Tad Eggleston: Until they've, like… I'm just gonna use random numbers, but say… say…
24:39
Tad Eggleston: You're paid $50,000 up front, and there's a… $5 profit.
24:47
Tad Eggleston: after… production…
24:52
Tad Eggleston: store cut, distributor cut, right? There's $5 to split between you and the publisher. So, until you get to that $50,000 mark, you get $2 and they get $3. And once… once you've…
25:06
Tad Eggleston: Cross that $50,000 line?
25:10
Tad Eggleston: or 50,000 copies. We'll make it that $1 difference, right? So, so, so, for that $50,000 advance, or whatever you want to call it, but it should be a non-refundable advance. It's like…
25:20
Tad Eggleston: You get $2 per copy, they get $3 per copy. Once they've recouped that $50,000, you get $3 per copy, they get $2 per copy. Done.
25:32
Tad Eggleston: And that would completely change the industry, because the… the risk would be the people that had the money. And again.
25:39
Tad Eggleston: Those are random numbers, but they're not completely random numbers.
25:44
Sarah Gailey: Well, what you're describing is the advance and royalty model of a lot of publishing, but again.
25:50
Tad Eggleston: And a lot of us.
25:50
Sarah Gailey: You don't.
25:50
Tad Eggleston: I don't want to give you the royalty until the advance is paid off.
25:55
Sarah Gailey: That was gonna be the end of my sentence, yeah.
25:57
Tad Eggleston: Oh, I'm sorry.
26:01
Tad Eggleston: Which ignores the fact that you still need to live.
26:05
Sarah Gailey: Also, what you're describing is… is… Functionally, like… a Medici model, right?
26:14
Sarah Gailey: We… what we need is… People who have money to decide that art
26:21
Sarah Gailey: is worth supporting for the sake of art, and even if they won't decide that, how about for the sake of your reputation? I mean, we used to have, like, Rockefellers trying to build big public parks, because they were like, everyone hates us, you'll hate us less if you have a big public park. Right. We can't even get there now.
26:39
Tad Eggleston: Well, and, like, the biggest… the biggest place that we're different from what Adam Smith laid out…
26:45
Tad Eggleston: is that the reason Capital was supposed to get a return on investment was that they were coming in to take the risk. We've set up a system
26:53
Tad Eggleston: Where the people who provide the capital have almost no risk.
27:01
Tad Eggleston: It's the people that work, or the people who make art.
27:04
Tad Eggleston: that have risk. I mean, it's not just artists, like, like…
27:08
Tad Eggleston: The people who work for a living have all the risk, because if, for whatever reason.
27:15
Tad Eggleston: Amico goes out of business.
27:17
Tad Eggleston: The guys who own Amoco are gonna be okay.
27:21
Tad Eggleston: All the people who pumped gas for a living.
27:24
Tad Eggleston: are not gonna have jobs anymore.
27:27
Tad Eggleston: I mean, anytime there's a tariff, it's like, okay, well, our percentage of profit needs to be the same.
27:38
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. So the price isn't just going up by whatever the tariff is.
27:43
Tad Eggleston: It's going up enough that our percentage of prof… you know, if… if you… if you were selling something for $100, and they were taking 35% profit.
27:54
Tad Eggleston: And now you're sending it Sally, for a hundred and…
27:57
Tad Eggleston: 10, or now there's a $10 tariff, it's gonna get raised, like, $13.50, because…
28:06
Tad Eggleston: Because they still have to keep their same profit margin.
28:10
Tad Eggleston: They can't decide, oh.
28:13
Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna make X dollars of profit. It's, I'm gonna make this percentage of profit. The little guy doesn't get a percentage. The little guy gets…
28:22
Tad Eggleston: As little as they can give him, because they're convinced that that's how capitalism works.
28:28
Sarah Gailey: Well, it's, again, it's the weight that…
28:31
Sarah Gailey: the value is placed on margin. It's we, who are doing the work.
28:38
Sarah Gailey: lose margin as much as possible so that the margin can stay with the people who are supposedly, as you said, taking on that risk. And they're like, oh, I'll give myself big margin so that the risk isn't as much risk, so that if this doesn't work out, I don't take the big hit. But the result of that is
28:55
Sarah Gailey: functionally margin hoarding, and that's why these billionaires don't actually have
29:01
Sarah Gailey: They're not at risk of really anything, because they have so much margin that no matter what happens, they'll be fine.
29:09
Tad Eggleston: And that's before we even get into various structural things that make it so that, like.
29:15
Tad Eggleston: If money is lost, it comes from the little guy first, not…
29:21
Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, part of… part of the big problem with the…
29:25
Tad Eggleston: The… the whole diamond fiasco with comics is that, like.
29:31
Tad Eggleston: The banks were the last money in, and why they lent them so much money that late is really kind of insane, except that they're also the first money out.
29:42
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. They're allowed to screw the small publisher easier than they're allowed to screw the… the bank that could write it off gets their money before the publisher that's going to be put out of business.
29:54
Sarah Gailey: Yup.
29:55
Tad Eggleston: Because of the way laws are written, and that's just… that's, again, like…
30:00
Tad Eggleston: When you hear the speeches, oh, you gotta be laissez-faire with your government in life, but the government's not keeping their hands off, the government's making it so the banks get paid first.
30:10
Sarah Gailey: Yeah, yeah.
30:11
Tad Eggleston: They're putting their hand on the scale really hard.
30:15
Sarah Gailey: This was something that I talked about, you know, oh gosh.
30:19
Sarah Gailey: right before the last election, I was talking to an artist who I was working with, not on any of my comics, on a personal project, and…
30:29
Sarah Gailey: he was voicing some, like, weird pro-Trump
30:33
Sarah Gailey: stuff that wasn't, like, the kind of… Frothing at the mouth, like…
30:39
Sarah Gailey: vicious bigotry that you normally hear from people who are saying that they don't think he's a bad guy. And so I was… I was trying to talk to this artist and be like, explain to me what you mean. Explain, like, why you're saying these things that you're saying. And he said, well.
