Latest / 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast / With Great Power #301... 22 Panels with Ruby Carter

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With Great Power #301... 22 Panels with Ruby Carter · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

0:00
Tad Eggleston: It's two buttons now.
0:02
Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels. My guest tonight is Ruby Carter. Well, to be completely honest, I did almost no homework except reading your… your…
0:14
Tad Eggleston: Most of your, your, your book… Bird Comics today.
0:21
Tad Eggleston: and therefore, I'm going to have to have you introduce you, because I imagine you want to tell the world more about yourself than you're a friend of… friend of the podcast, Daria Faruhar. I mean, that's high praise, right there.
0:37
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, Dario's always doing so much around the city, it's so exciting.
0:43
Tad Eggleston: will take over the world one day. Yeah. I'm certain of this. And it will be good. She will be a benevolent leader.
0:49
Ruby Giles-Carter: This is true, I mean, she's going to law school, like…
0:52
Tad Eggleston: I know.
0:53
Ruby Giles-Carter: No, yeah, it's… this is true. So, I'm Ruby Carter, I grew up in Chicago, I started getting into comics, in high school, I.
1:05
Tad Eggleston: Dare I ask how long ago high school was?
1:08
Ruby Giles-Carter: So I'm 24 right now, so…
1:10
Tad Eggleston: Okay, so you're older than Daria, but still younger than my son.
1:15
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah, so, my, like.
1:19
Ruby Giles-Carter: introduction to alternative comics was Koosh Comics, that really, my brain open, and, I started going to Quimby's and their, like, zine nights, where people just kind of, like, hang and draw zines, and that's where I drew the first page of what would later become Bird Comic, which is now
1:38
Ruby Giles-Carter: A book.
1:39
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:40
Tad Eggleston: Which is always fun. It's fun when something becomes a book.
1:46
Ruby Giles-Carter: And so unexpected. I never thought, like, drawing that would continue, but it did.
1:51
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean… You clearly enjoyed yourself.
1:57
Tad Eggleston: Give me the front counter pitch for a bird comic. If you were… if you were working at Quimby's, and…
2:03
Tad Eggleston: Trying to sell the book. Who would you sell it to? How would you sell it?
2:07
Ruby Giles-Carter: So, this book is, a series of
2:11
Ruby Giles-Carter: vignettes, and they're kind of, like, they're… it has, like, a dry humor. It's, kind of funny and relatable. People find it, and it's about this kind of, humanoid bird who walks around the city aimlessly.
2:25
Ruby Giles-Carter: I think it's kind of like a human-pigeon hybrid, and it's very, like, minimalistic with, like, like a perpetual blank stare in its eye.
2:36
Tad Eggleston: that… That's an accurate description of what I read.
2:43
Tad Eggleston: what… I mean, they're human stories, but they don't have to be autobiographical. Where do you take your inspiration?
2:53
Ruby Giles-Carter: It's 100% autobiographical, and then I.
2:57
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
2:58
Ruby Giles-Carter: about it.
2:59
Tad Eggleston: You just made yourself a bird.
3:01
Ruby Giles-Carter: But, like, I changed the setting, I changed the thoughts. It's hard to explain, it's kind of like I collage different things over, like, so I'll be standing, like, somewhere, and then I'll remember standing in that street corner, and then I'll, like, collage a bird over it in my mind, and then…
3:18
Ruby Giles-Carter: Right over it.
3:20
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
3:22
Tad Eggleston: Okay? How… We'll see. Some days I'm great at questions, and other days I'm not.
3:31
Tad Eggleston: You started at just a Xenite at Quimby's.
3:36
Tad Eggleston: What made you keep going? Had you… I'm at your website, so I see that you have a handful of other things
3:43
Tad Eggleston: there as well. Was that stuff that was done before, after?
3:47
Ruby Giles-Carter: Lightning? .
3:48
Tad Eggleston: Well, after, but I would say what made me keep going in comics is…
3:52
Ruby Giles-Carter: I… so I started making zines in, like, the 8-page thing, so that will, like… or, no, no, no, the 8-panel thing, where you have one piece of paper and you, you know, cut it up. Right. And I made, like.
4:03
Tad Eggleston: I sometimes call them the McLeod comics, because the first time I came across them was when he…
4:09
Tad Eggleston: When he explained in Understanding Comics that all you needed was a single piece of paper to make a comic.
4:15
Ruby Giles-Carter: Oh yeah, got that book right on my desk, in fact.
4:19
Tad Eggleston: a great book.
4:20
Ruby Giles-Carter: But I…
4:23
Ruby Giles-Carter: I would always, like… I always tell people who are new to comics to make those exact zines, because it's just the most accessible way to start making comics, right? So I made a bunch of those, and then,
4:38
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah, things are going from there. I make, I did a series called Vogue, which is, like.
4:45
Ruby Giles-Carter: Vogue for bugs, and I'm.
4:49
Tad Eggleston: I like that.
4:50
Ruby Giles-Carter: I'm working on possibly… I'm probably gonna make a sequel to Bird Comic, some other things. I'm working on,
4:58
Ruby Giles-Carter: Daria has an anthology that I'm gonna be in.
5:01
Tad Eggleston: Nice.
5:03
Ruby Giles-Carter: Of course she does. And of course she didn't mention it to me over the weekend.
5:08
Tad Eggleston: She's too humble sometimes.
5:12
Tad Eggleston: Mom.
5:15
Tad Eggleston: Talk to me about your comics biography.
5:18
Tad Eggleston: So, so we went through your bibliography really quick, but your biography, like…
5:24
Tad Eggleston: what are the early comics that you remember reading? You know, were you a comic strip girl? Were you a superhero girl? You know…
5:33
Ruby Giles-Carter: Oh, I've never read a superhero comic, I think.
5:35
Tad Eggleston: And that's fine. That's even good. I appreciate that.
5:39
Ruby Giles-Carter: I read… I grew up reading Calvin and Hobbes, then I read.
5:42
Tad Eggleston: Oh!
5:42
Ruby Giles-Carter: Algermeyer, and then, the book that, like, change me.
5:50
Ruby Giles-Carter: was Ghost World. I read that as one of my.
5:53
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, Klaus.
5:54
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah, one of the first.
5:55
Tad Eggleston: Another Chicago native.
5:57
Ruby Giles-Carter: yeah, substantial comics that I'd read, and I think that I, like, Something about…
6:02
Tad Eggleston: Wait a minute, wait a minute.
6:04
Tad Eggleston: I need to stop you.
6:05
Ruby Giles-Carter: Okay.
6:05
Tad Eggleston: Raina Telgemeyer and Calvin and Hobbes are substantial comics.
6:11
Tad Eggleston: Okay, yeah.
6:13
Ruby Giles-Carter: Hmm, I shouldn't insult them in this way. I would never… formally apologize.
6:18
Tad Eggleston: Both of them are genius.
6:20
Ruby Giles-Carter: Adult comics that…
6:22
Tad Eggleston: It's better.
6:26
Tad Eggleston: Yep.
6:28
Tad Eggleston: Sorry, didn't mean to throw you under the bus there, but I…
6:31
Ruby Giles-Carter: Don't love mine.
6:31
Tad Eggleston: my Raina and my…
6:33
Ruby Giles-Carter: Oh yeah, they're, I mean.
6:34
Tad Eggleston: my Bill Waterson.
6:35
Ruby Giles-Carter: I still read them.
6:37
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
6:38
Tad Eggleston: I have twice sat in large audiences to hear Reyna talk.
6:44
Tad Eggleston: Where?
6:46
Tad Eggleston: Once in… Columbus, when she was at CXC.
6:50
Tad Eggleston: Columbus and the Billy Ireland Cartoon Art Museum is also where ALL of the original Calvin and Hobbes is.
6:58
Ruby Giles-Carter: Except the stuff that he's given away as gifts.
7:01
Tad Eggleston: And once, just last year,
7:05
Tad Eggleston: My friend Lucy Knisley is one of Raina's old-time friends.
7:10
Tad Eggleston: And she interviewed her.
7:13
Ruby Giles-Carter: Awesome.
7:13
Tad Eggleston: on the stage at, I forget which theater, in Downers Grove.
7:18
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah.
7:19
Tad Eggleston: So I went and checked that out.
7:20
Tad Eggleston: Good to see.
7:22
Ruby Giles-Carter: most recent CXC?
7:24
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
7:25
Ruby Giles-Carter: Me too. That was my first time.
7:27
Tad Eggleston: Oh, you were there.
7:28
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
7:29
Tad Eggleston: So great.
7:30
Ruby Giles-Carter: I got to see an original,
7:34
Ruby Giles-Carter: Charles Burns. Yes. And a bunch of Lynn Berry originals.
7:38
Tad Eggleston: Yep.
7:40
Tad Eggleston: I assume you went to the Carol Tyler exhibit?
7:43
Ruby Giles-Carter: I didn't get to go.
7:45
Tad Eggleston: Thanks.
7:46
Ruby Giles-Carter: I know.
7:47
Ruby Giles-Carter: It was terrible, that was, like, the one thing.
7:50
Tad Eggleston: I mean, you got to see all of the originals, all you had to do was go upstairs.
7:54
Ruby Giles-Carter: It was closed!
7:56
Tad Eggleston: Oh, it was closed?
7:59
Tad Eggleston: Where… I mean… At CXC? It was open…
8:05
Tad Eggleston: all through CXC. If you did any back room tours, or were in the reading room, you just had to go upstairs.
8:15
Ruby Giles-Carter: No, I was just sitting at my table.
8:17
Tad Eggleston: That's fair.
8:18
Ruby Giles-Carter: Wow.
8:19
Tad Eggleston: That's fair.
8:20
Tad Eggleston: I mean…
8:21
Ruby Giles-Carter: I thought that after hours, I was like, oh, surely there's… this will be it, but now the library was…
8:27
Tad Eggleston: This is… this is where I tell…
8:29
Tad Eggleston: my listeners as well, when you're going to CXC, it is worth bending over backwards.
