Latest / 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast / With Great Power #340... 22 Panels with Christof Bogacs

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With Great Power #340... 22 Panels with Christof Bogacs · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

0:02
Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody! Morning in Australia. I get to say that a lot.
0:08
Tad Eggleston: But, this time I'm not saying it to talk to Maria, I'm saying it to talk to Kristoff, who I forgot to ask how to pronounce your last name, Christoph.
0:15
christif: Oh. You are so fine, so it's Borg Arch. So Borg like Borg from Star Trek, and Arch like an arch.
0:21
Tad Eggleston: So, Borgon.
0:23
Tad Eggleston: Black guy.
0:23
christif: Yeah.
0:24
Tad Eggleston: Door guards. Spot on. Okay. Okay. Cool, cool. Did I forget an R in your name, then? It must have.
0:31
christif: No, it's just.
0:34
Tad Eggleston: No.
0:34
christif: So, so the…
0:36
Tad Eggleston: It's the opposite of a silent R? It's an invisible R? Okay. Yep. Okay. That makes me feel better.
0:43
christif: No.
0:44
Tad Eggleston: Cool.
0:44
christif: An Austrian… yeah, so it's an Austrian… my… both my names are Austrian, so it's the Austrian.
0:50
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
0:51
Tad Eggleston: Gotcha. Borg Arch. Borg Arch.
0:54
Tad Eggleston: Borg Arch. I'll get there.
0:56
Tad Eggleston: I'll get there. My tongue, it feels weird in my mouth.
1:02
Tad Eggleston: But it's a big deal at my school to… like, at the school that I work at, we… we have…
1:08
Tad Eggleston: like…
1:10
Tad Eggleston: I want to say just under 5,000 students now, but… but I want to say it's like… I want to say it's like 130 different languages are the primary language at home.
1:20
Tad Eggleston: For our students. Wow.
1:22
Tad Eggleston: So we've got lots of different names, so, like, we try really hard.
1:27
Tad Eggleston: To get people's names right.
1:31
Tad Eggleston: But at the same time, like, it's where you become aware of how your tongue gets used to specific languages.
1:40
christif: Totally.
1:40
Tad Eggleston: There are certain sounds that if you don't make them enough, they're really hard to make.
1:47
christif: I think we forget how much, like, how deep language goes in terms of the way our brains are wired.
1:54
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:56
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it does. One of my… one of my favorite… and we will totally get to Lex Luthor. Let me toss that out. He's got a Lex Luthor middle-grade graphic novel coming out soon. What's the date on that, so we know that.
2:11
christif: Yeah, it'.
2:11
Tad Eggleston: Anybody who decided…
2:13
christif: 7th of July, that one's out.
2:14
Tad Eggleston: 7th of July, so, like, next week.
2:18
christif: Yup.
2:19
Tad Eggleston: I just… I wanted to make certain, if anybody gets bored, they know what book to look for, at least.
2:25
Tad Eggleston: But what I was about to say is… is one of the coolest things I ever heard about language. There's a podcast called… called Radiolab that, like, will just go down all sorts of…
2:36
Tad Eggleston: Fun Rabbit holes. It's a perfect podcast for an info junkie, right?
2:41
Tad Eggleston: And they had one called Colors many years ago.
2:45
Tad Eggleston: That I think is still available for free on the web. It's not behind a paywall, or at least it wasn't the last time I sent it to somebody. But…
2:53
Tad Eggleston: In it, they talked about how, in every language except Egyptian.
2:59
Tad Eggleston: The last word, or the last color, primary color, or primary or secondary color, to have a word.
3:07
Tad Eggleston: is blue.
3:09
Tad Eggleston: And the only reason that the Egyptians had one first
3:14
Tad Eggleston: or have one earlier, is they're the only place where, where, like, a pure primary blue is actually
3:21
Tad Eggleston: Found in nature.
3:23
Tad Eggleston: They've got… they've got the old…
3:25
christif: Fascinating.
3:25
Tad Eggleston: They've got the only plant that grows blue. Like, if you get blue roses, they were dyed blue.
3:33
christif: Yeah, yeah.
3:33
Tad Eggleston: some sort of genetic modification, right? But it goes further than… and, like, one of the ways that people started noticing this is because in, like, all of the Odyssey and Aeneid.
3:45
Tad Eggleston: The word blue does not appear.
3:49
christif: Oh, that's so interesting.
3:50
Tad Eggleston: Because it literally didn't exist to Homer.
3:53
Tad Eggleston: You have a wine-colored sea.
3:56
Tad Eggleston: He describes the sky, but he never gives a color to it, you know?
4:01
christif: Wow! .
4:03
Tad Eggleston: But then it goes deeper. They, like, scientists have actually, like, found tribes.
4:09
Tad Eggleston: you know, I think it was an Amazon tribe that they found.
4:13
Tad Eggleston: where… Not only did they still not have a word for blue.
4:19
Tad Eggleston: When you gave them a 9-color swatch.
4:23
Tad Eggleston: With shades between blue and green.
4:28
Tad Eggleston: They were absolutely insistent that the pure blue square was exactly… they thought that there were only 8 colors on the page.
4:38
Tad Eggleston: Essentially. That it was literally exactly one of the colors that they did have a word for. In other words, we're so wired to language that if we don't have a word for it.
4:52
Tad Eggleston: it doesn't… compute at all. Sometimes we can't.
4:56
christif: Huh.
4:57
Tad Eggleston: see it, see it. I mean, and, like, in my own… my wife is… is not only an artist, but, like, I think in words, she thinks in pictures, only really I, like, hear words in my head, and she, like…
5:14
Tad Eggleston: has swirls of color in her head that sometimes become pictures. So, like.
5:21
Tad Eggleston: I will look at something and say, that's… that's green, and she's like, that's not green, that's not green at all, that's gray, and I'm like… like, she has to, like, start breaking it down before I can manage to see the difference. I'm convinced that she literally sees more hues than I do.
5:38
christif: So interesting. I mean, I…
5:40
Tad Eggleston: Greetings.
5:41
christif: Is it aphantasia, that's what it's called, when in your mind, you can't visualize images, but you visualize the word?
5:50
Tad Eggleston: Maybe, but I don't visualize the words.
5:53
christif: Really?
5:54
Tad Eggleston: I, like, hear the words. I, like, that was one of the things my wife asked me about. She's like, so you see words in your head? I'm like, no, you don't get it. I don't see things in my head.
6:05
christif: That's… wow, that's crazy.
6:06
Tad Eggleston: it is I, like, hear it.
6:10
Tad Eggleston: I can feel things in my head.
6:14
Tad Eggleston: like, I can both conjure…
6:16
Tad Eggleston: a feeling, and not just a feeling, like, sad or whatnot. I can, like, conjure in my head what it feels like to stub my toe.
6:26
christif: Yeah, so, like, a very specific sensation.
6:29
Tad Eggleston: Right, I can conjure sensations in my head, I can sometimes conjure tastes and smells in my head, I…
6:37
Tad Eggleston: I…
6:38
Tad Eggleston: can hear anything in my head. I can sometimes, like, paint a very great audible picture. Like, you ask me to describe some of my favorite things, and I can… I can put together the audible tapestry that makes you think that I'm seeing it in my head.
6:56
Tad Eggleston: But you know that relaxation thing where you're supposed to close your eyes and imagine an island and whatnot? It makes me so anxious because I don't have that picture.
7:07
christif: Like, life…
7:09
Tad Eggleston: like… Maybe once a year.
7:14
Tad Eggleston: I have a dream that involves pictures.
7:17
christif: Wow. And that's the only…
7:18
Tad Eggleston: only time I ever have any images in my head.
7:26
christif: That's so interesting. It is just fascinating to me how… I don't know, just, like, how our interior lives define our reality to an extent?
7:36
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah!
7:39
Tad Eggleston: And, like, I mean, this is… and this is why I'm gonna tie it to your books, because all of your books deal with, on some level, I'm gonna say neurodiversity.
7:51
Tad Eggleston: And certainly, managing to… to… Navigate worlds and relationships
7:58
Tad Eggleston: From a different vantage point than the people that you're… communicate.
8:04
christif: Yeah.
8:04
Tad Eggleston: fifth.