30:54
Sarah Gailey: The other politicians who I see…
30:57
Sarah Gailey: just don't seem to stand for anything. And I… I said, I totally agree with you, like, Gavin Newsom is a little worm who doesn't have any beliefs or views other than, Gavin Newsom, be president, please. Like, that's all he's got.
31:11
Sarah Gailey: And what I said was, you know, I don't disagree with you about most politicians, but when you…
31:17
Sarah Gailey: look at… This administration, you have to see that their values are, enrich our cohort.
31:26
Sarah Gailey: That's the whole plan. There's nothing else there. It is enrich our cohort. If you are connected to the current administration, the goal is to put as much money into your pockets as possible before everyone gets kicked out.
31:41
Sarah Gailey: It's a money grab, and it's like…
31:44
Sarah Gailey: People were doing all this game theory and psychoanalysis and, like, like, armchair strategy, and it's like, no, it's a money craft.
31:52
Sarah Gailey: That it's not… it's… sometimes it's not warm up.
31:56
Tad Eggleston: But, but what? Trump.
31:59
Tad Eggleston: and specifically Trump.
32:01
Tad Eggleston: does.
32:02
Tad Eggleston: that… I don't think… the people… who…
32:10
Tad Eggleston: have more of our best interest at heart are particularly good at, though AOC's getting better at it.
32:18
Tad Eggleston: is… Just shoot from the hip.
32:24
Tad Eggleston: Which comes off as authentic.
32:28
Tad Eggleston: Democrats sound really, really focus-grouped.
32:32
Tad Eggleston: And that's why, even when there's evidence that
32:35
Tad Eggleston: you know, Gavin Newsom, yes, I don't think he believes in anything but me… me be president, but Chris Murphy, until recently, often came off very focus-grouped
32:45
Tad Eggleston: Even though I think he stands for a lot more than that.
32:50
Tad Eggleston: In fact, I still don't know if he'll throw his hat into the ring. I kinda hope he does, I kinda hope that he doesn't, because I think he'd be a great Secretary of State.
32:59
Tad Eggleston: But until recently, every time I heard him speak, it just sounded so measured that I'm like.
33:07
Tad Eggleston: I've seen enough of your writings, I've seen enough of your longer talks that I know that you have real beliefs.
33:15
Tad Eggleston: But I feel like when you talk in an interview, you're just trying not to piss anybody off, and that's, like, the definition of the Democratic Party.
33:25
Tad Eggleston: And that makes it really hard to figure out… who actually… Cares about anything.
33:32
Sarah Gailey: Yeah.
33:33
Sarah Gailey: I think there's a really interesting point of contrast here, because, like.
33:39
Sarah Gailey: I medium care about the public-facing authenticity of the politicians who represent me. I know that they're showing me a face, I know they're showing me a brand, I know they're performing a certain amount of polish, and I'm like, good, yeah, you're professional, you're taking your job seriously. But…
33:57
Sarah Gailey: people, I think, especially in the US,
34:00
Sarah Gailey: Are so sick of being manipulated.
34:03
Sarah Gailey: And there comes this breaking point where I think people go, I want someone artless.
34:10
Sarah Gailey: who I might not respect, but who I don't think is trying to manipulate me. And, like.
34:17
Sarah Gailey: Gavin Newsom… I'm sorry, I just… I live in California, and we have such a… you know.
34:22
Tad Eggleston: Love-hate relationship.
34:23
Sarah Gailey: Loving. Love isn't part of it.
34:27
Tad Eggleston: Mostly hate.
34:28
Sarah Gailey: He… that man hates unhoused people and trans people so much, and I just want… anyway.
34:35
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
34:36
Sarah Gailey: When he speaks publicly.
34:41
Sarah Gailey: it feels like he's trying to manipulate me. I can feel that he's like, like me, like me, like me, I'm gonna push the button to make you like me. And that…
34:48
Sarah Gailey: Feels… both feels bad to experience, and creates this… This understanding of, like.
34:57
Sarah Gailey: Not only do you not stand for anything, but you'll do anything.
35:02
Tad Eggleston: Right.
35:03
Sarah Gailey: to try and get where you want to go. So why would I trust you with public office?
35:08
Tad Eggleston: Well, and you and I are both, like, Hi, info voters.
35:14
Tad Eggleston: Imagine that you're not. Imagine that you work 80 hours a week, and you really wish you could work 50 hours a week, and you just want whoever in government will make your life a little bit easier. And this guy is yelling up and down about how they're the ones that made your…
35:33
Tad Eggleston: your life hard, and I'm gonna take care of you, because I'm gonna bring the best ever. And this guy, who your friends, who are smart, but don't live your life because they're smart, and they're college professors, or whatever, are going, no, no, you should really be listening to this guy, but you're sitting there going.
35:50
Tad Eggleston: Do you understand where I'm coming from?
35:54
Sarah Gailey: This connects to your earlier point about You know, consumerism, because contentment Is the enemy of…
36:05
Sarah Gailey: fascism, it's the enemy of authoritarianism, it's the enemy of consumerism.
36:10
Sarah Gailey: People being genuinely… Happy and content in their lives, and having the things that they need would undermine
36:18
Sarah Gailey: This current political cohort's efforts at accumulating and hoarding power and money.
36:26
Sarah Gailey: They wouldn't be able to do it if people actually had the things that they need.
36:31
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
36:32
Tad Eggleston: I mean… there's been, like, rising right-wing stuff in a lot of Europe.
36:40
Tad Eggleston: funded primarily by American companies.
36:44
Tad Eggleston: Ahem.
36:47
Tad Eggleston: But I think one of the reasons that it doesn't stick as well is, like, they have healthcare.
36:53
Tad Eggleston: They have education.
36:56
Tad Eggleston: Their countries view homelessness as a societal problem, not a personal problem.
37:02
Tad Eggleston: It's amazing how just those 3 things could…
37:08
Sarah Gailey: Yeah, I think there's also a real, you know, one of my very dearest friends lives in Germany, and I get to visit her, with some frequency.
37:17
Sarah Gailey: And… There are legal boundaries in place to try to prevent These things from sticking.