8:36
Ruby Giles-Carter: Oh, yeah.
8:36
Tad Eggleston: to get there Friday during the day.
8:39
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah.
8:39
Tad Eggleston: Because you should go… you should go to the reception Friday night.
8:44
Tad Eggleston: Where everybody hangs out with everybody, and it doesn't matter who they are.
8:49
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah. I mean?
8:51
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah, I was, I was actually, like, driving in late Friday night, so…
8:55
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. No, I understand. No, no, like, 2 years ago, I wound up,
9:02
Tad Eggleston: I hate it when I can't remember names.
9:12
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, 2 years ago, I wound up watching Kate Beaton's kid for 5 minutes while she went to…
9:19
Tad Eggleston: accept an award, just because I happened to be the person closest to her on the stairs when they called her.
9:27
Tad Eggleston: That's how the reception is. It's worth finding a way to get in early. Yeah.
9:35
Tad Eggleston: But, you know, there's jobs and that sort of thing. So…
9:39
Tad Eggleston: Calvin and Hobbes, to Rainey Telgemeyer, to Dan Klaus. What attracts you the most about… I mean, those… that's a… that's a reasonable pathway.
9:52
Tad Eggleston: But talk to me about what you liked, what made you want to.
9:55
Ruby Giles-Carter: Okay.
9:57
Ruby Giles-Carter: what made I…
9:59
Ruby Giles-Carter: Well, okay, I was saying about Ghost World that what, like, struck me the most, and, like, I think, like, stuck with me tonally through the comics I like to make now is, kind of this sense of, like.
10:10
Ruby Giles-Carter: just, like, deadening realism that he's able to convey through fictional characters, and how it's just, like, through this subtlety you can get, like, it's just kind of like a…
10:20
Ruby Giles-Carter: like…
10:21
Ruby Giles-Carter: striking portrait of, like, a real human experience, and something about that feels just kind of aching and melancholy to me.
10:30
Ruby Giles-Carter: And although I really like, I enjoy fantasy, but I prefer to use, like, kind of…
10:38
Ruby Giles-Carter: a lot of realism, too, because I just… mmm…
10:43
Ruby Giles-Carter: I don't know about if realism is the right word. I guess a lot of.
10:47
Tad Eggleston: I was about to say, you made yourself a bird.
10:50
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah.
10:51
Ruby Giles-Carter: But, I guess, what's the, you know…
10:57
Ruby Giles-Carter: I like, I'm interested in exploring the, like.
11:03
Ruby Giles-Carter: nitty-gritty of, like, real life, whether that… it could be through fantasy rather than, like.
11:07
Tad Eggleston: Right.
11:07
Ruby Giles-Carter: That's epic.
11:09
Tad Eggleston: You like to be about the human condition rather than the epic Battle between good and evil.
11:16
Ruby Giles-Carter: Right, totally.
11:18
Tad Eggleston: And, like, that starts with Calvin and Hobbes and Raina Telgemeyer, because that's what… I mean, even with the fantasy of Calvin and Hobbes, that's all it is.
11:26
Tad Eggleston: It's exploring humanity, it's exploring… How you… how you fit in the world.
11:35
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
11:36
Tad Eggleston: So…
11:37
Ruby Giles-Carter: But I've read recently that has been really.
11:41
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
11:41
Ruby Giles-Carter: Incredible, I would say. Like, I mean, that was, like.
11:45
Ruby Giles-Carter: three-ish books that I thought of early on, but I… hmm…
11:50
Tad Eggleston: When were you reading Ghost World, just so I have a bit of a timeline?
11:55
Ruby Giles-Carter: 2019?
11:56
Tad Eggleston: So you discovered it in high school?
11:59
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yes.
12:01
Ruby Giles-Carter: Along with Koosh Comics, yeah. And now I…
12:04
Tad Eggleston: And discovering Kush Comics in high school is impressive, by the way, because I was, I think, 40 when I discovered Koosh Comics.
12:11
Ruby Giles-Carter: Oh, you didn't go to Quimby's before that?
12:14
Tad Eggleston: I did go to Quimby's, I just didn't notice those. When I, when I discovered them was, was when,
12:20
Tad Eggleston: I found out that it was where one of my favorite… favorite Matt Madden comics had come… had been printed first, and I went.
12:27
Tad Eggleston: I gotta go.
12:28
Tad Eggleston: That, and I think Ryan Carey.
12:31
Tad Eggleston: pitched them to me. I went, okay, I have to look more at this. And unfortunately, I'm a suburban guy, and always have been, as much as I prefer the city, but, like.
12:43
Tad Eggleston: First, I lived with parents who were in the suburbs, then my kids were in the suburbs, then my wife came from South Dakota, and the idea of going to live in the city is scary, so I'm… I'm stuck.
12:56
Ruby Giles-Carter: Oh, yeah.
12:57
Tad Eggleston: In the suburbs. I'm thankfully, in a suburb that I enjoy, but… but, you know.
13:02
Tad Eggleston: So going to Quimby's is, like.
13:05
Tad Eggleston: More of a treat than a regular thing.
13:09
Tad Eggleston: You know… But yes.
13:15
Tad Eggleston: No, I get it. I am uncool and read way too much Spider-Man.
13:20
Tad Eggleston: I get that.
13:22
Tad Eggleston: You're allowed to look at me like an old man that doesn't know comics.
13:26
Tad Eggleston: I'll… I'll school you, but you're allowed to look at me, though.
13:32
Tad Eggleston: So you discovered, Klaus, yeah, Dan Klaus and, and, and, Kush in High School.
13:39
Tad Eggleston: And was there anything in particular in Kush, or did you just, like… because one of the cool things about Kush is, like.
13:47
Tad Eggleston: Every issue is something a little bit different.
13:50
Tad Eggleston: You know, they find some…
13:51
Ruby Giles-Carter: Right next to my bookshelf, and I bet I can find that in 5 seconds.
13:56
Ruby Giles-Carter: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 periods.
13:58
Tad Eggleston: Hey, hey! Look at that!
14:00
Ruby Giles-Carter: This is… Coosh number 37.
14:04
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
14:05
Ruby Giles-Carter: cover, I don't know, I don't know how.
14:06
Tad Eggleston: It's a cool cover.
14:07
Ruby Giles-Carter: But, to be fair.
14:08
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
14:09
Tad Eggleston: It's got, it's got, it's got a grouch-like rabbit.
14:15
Tad Eggleston: Painting on a wall.
14:18
Ruby Giles-Carter: Got a little, yeah, beautiful, colorful brick wall, some flying plastic bag, of course,
14:32
Ruby Giles-Carter: we got Tommy Parrish in here.
14:35
Tad Eggleston: That's weird.
14:35
Ruby Giles-Carter: There are a lot of names, and I'm reading out the ones…
14:38
Tad Eggleston: Tommy Parrish on a while ago.
14:40
Ruby Giles-Carter: Oh yeah.
14:42
Ruby Giles-Carter: Simon Hanselman,
14:50
Ruby Giles-Carter: so many of these. This was an issue that, like, everybody… everybody really likes. Like, when I…
14:55
Tad Eggleston: Right.
14:55
Ruby Giles-Carter: A lot of people were like.
14:57
Tad Eggleston: No, I mean, just already, it seems like a good way to wind up Very quickly learning about the…
15:07
Tad Eggleston: Alternative comic scene.
15:09
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah.
15:11
Tad Eggleston: Which… which seems to be… to be your jam. So what would you say are your…
15:19
Tad Eggleston: Top 3 not named Ghost World, because it's clear that Ghost World is big to you, but I want 3 more titles.
15:26
Ruby Giles-Carter: Okay, so…
15:27
Tad Eggleston: Trying to get a feeling for Ruby's taste.
15:30
Ruby Giles-Carter: list, because I've only just started reading again. Like, I've read… like, Ghost World, reading that in high school was a bit of an anomaly.
15:38
Ruby Giles-Carter: a couple years ago, I was like, I… I can't be a cartoonist if I'm not gonna read, so I started reading again. I still… there are still a lot of amazing artists that I still haven't read, so I would see top 3… top three titles.
15:50
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
15:51
Ruby Giles-Carter: Okay.
15:52
Tad Eggleston: I mean, unless you want to give me top 3 artists, whatever.
15:56
Ruby Giles-Carter: Hmm…
15:57
Tad Eggleston: Give me 3 sets of 3.
15:59
Ruby Giles-Carter: Okay, okay, I will.
16:01
Tad Eggleston: Just like threes.
16:02
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah. It's a good, good number.
16:05
Ruby Giles-Carter: Oh man, gonna have to edit this part out, cause I'm gonna need to, like…
16:13
Tad Eggleston: I'll just keep babbling.
16:14
Tad Eggleston: Because I hate editing, it takes too much time.
16:17
Ruby Giles-Carter: Okay.
16:18
Tad Eggleston: I'm finally posting the weekend episode as I'm talking to you, because I should have gotten it up Sunday night, and I've just been slammed.
16:26
Tad Eggleston: So, now you're asking me to edit, too? Are you kidding?
16:36
Tad Eggleston: Okay, I'll make it a little bit easier.
16:39
Tad Eggleston: Have you read any other Klaus?
16:43
Ruby Giles-Carter: Ice Haven, and I need to reread it, because I…
16:47
Ruby Giles-Carter: just don't remember it that well, and I feel like I have… Better processing of it now.
16:52
Tad Eggleston: Because I've loved some of his newer books.
16:56
Ruby Giles-Carter: Like what? He was at CXC a couple years ago.
17:00
Tad Eggleston: Was it Monica that came out that year?
17:05
Tad Eggleston: I think Patience was the one before that.