8:05
christif: Totally. I mean, I think a lot… yeah, my kind of, like, the core thing, I mean, the place I always write from is, like, I'm feeling like this. Is anyone else feeling this way? Is it just me? It's like a… Right. Yeah, my writing really is, like, always, like, a signal flare to be like, hey, is anyone else…
8:22
christif: kind of feeling like this, because to me, that's always been the art.
8:26
christif: I mean, the art that is the most powerful to me is always one where someone articulates something specific, and you're like, oh, fuck, that's…
8:34
christif: That one's.
8:35
Tad Eggleston: Really? Oh, yeah. No, it's great when you can go… I mean, particularly for those of us who are neurodiverse, it's great to go, oh, wait, I'm not completely alone in that.
8:44
Tad Eggleston: Oh, they're still not like me, because that doesn't make sense.
8:48
Tad Eggleston: Which is where I was about to go. The other really cool thing I've learned in, like, the last couple years, you do brain scans of neurotypical people versus neurodiverse people. Neurotypical people
8:59
Tad Eggleston: You know, as the brain develops, you know, certain pathways
9:05
Tad Eggleston: like, trim and certain pathways branch out and become stronger and whatnot. Brain scans of neurotypical people look really, really similar to each other.
9:16
Tad Eggleston: No too neuroatypical.
9:20
Tad Eggleston: people.
9:24
Tad Eggleston: Even remotely similar brain scans.
9:26
christif: That's… I mean, that makes so much sense, and I mean, something that I… I think this is an experience maybe a lot of neurodivergent people have, or at least I've found people in my life have had this, is, like, sometimes the worst people to deal with as a neurodivergent person is someone with your same type of neurodivergence, but it affects them differently.
9:45
Tad Eggleston: Right. Oh, yeah. They'll be like, well, my… I should do it this way.
9:49
christif: Yeah, yeah, yeah. My bipolar… my bipolar works like this, so therefore that's how everyone's experience is, and that's often sometimes the most difficult people to navigate around.
10:00
Tad Eggleston: Well, and if you think about it, just statistically, like, if all of our… I mean, one of the reasons that neurodivergent people, you know, some people, neurodivergent people, have less trouble
10:12
Tad Eggleston: like, conforming in a neurotypical world and whatnot is, like, if they're all different, there are gonna be overlaps with a neurotypical brain.
10:20
christif: Yeah, of course.
10:20
Tad Eggleston: So if you've got the right overlaps, oh, oh, my feelings are different, but my communication strategies are the same. Woohoo, you hit the jackpot!
10:31
christif: Totally, and I think, like, this is kind of something, I don't know, like…
10:37
christif: My… my kind of… the older I get, the more I kind of accept…
10:42
christif: that life is, like… ultimately, in a lot of ways, I don't mean to be, like, make it sad, but, like, it's quite a lonely experience, because no one… It can be. It's both remarkable that no one experiences the world the same way as, you know, like, as you do, but it's also, like, kind of horrific in its own way.
11:01
Tad Eggleston: Though, again, like, there does appear to be a neurotypical, and I think those people
11:08
Tad Eggleston: experience the world really, really similar. It's just not…
11:11
christif: Yeah, I can't.
11:11
Tad Eggleston: And more and more, I think neurotypical is actually a minority. It's just.
11:16
christif: I hardly agree.
11:18
Tad Eggleston: If you have 1,000 people, and 400 of them are neurotypical, and 600 of them are 600 different variations of neurodivergence. Yeah.
11:31
christif: That's… yeah, totally. How are you gonna, like… yeah, you're obviously gonna match all the neurotypical people and be like, well, we can all put them into one basket, whereas we've got, like… Yeah.
11:40
Tad Eggleston: My wife has found, like, all of the support… online support groups since I was diagnosed, so she's always sending me the great meme or whatnot, and my favorite is still
11:53
Tad Eggleston: Fire was invented by the… the neuro…
11:58
Tad Eggleston: Diverse guy in the back of the cave, banging different types of rocks together to see what happened, while all of the neurotypical people were out front talking about their hair.
12:11
christif: That's great.
12:13
christif: That's…
12:14
christif: No, that's… That's fantastic. And I mean, I think, like, that's, to me, what I find most comfort in is when you find those moments of, like… I don't know, like, yeah, like, whenever I…
12:25
christif: I've been talking about before Pod, I was…
12:28
christif: diagnosed with bipolar II, close to 10 years ago now, but, like, whenever there's, like, a meme about that experience, I'm like, oh, that's… it hits harder, and it feels… it brings you a comfort, because you're like, someone else…
12:41
Tad Eggleston: Right.
12:42
christif: Someone else…
12:42
Tad Eggleston: Someone else…
12:44
christif: Yeah.
12:45
Tad Eggleston: Well, and also, like, particularly when, like…
12:49
Tad Eggleston: I'm so happy, like, because there is more and more medical research for a lot of this stuff, though…
12:57
Tad Eggleston: so spread out across the world, and part of so many mountains of data that, you know, you can't expect any doctor to know it already unless they start looking for it. And it's really hard to look for things that you don't have a name for.
13:11
Tad Eggleston: Right? So the other thing that's been great for me,
13:15
Tad Eggleston: With her doing this, is she'll come across stuff and she'll go.
13:18
Tad Eggleston: Tad, is this what you were trying to explain to me? And I'll go, yeah, and she's like, oh, this person has it, and it's called this, so we should ask about this. And then I'll ask about that, and they'll go, I've never heard of that, let me do some research. And the next time I talk to them, they'll be like, oh, yeah, this is totally you, and let's try this, and this, and this.
13:38
christif: It's… there's such a relief that comes with that, too, because I think…
13:43
christif: There's, yeah, there's, like, I don't know, like, when you're dealing with…
13:48
christif: whether it's, like, in my… with my experience, at least, like, anxiety or OCD, when you don't have any words to understand it, it's really quite terrifying.
13:57
Tad Eggleston: Terrifying.
13:58
christif: an existential horror to it, then as soon as, like, as soon as you can give something a name and a shape.
14:04
christif: it becomes so much less scary. Like, even if it is just a name, it's kind of like in… at the end of the horror movie, when you kind of start to see the, you know, whatever the monster or the thing going on is, suddenly it becomes a whole lot… lot less scary, even though it's the same thing you've been terrified of this entire time.
14:22
Tad Eggleston: Right, and, like, I'm gonna bring this to Lex right now, because you didn't give anybody specific, specific labels, and, like, I don't know if that was a choice, or if that was something from DC, or… but to me.
14:35
christif: Hmm…
14:38
Tad Eggleston: Both Lex and… and… is it Lena, his sister?
14:43
christif: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Lena.
14:44
Tad Eggleston: both Lex and Lena code to me as neurodiverse, but, like, with different, like, she, she, she is the one
14:55
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm trying to remember what I was watching once, where somebody, you know, oh, you're… yeah, your kid's ADHD, but they're also a dancer, that's the thing. So she's… she's like the… the physicality, you know, she needs.
15:10
christif: Totally.
15:10
Tad Eggleston: find ways to move her body, and he's the more typical Sheldon Cooper-ish, you know.
15:17
christif: 100%, yeah.
15:19
Tad Eggleston: And you kind of do Batman up that way, too, where it's like, oh, wait.
15:26
Tad Eggleston: Y-you weren't okay with what I just did?
15:30
christif: Totally, yeah, I mean, I think…
15:33
christif: Yeah, and I think, like, that the neurodivergent question is so… I mean, you know, because I'm neurodivergent, I think every character, right, is gonna have a flavor of that in them. I think with Lex.
15:44
christif: And often, like, unless a book is deliberately, like, a about,
15:51
christif: neurodivergence. I find I don't necessarily write characters that way, I just kind of write them as a character, and then…
15:58
christif: I,
15:59
christif: And then kind of allow people to, if they attach to it and feel like it explains their experience, that's amazing, and that's such an honor, but it's not… but, like, you know,
16:09
christif: for instance, in my HarperCollins book that's out in August, Earth to Chris Clevy, one of the characters…
16:14
Tad Eggleston: Right.
16:15
christif: flow.
16:15
Tad Eggleston: Which I definitely was gonna bring up, too.
16:18
christif: obsessed with fish tanks, and people have said, oh, you know, she reads as autistic, and that wasn't intentional, because that's not an experience I've… I've had, so I…
16:28
Tad Eggleston: Oh, but no, the fish tanks and… they're like trains.