37:27
Sarah Gailey: In Germany, there's shit you can't say, legally. They're like, freedom of speech? Actually not that important to us. What is important is no Nazis.
37:36
Sarah Gailey: We don't want that, and therefore, you can't do that shit here. And it's like…
37:43
Sarah Gailey: that runs so counter to the American kind of idea of what… how a country should be run.
37:51
Sarah Gailey: And frankly, experiencing both of these realities, right? Experiencing what it's like there, experiencing what it's like here.
38:00
Sarah Gailey: can make us seem childish at times.
38:04
Sarah Gailey: Yeah. It's… it's like, no, if you don't want Nazis in your bar, you don't let Nazis hang out in your bar.
38:11
Tad Eggleston: Right.
38:13
Tad Eggleston: Right. Or, like, you know…
38:16
Tad Eggleston: I love when we talk about how great our Constitution is. It's the oldest Constitution, blah blah blah, and you know what?
38:22
Tad Eggleston: Like, I want to make really clear, there are a lot of great things about our Constitution.
38:28
Tad Eggleston: But, like… What thing that was first?
38:33
Tad Eggleston: What thing in, like, all of the rest of the universe and time and whatnot that was first was also best?
38:41
Sarah Gailey: Carefully, you're gonna get a lot of mail from older siblings.
38:45
Tad Eggleston: I am the oldest, but I meant in terms of, like, invention, in terms of…
38:53
Sarah Gailey: Alright.
38:54
Tad Eggleston: And, and, like…
38:56
Tad Eggleston: I'll take a lot of mail, I've never gotten a lot of mail, that'd be kind of cool.
39:02
Sarah Gailey: I don't know, I'm a youngest.
39:03
Tad Eggleston: 22 Panels Podcast.
39:04
Tad Eggleston: gmail.com.
39:05
Sarah Gailey: I can tell you, you don't want oldest siblings mad at you, because they remember stuff forever.
39:10
Tad Eggleston: I don't.
39:12
Tad Eggleston: My memory's terrible. My younger brothers remember the ways that I tormented them way more than I remember why.
39:20
Sarah Gailey: That's one of those, the axe forgets but the tree remembers things.
39:23
Tad Eggleston: Right?
39:24
Sarah Gailey: Yeah.
39:25
Tad Eggleston: But, but, like… And the Model T wasn't the first, but, like.
39:30
Tad Eggleston: Was the Model T the height of, of, of… of car making?
39:37
Sarah Gailey: Probably not, but thinking about how fucking sick I am of my car being like I'm having a computer problem…
39:43
Tad Eggleston: No, no, I get, I get that.
39:45
Sarah Gailey: I can't…
39:46
Tad Eggleston: Not that, but, but, but, like,
39:51
Tad Eggleston: Have there been no improvements in printing since Gutenberg?
39:57
Sarah Gailey: No, I take your point. I take your point.
39:58
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, of course.
40:00
Sarah Gailey: And I mean, we do have an amendment structure, but we fetishize the original in.
40:06
Tad Eggleston: Well, but beyond that, like, anytime you say, well, they do it this way over there, they wrote it in their constitution, it's like, well, our Constitution's better, it's like…
40:17
Tad Eggleston: Like, our founders knew that it should be amended.
40:22
Tad Eggleston: They said so! Right there. And then they amended it 10 times before it was even ratified!
40:29
Tad Eggleston: They didn't have to make those amendments.
40:33
Tad Eggleston: They could've… Made them part of the Constitution.
40:38
Tad Eggleston: I don't know, we're off on… and this is why I love talking to you, we go off on…
40:43
Tad Eggleston: Fun and intelligent tangents.
40:46
Tad Eggleston: Pitch your book before I get into closing-ish questions, because I want to get you out in time to go eat.
40:54
Sarah Gailey: Thank you. My book that's coming out in May is called Make Me Better, and it is an exploration of high-control community dynamics. It's about a cult on an island in the middle of a secluded lake, and the way that cult defines who its members are to each other.
41:12
Sarah Gailey: And what happens to a community when someone steps outside of their assigned role?
41:18
Tad Eggleston: Alrighty.
41:21
Tad Eggleston: Two of my favorite writers are doing stuff about cults right now. Mark Russell's… Mark Russell's new comic is…
41:27
Sarah Gailey: Love Mark Russell.
41:29
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, the comic that he's got kickstarting
41:32
Tad Eggleston: I think soon, it hasn't launched yet, but Ahoy's doing their first Kickstarter, and it's Mark Russell and Russ Braun doing a book called The Forgotten Divine.
41:43
Tad Eggleston: Where, like, this… this… this PTSD war vet starts seeing things, and then discovers that other people are seeing things, so they build a cult, and…
41:53
Tad Eggleston: That's what I know so far, but, like, I've read the first 7 pages, and it's enough to have me even more hooked than just Mark Russell would have had me hooked.
42:02
Sarah Gailey: Yeah. Oh, I'm in. That sounds great.
42:06
Tad Eggleston: Kickstarter soon, I'll send you a… I'll send you an update when it goes live.
42:11
Sarah Gailey: Absolutely.
42:11
Tad Eggleston: I'll try to remember anyway. But, but yeah.
42:17
Tad Eggleston: I wonder… I wonder what's in the zeitgeist that has you guys all thinking about cults.
42:21
Sarah Gailey: Well, it's really funny, I've been working on… well, I guess I should start using past tense. I worked on Make Me Better for, like, 6 or 7 years. I started writing it
42:34
Sarah Gailey: In, like, late 2019, early 2020, and it was a very different time, but not.
42:42
Tad Eggleston: I was about to say, the world hasn't changed at all during those 6 years.
42:45
Sarah Gailey: Yeah, not one bit.
42:47
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm constantly going, you know, 2019 was like yesterday.
42:56
Sarah Gailey: You know…
42:57
Sarah Gailey: In some ways, yeah. In some ways, it feels like time folded between, like, 2020 and 2024, and when I look back at.
43:07
Tad Eggleston: And that is true.