17:09
Tad Eggleston: He's just been… Messing around with, with, different…
17:21
Tad Eggleston: old genres, so it's like, Monica was kind of a… Was one part just a…
17:31
Tad Eggleston: Urban Housewife story, but at the same time, it was like…
17:35
Ruby Giles-Carter: Done in romance comic style, war comic style…
17:40
Tad Eggleston: You know, you could tell that it was, like, this… this comic scholar…
17:46
Tad Eggleston: Messing around with the medium to tell a weird story that on one level was very normal, on another level was…
17:55
Ruby Giles-Carter: That's very much.
17:56
Tad Eggleston: house.
17:57
Tad Eggleston: is Dan Klaus.
18:04
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I never know how to describe Dan Klaus. Dan Klaus and Chris Ware are the two guys that… I appreciate their work, and even sometimes love their work, and always feel like I'm not
18:15
Tad Eggleston: seeing something.
18:17
Ruby Giles-Carter: Hmm.
18:20
Tad Eggleston: I also find their work dense enough that going over it and over and over.
18:24
Ruby Giles-Carter: Oh, yeah.
18:24
Tad Eggleston: It's hard to do.
18:27
Tad Eggleston: to go find that thing. It's like, I'll revisit it every couple of years, rather than just hyper-fixating on it, because my stack of two-read comics is just…
18:37
Tad Eggleston: Too tall to easily hyperfixate on one.
18:42
Tad Eggleston: Happens every once in a while.
18:45
Ruby Giles-Carter: I gotta say, I'm looking at this list of three, I'm pondering, and I can't pick a third one. That's what I say when I'm like, this list is incomplete. I've read a lot more than two comics, I swear, but, like, I feel like to be in the top three, it's a big spot, so…
19:00
Ruby Giles-Carter: Fee for vendetta.
19:02
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
19:03
Ruby Giles-Carter: 100 demons. So we got Alan Moore and…
19:06
Tad Eggleston: Linda Barry.
19:09
Tad Eggleston: I might be my favorite, Linda Berry. I think I… I think I'd put.
19:12
Ruby Giles-Carter: Or five.
19:13
Tad Eggleston: different… Alan Moore's ahead of that, though. I love FIFA Vendetta.
19:20
Tad Eggleston: I live for more than one.
19:21
Ruby Giles-Carter: Sure.
19:22
Tad Eggleston: What?
19:23
Ruby Giles-Carter: I like it more than Watchmen, for sure.
19:25
Tad Eggleston: Oh yeah, no, Watchmen would be below V for Vendetta for me.
19:28
Ruby Giles-Carter: Okay.
19:29
Tad Eggleston: Top of my list is… Ballad of Halo Jones.
19:35
Ruby Giles-Carter: Oh. And then… Then, Jack, be quick.
19:41
Tad Eggleston: probably a tie between Tom Strong and Top 10.
19:45
Tad Eggleston: I really liked his ABC Comics years. Also in the ABC Comics years was Promethea, which is outstanding.
19:54
Ruby Giles-Carter: Okay.
19:55
Tad Eggleston: And a lot of people I know would be upset that I put it below…
20:00
Tad Eggleston: Top 10 Tom Strong, and definitely upset that I put it below Jack B. Quick, but I love Jackie Quick, so fuck them all.
20:08
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah.
20:09
Tad Eggleston: Jack B. Quick's one of the silliest things he's ever done, but he did it really well.
20:14
Tad Eggleston: And I feel like there's at least one more Alan Moore thing that I adore.
20:18
Tad Eggleston: Oh, I love his, his run on Miracle Man.
20:23
Ruby Giles-Carter: Okay.
20:26
Tad Eggleston: I need to… I still need to read,
20:28
Tad Eggleston: Bo Jeffery saga, and I still need to read his…
20:36
Tad Eggleston: da-da-da-da.
20:37
Tad Eggleston: Lovecraft trilogy.
20:41
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah, Ballad is definitely my top of the to-read list by him.
20:45
Tad Eggleston: Oh, Ballad is amazing.
20:48
Tad Eggleston: Ballad is the one that I'm very, very sad that he didn't finish.
20:54
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it brings it to a decent conclusion.
20:57
Tad Eggleston: But apparently it was supposed to be 9 parts, and there were only 3 that came out.
21:04
Ruby Giles-Carter: But it's still, like, I feel like what I like best about his writing, like, I feel like he does this more than, like, anyone I read, is that he's the best in endings.
21:12
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
21:12
Ruby Giles-Carter: So, he's… even though it's not done, was he able to, like, deliver.
21:15
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, it hasn't… because they were… they were supposed to be… it was all published in 2000 AD, which is a weekly comics magazine.
21:24
Tad Eggleston: enrich it.
21:26
Tad Eggleston: So, each… each part was actually
21:30
Tad Eggleston: X number of chapters for issues of 2000 AD, so he'd wrapped a,
21:36
Tad Eggleston: a chapter very well, and the way it was set up was that, like, in some way, I mean, really, it was, like.
21:42
Tad Eggleston: it was supposed to be 9 books, and 3 books came out, if that makes sense. If you think in, like, a fantasy novel series sense, it would have been, like, a 9-volume series.
21:55
Tad Eggleston: But each one of them was supposed to stand alone, and just represent another…
22:01
Tad Eggleston: But… but I… I heard that there's legend that one… one day when he was lecturing somewhere, he, like, laid out everything that was supposed to come and never came, and, like.
22:15
Tad Eggleston: from what I've heard, I'm just sitting there going, oh my god, that would have been beautiful.
22:19
Ruby Giles-Carter: Hmm, yeah.
22:21
Tad Eggleston: But, you know… But yeah, he's a brilliant writer.
22:26
Tad Eggleston: Brilliant writer.
22:26
Ruby Giles-Carter: So, this year so far, I have a list in my planner of what I've read. I read Beautiful Darkness, and I read The Archway, which was self-published by Patrick Heil and, image on Michael Frank.
22:39
Ruby Giles-Carter: And… it really has me thinking about collaborative comics in a way I haven't before.
22:47
Tad Eggleston: Yeah?
22:48
Tad Eggleston: I mean, th-th-there… I… you know, so many people who love… Cartoonists…
22:58
Tad Eggleston: And a lot of indie cartoons… comics. Talk about the purest
23:04
Tad Eggleston: comics being the single artist one, because you get their total vision, that sort of thing. But I…
23:15
Tad Eggleston: I've talked to enough creative teams.
23:17
Tad Eggleston: that, like… what… they love, what makes Collaborative Comics special to them, is the things that Surprise them.
23:26
Tad Eggleston: The things that the writer lays out, and the artist does something else, and it… and… and…
23:33
Tad Eggleston: But not something else entirely, but doesn't, you know… and the result is…
23:39
Tad Eggleston: You wind up with things that are greater than the sums of their parts.
23:42
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
23:45
Ruby Giles-Carter: So what is really… what's really different about the archway is that it's two cartoonists, not… rather than, like, an artist-writer team, and so one person has only the left pages, and one person has only the right, and in between, in the seam of the book, is an archway that they pass
24:04
Ruby Giles-Carter: an item through every 10 pages, you know.
24:07
Tad Eggleston: Oh, nice.
24:08
Ruby Giles-Carter: And they can't see what each other is writing, except for the item that gets passed through.
24:15
Ruby Giles-Carter: And… it's…
24:17
Ruby Giles-Carter: I've never heard of anything like that, and I wanna do… I wanna do something similar, you know, with all my cartoonist friends, you know? Like…
24:24
Tad Eggleston: Well, this… this reminds me of… of two things. First,
24:28
Tad Eggleston: one of the last things put out by RAW, the… the Francoise… Moulet and Art Spiegelman's magazine.
24:38
Tad Eggleston: In fact, my friend Bob Sikoriak was the editor on it, and…
24:44
Tad Eggleston: got this one going. I've got it downstairs, I'm not gonna run and get it, but it's called the…
24:49
Tad Eggleston: The Exquisite Corp. The Exquisite Corpse?
24:53
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
24:54
Tad Eggleston: And, like, it's a who's who of indie comic.
24:59
Tad Eggleston: Creators of, like, the late 80s.
25:03
Tad Eggleston: doing… 3 panels apiece.
25:08
Tad Eggleston: using… using a skeleton that… that Bob had created as… as the… the main character.
25:15
Tad Eggleston: And the person before only gets to see the…
25:22
Tad Eggleston: 3 panel… or the… when you're drawing, you only get to see the three panels from the person before you.
25:28
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah.
25:29
Tad Eggleston: So, similar to what you're… but… that inspired…
25:36
Tad Eggleston: the Infinite Corpse, which is online, I'm gonna…
25:40
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah, I've seen that.
25:41
Tad Eggleston: You seen that? Okay.
25:43
Tad Eggleston: Where now they're up to 560 artists?
25:49
Tad Eggleston: Doing 3 panels of peach, and with, like, multiple different…
25:56
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I think at this point, you can, like.
25:58
Tad Eggleston: click on a comic, and then it'll give you multiple options on… on what the next three should be, or what the next author should be. So yeah, no, that… that sort of…
26:10
Tad Eggleston: That sort of collaborative comic making is really cool.
26:15
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. And thank you for tipping me to that, because I hadn't… hadn't heard of that.
26:22
Ruby Giles-Carter: What, hmm. Yeah, totally. I found it in… I was.
26:27
Tad Eggleston: title.
26:28
Ruby Giles-Carter: I was getting a tattoo, and they had, like, a little library of zines, and I just read it while I…
26:34
Ruby Giles-Carter: Really good.
26:34
Tad Eggleston: There you go. What tattoo parlor has a library of scenes? You gotta plug this tattoo parlor.
26:40
Ruby Giles-Carter: It's called, hmm, it's one of those, kind of, like… Very, like, artist studio vibe.
26:49
Tad Eggleston: Right.
26:50
Ruby Giles-Carter: find it.
26:55
Ruby Giles-Carter: Mind Palace, Chicago.
26:57
Tad Eggleston: Mind Palace Chicago. Well, shout out to Mind Palace Chicago.
27:01
Ruby Giles-Carter: They had cookies, too, like.
27:03
Tad Eggleston: Cookies and zines while you get your tattoo.