16:32
christif: Yeah, I love…
16:34
Tad Eggleston: For me, baseball.
16:36
christif: I've always loved fish tanks and beachkeeping, so really, that's where it came out of. And obviously, it's an honor, such a huge honor that people, you know, feel seen in that way, but unless a book or a character is deliberately about it, I try not to think about that too much. Like, I definitely knew when I was writing Lex, I'm like, oh, some people might read him as autistic, and that wasn't how I wrote him, but I'm honoured.
16:56
Tad Eggleston: Right.
16:57
christif: Can see that.
16:58
Tad Eggleston: Right.
16:58
christif: to me, Lex is someone who has a very specific…
17:02
christif: way of seeing the world, and, you know, a very specific way of how things interact and work, and he's a very, sort of, cause and effect
17:12
christif: driven person and thinks in that binary, so he's not good at dealing with… you know, so he's like, well, if this person did the thing that I wanted, I won, right? It's like, well, actually, that person's hurt by the thing you did. So there's, like, another… so he just kind of sees the world in a really binary
17:29
christif: a really binary.
17:30
Tad Eggleston: That doesn't… doesn't… Doesn't see consequences beyond what affects him.
17:36
christif: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, 100%. And again, it's sort of like, well, we achieved the thing we wanted to achieve, why does how we achieve it matter? Right. That, you know, very ends, justify the means kind of person.
17:48
Tad Eggleston: I mean, well, I mean, I… it just comes up, like, that pops into my head, because
17:53
Tad Eggleston: like, because that's common in a lot of autistic people is why it's often said that autistic people don't have empathy, but, like, a lot of us are, like, way over-empathic.
18:08
christif: This is… I mean, I have a lot of…
18:10
Tad Eggleston: So the stuff… but we can't necessarily
18:13
Tad Eggleston: But just because we're over-empathic, like, that means that it's like, oh, we know when you're sad, and that makes us sad, and we're good at avoiding that or whatnot, but it doesn't.
18:23
christif: Totally.
18:23
Tad Eggleston: always mean that we'll, like, truly know the consequences
18:28
Tad Eggleston: for you. And where we're really bad, or at least where I was always really bad, is like, I figure this stuff out, and like…
18:37
Tad Eggleston: you're not happy that I made your decision for you, even though…
18:42
Tad Eggleston: even though I chose right, it's
18:45
Tad Eggleston: But… but that was my place to choose.
18:48
christif: No, totally, and this is… and this is, I mean, I think the way, you know, the way I wrote Lex.
18:55
christif: you know, is very, like… and I think this is something, I mean, something I've been struggling in my life, is, like, the idea of, like, when we try and control people, even if it's for the best outcome, we're denying them their dignity. And I think this is kind of the lesson.
19:10
Tad Eggleston: Well, and we're just… we're also doing… Back to lunch.
19:11
christif: To an extent.
19:12
Tad Eggleston: On… on one level, also denying them their liberty.
19:16
christif: Yeah, exact… 100%. This is…
19:18
Tad Eggleston: You know, it's not just their dignity, like…
19:21
Tad Eggleston: People are allowed to make wrong choices for themselves.
19:25
christif: And this is, you know, there's someone in my life who I care about dearly, who is a recovering addict, and through the process of going to support groups, you know, you learn a lot about the idea of, like.
19:38
christif: concepts like letting people reach their rock bottom, or concepts of, like, hey, like, yeah, they're doing something you don't agree with, and they're struggling, you know, with the disease, but also, like, it's their life, and it's their dignity, and that… I think that…
19:52
christif: that switch has been pretty big for me, because I, you know, the way my head works is I want to fix everyone's problems all of the time. Oh, God, yes.
19:59
Tad Eggleston: I want to fix all problems all the time.
20:02
christif: Totally.
20:03
Tad Eggleston: I have a problem, and I want to fix it.
20:05
christif: And I think this is where, kind of, Lex has the classic, like, male brain stereotype of, right? You… he doesn't ask you about your day or how you're feeling, he tells you what the solution is. That's kind of… that's where his brain is at.
20:18
christif: And that's kind of something I've been working on a lot in my relationships, is trying to be more open and just listening to people. So I think, again, like, let's kind of…
20:27
christif: as all my characters do, just have little bits of my life, often things that I'm kind of struggling with, and just kind of explore them. And again, I'm always honored when, you know, people from experiences different to mine connect with my character. It's the greatest honor, but it's definitely not…
20:44
christif: put this way, as a rule and the way I write, I will never write anything that's out of my experience, you know, so I would never write, like.
20:54
christif: an autistic experience, unless I had, like, a co-writer who'd had that experience. So, it's not something I do deliberately for that reason, because.
21:01
Tad Eggleston: No, no, that makes sense.
21:02
christif: to talk about, but again, when people attach or relate, the highest honor.
21:08
Tad Eggleston: Right, right.
21:10
Tad Eggleston: At some point, I might let my friend Britt pitch you on the idea that we need more things labeled explicitly, just because it makes it that much easier for particularly kids going through stuff to know
21:21
Tad Eggleston: O.
21:23
christif: Well, this…
21:24
Tad Eggleston: I'm seen.
21:26
christif: Totally. And this is something that I've learned from, tabling at conventions and stuff, is obviously is, like, as a creative, you're always pitching to different people, but the biggest thing I learned with, like, consumers is.
21:39
christif: Or, you know, when people come up.
21:43
christif: I want to, like, know about a book.
21:45
christif: they always want to know, like, what… who's it for? What is it like that already exists? Like, what boxes does it tick in terms of, like… they'll often, I'll just list, they'll be like, you know, it's… it's LGBT, it's neurodivergent, it's, you know, and just… and people often really like that, because again, they want to…
22:03
christif: they want to kind of know what something is, so I think.
22:06
Tad Eggleston: Right.
22:07
christif: I, yeah, I think artists, it's easy to be like, well, it's reductive to be like, this book is, you know.
22:13
christif: these three checkboxes, but it's really, especially in today's, like, you know, media… saturated media market, it's really, really helpful.
22:22
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm all for it being, like, 50 checkboxes rather than 3.
22:28
Tad Eggleston: But, but…
22:29
Tad Eggleston: But, I mean, even… even not as a consumer, speaking as a teacher, sometimes… I mean, I gave.
22:35
christif: 100%.
22:36
Tad Eggleston: I gave a book to… a… a… I think it was his…
22:44
Tad Eggleston: 7th birthday, I gave a book to the child of a friend of mine.
22:49
Tad Eggleston: that… that I gave…
22:51
Tad Eggleston: I gave to them just because I thought they'd like it. But the fact that it had a non-binary character
22:59
Tad Eggleston: Within a year after… them… Kind of deciding that they were non-binary made them go over the moon.
23:09
christif: Oh, that's…
23:10
Tad Eggleston: And I had.
23:11
christif: Anyway…
23:11
Tad Eggleston: I hadn't even thought of that.
23:14
Tad Eggleston: That wasn't what…
23:18
Tad Eggleston: I gave them the book, and for that matter, the book didn't spend a lot of time
23:22
Tad Eggleston: But it did explicitly make one of the characters non-binary.
23:27
Tad Eggleston: So, so, like, I mean, that's, that's just something that I wish…
23:33
Tad Eggleston: And you do it, so I'm not saying I wish that you would do more, but I wish we saw more.
23:37
christif: No, no.
23:38
Tad Eggleston: pop culture, period, is just, like, you don't need to make a story about the condition to have somebody who has that named condition, as long as they also act appropriate to both the condition and the story.
23:52
Tad Eggleston: in whatever…
23:54
christif: This is 100%, this is something when I think about representation, right, is number one, if you're gonna go deep, then you want to draw from your own experiences.
24:05
Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
24:05
christif: You just… but, like, if you just want to show someone of an experience different to your own, like, that's great. Like, I'm always trying to include, you know, characters of color, and people, you know, people that don't look like me in my stories, but at the same time, I'm not gonna tell a story about, like, this is what it's like to be brown-skinned in America.
24:23
Tad Eggleston: That's not bad.
24:24
christif: Not my lane, but it doesn't mean I can't have characters of color in my stories. And that's kind of the two elements of it. You know, you go deep with your own experiences, and you can go… not… you know, and then you can have people that don't look like you in your stories, but just don't talk about their struggles in a way you're not qualified to.