43:09
Sarah Gailey: back at the community work that me and some of my colleagues were doing in, like.
43:15
Sarah Gailey: 2018, 2019, what we were trying to organize to prevent.
43:19
Sarah Gailey: it feels like there's, just this lacuna between then and now that progress vanished into. Which isn't so. It feels that way, but that's not true, of course. We have a huge amount of progress, if only in community building and awareness.
43:36
Sarah Gailey: And of course, in many other ways.
43:38
Tad Eggleston: Oh, no, no, no, that's, that's, that's paid protesters, didn't you hear?
43:42
Sarah Gailey: Oh, are we getting paid?
43:44
Sarah Gailey: It's.
43:44
Tad Eggleston: No, I mean, apparently, I don't know where to file for my paycheck, but I've been told that all of that is organized paid protesting.
43:54
Tad Eggleston: I'll check my space.
43:55
Sarah Gailey: Bank account balance once we finish here.
43:57
Tad Eggleston: I think it's because, as it turns out, there aren't many fascist things that happen without outside agitation, whereas, like, kindness is something that people
44:09
Tad Eggleston: Do… Just to do?
44:13
Tad Eggleston: I mean, is that possible?
44:15
Sarah Gailey: I think there's… there is a really valid distinction to be drawn between the way fascism is very top-down, trying to impose a structure, and, you know.
44:26
Sarah Gailey: people, especially influencers in, like, you know, conservative media spaces, love to say, well, this is what God intended, it's the natural order of things, and it's like, I don't know, you're having to work awfully fucking hard to impose the natural order of things on people whose natural order seems to be community support and care.
44:43
Tad Eggleston: Well, but I go even further than that, like, because I've done enough of the, you know, Jane Meyer had a great book called Dark Money, and…
44:52
Tad Eggleston: There are all sorts of… like, so many of the things they accuse us… Of being on the left.
44:58
Tad Eggleston: you know, paying to put together the… the protests and whatnot. Like, there's evidence that they've done it. So… so, like, I think for some of them, they, like, literally don't… they believe what they're saying, because that's the only way that they can get it to happen.
45:19
Sarah Gailey: I mean, sure, possibly. I gotta say, like, this is maybe not, my most… elevated opinion.
45:30
Sarah Gailey: there's a lot of conversation about what people in the far right do or don't believe, and I kind of don't give a shit about their.
45:37
Tad Eggleston: No, I don't actually care a lot about what they do or don't believe, but in terms of the dynamic, I think one of the reasons that it…
45:45
Tad Eggleston: that A, it's hard to go away, and B, they think they need so much money, is that, like.
45:54
Tad Eggleston: They… because they're, like… None of them have been to a church potluck. They don't know that, like…
46:02
Tad Eggleston: There's lots of people who are really good at putting a lot of food together fast for their community. That wasn't hard for the people of Minnesota. That comes natural to them.
46:14
Sarah Gailey: Well, this is, you know, just… I… I keep on returning to this well of the afterword to Know Your Station that Leona Kangas and I put together that is about the…
46:26
Tad Eggleston: I've been read on my air a few times.
46:28
Sarah Gailey: Massive wealth hoarding exists for the sole purpose of separating the hoarder from the experience of humanity.
46:36
Sarah Gailey: That's the function. They… they don't want people to organize to bring them food after something difficult happens, because they don't want that connection to humanity and community. They want to eliminate it because it feels like a vulnerability.
46:54
Tad Eggleston: I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do another, another plug,
46:58
Tad Eggleston: And I don't know if the…
47:02
Tad Eggleston: if the… the Kickstarter finally has the… the after…
47:08
Tad Eggleston: program, so I don't know if you can still order them, because they're just done. I just got my,
47:16
Tad Eggleston: Did you see the project that Andrew Iden did last year?
47:20
Sarah Gailey: Which project?
47:21
Tad Eggleston: Andrew Iden did a project called, Islands in the Sky.
47:27
Tad Eggleston: Where… It's… it's, officially, it's by a group he created called the Appalachian Comics Project.
47:40
Tad Eggleston: And it's an anthology of actual stories
47:46
Tad Eggleston: of Hurricane Helene, and surviving it, and, like, rebuilding and whatnot.
47:53
Tad Eggleston: But he, you know, some of them are by creators that live in the area.
48:00
Tad Eggleston: But if, if, if there weren't… If there weren't…
48:05
Tad Eggleston: like, there are also stories that are just from people, but he'd then pair them with creators. So, like, Brian Michael Bendis helped write one, and, like, art from…
48:17
Tad Eggleston: I think the Valentine Delandro, and I can't even remember all the names. Like, it's a who's who of top-notch comics talent helping just…
48:27
Tad Eggleston: normal Appalachian people.
48:31
Tad Eggleston: tell the stories of how they dealt with this crazy thing, but, like, aside from the fact that it's just beautiful, and it's a cool project, like, he just sent out the PDFs to backers, and I read it this week, and it's like…
48:45
Tad Eggleston: It's just… Like, so humanizing.
48:52
Tad Eggleston: So, like, because again, like.
48:55
Tad Eggleston: I mean, the things that we don't know about, or that the general public doesn't know about Helene is just insane, like…
49:02
Sarah Gailey: Massive, yeah.
49:03
Tad Eggleston: A, you know, because the disinformation started going out really fast, etc, you know.
49:10
Tad Eggleston: all sorts of things were going wrong, but there was a huge swath in North Carolina where, like.
49:16
Tad Eggleston: All communications were out.
49:19
Sarah Gailey: Yeah.
49:20
Tad Eggleston: Like, cell towers were… like, all communications. And there were no roads that weren't… like, so there was a swath of North Carolina that, for, like, 2 or 3 days, was completely cut off.
49:32
Tad Eggleston: From the rest of society, and had to figure out.
49:35
Tad Eggleston: on their own, you know, find each other, and get up on roofs, or, oh, the neighbor's house down the way is okay, let's all go there. You know, the restaurants that would, like.