27:07
Ruby Giles-Carter: Nope.
27:09
Ruby Giles-Carter: So what, like, what do you… tell me more about what you think of, like, I don't know, what are some artist, writer.
27:17
Ruby Giles-Carter: Like, teams that you think work well together, or what makes people work well together as an artist-writer team, and what makes.
27:23
Tad Eggleston: Mom?
27:24
Ruby Giles-Carter: better alone.
27:25
Tad Eggleston: I think more times than not, though there are exceptions to this rule,
27:32
Tad Eggleston: The teams that get to know each other and become friends work best.
27:37
Tad Eggleston: Because… because they start developing their own shorthands.
27:41
Tad Eggleston: you know, I'll read anything that Brian Michael Bendis does with Michael Avon Oming.
27:46
Ruby Giles-Carter: Okay.
27:48
Tad Eggleston: I'll read… anything that Ed Brubaker does with… with Sean Phillips.
27:55
Tad Eggleston: More recently, I'll read anything that Chris Condon does with with Sean's son, Jacob.
28:03
Tad Eggleston: which makes it kind of cool that you've got father-son that have…
28:07
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah. Oh, yeah.
28:08
Tad Eggleston: both already develop… I mean, one has the long… Brubaker Phillips is, like…
28:13
Tad Eggleston: If you're into crime comics, they're… they're, like, THE tandem forever.
28:22
Tad Eggleston: But Alan Moore always seems to know how to get the best out of his artists. Tom King always seems to know how to get the best out of his artists.
28:30
Tad Eggleston: And then there are the artists that I think always manage to…
28:36
Tad Eggleston: to elevate whatever's put in front of them, like Bill Sienkiewicz.
28:41
Tad Eggleston: No matter who he works with, it's, like, the best work that writer's ever done.
28:45
Tad Eggleston: Possibly including Alan Moore.
28:48
Ruby Giles-Carter: So how does she do that?
28:50
Tad Eggleston: I don't know.
28:51
Tad Eggleston: you know, it's… it's… it's… he's just such a… I mean, Bill Sankavich is just… he's one of the coolest artists in my mind, period, just because
29:01
Tad Eggleston: like, he started in the Kirby Adams style.
29:06
Tad Eggleston: But then started messing around with other…
29:11
Tad Eggleston: not just other styles, but other materials. So, sometimes he'll draw, sometimes he'll paint, sometimes he'll…
29:19
Tad Eggleston: tape things to the page. You know, there was a fantastic exhibit in Libertyville a few years ago.
29:26
Tad Eggleston: He gets multimedia sometimes with… with his…
29:31
Tad Eggleston: If you can manage to find big numbers.
29:34
Tad Eggleston: that's… that there were only 3 issues. It was another thing that Alan Moore started and wasn't able to finish, but it was Alan Moore and Bill Sankiewicz, and it's just…
29:43
Tad Eggleston: Crazy.
29:46
Tad Eggleston: So, like, how much conversation do you think is happening, like, in this, like.
29:51
Ruby Giles-Carter: Like…
29:51
Tad Eggleston: Again, it depends on the team.
29:54
Tad Eggleston: Like, I know some teams that they're, like, trading text messages back and forth.
30:00
Ruby Giles-Carter: Hmm.
30:01
Tad Eggleston: all the time?
30:02
Tad Eggleston: I know some teams were… where…
30:05
Tad Eggleston: They sometimes work in the same room.
30:09
Tad Eggleston: And then… other teams, it's like…
30:14
Tad Eggleston: Once they learn how to write a script for each other, or once the one learns how to write a script for the other.
30:22
Tad Eggleston: That's all it takes.
30:24
Tad Eggleston: You know…
30:27
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. And as the outsider, I only… I can't… I can only… I can only take what they tell me and what I can see. It's hard for me to, like, completely put it into words, because…
30:42
Tad Eggleston: I'm not great at either side of it. I'm a better writer than I am an artist, but… but, like, trying to figure out how to write for somebody
30:51
Tad Eggleston: Much less trying to figure out how to take a script and turn it into panels is just something that…
30:58
Tad Eggleston: That even after 4 years of talking to artists and writers is a challenge for me.
31:05
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah, I've always been intimidated by that idea,
31:10
Ruby Giles-Carter: I don't write any… sometimes I think it might be really nice, because I think my drawing is stronger than my narrative ability, which I'm working on, but, I don't do scripts at all. I just do, like, scribble sketches, and then I…
31:26
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
31:28
Ruby Giles-Carter: remember that, and I try to draw as fast as I'm thinking of a certain thing. And I know most… a lot of people write scripts, and it seems to work great for them. And that's not me, but I would… I think I…
31:40
Ruby Giles-Carter: I don't know, I would love to… have.
31:45
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, actually, one of my…
31:47
Ruby Giles-Carter: For the structure of the story.
31:50
Tad Eggleston: Do you know, Lillian Generosso Fierro?
31:54
Tad Eggleston: Have you seen any of their comics?
31:55
Ruby Giles-Carter: That sounds really familiar.
31:58
Ruby Giles-Carter: I'm sure I have. I definitely haven't read it, but I'm… Recognize the name.
32:03
Tad Eggleston: They're… they really blow my mind, and one day I need to…
32:11
Tad Eggleston: Convince them to let me read.
32:16
Tad Eggleston: an original script.
32:17
Ruby Giles-Carter: Wait, what did they write?
32:19
Tad Eggleston: They, they, they're, they call themselves plastic grapes.
32:23
Tad Eggleston: Their first book was Vessel.
32:30
Tad Eggleston: And of course, that's the one that I made.
32:32
Tad Eggleston: I think they've put out 4 so far, I'm trying to get the list.
32:49
Tad Eggleston: Of course, this… this seems like their criticism page.
32:56
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, they write, like, movie and comics criticism.
33:01
Ruby Giles-Carter: Okay.
33:04
Tad Eggleston: absolute simultaneity?
33:07
Tad Eggleston: Is… is the most recent.
33:10
Tad Eggleston: Which was through Domino.
33:12
Tad Eggleston: Inversion, and Chua, and vessel.
33:16
Tad Eggleston: Are the other ones.
33:18
Ruby Giles-Carter: Do you think they work really well together?
33:20
Tad Eggleston: Well, I know they work really well.
33:22
Ruby Giles-Carter: Oh, yeah.
33:22
Tad Eggleston: But what blows my mind is Lily writes the script in prose.
33:28
Tad Eggleston: It's a prose short story that… that Generosso then turns into sometimes all but wordless comics.
33:38
Ruby Giles-Carter: That's great.
33:39
Tad Eggleston: Which, which is why I would… yeah, if you, if you hit, on Instagram… Yeah, it's, it's…
33:50
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it's Plastic Grapes on Instagram.
33:54
Tad Eggleston: And they have, they have, flipped-through videos of all of their books.
34:00
Tad Eggleston: So… Not so slow that you can, like, read it, but you can definitely get a feel for it.
34:10
Tad Eggleston: But again, I just… I love the fact that
34:14
Tad Eggleston: she writes them, I mean, because I don't know… I don't know anybody. I mean, I've seen all sorts of comic scripts, from… from the ultra-detailed Alan Moore script.
34:23
Tad Eggleston: To the… to scripts that are little more than dialogue, and the artist gets to figure out the rest.
34:31
Tad Eggleston: You know? Or occasionally, you've got the old school, what they used to call Marvel style.
34:37
Tad Eggleston: Where the artist will draw some, you know, they'll talk about what it's gonna be, the artist will draw the whole comic, and then the writer will come in and put the dialogue in.
34:46
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah.
34:47
Tad Eggleston: You know… .
34:50
Ruby Giles-Carter: So, I could.
34:52
Tad Eggleston: So the answer is there's no wrong way to make a comic.
35:00
Tad Eggleston: Which I think, actually, have you seen,
35:03
Tad Eggleston: Raina Telgemeyer and Scott McCloud did a book last year.
35:07
Tad Eggleston: Called the Cartoonist Club.
35:09
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah.
35:10
Tad Eggleston: It's so good.
35:12
Tad Eggleston: But one of the big… One of the big lessons was there's no wrong way to make a comic.
35:17
Ruby Giles-Carter: That's… yeah.
35:20
Ruby Giles-Carter: I think I'm in my, like, meta-comic reading phase, because I…
35:26
Ruby Giles-Carter: I need to read all these books about comics. My friend suggested The Lexicon of Comicana.
35:33
Tad Eggleston: I ordered a copy of that recently, I'm looking forward to that.
35:37
Tad Eggleston: We have a, we have a…
35:39
Tad Eggleston: Comic Strip Book Club on 22 panels, and we're gonna be…
35:44
Tad Eggleston: talking about Beetle Bailey our next time around, so we also decided to toss in the Mort Walker
35:52
Tad Eggleston: lexicon of Kamikana.
35:54
Tad Eggleston: To go with it.
35:56
Tad Eggleston: I, I also highly recommend, if you've seen, matt Madden and Jessica Abel's
36:07
Tad Eggleston: Writing pictures and drawing words.
36:10
Ruby Giles-Carter: No.
36:11
Tad Eggleston: Like, literally the textbook to their… Master's level comic book.
36:17
Tad Eggleston: Drawing, or comic creation class, yeah.
36:23
Ruby Giles-Carter: I… I love that, title, because whenever… sometimes if I'm, thumbnailing, or even inking, I'll, like, have someone
36:31
Ruby Giles-Carter: I'll show it to someone after to check the clarity, right? Because I think clarity can be, like, a big trip up sometimes.
36:38
Ruby Giles-Carter: you know, people who are not experts, and I always ask them to read it. And, you know, I use various spare words, so, like, I'm saying, like, read the pictures.
36:50
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah. Can you read this picture?
36:54
Tad Eggleston: That's… that's a good way to put it.
37:00
Tad Eggleston: Going back to your comic, I gotta ask you, do you have any manga background?
37:05
Ruby Giles-Carter: No, not at all. No manga or superhero. Not because, like, I'm that bad of a snob, I just never happened to read it.