24:43
Tad Eggleston: Right, right.
24:45
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, so talk to me about how, how…
24:49
Tad Eggleston: how the… the Lex Luthor gig… came about.
24:52
christif: Yeah.
24:53
Tad Eggleston: pitched? Was it something where they went, oh, we like Kristoff's work, hey, would you like to do something? And I do have follow-ups. Yeah, totally.
25:02
christif: I mean, I think my experience, and I think this is the experience of most comic… a lot of comic creators, or at least writers, is that an ex-editor once told me that basically
25:14
christif: for every writer they hire, they need 8 artists. Like, that's kind of the ratio with publishers. So, as a writer, unless you're, like.
25:22
christif: one of the top, you know, Scott Snyder, or a Tom Taylor, one of these, you know, or a, Kelly Thompson, one of these top people, a lot of the time, like.
25:31
christif: work isn't coming to you, or at least I've, you know, I've been doing this for close to a decade, and I think last year was the first time anyone ever hit me up to be like, hey, we want to work with you. Outside of that, I've always… it's always been a case of, like, I chase up the leads, you know, and that… Right. With the DC thing, I… I am lucky to have an agent, and I ask my agent, hey, like, I really want to do a DC Young Reader's book, do you have a contact there? And she set up a meeting. So from… and then in that meeting.
25:55
Tad Eggleston: Which, which right there is one of the reasons why people should definitely consider
26:00
Tad Eggleston: And it's hard, because there's not enough money in comics, so giving up that 5, 10, 15% is a big deal.
26:09
Tad Eggleston: But agents are there for a reason, lawyers are there for a reason.
26:13
christif: God.
26:14
Tad Eggleston: Totally! To any comic people just up and coming, let me emphasize a ton
26:22
Tad Eggleston: there's a purpose. Your editor is there for a reason, you know?
26:28
christif: Oh, no, 100%.
26:30
Tad Eggleston: service announcement, and I'll let you get back to your.
26:32
christif: Sorry.
26:33
Tad Eggleston: It's so funny.
26:34
christif: Fine, yeah. So I came with them, with… I think, like, maybe… I think it might have been 3 or 4 ideas, but there were two that I was, like, as is always the case when you're, like, doing a scattershot pitch, there's always, like, one that you're like, this is the one I want. And funnily enough,
26:51
christif: The one I was really passionate about was, the Suicide Squad, but they're in detention. And who would have thought that DC was skeptical about using the Suicide Squad for children? Who could have possibly predicted that? So, the other kind of.
27:05
Tad Eggleston: I mean, they have had a Johnny Constantine.
27:09
christif: Look, I… I would still love to do that.
27:10
Tad Eggleston: And there are Suicide Squad… there are.
27:13
christif: Yeah.
27:14
Tad Eggleston: Squad movies, and they've done a Harley Quinn.
27:18
christif: Look, I would…
27:19
Tad Eggleston: No, Logan.
27:20
christif: I would love.
27:20
Tad Eggleston: Don't give up. That's what I'm saying.
27:22
christif: But that was… for whatever reason, that was the idea that I was like, this is… this is the idea they're gonna love, and the one that they actually kind of gravitated towards… I won't say, like, half-assed, because I cared about the pitch a lot, but it was sort of when I… half an hour before the meeting, I was thinking of other ideas, and I was like, oh, what if I did, like…
27:39
christif: You know, I, like, remember growing up, there was, like, Dexter's Lab and so many kind of cartoons and shows about, like, young geniuses, young evil geniuses. Right.
27:49
christif: Okay. So I was like, oh, what if I just pitched, like, it's Artemis Fowl, but it's Lex Luthor, and instead of fairies, they're superheroes? And that was essentially the core of the pitch, and then from there, you know, I feel like it's very much become its own thing, but that really is how I pitch it to people. It's like, hey, it's Artemis Fowl, but it's Lex Luthor.
28:07
Tad Eggleston: Which, I feel bad, because I've heard you say that, and I still haven't read Artemis Fowels.
28:12
christif: I…
28:13
Tad Eggleston: I didn't know what that means.
28:15
christif: Look, so Artemis Spell is basically about this young 11-year-old who inherits his family's crime empire, and decides that in order to regain his family's fortune, he's going to capture a fairy and hold her to ransom.
28:32
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
28:33
christif: And that's… and that, like, if you look at the Lex Luthor, it's like, it's very similar in a sense about…
28:38
Tad Eggleston: Right.
28:39
christif: Lionel Luthor gets, thrown into jam. Yeah, thanks to Superman. So Lex is stepping up to take over Luther Corp, which is thoroughly out of money.
28:49
christif: And, you know, all their money has been, like, seized by the government and all that kind of stuff. So he decides he's gonna kidnap Lois Lane.
28:58
christif: So that… so that he can get money and Superman's weakness from Superman. And that's kind of where we start, and then it goes off in a very different direction, but it's…
29:08
Tad Eggleston: But he…
29:09
christif: It is quite similar, you know, I did kind of start from the same starting point as Artemis Fowl in a lot of ways.
29:15
Tad Eggleston: So, I'm gonna… I'm gonna ask this question where… in a way that I hope allows you to decide how… how spoilery you get.
29:23
christif: For.
29:24
Tad Eggleston: There are some characters that you use that I didn't immediately expect When I opened the book.
29:34
Tad Eggleston: I've talked to a lot of people about working in teams and working with established properties and whatnot, and there tend to be a couple of different ways that things work. Sometimes… sometimes the publisher says, I want you to use this person.
29:48
christif: Yeah.
29:48
Tad Eggleston: this person and this person. And sometimes it's, you have to go and say, okay, I need somebody for this. Is this person available? Is that person available? Are any of these four people available? Or even just, okay, who can I use to play this role?
30:06
Tad Eggleston: So, like, kinda, how did that work for… for…
30:10
christif: Totally.
30:10
Tad Eggleston: There are two major and then a slew of minor characters that aren't automatic, I expect them in a Lex Luthor book.
30:21
christif: Yeah, I mean, so I think we could do it. So, Batman is in it, I mean, that is… that's mentioned on, like, the back cover and description.
30:28
Tad Eggleston: Oh, God.
30:28
christif: that.
30:29
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
30:29
christif: That's, like, an open secret, that involves Batman. So the great thing about the DC Young Readers books, and that they told me this from, like, the get-go when I pitched, was, like, they're not canon, so you can do whatever you… so immediately, you have so much freedom. And I thought it's more a case of, like, I need a character that can do X, Y, and Z,
30:49
christif: Who would be a good fit, and then kind of looking through the roster.
30:53
christif: So, like.
30:55
christif: That said, I think the core… I always knew, like, the core was gonna be Lex, and then…
31:00
christif: Slade is, like, the… yeah, as, again, to compare it to, Artemis Fowl, Artemis Fowl has, like, an indentured servant and bodyguard called, who's just called Butler. And there's.
31:12
Tad Eggleston: I was like.
31:12
christif: a trope. It's also, like, a trope in a lot of kids' stuff to have, like, the kid, and then he's got his sidekick, who's, like, the, you know, the big…
31:19
christif: The big, strong guy who's, you know, who's, like.
31:21
Tad Eggleston: The babysitter, the one that prevents.
31:24
christif: Yeah.
31:25
Tad Eggleston: From actually getting in trouble for his worst incident.
31:29
christif: Yeah, totally. It's such a trope, and so that, to me, just… Slade Wilson just felt like the perfect… the perfect fit for that, both in terms of his moral ambiguity, but then also, like, just…
31:41
christif: Who he is as a character and what he can do.
31:45
Tad Eggleston: And I assume one appearance was an homage to your Suicide Squad pitch.
31:51
christif: No, I… I… I… oh! Yeah, yeah, no, that was just…
31:56
christif: I think… so the other thing I really wanted to do with this book is…
32:01
christif: I wanted it to feel big, so, like, I'm like, even if we never get to see… so there's a scene towards the end that involves a lot of different characters,
32:09
christif: And I just kind of wondered, like, how many different corners of the DC universe can we.
32:14
Tad Eggleston: Right.
32:15
christif: bring in. And yeah, so for me, it was just, like… and that was kind of the other rule I did, is, like, really making sure that, oh, if I need a character to… to do something, let's just not do… if possible, let's just not do a filler character, let's actually use, like, a DC character.