49:47
Tad Eggleston: Make food and give it away for, you know…
49:51
Tad Eggleston: like, and I just loved it, because it's this… it's this anthology of…
49:56
Tad Eggleston: Here you have a community that, like, your average…
50:01
Tad Eggleston: Average coastal or city person would, like.
50:06
Tad Eggleston: Easily malign, or whatever, you know, we're talking… Redneck, Appalachia, whatever, but…
50:16
Tad Eggleston: They… they went to bat for each other immediately.
50:20
Tad Eggleston: You know, and, I mean, clearly it's not all redneck.
50:25
Tad Eggleston: whatever, because, like, one of the stories is from a climate scientist. And one of the stories is from Andrew Iden, and I don't think anybody's gonna com… like, talk about John Lewis's right-hand man being some…
50:41
Sarah Gailey: I would even… I would push you one step further on that, to… to try…
50:47
Sarah Gailey: not to separate the idea of a redneck from a good and valuable person.
50:52
Tad Eggleston: I don't, that's my point. That's what I love about this anthology, is I try really hard not to, but…
50:59
Tad Eggleston: But particularly, and I'm certain that you deal with this sometimes, too, particularly when you actually
51:06
Tad Eggleston: Are around a lot of people who are very aware and up-to-date on news and infuriated at what's going on in this nation.
51:13
Tad Eggleston: Too many of them will immediately write off anybody who voted for Trump.
51:19
Tad Eggleston: anybody who's a Christian, anybody who's whatever.
51:23
Tad Eggleston: And it's like, no, I don't think that's how it works. I think they're human too, and they're doing the best they can, and yeah, some of them are deplorable people. You know, Hillary probably wasn't completely wrong, but she probably had her number a little high, you know?
51:42
Tad Eggleston: And even so, like, how do we define deplorable? Like, the thing that I hate the most about the last 10 years is, like.
51:52
Tad Eggleston: Yes, I can't wait for hearts and minds to be won over, and realize that people are people, our people are people.
51:59
Tad Eggleston: You know, rather than looking at color, or gender, or… or… Sexual preference, or whatever.
52:06
Tad Eggleston: But before Trump, people were at least embarrassed to be racist.
52:15
Tad Eggleston: You know what I mean?
52:18
Sarah Gailey: Yeah, I think… I think we have really lost something by, losing
52:25
Sarah Gailey: That sense of embarrassment for people who… Reveal themselves to be…
52:33
Sarah Gailey: horrible, or to hold horrible views in a spouse forward.
52:36
Tad Eggleston: 10 years ago, if you let horrible thoughts come out, people would shame you, and you would either start thinking about them, or at the very least, keep them inside so that you weren't spreading them to other people. Now it's like, I'm not a racist, I haven't hung anybody this month.
52:53
Sarah Gailey: Yeah, I think social censure is… Really valuable and underrated.
52:58
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no.
52:59
Sarah Gailey: Society.
53:00
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, I think… whether it's full-on censure or not, like, it… It's a forced discussion.
53:08
Tad Eggleston: now we just don't even have the discussions. Well, everybody's entitled to their opinion. It's like, well, except that that's not true, because you tell me to shut the hell up if I talk about, like, amending the Second Amendment.
53:21
Tad Eggleston: I'm not entitled to my opinions on the Supreme Court being full of shit when they pass down a gun.
53:31
Tad Eggleston: A gun decision!
53:36
Tad Eggleston: We just… I wanna live in a more boring world, Sarah.
53:42
Sarah Gailey: Absolutely. That's like I said, contentment. Boring and content are next-door neighbors, and…
53:49
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
53:50
Sarah Gailey: And I think… I think, like I said, that contentment is really the enemy of power.
53:56
Tad Eggleston: So, like, my only thing that I… because I feel like our parents were content, and if anything, they were too content, so when…
54:05
Tad Eggleston: When, like, this started creeping up, they didn't see it.
54:10
Tad Eggleston: Particularly because they were kept content.
54:13
Tad Eggleston: So it was just that younger generation, well, what's wrong with you? I'm happy.
54:19
Sarah Gailey: I don't know that I totally agree, but I see where you're coming from.
54:22
Tad Eggleston: You know…
54:24
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I think it depends on… on, like, what… what group. I mean, I'll be the first to say, I… I grew up a pretty affluent
54:34
Tad Eggleston: white male life.
54:37
Tad Eggleston: You know,
54:39
Tad Eggleston: I'm still seeing members of my family suddenly wake up, oh, oh, this is problematic! It's like, yeah!
54:46
Tad Eggleston: It was problematic 20 years ago, too!
54:51
Sarah Gailey: Well, I think that's, you know, to your point you were making earlier, is everyone is on their own path of figuring out how they want to exist in the world and what they want the world to look like. And one of the most frustrating and annoying and important parts of being a community is
55:06
Sarah Gailey: Being able to hold space for that, and it is not always easy to exercise that principle of universal compassion when someone is
55:14
Sarah Gailey: Talking out to the side of their mouth, but… We got it.
55:19
Tad Eggleston: That's…
55:19
Sarah Gailey: some people.
55:20
Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, to me, the thing that free speech should be is encouraged conversation.
55:27
Tad Eggleston: Free speech shouldn't be, like, there's no consequences for my speech. It's like, you can absolutely tell me your ideas, but you need to also hear mine.
55:38
Sarah Gailey: Well, I mean, that's the thing that I think people forget when they talk about everyone's entitled to their opinion, is that, sure, everyone's entitled to their opinion is an idea that has to live alongside talk shit, get hit.
55:50
Tad Eggleston: Right.
55:51
Sarah Gailey: Like, I have lived in many communities where it's like, yeah, you can have your opinion, and if you come and voice that opinion around the people it pertains to, you're gonna be short a few teeth when you leave, and that's
56:03
Sarah Gailey: How the world fucking works.
56:05
Tad Eggleston: Yes!
56:07
Tad Eggleston: You don't make me send you to the desk.
56:09
Sarah Gailey: It's by talking that shit.
56:11
Tad Eggleston: I don't really condone violence, but I will argue that there are times where I think that non-fatal violence is a form of speech.