37:13
Tad Eggleston: No, the biggest reason I ask is…
37:21
Tad Eggleston: It's a story with way, way longer narrative.
37:26
Tad Eggleston: and a slightly different bird, but Inio Asano's masterpiece is called Goodnight Pun Pun.
37:32
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah, yeah.
37:33
Tad Eggleston: similar with… with the bird. Yeah.
37:37
Tad Eggleston: I figured you'd heard… I suppose you've heard that before.
37:42
Ruby Giles-Carter: Happy.
37:43
Tad Eggleston: Before or after you.
37:46
Tad Eggleston: Published. After you published.
37:50
Ruby Giles-Carter: Actually, maybe before, like, maybe… I don't know, I did go to art school, I went to the School of the Art Institute, but I…
37:55
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
37:57
Ruby Giles-Carter: Bird Comic was, like, a side project,
38:00
Tad Eggleston: Right?
38:00
Ruby Giles-Carter: Occasionally, if I had, like, some random deadline with nothing for it, I would show, like, a chapter of it, and I think I did get that commentary before.
38:09
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. I mean, honestly, it's… it's worth the read. Inio Asami.
38:12
Ruby Giles-Carter: I know, I know it's gonna be really sad, so I've been avoiding.
38:16
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, there are definitely…
38:17
Ruby Giles-Carter: I like cat books, but I'm.
38:18
Tad Eggleston: Heartbreaking. Yeah. But, but, I mean, you were talking about liking… Very human-centered stories.
38:30
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah. Of all the Mongakas.
38:32
Tad Eggleston: I know.
38:34
Ruby Giles-Carter: Okay.
38:35
Tad Eggleston: like, Inio Asano and… Yeah, probably Inio Asano is the most grounded Okay. Okay.
38:47
Ruby Giles-Carter: Very recommendation, I appreciate it.
38:49
Tad Eggleston: There are a handful of others that I think tell human stories, but they…
38:55
Ruby Giles-Carter: Ow.
38:57
Tad Eggleston: like, Rumiko Takahashi, I think all of her stories are very human, but they tend to either have…
39:05
Tad Eggleston: like, my favorite of hers is something called Mice and a Cuckoo, and it's just, like, it could be a sitcom.
39:12
Tad Eggleston: In fact, I think it got turned into a sitcom, you know, because while it's a very human story, it's… it's, like, a bunch of people that are…
39:23
Tad Eggleston: Going through some of the same stuff, but also very different people, all living in the same, like, apartment building, and…
39:30
Tad Eggleston: Hilarity ensues.
39:32
Tad Eggleston: Right. And then most of her other work will have some sort of fantastical element to, you know… I mean, what I always like to say about manga is take any three things that you didn't think were related, and there's a manga about that.
39:50
Tad Eggleston: That's…
39:51
Ruby Giles-Carter: name again?
39:53
Tad Eggleston: Which one?
39:54
Ruby Giles-Carter: The… the mangaka you said is, like, the really grounded one that I would like.
40:00
Tad Eggleston: Inio Asano?
40:03
Ruby Giles-Carter: Got it.
40:05
Tad Eggleston: Though, though, come to think of it, I think he'd also like…
40:13
Tad Eggleston: Let me make certain I get this one right.
40:18
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
40:22
Tad Eggleston: And I… I will probably butcher the pronunciation here, but… but I Yazawa?
40:27
Ruby Giles-Carter: AI.
40:29
Tad Eggleston: Y-A-Z-A-W-A.
40:33
Tad Eggleston: I absolutely love her series called Nana.
40:38
Ruby Giles-Carter: Oh yeah, I've heard of Nana, okay.
40:40
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
40:41
Tad Eggleston: Paradise Kiss is also really good.
40:45
Ruby Giles-Carter: And I'm not a big manga guy either, I just… Yeah.
40:50
Tad Eggleston: when I started doing… I mean, before that, but really, when I started doing the podcast, I started really trying to branch out into
40:58
Tad Eggleston: All comics everywhere.
41:01
Ruby Giles-Carter: So cool.
41:01
Tad Eggleston: It's the medium that fascinates me, not… Not any particular… Part of it.
41:15
Tad Eggleston: That was actually… that was one of the first… first discussions I had with my… my original co-host, was like, what do we want to be? And I said, I know what I don't want to be. I don't want to be about which comic is valuable, and I don't want to be all superheroes all the time.
41:34
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yup.
41:35
Tad Eggleston: After that, We'll do whatever's fun.
41:39
Tad Eggleston: So… When was… I forgot, I should…
41:46
Tad Eggleston: This is how little I researched. When was, Bird Comics published?
41:50
Ruby Giles-Carter: Birdcomic was published in, 2024.
41:55
Tad Eggleston: So you've got a year with a published work, plus your zines. Have you been doing the…
42:03
Ruby Giles-Carter: the…
42:04
Tad Eggleston: the independent comic… Con circuit?
42:10
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah, I actually got waitlisted for cake this year, but, I do love cake, usually.
42:16
Tad Eggleston: is amazing.
42:17
Ruby Giles-Carter: Cxc, I had my first CXC the other… the other time, like we talked about.
42:25
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I'm sorry I missed you.
42:26
Ruby Giles-Carter: A lot more popping.
42:27
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I probably said hello walking by at some point, but… Exciting.
42:32
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah, it just seems like there's a lot more ZineFest up and coming around.
42:37
Tad Eggleston: There are?
42:38
Ruby Giles-Carter: you know, I feel like they go through a bit of a, you know, like, an awkward phase growing, where people are gonna, you know, the attendance isn't really there, but I'm so, like, I'm so hyped that…
42:50
Ruby Giles-Carter: they're coming up, because I know that, like, you know, it just takes a little bit to establish it, and, you know, find the right… find the right location, get it to be…
42:58
Tad Eggleston: Oh, and sometimes even once you're established, you move around.
43:02
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah.
43:04
Tad Eggleston: In the time I've been going to Cake, I think they've been in 4 different locations.
43:08
Ruby Giles-Carter: Well, we're probably gonna… I mean, you know, we'll probably be back at the Irish American… well, we are. This is… Right, this year.
43:15
Tad Eggleston: The two years before that were… were…
43:18
Ruby Giles-Carter: And, that other place.
43:20
Tad Eggleston: Right. And then they'd been in Boys Town
43:25
Tad Eggleston: For at least 5 years before the pandemic.
43:28
Ruby Giles-Carter: Okay.
43:30
Tad Eggleston: That's where I first started going.
43:34
Ruby Giles-Carter: So, also, you mentioned Birdcomic being similar to, Goodnight Boom Poon, which reminds me, there is a couple artists who I
43:42
Ruby Giles-Carter: failed to mention, when we were talking about, like, early things I've read getting me into comics, Kyler Roberts is a good family friend of mine, and her visual style is so… I'm, like.
43:54
Ruby Giles-Carter: I… I owe a lot to her for, you know, the work that she makes. And also, the… like, her work kind of showed me that comics can be,
44:05
Ruby Giles-Carter: Like, anecdotal, kind of, like,
44:08
Ruby Giles-Carter: Just, like, a series of instances, and still have it be something.
44:11
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
44:11
Ruby Giles-Carter: and valuable. Obviously, I did see that reading Calden Hobbes, but those were very different, right? Syndicated strips. Right. Reading Tyler's work, I was like, wow, like, you could make a work that, like, I can laugh at and feel sad at and feel moved by.
44:25
Ruby Giles-Carter: and it's… it's not syndicated strips, and it's also not… I don't have to construct a narrative plot yet.
44:31
Ruby Giles-Carter: And it still is something, you know, greater than its parts.
44:41
Tad Eggleston: I haven't read enough of it, but I do know it.
44:45
Ruby Giles-Carter: Of what?
44:46
Tad Eggleston: Kyler Roberts.
44:48
Tad Eggleston: I had to look her up.
44:53
Tad Eggleston: See, you're impressing me already, because half the stuff you've brought up, I don't know.
45:00
Tad Eggleston: That's not an easy thing to do.
45:02
Ruby Giles-Carter: Really?
45:03
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
45:04
Ruby Giles-Carter: Okay, well, tell me, like, any of the, like, most basic, like, Spider-Man, and I'll be like, I don't know that one, sorry.
45:10
Tad Eggleston: Well, but, I mean, that's… that's not the… that is… that's not even what I pitched towards you.
45:16
Tad Eggleston: I'd be… I mean, based on your…
45:21
Tad Eggleston: I am trying to figure out what to pitch towards you. You've got an interesting selection here.
45:28
Tad Eggleston: I'm kind of… Frustrated that it doesn't look like Archway is available for sale right now.
45:45
Tad Eggleston: P.
45:54
Tad Eggleston: I remember, because I know I've been to the Kyler Roberts homepage before.
45:59
Tad Eggleston: I immediately recognized the Robin cartoon that she has up.
46:04
Ruby Giles-Carter: Okay.
46:05
Tad Eggleston: She's a lot on drawn on Quarterly.
46:08
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah. No, I just mean that 90% of the time, when I remember a homepage, it's because some other cartoonist recommended them.
46:16
Tad Eggleston: Okay. So I'm trying to remember who else it is that loves Kyler Roberts.
46:26
Tad Eggleston: Lang down like a grown-up.
46:30
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
46:31
Tad Eggleston: Stop with the rabbit hole.
46:33
Tad Eggleston: Ugh, excuse me.
46:35
Tad Eggleston: I'm sorry.
46:36
Ruby Giles-Carter: Sounds okay.
46:39
Tad Eggleston: Did I mention it's been a long day? So what is your favorite non-Chicago con that you've gotten to go to?
46:46
Ruby Giles-Carter: Non-Chicago Vine, CXC.
46:49
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
46:50
Ruby Giles-Carter: Okay, so, I have a friend… Who lives in the area
46:55
Ruby Giles-Carter: Columbus, Nora, Klaus, and she…
47:00
Ruby Giles-Carter: says that it's, like, what's the name of the French comic event that's, like, really, it starts.