32:30
Tad Eggleston: Right. Right.
32:31
christif: You know, so that was my… that's kind of my other deliberate rule that I set for myself with it.
32:36
Tad Eggleston: Well, I always wondered.
32:37
christif: pulling from what's there.
32:39
Tad Eggleston: And this is where I will spoil one minor thing, just…
32:43
Tad Eggleston: Tom King, I'm very friendly with, and I love that he has made Kite Man a thing, and Kite Man.
32:49
christif: Oh, yeah, yeah.
32:49
Tad Eggleston: Just make a completely inappropriate… create a completely…
32:56
Tad Eggleston: Tom's so proud of that, too. The fact that somehow he made Kite And into a thing.
33:03
christif: It's… oh, yeah, it's wild. But also, like, that's the other thing, it's like, you… I kind of wanted to, like, acknowledge where the DCU was at, like, you know, why it's not Ken. It's like, well, I know Kite Man's a thing, so why wouldn't I put, like.
33:14
Tad Eggleston: Kind of.
33:15
christif: in it.
33:16
Tad Eggleston: Right.
33:17
christif: that was… that was very deliberate as well, as to, like, alright, think about, obviously, the characters, like, I like and are attracted to in the DCU, but also, like, oh, who… who is kind of the… who are the characters that kind of have heat at the moment?
33:30
Tad Eggleston: How is it that, like, you take the war of jokes and riddles, and the biggest thing that came out of it was Kite Man?
33:38
christif: Yeah, that's a good point.
33:40
Tad Eggleston: I mean, yeah, the fact… I mean, don't get me wrong, Go ahead.
33:45
christif: I mean, yeah, the fact that he's, like, the linchpin to that, the.
33:48
Tad Eggleston: Mac.
33:48
christif: of that story.
33:49
Tad Eggleston: Right, right. I mean, don't get me wrong, it also introduced what's become a much darker Riddler. I don't think I'd seen the Riddler that dark before…
34:00
Tad Eggleston: that line, but that wasn't, like, the immediate effect. Like, the kite man, hell yeah!
34:06
Tad Eggleston: What's the immediate effect?
34:09
christif: Totally. And I think… I mean, I think there's a lot of, like, fun to be had in going back to those, like, old characters and making them scary, or not even scary, making them, like, serious.
34:21
Tad Eggleston: I lost his.
34:21
christif: I see someone, like, do, like, a, you know, like… Or, like, I've…
34:26
christif: Like, the way that, James Gunn handles Polka Dot Man, and I'd love to see someone, like, take Calendar Man in, like, a more sinister direction and stuff. Some of these silly characters, I know, it's always, as a fan, it's always refreshing to see, like, it's like, oh, this is what they could be like if we kind of revamped them and made them, like, edgy or serious.
34:46
Tad Eggleston: Right.
34:47
christif: As a fan, I love that.
34:48
Tad Eggleston: Well, and it's particularly cool when it's, like, somebody shows you, oh, this character wasn't as dumb as you thought. I mean, I think both in… I mean, it was always one of my favorite characters that I thought was underutilized, but both the Into the Spider-Verse movie and Chris Condon's current
35:07
Tad Eggleston: current run on, what is it? Reborn Ultimate something? It's a miniseries.
35:13
christif: Yeah, I know the one you're talking about, yeah.
35:15
Tad Eggleston: Right, right. I love getting to see spot used well.
35:20
christif: Yeah. Yeah, I mean…
35:22
Tad Eggleston: Because it's such a cool power to be able to make the hole in the world and have it come out wherever you want it.
35:29
christif: Like… It's visually so interesting, yeah, because I think…
35:33
Tad Eggleston: Right.
35:34
christif: Was he… I don't know if he was… was he invented for the mark… for the.
35:39
Tad Eggleston: No, he was in, like, Spectacular Spider-Man…
35:42
christif: Oh, I like…
35:43
Tad Eggleston: have the first appearance, and have had.
35:44
christif: Produce periods.
35:45
Tad Eggleston: forever.
35:49
christif: My first thing…
35:52
Tad Eggleston: Because, like, I… Go ahead.
35:54
christif: Sorry. I was gonna say, my first encounter with the spot with Mark Waid's Daredevil run, so I just assumed that he made the character.
36:02
Tad Eggleston: No, no, no, I wanna say the first one was…
36:10
Tad Eggleston: Spectacular Spider-Man in 1995, number 98.
36:16
christif: Okay, he feels like a 90s character.
36:19
Tad Eggleston: Er, I'm sorry, 1985, not 95.
36:22
christif: Oh, okay.
36:23
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
36:25
Tad Eggleston: So the fir- the first appearance was a kingpit, you know, a…
36:31
Tad Eggleston: It was more of a kingpin Black… that was the era where Peter and Black Cat were, like, really dating.
36:39
Tad Eggleston: But the Kingpin was… was… and Kingpin was still…
36:43
Tad Eggleston: I mean, Miller had started to use them in Daredevil, but he was still.
36:47
christif: Yeah.
36:48
Tad Eggleston: as much of a Spider-Man villain as… as, a Daredevil villain.
36:55
Tad Eggleston: But then, I remember…
36:57
Tad Eggleston: and I think it's 99, this is one of my favorite color covers, so he was probably introduced in 98, and the first…
37:05
Tad Eggleston: First full issue with him was… was 99.
37:09
Tad Eggleston: Just look at that. Oh, okay.
37:12
christif: Oh, that's… that's sick. I mean, just visually, the spot… spot worked so well.
37:17
Tad Eggleston: Right.
37:18
christif: That's… yeah, that's a rad cover.
37:20
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
37:22
Tad Eggleston: And it, I think just such a gift to an artist, too, because, like.
37:28
christif: Yeah.
37:28
Tad Eggleston: Have you ever read… have you ever read Mr. Invincible?
37:33
christif: No!
37:34
christif: I mean, the comic Invincible?
37:36
Tad Eggleston: No, no, no.
37:36
christif: It's literally called me for it.
37:37
Tad Eggleston: It's a French… yeah, it's a French comic, and it's often… it's like 1-4 page gag comics, but Mr. Invincible's power is that he can move between panels.
37:49
christif: Huh.
37:49
christif: The power sounds familiar. I feel like I may have heard of this.
37:54
Tad Eggleston: Right. And his… his… his sidekick is 2D?
37:59
Tad Eggleston: 2d can, like…
38:03
Tad Eggleston: he can, like… he gets to treat the world like 2D, so, like, if you're way… small off in the… off in the distance, he can pick you up and bring you here the same size that you are. Or he can take a car from here and drop it the same size there.
38:23
christif: That's.
38:23
Tad Eggleston: Aww.
38:24
christif: It's so fun.
38:25
Tad Eggleston: there's, there's a, I can't remember the name of the, the, the… villain that…
38:32
Tad Eggleston: Pascal Jusalin is the… is the…
38:37
Tad Eggleston: is… is the… the artist, but I can't remember… one of the villains can move between pages, so, like, he can open a door and go to the page on the other side.
38:50
christif: That's rad.
38:51
Tad Eggleston: Here, here's a full page to give you…
38:55
Tad Eggleston: just had to go find one really quick. Here's a full page to give you a feeling for…
39:01
Tad Eggleston: what we're talking about. So, so, like…
39:04
Tad Eggleston: He jumps down to tell the runner.
39:07
christif: Aww.
39:08
christif: That's… oh, wow.
39:11
Tad Eggleston: Slow down so he doesn't get hit by the…
39:15
christif: That's cool.
39:17
Tad Eggleston: I mean, my…
39:17
christif: Check it out, that's amazing.
39:19
Tad Eggleston: My all-time favorite is, like, totally meta, because it's a… it's a… it goes with the whole comic book thing, but, like, he's walking along, and a kid is reading a comic book, and goes, oh, now I gotta wait a month to see what happens next! So he, like, climbs down.
39:37
Tad Eggleston: the entire page…
39:39
Tad Eggleston: to get the comic from a month later, and then climbs back up, and gives it to the kid. Oh, thanks, Mr. Invincible, and he reads it. And then the very last panel is the kid opening up a comic a month later, going, man, I read this one already.
39:54
christif: That's… oh, that's incredible. That's so… after checking that out, that's amazing. I always… yeah, that sounds like an incredible, like, a gag trip.