56:25
Sarah Gailey: I feel the same way about condoning or not condoning violence, as we were talking about the beliefs of people on the far right. It's like, whether I condone violence or not.
56:33
Sarah Gailey: It's a reality of human life, and when people pretend that, again, coming and talking your shit should be free, it's like…
56:42
Sarah Gailey: Yeah, say what you want, and some people are gonna talk back with their hands.
56:46
Tad Eggleston: Right.
56:47
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
56:48
Tad Eggleston: Alright.
56:50
Tad Eggleston: Well, I'm gonna say really quickly, before we get into the final questions that are, like, only semi-related, that this is actually why I love your books, comics or books, is that I feel like… and obviously why I love talking to you is that,
57:08
Tad Eggleston: I have to think about things. I have to think about new things. And even when I agree with lots of things.
57:18
Tad Eggleston: I never go into a conversation or read a book of yours without… without looking at something differently, without… without going, oh…
57:27
Tad Eggleston: That's an interesting take. I need to… stew on this.
57:33
Sarah Gailey: Does that make sense?
57:35
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, does that make sense? I, I love stewing, like, because I don't mean that in, like, a bad, you make me anxious, and I mean that in a, in a, like, every conversation we have, every, every work of yours I read, I feel…
57:50
Tad Eggleston: A little wiser at the end of it.
57:54
Tad Eggleston: just for having had it. So I thank you for that, and now we'll get into… now we'll get into closing questions. I have a new one since the last time you were on.
58:06
Sarah Gailey: Okay.
58:06
Tad Eggleston: There's the one closing question that you've been asked many times, so you might remember it, but the new one is,
58:12
Tad Eggleston: like… I've been doing this podcast for… for…
58:17
Tad Eggleston: This is the fifth year. We're in Season 5.
58:20
Tad Eggleston: And I feel like I live in the Twilight Zone now.
58:24
Tad Eggleston: I've made more friends in my 40s than I made in my teens.
58:29
Tad Eggleston: I… I… I feel like I have surreal experiences on a regular basis.
58:35
Tad Eggleston: like, that the people that I'll text baseball about, that, like, the 30-year-old me, like, if you even told me I was gonna get to talk to them for 5 minutes in my life, I would have gone, yeah, whatever.
58:47
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I get to say my friend Sarah Gailey when I see one of your books, like…
58:53
Tad Eggleston: it's just weird in all of the most wonderful ways, and I have found that
59:00
Tad Eggleston: This is a really common thing in the comics community. All of us have these surreal, pinch-ourselves moments, or…
59:12
Tad Eggleston: life changes or whatever. So I started collecting the stories. Tell me about…
59:18
Tad Eggleston: a surreal moment or thing that when you think about and you go, oh wow, this is… this is something that's part of my life now. You almost have to, like, pinch yourself, or you sit there going, little Sarah would have said, yeah, whatever!
59:34
Sarah Gailey: This one's so easy. I just, was at WonderCon, and got to be on a panel about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, because I wrote a 16-issue run of Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics.
59:46
Tad Eggleston: I'm not even a Buffy fan, I'm just a Gailey fan.
59:51
Tad Eggleston: I hope you…
59:52
Sarah Gailey: loose.
59:52
Sarah Gailey: included, one of the people who created HellmouthCon, which is the big Buffy fandom con.
1:00:00
Sarah Gailey: And, the actress who played Drusilla on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Juliet Landau. And there were… there were other people on that panel, but that is the surreal thing, was sitting between those two people, and not feeling like…
1:00:18
Sarah Gailey: not feeling holy shit feelings, greater or smaller than the feelings I feel about, you know, my artistic collaborators on my comics, the editors who I get to work with, the people who I get to interact with every day in this job.
1:00:33
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:00:35
Sarah Gailey: That was a really surreal feeling, sitting there and realizing these are two people who
1:00:40
Sarah Gailey: objectively, I am… I am impressed by, I respect a great, great deal, and I'm not…
1:00:50
Sarah Gailey: sweating bullets about it, because I also have an email in my inbox.
1:00:55
Tad Eggleston: customs.
1:00:55
Sarah Gailey: so-and-so, who I can't name right now, who… who, like, I feel the same way about.
1:01:01
Sarah Gailey: The equalization of… artists over the course of my career has been incredibly surreal. Just this feeling of, like.
1:01:11
Sarah Gailey: Oh, everyone is as important as everyone else.
1:01:14
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I still have to… Cause I, I…
1:01:20
Tad Eggleston: like, like, I… while you were at WonderCon, I was at C2E2, and I… I… I moderated my first four panels this year.
1:01:29
Tad Eggleston: And…
1:01:29
Sarah Gailey: Congratulations!
1:01:30
Tad Eggleston: the… The names on those panels are insane.
1:01:35
Tad Eggleston: You know, I had… I had Jeffrey Brown and Lucy Knisley on a panel. I had… I had,
1:01:46
Tad Eggleston: Terry Moore and Spike Trotman and Greg Petrie on a panel, you know? Eisner winners, and bestsellers, and whatnot, and, like.
1:01:59
Tad Eggleston: they all said yes when I wrote to them, and they all thanked me for having them there, and whatnot, and it's like, wait a minute, like…
1:02:10
Tad Eggleston: I came to this con to work. I'm a peer of these people, not… not just the fan running around, and that was… that was a weird and cool feeling.
1:02:21
Sarah Gailey: I think that's the cool thing about getting to interact with creators, is just that… that growing realization that all of us are doing a job, many of us are doing a job that we love.
1:02:33
Sarah Gailey: And… we're co-workers. Like.
1:02:36
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:02:37
Sarah Gailey: And this is my, you know, this is my coworker who, has been to the Oscars
1:02:42
Sarah Gailey: and, you know, walked so many red carpets that they've lost count. And this is my coworker who lives in a studio apartment in Silver Lake and is grinding out
1:02:54
Sarah Gailey: drafts day after day, and it's like…
1:02:56
Sarah Gailey: Yeah, these are… these are my coworkers, and all of them are amazing, and all of them are human beings, and it's like…
1:03:04
Sarah Gailey: Integrating the idea of both of those things at the same time is such a landmark.