47:05
Tad Eggleston: A lamb.
47:06
Ruby Giles-Carter: No, it starts with an A, it's like the…
47:08
Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna lie.
47:09
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yes.
47:10
Ruby Giles-Carter: Okay, so you, you decided.
47:12
Tad Eggleston: It got canceled this year. Yeah, it got canceled this year.
47:15
Ruby Giles-Carter: Okay, that, that sucks, why?
47:17
Tad Eggleston: Because the… there was a boycott of the people running it who had.
47:24
Ruby Giles-Carter: Okay.
47:25
Tad Eggleston: Covered up a sexual assault.
47:27
Ruby Giles-Carter: So it was, like, canceled, canceled, not just canceled.
47:30
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean, it'll be back… next year.
47:33
Ruby Giles-Carter: Okay.
47:33
Tad Eggleston: It looks like under completely new. But yeah, it wound up.
47:37
Ruby Giles-Carter: Correct.
47:38
Tad Eggleston: One of my friends is actually a,
47:43
Tad Eggleston: to talk to her about it some. You can go listen to it on the podcast. I think we hit on it.
47:47
Tad Eggleston: Leonie Bischoff.
47:51
Tad Eggleston: actually won two.
47:53
Tad Eggleston: She won the Audience Award one year, and she won the Young Adult Award another year.
47:58
Tad Eggleston: at Anglem.
48:00
Tad Eggleston: And…
48:01
Ruby Giles-Carter: Boom.
48:02
Tad Eggleston: she filled me in on… yeah, it's a mess. So much so that the mayor… the mayor of the city, and it's, like, one of the biggest… it's one of the, like, biggest tourist things in the city, right? So… but the mayor of the city had to come out and say the city was pulling out, because it might have cost him the election if it hadn't.
48:22
Tad Eggleston: Wow.
48:26
Ruby Giles-Carter: Well, anyway, my friend Nora says that CXC is out on the limb of…
48:30
Tad Eggleston: Yep.
48:31
Ruby Giles-Carter: America, or they're trying to be, at least, and…
48:33
Tad Eggleston: When… when… when Jeff and Tom Spurgeon
48:38
Tad Eggleston: Came up with it to begin with.
48:40
Tad Eggleston: That was their goal.
48:42
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah, I… so I've heard, and I think that they are doing…
48:46
Ruby Giles-Carter: an amazing job. I wish that I had heard of the just sheer amount of, like, amazing programming, because my… my huge regret is not making a bigger effort to see all of that,
48:58
Ruby Giles-Carter: But, yeah, I mean, it's not the, like, you know… I will go every year I possibly can. It's so fun.
49:06
Tad Eggleston: No, since…
49:08
Ruby Giles-Carter: you know, it's not gonna make a… I'm not gonna make a big profit there, but it's… that's not the point.
49:13
Tad Eggleston: I know, I mean, Jeff…
49:16
Tad Eggleston: since the first time Jeff was on 22 panels, he pitched it to me, and then… then Caitlin McGurk was on, and she pitched it even harder, and
49:25
Tad Eggleston: I haven't missed one since. And I don't intend to. For those of you listening, the next one is in early April of 2017, because stupid Ohio State football…
49:37
Tad Eggleston: Can't get their schedule in order in time anymore, so they have to move to… move to the spring.
49:44
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah, when I was there and, like, heard about the stuff I missed, and then I heard the next one was in 2027, I was pissed, but…
49:51
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Well, but it's not, like, far into 27. They're moving…
49:56
Ruby Giles-Carter: True, it's only about another year at this point, so…
49:59
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, they moved it from the fall to the spring.
50:03
Tad Eggleston: So rather than ending the con season, it kicks off the con season, which is actually kind of nice, because…
50:10
Tad Eggleston: I know a number of people who
50:13
Tad Eggleston: go to CXC every year they can.
50:17
Tad Eggleston: Unless it's up against New York Comic-Con.
50:20
Tad Eggleston: Because there's a certain group of people that do enough in commissions and or selling prints and whatnot.
50:27
Tad Eggleston: I mean, like, my friend Chris Schweiser.
50:30
Tad Eggleston: CXC is, like, the closest con to his house, because he lives in rural Kentucky, and he loves CXC.
50:39
Tad Eggleston: But, like… Yeah. He pays half of his expenses for the year at New York Comic-Con.
50:46
Ruby Giles-Carter: That's nuts.
50:47
Tad Eggleston: So, so he can't skip New York Comic Con!
50:56
Tad Eggleston: But Chris does all sorts of crazy posters and stuff. I have…
51:00
Tad Eggleston: Three of them on my wall.
51:03
Tad Eggleston: Because he'll… I mean, he managed to… aside from making great comics, make a niche for himself, doing really fantastic movie posters for all sorts of geek-type movies. So I have his three Indiana Jones posters on the wall.
51:22
Ruby Giles-Carter: Oh, yeah.
51:22
Tad Eggleston: we're gonna think.
51:23
Tad Eggleston: He also does Papercraft.
51:25
Ruby Giles-Carter: You can get your collection of paper characters.
51:31
Tad Eggleston: And he can do a watercolor 4x4 headshot in, like.
51:37
Tad Eggleston: 45 seconds, so he'll give them away for free.
51:40
Ruby Giles-Carter: Oh, wow.
51:43
Ruby Giles-Carter: That's… that's dope.
51:44
Tad Eggleston: But that's a great way to get somebody to come to your… it's like…
51:48
Tad Eggleston: Maybe 2x2. Free 2x2 watercolor, and while I'm doing it, look at the other stuff I have to sell.
51:57
Ruby Giles-Carter: Oh, yeah.
52:01
Tad Eggleston: So, okay, yeah, CXC's a good one.
52:04
Tad Eggleston: It's definitely my favorite.
52:06
Tad Eggleston: Any other great experiences?
52:09
Ruby Giles-Carter: Great experiences.
52:16
Ruby Giles-Carter: No, I feel like I'm just thinking about the last episode, where, Kayla was talking about her great experience, and I'm just thinking about that, and I'm like, I was listening to that, and I was like, wow, I have not had that.
52:29
Tad Eggleston: Well, you haven't been at it quite as long yet.
52:32
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah, because… Yeah.
52:35
Tad Eggleston: You have one year under your belt.
52:39
Tad Eggleston: As a professional professional.
52:43
Tad Eggleston: I don't know how much you were doing the Zine… the zine cons or whatnot before you had your own stuff to… to… to plug.
52:51
Ruby Giles-Carter: I tried it, and they just weren't selling, but I think that was… it was at some, like, school art fair thing, so…
52:56
Tad Eggleston: Right.
52:57
Ruby Giles-Carter: once I… yeah, my first cake was good, and that was before Birdcomic.
53:02
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
53:03
Tad Eggleston: Well, and that's always… I mean, I always like to tell the story to any young up-and-comer. Do you know Challengers, Comics and Conversation?
53:13
Tad Eggleston: In Buck Town. It's not far from Quimby's, it's the closest… it's the closest, like.
53:17
Ruby Giles-Carter: I haven't made the… made the time to, you know.
53:24
Tad Eggleston: it's worth going to… I mean, they don't do as much of the…
53:28
Tad Eggleston: They have a decent indie selection for, A shop that already does…
53:37
Tad Eggleston: like, weekly single issues, though they don't go nuts, because they know they're walking distance from Quimby's, so it's like…
53:45
Tad Eggleston: if they don't love it, they'll make certain the person knows to go to Quimby's, because…
53:51
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah, totally.
53:52
Tad Eggleston: They try… try not to cannibalize each other.
53:56
Ruby Giles-Carter: Oh! But they've…
53:58
Ruby Giles-Carter: Sorry, correct, because I just thought of a good moment. It's not an incredible moment. It's a fun moment, which is…
54:04
Tad Eggleston: I…
54:04
Ruby Giles-Carter: working as a substitute teacher, and I found myself in Marnie Ware, Chris Ware's wife's classroom. And I met because she forgot to take the day off. I was like, hi, I'm here to cover, and she was like.
54:16
Ruby Giles-Carter: Huh?
54:18
Tad Eggleston: You subbed?
54:20
Ruby Giles-Carter: No.
54:21
Tad Eggleston: Did you keep your cool, or did you go…
54:23
Tad Eggleston: Your husband is so awesome. Do you have anything signed of his?
54:28
Ruby Giles-Carter: I tried to do a…
54:31
Tad Eggleston: Adopt me.
54:31
Ruby Giles-Carter: I was very excited, I was, I was very excited. And the fact that she was just there, she was, she was there just working, yeah.
54:43
Tad Eggleston: That is pretty cool.
54:44
Ruby Giles-Carter: She was a great compliment. I was like, wow, I'm always gonna remember this, so… Did you… She gave me, like, her actual… she gave me her actual lesson to teach, which is fine, because usually substituting, I'm just kind of like… if it's high school, I'm just babysitting them on computers.
54:58
Tad Eggleston: Right.
54:58
Ruby Giles-Carter: You know, that's, like, nice, but I… she gave me this, like, actual thing to have them do, which was,
55:07
Ruby Giles-Carter: it was just some, like… so she's a biology teacher, right? And I asked her why biology, and it's because she was an artist, she went to SAIC too, and she loves,
55:15
Ruby Giles-Carter: the visuals of biology, and she got really into it, and now, you know, it was all about the science. So she made her students a…
55:24
Ruby Giles-Carter: It was… it was actually a Zoom recording from COVID times that she keeps, because it was really good, and it was, like, a visual flow chart slash kind of comic-y situation explaining, I think it was, like, sickle cell disease or something.
55:39
Tad Eggleston: Nice.
55:40
Ruby Giles-Carter: like, visual, so I was just kind of, like, showing the video, pausing it, talking with their students about it. It was really fun.
55:45
Tad Eggleston: It's awesome.
55:46
Ruby Giles-Carter: God.