40:02
Tad Eggleston: But the spot is like an in-universe version of.
40:06
christif: That's…
40:07
Tad Eggleston: Let a cartoonist mess around with things.
40:10
christif: in total.
40:10
Tad Eggleston: do in a cartoon that, like, really couldn't… So yeah.
40:18
Tad Eggleston: Let's talk a little bit about your other books, because I know you're on a… on a clock, and I want to get you out, and I do have closing… closing questions. So give us just the front counter… give us the front counter pitch for Underwarden, and for Earth to Chris Cleavy, and then your… your… your…
40:34
Tad Eggleston: Your choice on whether you give a front counter pitch for the other couple that you have
40:39
Tad Eggleston: coming up that I haven't read yet, or if you just come back later and talk about.
40:43
christif: Yeah.
40:43
Tad Eggleston: 2.
40:44
christif: Yeah, of course, so Under… yeah, Under Kingdom, is published by Dark Horse, it's written by myself with the amazing Marie Enker on art, and it follows this kid, called Shay, who… his mum disappears and he finds out that she ran this kingdom of monsters underneath his town, so with her out of the picture, he has to take over. And the elevator pitch I used for that one is D&D meets Dungeons & Dragons. I'm sorry, Dungeons & Dragons meets Ted Lasso.
41:09
Tad Eggleston: you may see.
41:10
christif: D&D, yeah. But it's like, yeah, it's… D&D meets Ted Lasso, so it… it's really about,
41:18
christif: This kid that gets thrown into this world of monsters who solve everything through fighting, and him having to…
41:23
christif: He pup fight.
41:25
christif: So he having to figure out other ways of solving his problems. And it really came out of something me and Marie kind of talked about, is, like, so many… at least growing up, so many of the cartoons and media for young boys, all conflict is physical conflict. You know, when I look at, like, Pokemon.
41:42
christif: Beyblade, Dragon Ball Z, all these things, it's, like, all, all…
41:46
Tad Eggleston: I grew up on He-Man, and G.I. Joe, and all sorts of shows that my mother wouldn't let me watch, except for the public service announcement at the end.
41:56
Tad Eggleston: I was allowed to watch Batman 66 because you didn't actually see the punches. You got the BAM!
42:02
christif: Yeah, you got the… the bangers and the pals.
42:06
christif: Yeah, so that, that kind of came out of a response to that, so the book is very much an antithesis of that. And then, it's also my kind of fascination with, like.
42:16
christif: D&D dungeons is, like, a living, breathing environment. So, you know, whenever you've done, like, a dungeon call, you'll be like, oh, we go into this room, and there's, like, three kobolds, and they're protecting a treasure, and then this other room, there's, like, a… there's a slime, and then down here, here's, like, a necromancer, and it's like, well, those guys know each other? Like, are the slime and the kobold friends? Like, what are the… what's…
42:36
Tad Eggleston: Right.
42:37
christif: How does this ecosystem work? It's something that, like, DungeonMeshy, Delicious, and Dungeon does so well that I really.
42:43
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
42:43
christif: That was kind of.
42:44
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
42:44
christif: kind of something I wanted to explore as well. It's like, oh, let's treat the… the… the D&D dungeon crawls like its own world, with its own.
42:53
Tad Eggleston: How would that work?
42:54
christif: book.
42:55
Tad Eggleston: Are you a gamer as well, or…
42:58
christif: Yes, yeah, yeah, very.
42:59
Tad Eggleston: Pretty much faster. Okay, okay.
43:01
Tad Eggleston: Very cool.
43:02
christif: Yeah, so it was, it also… there was a game… funnily enough, it's a game I never played, but growing up, a lot of my friends played it, and it scared… for whatever reason, it scared me, and that seems to be a big part of my writing, is just revisiting things that scared me, but the game Dungeon Keeper…
43:18
christif: That was a big influence.
43:21
christif: Because Dungeon Keeper is basically a sim where you play as, like, an evil dungeon master, and you have, like, a dungeon full of monsters, and you, like… and the good guys are coming through, and you have to, like, stop them. And yeah, so…
43:32
christif: that game was, like, a huge influence on… on… on Under Kingdom. Just my weird exposure and fear of that game as a child.
43:40
Tad Eggleston: Okay, okay, very cool. I do have to ask the quick question, it kind of ends on a cliffhanger. Will there be more? Or is.
43:47
christif: Yeah, I mean…
43:48
Tad Eggleston: We gotta convince people to buy more so we can get.
43:53
christif: Yes.
43:54
christif: Unfortunately, it's very much… I would describe it as Marie and I desperately want to do more. We love working together, we've always envisioned it as more. So we're in the process of figuring out how we do more. But yeah, but I mean, as always, like, buying the book.
44:09
christif: It is, I think… yeah, exactly. The more people buy the book, the easier it is for us to make more, but we definitely want to do more, and I'm confident we will, it's just when and what that will look like, I'm… I'm unsure of.
44:22
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
44:23
Tad Eggleston: Okay. And, and the, the Chris Clevey front counter.
44:27
christif: Yeah!
44:28
Tad Eggleston: Because I love this book. I love this book. I mean, I kind of want to have you come back just to talk about this.
44:33
christif: I would love that, yeah, for sure.
44:36
Tad Eggleston: Because, like… Yeah, it, it, it hit me, it hit me in the feels.
44:41
christif: Oh, I'm so… I'm so happy to hear that. Yeah, it's, definitely… so, Esther Grace Cleavy is about…
44:48
christif: a kid, Bruce Clevy, who his mum, starts date, gets a boyfriend, and he's…
44:55
christif: convinced that his mom's new boyfriend is an alien. And then, at the same time, he's starting to develop OCD habits. So really, I mean, Esther Chris Clevey is like, it's not…
45:06
christif: autobio, like, I didn't grow up in New York, like, it's not… it's not autobio, but his experiences with OCD and a fear of aliens are based almost directly on what I dealt with as a kid, you know? So, like, I've added a bit of, like, the sauce and, like, the specificity of the aliens and stuff.
45:22
christif: I was made up for the book, but, like, as a kid, I was just, like…
45:26
christif: sure that, like, if I didn't do… if I didn't switch the light on and off enough, or wash my hands properly, do this or that, like.
45:32
christif: The world was screwed, and we were gonna get invaded by aliens.
45:35
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it would lead… it would lead to this completely… non-sequitur…
45:41
christif: Yeah, and so that, you know, I spent, like, a good…
45:45
christif: you know, 5-6 years of my life living like that. So that's really what the book is about, because I'm like, oh, it would be nice if, like, people who are going through this know that it's…
45:53
christif: They're not alone. This is actually a thing that has a name, it has symptoms, and it has treatment.
45:58
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah. They're weird, but they're not broken. And they're weird…
46:03
christif: How do you miss out.
46:03
Tad Eggleston: good way. They're weird.
46:05
christif: Yeah.
46:05
Tad Eggleston: way.
46:07
christif: No, totally.
46:08
Tad Eggleston: They might be mildly sprained, because, like, when it gets in the way of them being able to be happy, then you gotta work around it.
46:16
christif: Hardly.
46:16
Tad Eggleston: Think of it as, I mean…
46:18
Tad Eggleston: sometimes it's broken, but I don't like to say that it's automatically broken. I mean, I… like, so hard to find the right words as somebody who's lived through it. It's like, no, there were times where I was broken, and I had to fix myself. But it wasn't purely because I had this or that, it was because I had this or that, and hadn't learned how to deal with it, and hadn't…
46:39
Tad Eggleston: created the environment where I was safe with it, and…
46:43
christif: Yeah, totally. I think a lot of the time, it's like, you're just trying… you're just trying to deal with problems that you didn't have the tools for, and I think that's…
46:52
Tad Eggleston: And they're often even the words to describe.
46:55
christif: 100%, and I think that's kind of, like, the heart of Chris Clevy, is like, hey, it doesn't go away, but the thing… but it does get more manageable when you have the words and the techniques to deal with it, and that's kind of the message of… yeah, of…
47:11
Tad Eggleston: I mean.
47:11
christif: The real message I hope people get out of a book like Chris Cleepy is, like, hey, like, these big things, when you share them with people.
47:19
christif: You often can find out other people have had the same experiences, and suddenly they become a little smaller, a little easier to manage.