1:03:09
Tad Eggleston: It is. It's… and it's… I mean, I mean, going back a little bit, it's… it's why…
1:03:15
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I've always…
1:03:17
Tad Eggleston: disliked anything that smacks of dehumanizing the other at all, but it has become such a big deal to me.
1:03:27
Tad Eggleston: When people on the left art.
1:03:31
Tad Eggleston: Even brushing the border.
1:03:34
Tad Eggleston: Of dehumanizing anybody on the right at this point, because it's like, no, wait a minute!
1:03:39
Tad Eggleston: You can't sit there, going, that's their problem.
1:03:44
Tad Eggleston: and then turn around and do it. And beyond that, like, I know so many people across so many different spectrums right now, because of what I do with this podcast that, oh, they're human beings, with their own lives, and their own needs, and their own time, and their own…
1:04:00
Tad Eggleston: whatever, you don't get to decide what's important to them. You don't get to decide whether or not they're smart, or whether or not they pay enough attention.
1:04:13
Tad Eggleston: They're humans You get to… you get to treat them like humans, and do your best.
1:04:19
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:04:24
Tad Eggleston: But this is a really cool industry, isn't it?
1:04:27
Sarah Gailey: Yeah.
1:04:29
Tad Eggleston: you need to go, and the next one's in April, Like, next April.
1:04:34
Tad Eggleston: to Comics Crossroads Columbus. You belong there, either as a table or as a fan. Either way, doesn't matter. Just because what you were describing, I've seen…
1:04:48
Tad Eggleston: Like, boom, boom, boom tables.
1:04:51
Tad Eggleston: that's the one place that you'll see it. You'll see, like, the table of the handmade zines
1:04:59
Tad Eggleston: Shelly and Philip Bond.
1:05:02
Tad Eggleston: The Society of Political Cartoonists. Dennis Kitchen, more handmade scenes.
1:05:12
Tad Eggleston: You know what I mean?
1:05:14
Tad Eggleston: And it's just everybody's only tied by… by comics. They love comics.
1:05:20
Tad Eggleston: It's not even, like…
1:05:22
Tad Eggleston: What you won't see is cosplay, or at least cosplay by anybody over the age of, like, 10.
1:05:29
Sarah Gailey: Oh, that's a shame.
1:05:31
Tad Eggleston: Well, but it's also a much smaller con. I mean, how often do you see cosplay at, like, SPX?
1:05:37
Sarah Gailey: Well, you know what? I… most years, I'm not able to do it this year, but most years, I do, the Napa Valley
1:05:43
Sarah Gailey: Comic-Con, which is held at the Napa Valley Library.
1:05:48
Sarah Gailey: In their parking lot.
1:05:51
Sarah Gailey: And it's awesome, because this community of really excited readers comes out, and you get cosplay of all ages. It's like a fairly, you know, it's small compared to, like, an SDCC or WonderCon or whatever.
1:06:04
Sarah Gailey: But they're passionate, and one of my favorite things I've ever seen at any con of any kind was… happened there. There was this little kid, like 3 years old, dressed as Spider-Man.
1:06:16
Sarah Gailey: And someone showed up in this incredible Godzilla cosplay.
1:06:21
Sarah Gailey: Huge. Like, 7 feet tall.
1:06:26
Sarah Gailey: And the Godzilla is coming toward these front steps of the library.
1:06:31
Sarah Gailey: And Spider-Man is coming down the steps, and sees Godzilla.
1:06:36
Sarah Gailey: And the person, like, the handler who was with the Godzilla cosplayer, goes, Help, Spider-Man, Godzilla's here!
1:06:43
Sarah Gailey: And this little, tiny kid starts doing Spider-Man, like, leaping around this Godzilla and flinging webs at him.
1:06:50
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:06:50
Sarah Gailey: and trying to take him down, and this Godzilla cosplayer goes with it immediately, and, you know, lets Spider-Man win, and this kid was like…
1:06:59
Sarah Gailey: you know, at an age where imagination, play, and reality, not totally distinguishable. And you could see the moment when this kid was like, I think I just saved the library from Godzilla.
1:07:11
Sarah Gailey: Right. It was just… I mean, that's what… that's what these communities are for.
1:07:16
Tad Eggleston: I did not mean to, like, have it come off like I don't like cosplay, or that it was a bonus that there wasn't cosplay. Mostly, it's that, like.
1:07:28
Tad Eggleston: There's not as much superheroes.
1:07:31
Tad Eggleston: They've got Raina Telgemeyer, but they don't have Scott Snyder.
1:07:36
Tad Eggleston: Does that make sense? Right.
1:07:37
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. So, like, the cosplay tends to be different at CXC, and more kid-oriented, though I have talked to enough of the organizers to know that they'd be willing to have superhero people, so, like, who knows? That could change. You should go out and encourage the cosplay contingent.
1:07:57
Sarah Gailey: Great! That's what I'm here for.
1:08:01
Tad Eggleston: Actually, there's often cosplay at the karaoke after-party.
1:08:06
Sarah Gailey: Oh, nice.
1:08:08
Tad Eggleston: I mean, not, like, a ton-ton, but there is… is sometimes. So, like, I mean, there's all sorts of… but it is comics-focused, because it's… it's Jeff Smith and Tom Spurgeon's con.
1:08:20
Tad Eggleston: And the Billy Ireland Museum at Ohio State is, like, the largest collection of
1:08:28
Tad Eggleston: original comic book art in the United States.
1:08:33
Tad Eggleston: So that's the basis of it. Great. Alright, the question that you've had to answer every time now, and then you can go eat. Tell me something you love.
1:08:45
Tad Eggleston: Preferably a comic, but we don't really have rules. Preferably storytelling, but again, with the rules. But something that you love…
1:08:53
Tad Eggleston: That not enough people around you have experienced.
1:08:56
Tad Eggleston: You'd really like them to, so that you have more people to talk about it with.