55:47
Tad Eggleston: That is… that is completely awesome. See, I hadn't even gotten to surreal Experiences. That would have been the surreal experience. Oh, okay. We'll just book that one.
55:57
Tad Eggleston: Unless you think of another one before I get there.
56:01
Tad Eggleston: That is so good, I forgot what I was talking about, which means it probably doesn't… oh, Challengers. The reason that stick your head into challengers is twofold. First, they have a phenomenal graphic novel and young adult section.
56:17
Ruby Giles-Carter: Oh crap.
56:17
Tad Eggleston: And the second is, they have… Anybody who comes to sign, Draw stuff on their wall.
56:26
Tad Eggleston: So the wall behind the counter is just filled with art.
56:31
Ruby Giles-Carter: And why I brought this up…
56:33
Tad Eggleston: was the first time that they had Raina Telgemeyer, nobody came.
56:42
Tad Eggleston: The second time that they had Ray Natal Gemeyer, like, 4 people came.
56:48
Tad Eggleston: And the next time Raina Telgemeyer was in Chicago, she was at the United Center.
56:55
Ruby Giles-Carter: Oh my god!
56:57
Ruby Giles-Carter: So when, when were these, like, unknown times?
57:02
Tad Eggleston: I know one of them, she…
57:04
Tad Eggleston: Had done at least a babysitter's club, but one of them, she might have still been just selling her own…
57:11
Tad Eggleston: Books at tables?
57:13
Tad Eggleston: you know, she and Jerry Craft came up
57:16
Tad Eggleston: with Lucy Knisley, and, you know, they were all the indie circuit…
57:21
Tad Eggleston: You know, everybody whose work you love.
57:25
Tad Eggleston: At one point, went to a con and didn't sell anything.
57:29
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah.
57:32
Tad Eggleston: I mean… It takes time.
57:37
Tad Eggleston: For, for, for, for every, for every,
57:41
Tad Eggleston: Jaime Hernandez, or Emil Ferris, or… or…
57:45
Tad Eggleston: Whatever that seems to come out of the gate fully formed and immediately blow the world by storm.
57:53
Tad Eggleston: there are… like… A hundred artists that, like, never get past the indie tables.
58:03
Ruby Giles-Carter: And don't reach the point where they're consistently paying for their travel.
58:08
Tad Eggleston: Until they've been at it for a long time.
58:11
Tad Eggleston: You know, it's… it's unfortunately not a very good paying business. I would love to change that. That's one of the goals of this podcast, is to tell people that comics are awesome, the people who make them put a lot of time and money into it, and therefore, like, paying them is a good idea.
58:32
Tad Eggleston: But the world's not there yet.
58:34
Ruby Giles-Carter: Fair.
58:35
Tad Eggleston: I hope so. It's the greatest medium. There's nothing you can't do with a comic.
58:40
Ruby Giles-Carter: Well, I had a… when I was in school, Beth Hetland was my teacher for, like, professional practice, or some… some requirement, she's amazing, and she said that… so there's the academic cliff right now, I guess, like, the effect of the
58:55
Ruby Giles-Carter: Declining birth rate and, like, how, you know, colleges are affected with attendance, but comics…
59:03
Ruby Giles-Carter: is a field that's not shrinking, it's growing, and I… No?
59:09
Tad Eggleston: No, it's not shrinking, is what I meant. I was agreeing with you, yes, it's not shrinking.
59:15
Ruby Giles-Carter: we have data here, but yeah, I mean, it's so niche that I would be… that I'm kind of like, hmm, I wonder how many comics programs there are, not… not too many, but I don't know. There's more and more. There's definitely…
59:28
Tad Eggleston: I mean…
59:29
Ruby Giles-Carter: Third…
59:29
Tad Eggleston: There's more and more.
59:31
Tad Eggleston: there are more people like Daria pushing for the idea that you can use comics academically.
59:40
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah.
59:41
Tad Eggleston: For that matter, I… I… I just…
59:44
Tad Eggleston: showed her my friend Nick Susanis' website, Spin, Weave, and Cut, because he's the first person ever to turn in his doctoral thesis as a comic.
59:55
Tad Eggleston: That was then… printed by Harvard University Press.
1:00:01
Tad Eggleston: unflattening is amazing. You know, it's, like… I always, I always say that, if, if, if, if…
1:00:11
Tad Eggleston: Understanding comics as Comics 101, then Unflattening is, like, the 400 level class.
1:00:19
Tad Eggleston: But it's also an allegory for, like, public education.
1:00:23
Ruby Giles-Carter: Okay.
1:00:26
Tad Eggleston: Because there's nothing you can't do with a comic.
1:00:29
Ruby Giles-Carter: We did lose,
1:00:31
Ruby Giles-Carter: But kind of back on, like, academics, we did lose CCA, California College of Arts, it's gone.
1:00:37
Ruby Giles-Carter: I was gonna do, like… I was thinking about applying for, like, Masters in Comics there, but the whole school has dissolved.
1:00:45
Tad Eggleston: Now… I'm certain other ones will appear.
1:00:49
Ruby Giles-Carter: True.
1:00:51
Tad Eggleston: Because among other things, like, again, like… one… one of the things that has to happen for there to be more programs for…
1:01:01
Tad Eggleston: It is, like, recognition of comics as both an art form and a communication form, not just kids' entertainment.
1:01:11
Tad Eggleston: And you're seeing that more and more. The number of graphic novels that get taught in colleges, either…
1:01:16
Ruby Giles-Carter: Oh yeah.
1:01:17
Tad Eggleston: Either in classes devoted to them, or better still, in classes that aren't devoted to them, but use…
1:01:25
Tad Eggleston: One, because… Say it's a feminist literature class. There's a lot of…
1:01:31
Tad Eggleston: Graphic novels that you can put into that.
1:01:34
Tad Eggleston: I talked to… to… unfortunately, we weren't able to manage to set up a podcast, but there was a…
1:01:40
Tad Eggleston: 3-day symposium at the, newberry Library this year for using comics… To teach about medieval history.
1:01:55
Ruby Giles-Carter: Oh, yeah.
1:01:57
Tad Eggleston: You know, with people all… from all around the world coming, some of them medieval scholars, and some of them…
1:02:05
Tad Eggleston: Cartoonists, and some of them both, to spend 3 days talking together about how to…
1:02:12
Tad Eggleston: So, I mean, for that matter, you brought up,
1:02:16
Tad Eggleston: Marnie Ware and, and, and taking art to do biology,
1:02:22
Tad Eggleston: Criota Wilbur created the job for herself of cartoonist in residence at the NYU Medical School.
1:02:30
Ruby Giles-Carter: Oh! So, like, graphic medicine?
1:02:33
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:02:33
Ruby Giles-Carter: That's so important.
1:02:35
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. I started graphic medicine.
1:02:37
Ruby Giles-Carter: book about menopause. It was amazing.
1:02:40
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Well, and you're an artist, so if you don't have Korea's, Draw Stronger, you should get yourself a copy.
1:02:46
Ruby Giles-Carter: Oh, yeah, yeah.
1:02:49
Ruby Giles-Carter: This is… yeah.
1:02:51
Tad Eggleston: Cause, like… For artists, that's the other must-have
1:02:56
Tad Eggleston: Comic book is the one that, to…
1:02:59
Tad Eggleston: To teach you how not to hurt yourself making all of your pictures.
1:03:06
Tad Eggleston: Alright, do you have another surreal experience? Because that was a pretty good surreal experience. We can skip another surreal experience if you don't have another one.
1:03:13
Ruby Giles-Carter: I don't know,
1:03:19
Ruby Giles-Carter: Well, I'll think on it. Can… I mean, you've probably shared a lot of yours on the podcast already, but tell me…
1:03:24
Tad Eggleston: I have, but I'll share one. I'll come up with one if you want.
1:03:27
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah.
1:03:28
Tad Eggleston: I probably shared this one too, but it's still a fun one for me.
1:03:35
Tad Eggleston: I, dennis Kitchen has become a friend of mine.
1:03:42
Tad Eggleston: And…
1:03:44
Tad Eggleston: we see each other most of the time when he comes to visit family in Milwaukee area, but the first time he came out, first I got to sit and watch him
1:03:54
Tad Eggleston: draw in… A copy of his art book for me, and then draw a sketch
1:04:02
Tad Eggleston: for the store, because we were at Lion's Tooth.
1:04:05
Tad Eggleston: Do you know Lion's Tooth in Milwaukee?
1:04:08
Ruby Giles-Carter: No. You should take your book up there.
1:04:10
Tad Eggleston: Lions… actually, your book might already be there, they keep track of field mouse. Lion's Tooth in Milwaukee is this… this…
1:04:19
Tad Eggleston: It's one of my favorite… Small indie comic shops.
1:04:24
Tad Eggleston: And they've got tea, and they have book clubs, and during the summer, they… they have, like, cartoonist summer camp.
1:04:32
Tad Eggleston: For kids?
1:04:33
Tad Eggleston: And then they publish the stuff that the kids in the summer camp do, and you can buy it at the store.
1:04:42
Tad Eggleston: So… I got to sit with him there for a couple hours.
1:04:46
Tad Eggleston: Well, we drank tea, and he drew…
1:04:49
Tad Eggleston: One in my book, and one on the wall.
1:04:52
Tad Eggleston: And… he and I are both baseball fans.
1:04:56
Ruby Giles-Carter: That's one of the ways that we bonded.
1:04:58
Tad Eggleston: So then we went to a, a, like, independent minor league baseball game, because the Brewers were out of town, and…
1:05:06
Tad Eggleston: all of the affiliated minor league
1:05:09
Tad Eggleston: teams nearby were out of town, so we went to a Milwaukee Milkmen game, and sat, like, 5 rows behind the plate.
1:05:17
Tad Eggleston: And just watch baseball and talk comics.
1:05:20
Tad Eggleston: With, with, you know…
1:05:22
Ruby Giles-Carter: God.