47:25
Tad Eggleston: Right. I mean, it's similar to, you know, that there are people who are convinced that we're in an autism epidemic, and I'm sitting there going, no, let me… let me explain diagnosis to you, and let me explain statistics to you.
47:41
christif: So, the people who say that, it's so funny to me. It's like, have you looked at all of history? Like, there were so.
47:47
Tad Eggleston: Like I said, let me explain how diagnoses work. You know, until you come up with criteria and words, you can't have a diagnosis. And now let me explain statistics, because, like, you explain how diagnoses work, and they're like, well, yeah, but even since we've had this diagnosis, it goes up this much every year, and it's like, yes, but let's look granularly.
48:10
Tad Eggleston: The rich white boys, who were the first group that
48:14
Tad Eggleston: really got diagnosed. Their level hasn't changed. What's happened is non-rich white boys, and then… and then boys of color, and then
48:26
Tad Eggleston: Wait for it, wait for it, girls have been diagnosed! And their rates have risen to the fact, they're to the point where it's like, oh, wait a minute, maybe it's not something that's more prevalent in boys. Maybe we were just harder at diagnosing.
48:45
christif: Totally, man.
48:46
Tad Eggleston: Maybe it's something…
48:47
christif: Differently.
48:47
Tad Eggleston: is more… is not more prominent in white boys. Maybe… maybe we just had a problem with deciding that the black boys were… were bad, rather than autistic. Yeah, yeah.
49:01
christif: I mean, this was… this was the thing growing up, right? You were either, like, there wasn't neurodivergent, neurotypical, it was like, you're a good boy or a bad boy. And now I'm like, all the naughty… all the naughty boys, I'm like, they just had to unmedicate, you know?
49:14
Tad Eggleston: Right.
49:14
christif: unmedicated ADHD, or, like, they weren't… they were just forced into a system that didn't work for their brains, and no one made any accommodations.
49:22
Tad Eggleston: And, like…
49:24
Tad Eggleston: Credit where credit is due. Part of the reasons that we started managing to do this is because… because rich white parents didn't want their rich white sons to face consequences, so they needed to come up with reasons.
49:40
Tad Eggleston: And not everybody can just become a Supreme Court justice to avoid their consequences.
49:47
christif: Incredible.
49:50
Tad Eggleston: I like beer, okay? You're allowed to like beer. But if that's your answer to Congress, you just failed your fucking job interview.
49:59
christif: God.
50:00
Tad Eggleston: Wonder.
50:00
christif: I don't know how…
50:01
Tad Eggleston: We missed that one. I don't know how we missed that one.
50:07
Tad Eggleston: Sorry, a congressional hearing is a job interview. What job, apparently other than Supreme Court Justice, could you behave like Brett Kavanaugh behaved in his confirmation hearings and get the job?
50:26
christif: It's… honestly, it's truly buck wild. It's… it feels like… I feel like part of the reason that, like, mental health stuff is, I don't know, becoming more open as well is, like, the world we live in, I think everyone just feels like they… everyone feels like…
50:42
christif: their… their… how they're feeling doesn't line up with how everyone else saying reality is, because everyone's.
50:48
Tad Eggleston: Well, and…
50:49
christif: Normal, this is how things are, and it's like, seems pretty weird to me.
50:54
Tad Eggleston: Right. Before I forget, I'm gonna quickly say.
50:56
Tad Eggleston: Earth Chris Cleavy comes out August 26th, or August 25th, I'm sorry.
51:02
Tad Eggleston: But, but, but yeah, no, I think also, particularly for… the United States.
51:09
Tad Eggleston: We are so built on generational trauma, like, from the get-go.
51:15
Tad Eggleston: And also, like, the reason that anybody gets away
51:20
Tad Eggleston: with calling us a Christian nation, even though, from the get-go, we've tried very clearly to make it, like, read the damn First Amendment!
51:30
Tad Eggleston: Actually read it. Don't listen to what the court says about it. Read it.
51:36
Tad Eggleston: Or listen to 22 panels on Saturday, or Sunday or Monday, after we have our book club on Constitution Illustrated and Declaration Emancipation Illustrated.
51:46
Tad Eggleston: But, is that, like…
51:56
Tad Eggleston: the Christians that came here were the ones that Europe didn't want.
52:01
christif: Yeah, they were, like, the weirdest.
52:03
Tad Eggleston: We started with the crazy Christians.
52:11
Tad Eggleston: the Christians that, like, took things too far, they went, here's the Mayflower, see you later.
52:19
christif: The guys that were, like, weird in church, they're like, what if we all put them on the same boat and sent them away?
52:24
Tad Eggleston: Right, I mean, I mean, in some ways, that's where Australia was lucky. You got sent the criminals that weren't necessarily actually criminals, they were just, like, not friends of the crowd, and not crazy Christians. Because the crazy Christians could go to America!
52:42
christif: Yeah, they had a place.
52:44
Tad Eggleston: You're gonna eat it.
52:49
Tad Eggleston: I'm sorry, we could… we could riff way too long on this, so I'm gonna… since… since we're…
52:55
Tad Eggleston: running up on time. I'm gonna get to closing questions.
0:02
Tad Eggleston: Alright, those savvy enough, and I'm making it so you don't have to be savvy.
0:08
Tad Eggleston: will notice that I had to cut, because we wound up having more… more technical difficulty than I realized the last time around during our closing questions, so… so we've gotten back together, like, about, what, 6 hours later? Something like that.
0:22
christif: Yeah.
0:23
Tad Eggleston: About 6 hours later, so, so…
0:26
Tad Eggleston: Wee hours of the morning for me now, and mid-afternoon for him now, kind of a flipping of what we had before.
0:36
Tad Eggleston: to ask the closing questions and get a clean recording, I will also say on air, in case I forget to do it in, like, you know, a phone call, which tells you about how I communicate with my family, because this message is for my mother and brother, who I know listen to all of the episodes. If you ever listen to an episode and the audio is particularly bad, please let me know so I can go edit.
1:00
christif: That's so…
1:01
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, because…
1:02
christif: It's so.
1:02
Tad Eggleston: Dumb luck that I decided to listen.
1:05
Tad Eggleston: to the end, just to make certain this time, rather than going, well, you know, most of the time, even when I can't hear the answer, it picks up.
1:14
christif: Yeah, yeah.
1:17
Tad Eggleston: On the other side.
1:19
Tad Eggleston: So… so that's… that's what I'll say, and you're… okay, you're not frozen again. For a second, you froze. Okay, so we gotta move.
1:25
christif: Oh, he hasn't properly.
1:26
Tad Eggleston: damn, undersea cables. So, I've been doing this podcast for the less than 5 years now, and I feel like I've entered the Twilight Zone. The number of people who are friends of mine, the experiences that I've gotten to have, the things that I get to see ahead of time, or…
1:44
Tad Eggleston: conversations that I get to have. I mean, I'm up at 1 o'clock in the morning, talking to my new friend Kristoff in Australia. I hope you're my new friend, because I've really enjoyed.
1:53
christif: Of course. Yeah, it's been, no, it's been wonderful.
1:56
Tad Eggleston: Right,
1:58
Tad Eggleston: so I feel like I live this surreal life, where I have all of these memories, where it's like, oh, wait, is that really, like, my life? I mean, now, when I say Chris, my wife has to ask, Cantwell or Condon or your cousin?
2:13
christif: Ugh. Ugh, the dream.
2:16
Tad Eggleston: You know? And, and that's like, when, when, oh, I'm te… who are you texting with? Chris? Cantwell, or Condon, or your cousin?
2:27
christif: Dream. A myriad of Chris's.
2:30
Tad Eggleston: Right. Don't even get us started on some of the even more common names in the world.
2:37
Tad Eggleston: That were already hard before we added in comics people.
2:41
Tad Eggleston: But anyway, I find that everybody in comics, everybody in arts in general.
2:47
Tad Eggleston: Has this kind of blessed experience, where it's like, oh, wow.
2:51
Tad Eggleston: this is the life that I lead. That's just so cool. So I started collecting those stories, those surreal, tell me about something.
3:01
christif: Yeah.
3:02
Tad Eggleston: Because you're comics.
3:04
Tad Eggleston: that you.
3:05
christif: Yeah, I…
3:05
Tad Eggleston: that's just.
3:06
christif: I mean…
3:06
Tad Eggleston: Oh my god.