1:09:02
Sarah Gailey: There is a, a…
1:09:05
Sarah Gailey: I guess graphic novel, that I have read many times, that I re-read recently, and that I'm actually pitching an essay on about how not enough people have read it and shit. It's called The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil.
1:09:18
Sarah Gailey: And…
1:09:19
Tad Eggleston: I don't know if I know this one.
1:09:21
Sarah Gailey: It's gorgeous. It's this beautiful book about…
1:09:26
Sarah Gailey: Structure and entropy and how societies are impacted by
1:09:33
Sarah Gailey: Unfathomable disaster that was neither… like, the kind of disaster that's neither predictable nor preventable.
1:09:40
Sarah Gailey: And… It's not didactic, it's not a morality tale, but it always makes me think
1:09:53
Sarah Gailey: more deeply about how I'm approaching
1:09:57
Sarah Gailey: The frightful parts of the world around me.
1:10:01
Tad Eggleston: And he loves the Bengals.
1:10:07
Tad Eggleston: Alright.
1:10:08
Tad Eggleston: I… I am in.
1:10:10
Tad Eggleston: I will have read this by the next time we talk.
1:10:13
Sarah Gailey: Fantastic, I hope you love it.
1:10:14
Tad Eggleston: Because… because I… you're also on the short… short list of people that you make a recommendation. It's not a, oh, I should get around to that sooner. It's a…
1:10:27
Tad Eggleston: I… I must get now?
1:10:29
Sarah Gailey: I'm honored.
1:10:32
Tad Eggleston: I went… well, you've never steered me wrong.
1:10:36
Tad Eggleston: you know, there's a short list of people that, like, I mean, Alex DeCampi makes a recommendation, and it's like, okay, ordering.
1:10:42
Sarah Gailey: Yeah.
1:10:46
Tad Eggleston: You know, I'm a pretty well-read guy, so when I run into people that I both think are better read than I am, and…
1:10:56
Tad Eggleston: Have really good taste.
1:10:59
Tad Eggleston: I want to know what they want to read.
1:11:03
Tad Eggleston: You're going on tour again, so people should find you at various places, though the closest you're coming to me is Des Moines, and it's a weekend that I don't think I can get out there.
1:11:13
Tad Eggleston: Which makes me sad, because I might have.
1:11:16
Tad Eggleston: I'm thinking about it.
1:11:18
Tad Eggleston: Like, it's still during the school year, and I think you're there on a Saturday?
1:11:23
Tad Eggleston: And essentially, what I'd have to do is go out to my mom's in Galena on…
1:11:28
Tad Eggleston: And as I say this, and my mom's gonna listen to it, she might actually, like, start pressuring me, so I'm gonna say it anyway, and it'll be the test to see if mom's listening to the end of the episode.
1:11:38
Sarah Gailey: Hi, Mom.
1:11:39
Tad Eggleston: Hi, Adam. Hi, Britt. Hi, John.
1:11:43
Tad Eggleston: because I think your… I think Des Moines is your last stop, and I think it…
1:11:48
Sarah Gailey: Yes, it's my last stop.
1:11:49
Tad Eggleston: I want to say, May 16th? Does that sound right? Yes. Saturday. So, I'd have to go from…
1:12:00
Tad Eggleston: home to Galena, which is, like, 3 hours Friday night. I'd have to make, like, the 10-hour round trip to Des Moines
1:12:09
Tad Eggleston: from Galena.
1:12:12
Tad Eggleston: Might only be 8-hour round trip, but I'm pretty certain Des Moines' almost 4 hours from Galeno.
1:12:19
Tad Eggleston: That sounds perfect.
1:12:20
Sarah Gailey: pretty miserable.
1:12:21
Tad Eggleston: Well, no, I mean, I've done crazier because I wanted to, so it's not impossible. But I had to do that because… because…
1:12:31
Tad Eggleston: as, like, kind of… my mom just retired, and her birthday's May 14th, and Mother's Day's in there too, and we haven't seen her in a while, so she's got, like, birthday presents for both my wife and I, and I think even…
1:12:44
Tad Eggleston: I think we've got our Christmas presents, I don't remember. So, we were trying to get a… so, right before you announced your dates.
1:12:53
Tad Eggleston: we'd arranged to meet halfway between Galena and us to go to a baseball game in Appleton, Wisconsin.
1:13:01
Tad Eggleston: on Sunday the 17th.
1:13:03
Tad Eggleston: So, I would have to do all of that in…
1:13:07
Tad Eggleston: So if I miss you, that's why. But by putting it out in the ether, my mom's probably gonna pressure me.
1:13:15
Tad Eggleston: But seriously, one of these times… like, Chicago and Milwaukee are both an hour away, Sarah, and I could now book you at a bookstore in Algonquin. I will bring the crowd to you. We've got space, a comfy couch!
1:13:31
Sarah Gailey: Well, here's hoping that I make my way out there soon.
1:13:34
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean, what's with all of these bookstores that skip sh… er, book tours that skip Chicago?
1:13:40
Tad Eggleston: It doesn't make sense to me.
1:13:43
Sarah Gailey: I cannot speak to that, unfortunately.
1:13:45
Tad Eggleston: You can't speak to it, or you… or it's the publisher that plans stuff?
1:13:53
Sarah Gailey: It's the publisher that plans it, and they've got all kinds of internal math that they do, and… Okay.
1:14:00
Tad Eggleston: I just wanted to make certain that it wasn't… you can't speak to that, because you didn't want to piss off Chicago, and really, you'd given them the, we don't do Chicago!
1:14:09
Sarah Gailey: No, no, no, no, I love Chicago. Every time I've come there, I've had a great time. The people are nice, the popcorn's delicious, like…
1:14:16
Tad Eggleston: Well, maybe, maybe between the comics and the books, they'll send you to ALA this year. It's back.
1:14:23
Sarah Gailey: Fingers crossed.
1:14:24
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:14:25
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. So… Alright, for Sarah Gailey, the comic is Neighborhood Watch. The book that's just around the corner is
1:14:36
Tad Eggleston: make me better.
1:14:39
Tad Eggleston: It's always a pleasure, and for Sarah Gailey, we will see you after the next page.