1:05:23
Tad Eggleston: the… underground comic publisher.
1:05:29
Tad Eggleston: You know, guy that's published Eisner, and Kurtzman, and Crumb, and Howard Cruz.
1:05:41
Ruby Giles-Carter: That's awesome.
1:05:42
Tad Eggleston: And I was just sitting there, you know…
1:05:50
Tad Eggleston: Having a brat and watching a baseball game with him.
1:05:55
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah, people love to chill and hang out, this is…
1:05:58
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. And again, like, not even… I mean, we were watching a baseball game because we wanted to watch a baseball game. This is unaffiliated minor league ball. It was guys probably getting paid 500 bucks a month.
1:06:12
Tad Eggleston: To play ball,
1:06:15
Tad Eggleston: you, you know, we're both baseball nuts, and there was nobody in that game that we knew anybody's names. There were guys that couldn't get drafted, you know? But they were young, and they weren't ready to go into the real world, and…
1:06:28
Tad Eggleston: Or possibly even still in college, but done playing baseball, you know?
1:06:32
Tad Eggleston: But it was fun, because…
1:06:38
Tad Eggleston: I mean, first of all, that's always fun, but second of all, it's kind of pinched me when it's like, wait a minute, how… this guy's got a documentary being made about him.
1:06:48
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah, that's really awesome.
1:06:50
Tad Eggleston: How am I just sitting next to him at a ball game?
1:06:54
Ruby Giles-Carter: Do you hear that noise?
1:06:56
Ruby Giles-Carter: Literally.
1:06:57
Tad Eggleston: Okay, that's my pigeon. I have a foster pigeon Nice!
1:07:03
Tad Eggleston: So that's how you decided what the, the birds should look like.
1:07:07
Ruby Giles-Carter: No.
1:07:08
Tad Eggleston: up, and you saw the pigeon, and you're like, I know how to draw it.
1:07:13
Tad Eggleston: I need a mirror now.
1:07:14
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah, literally. I feel like I… I didn't know that…
1:07:17
Ruby Giles-Carter: that the bird was a pigeon until I was like, wait, yeah, obviously it's a pigeon, it, like, walks around in the city. But, so, my other surreal experience, like.
1:07:26
Ruby Giles-Carter: it's kind of, this is pretty predictable, but getting my first, like, publishing contract with Field Mouse was totally.
1:07:32
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:07:33
Ruby Giles-Carter: because Bird Comic was really not something I had ever… I wasn't, like, making this with a vision, with an end goal. It was… and I was… I was in high school starting these comics. I was, like, kind of a cringey teenager, like, smoking weed and, like, being…
1:07:51
Ruby Giles-Carter: like, you know, really angsty, and, like, why… for some reason, the, like, you know, Rob Clow, who, like, knows… he knows every… he knows every comic ever, and he was just like, this is really good.
1:08:03
Ruby Giles-Carter: Like, it's like, what? Like, yeah, we wanna publish it. I was like, what? Why? Okay, cool.
1:08:09
Tad Eggleston: Did you send it to him, or did he come across it somewhere? I mean, how did that…
1:08:13
Ruby Giles-Carter: Couple, couple chapters, and yeah.
1:08:17
Tad Eggleston: No, I'm just always curious, because sometimes it's, like, people send it in, and sometimes, like.
1:08:23
Tad Eggleston: Field Mouse, uncivilized, that sort of thing. Not only do they table at cons, but they'll, like, walk around the cons and look for stuff.
1:08:31
Tad Eggleston: And then talk to people. So it's always interesting to find out, like, did you have the confidence to send it in, or was it somebody, like, walked up your table, looked at it, bought it, came back a couple hours later, and said, hey, so I'm so-and-so?
1:08:45
Ruby Giles-Carter: That would be really awesome, but I was not tabling at that point.
1:08:48
Tad Eggleston: Okay. Yeah. I, I did send it in.
1:08:52
Tad Eggleston: Cool, cool, cool.
1:08:53
Tad Eggleston: And that's… it's… it doesn't… doesn't change how awesome it is. It just… it actually makes you more awesome, because you had the confidence to send it in. The number of people, myself included, who've, like, never been published in any way, shape, or form, because they've never bothered to…
1:09:10
Tad Eggleston: send anything in. And I guess that's not true anymore, because I've been publishing a couple issues of American Nature Presents, because they asked me to write a comics column, but…
1:09:21
Tad Eggleston: For the longest time, I'd never been published, because I never asked to be.
1:09:27
Ruby Giles-Carter: So, I find that I am having, like, that I had a bit more nerve as, like, a younger artist, and, like, I'm younger, like, I'm only 24, but, like, still, just.
1:09:35
Tad Eggleston: I was about to say. Still, somehow the difference of being.
1:09:40
Ruby Giles-Carter: 19 versus being 24 is, like, there's… I'm like.
1:09:44
Ruby Giles-Carter: I don't know, I'm just, like, in my head more about stuff, so I'll tell you this plan that I came up with, because, you know, 19 is, like, you're so… that's so little, you know.
1:09:52
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, every year between 18 and 25 is almost a decade.
1:10:00
Ruby Giles-Carter: That's how it feels. So I made myself… to encourage myself to apply to more things and risk getting rejected, I have a rejection chart, so when I get 10 rejections, I get to throw a party.
1:10:15
Tad Eggleston: I love it!
1:10:17
Tad Eggleston: I love it!
1:10:19
Ruby Giles-Carter: And if it's… if I don't get to, you know, if I don't fill up the chart fast enough, that means there were successes, I guess.
1:10:26
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, it should also be for every non-rejection, you get to throw a party.
1:10:32
Ruby Giles-Carter: Well, but the… the reward.
1:10:34
Tad Eggleston: I mean, success parties are great.
1:10:36
Tad Eggleston: No, they're just separate.
1:10:38
Tad Eggleston: You'll have to do a different kind of rejection party from the celebration party.
1:10:44
Tad Eggleston: Play different music. Do, like, the sad music, like, play, play… Play, like, sad 90s music.
1:10:53
Ruby Giles-Carter: For the rejection party?
1:10:55
Ruby Giles-Carter: My friends will be sick of me, I don't know.
1:11:02
Tad Eggleston: Alright.
1:11:03
Tad Eggleston: If you were listening to Kayla E, you know what the next question should be. Tell me something you love, preferably a comic.
1:11:10
Tad Eggleston: But we don't have any rules.
1:11:12
Tad Eggleston: Preferably storytelling, but again, with the rules.
1:11:16
Tad Eggleston: But something that you love, that not enough people around you.
1:11:20
Tad Eggleston: Have experienced, and you really want them to.
1:11:23
Tad Eggleston: So that you have more people to talk about it with.
1:11:29
Ruby Giles-Carter: Oh, yeah, I remember hearing this question and thinking, like, I don't know what I would answer. Yeah, I…
1:11:38
Tad Eggleston: Last question every time.
1:11:41
Ruby Giles-Carter: I would say what I've been… recently, I've been… watching Phantadromes.
1:11:48
Ruby Giles-Carter: So I'm not usually one to watch, like, obscure media, but, this is, like, a Latvian hand-drawn animation that is on YouTube, and there's only, like.
1:12:00
Ruby Giles-Carter: 10 episodes before I was getting… or, like, 13 episodes before I was getting, like, error thingies on my, you know, on the streaming. But there's supposed… there's supposedly 26 in total, but it's kind of,
1:12:12
Ruby Giles-Carter: I would say it's, like, child-appropriate, but very, like, adult… adult enjoyable. They're 7-minute episodes, and they are just… it's… it's just like a…
1:12:21
Ruby Giles-Carter: Beautiful age of, like, it's, like, gorgeous TV entertainment. It's… yeah, it's… it's so… Is this the…
1:12:31
Tad Eggleston: It looks like there was Phantodrome's… was it TB series from 85 to 95? Is that what we're looking at, or am I looking for something else?
1:12:40
Ruby Giles-Carter: That is the one, yeah.
1:12:41
Tad Eggleston: That is the one.
1:12:43
Tad Eggleston: Alright. I mean, 7.9 stars at IMDB, so you're not alone in liking it.
1:12:52
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah.
1:12:54
Tad Eggleston: I will have to track this down. It looks pretty cool.
1:12:57
Tad Eggleston: Shape-shifting robot?
1:13:00
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah, so it's about.
1:13:01
Tad Eggleston: Who likes to be a cat.
1:13:03
Ruby Giles-Carter: Yeah, yeah, it's about this cat who can also be any shape, and he's, he is also kind of a pencil when he travels, with, like, friends shaped in different shapes that get up to different stuff. I couldn't understand it visually.
1:13:17
Ruby Giles-Carter: for a bit, but once I kind of got my eye used to the, like, the animation style, I think that can be a challenge in 2D animation, is that everything is, like, freaking moving all the time, so you might…
1:13:30
Ruby Giles-Carter: have trouble processing, but once I got used to it, it's a pretty standard, like, friends get in trouble, we solve the problem kind of little story. But I just… I love the…
1:13:39
Ruby Giles-Carter: Love the animation.
1:13:42
Tad Eggleston: I love it. It looks cool.
1:13:45
Tad Eggleston: I will have to check it out.
1:13:48
Tad Eggleston: Well, Ruby, thank you very much.
1:13:51
Tad Eggleston: I look forward to seeing whatever comes next. Please let me know when it…
1:13:56
Tad Eggleston: When it shows up, we'll plug the hell out of it, we'll have you come back.
1:14:00
Tad Eggleston: If you're looking through our episodes, as you clearly have a little bit, and you see a book club, and you go, I want to be part of that, let me know, we'll add you to it.
1:14:13
Ruby Giles-Carter: Sounds so fun.
1:14:15
Tad Eggleston: If you just want an excuse to talk about a comic, I'm your guy.
1:14:20
Ruby Giles-Carter: you.
1:14:21
Tad Eggleston: And thank you. It's been fun. For Ruby Carter, this has been 22 Panels. We will see you after the next page.