3:07
christif: I think there's, like, a bunch, but a lot of them are, like… there's a bunch, but a lot of them are quite mundane in terms of, like, oh my goodness, I met this person, you know, and it was amazing. But the one that really sticks out to me was one from very, very early on in my career.
3:20
christif: Which was when I was first, starting in comics, I was working on a pitch, and I was looking at artists, and I was a huge fan of Marie Enga.
3:29
christif: And
3:30
christif: I remember thinking at the time, I was thinking of contacting her, and then I was like… or them, rather, and then I was like, they're probably too busy, they don't want to work with me.
3:42
christif: And then, you know, I met Marie at a convention, maybe, like, 6 months later, we became friends, and then maybe another 6 months after we met, they were asking me to pitch Under Kingdom with them. And now, you know, they're one of my best and closest friends, and so I'm… that, to me, is like an experience where I look back and think, oh, isn't it wild how I…
4:01
christif: I don't know, I just thought this person wouldn't want to have anything to do with me, and they're actually, like, a really wonderful and, you know, close friend. So I think that's the magic of comics, is that we all have this connective tissue, and I mean, I have my…
4:13
Tad Eggleston: We really…
4:14
christif: Oh, sorry, you guys.
4:15
Tad Eggleston: We really are a tribe, aren't we?
4:18
christif: 100%.
4:20
Tad Eggleston: I think we were talking about the whole neurodiversity thing, and I think all the neurodiversity people are like…
4:26
Tad Eggleston: Drawn to comics, so we're… we're just… we become a tribe together.
4:31
christif: Totally! It's such a… yeah, again, because it's such a diverse medium.
4:35
christif: And it's a medium that you can get really nerdy about and passionate about, so you just… I don't know, it just… yeah, it's really wonderful, and I have so many stories like that, so many people in my life.
4:44
christif: who I've met through comics, and, you know, it starts with comics, but then it goes to life stuff, you know?
4:50
Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
4:50
christif: big happens in my life, I'm always telling Marie, we're always, you know, when something big happens in their life, you know, they reach out, so… Right. It's wonderful, it really is wonderful that comics can be the start of these really wonderful relationships and.
5:04
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
5:04
christif: and human connections. And yeah, I've had that happen. I'm so lucky that, you know, most of the really close people in my life that I didn't… that aren't, like, family, or people I went to, like, school with, or whatever, people at Comics have brought into my life, so I feel incredibly.
5:17
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I was about to say that, that, like, the larger surreal part of my life is I have made more good friends in the last 5 years.
5:28
Tad Eggleston: than I made in, like… The 30 years before that.
5:34
christif: That's… and this is, like, I think when people talk about comics, and the comics will break your heart thing, which is true, but it's the comics business will break your heart. For the most part.
5:41
Tad Eggleston: Right.
5:42
christif: People are incredible, you know?
5:43
Tad Eggleston: Right.
5:44
christif: You know, there's jerks in every industry, but most pers… like, 99% of the people you live in com- you meet in comics are just wonderful people who want to see you succeed, and see comics succeed.
5:55
Tad Eggleston: Right. Well, and just, like, again, we're each other's… I mean, so many of us, like, you put us anywhere else, and, like, we're the… can I blend into the wall, please don't talk.
6:06
christif: Totally.
6:06
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. But as soon as it's like, oh, we both like comics, now we can talk about stuff. Oh, you like baseball too? Excellent. You like…
6:16
christif: Totally.
6:16
Tad Eggleston: Cool!
6:18
christif: 100%, it's like finding out that you, like, I don't know, both, like, speak the same language as someone. It's such a deep, you know, when someone says, oh, I read comics, I'm, you know, you're always like, what kind of comics? And, you know, you just.
6:30
christif: Opens up a pen, like, a wonderful…
6:32
christif: Avenue of conversation, because, you know.
6:35
Tad Eggleston: Right.
6:36
christif: There's so many things to talk about.
6:38
Tad Eggleston: Right.
6:39
Tad Eggleston: Alright, closing question. Tell me about something you love.
6:45
Tad Eggleston: And I'm looking forward to this, because I went through the transcript first. This is how I knew to go back and listen to the recording. I went through the transcript, I'm like, well, that didn't seem to come through. Now I need to go listen. No, it really didn't come through. So I'm looking… I heard just enough that I'm really interested in your answer here.
7:01
Tad Eggleston: Tell me something you love.
7:05
Tad Eggleston: Preferably comics, but we don't have rules. Preferably storytelling, but again, with the rules, but something that you love, that not enough people around you have experienced, and you really want them to, so you have more people to talk about it with.
7:16
christif: Hell yeah. So, one of my, like.
7:19
christif: I don't want to say I'm, like, hardcore into it, because the people who are hardcore into it are really into it, but I have a real soft spot and a love for speculative biology, so whenever I come across anything interesting.
7:30
christif: like, a storytelling project in, like, the speculative biology space, I'm always super interested. So, there's kind of… in a lot of ways, it's like a foundational text of speculative biology, but
7:41
christif: It's available for free on the guy's website,
7:45
christif: And it… so you can, like, read it for free as a PDF, and it's called
7:49
christif: all tomorrows. And essentially, what it is, is it's written from the perspective of aliens, millions, possibly billions of years in the future, looking back
7:58
christif: as, like, ancient history of what happened to mankind. So it's this history of mankind
8:05
christif: But specifically, mankind, after they encounter this strange, almost eldritch, but, like, quite…
8:12
christif: heavy sci-fi race called the Q, and basically the Q don't really communicate with humans, they're not interested in having a connection or relationship. All that they… they care about is they see humanity as in the front, so they take and…
8:26
christif: experiment and artificially evolve humans into all these insane subspecies. And this book, basically talks about all the subspecies, and they're horrific.
8:38
christif: insane and horrific. So, like, there's one that's essentially, like, a wall of flesh.
8:44
christif: there's another one called Lopsiders that are humans on high-gravity worlds that are essentially, like, crabs that have been, like, because the gravity's so high, pushed into almost, like, 2D. Anyway, it's horrific, but amazing. And it's really just… I mean, the way it kind of got me thinking about
8:59
christif: world building and the scale and scope and stuff in storytelling, it's just… it's incredible, because it's such an amazing storytelling piece.
9:07
christif: But it's so unconventional in the way that it approaches it.
9:11
Tad Eggleston: It sounds amazing. I'm trying to find the website right now and not find.
9:17
christif: Yeah, let me…
9:17
Tad Eggleston: It is… it is also very.
9:19
christif: We'll send you…
9:19
Tad Eggleston: purchase.
9:21
christif: Oh, good, yeah, good, because I'd been wanting to publish it for a while.
9:24
Tad Eggleston: Is it, is it, is it C.M. Kozman?
9:27
christif: Yeah, by C.M. Kozman, yeah, so All Tomorrow. So I think it is getting a print edition, which is amazing, because for the longest time, it was just a free PDF on their website.
9:36
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, it actually looks like the first English language print edition
9:40
Tad Eggleston: came out December of last year.
9:44
christif: Incredible, alright, well, I need to get a copy, because it is, like…
9:46
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
9:47
christif: It's just one of the coolest. I just… yeah, whenever I have a chance to rave about it, I do, because it's.
9:52
Tad Eggleston: Right, I mean, just the small parts of it that I'm seeing, I'm… I'm… I'm all over it.
10:00
christif: It's really… yeah, and I think…
10:03
christif: Because it kind of speaks to this idea of, like, what is a human?
10:08
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
10:08
christif: You know, at what point do we stop being human? It kind of takes it to insane extremes to be like, well, this flesh wall is technically a human if you look at the DNA, but like, is it a human?
10:17
Tad Eggleston: I mean, of course.
10:20
christif: So it's just…
10:21
Tad Eggleston: Yes.
10:22
christif: It's just, like, super interesting about, like, what are the limits of, like, at what point does something stop becoming a human? And, like, yeah, it's… anyway, incredible. I… I just encourage everyone to pick it up. I think…
10:34
christif: In particular, I mean, I'm not aware of anyone in the speculative biology space that, like, makes any significant money. Like, if you think comics, you know, are tight financially, I feel like the speculative biology people are, like.
10:46
christif: doing this, you know, running on fumes and doing it for the love of the game. So I think, yeah, buying, All Tomorrows is also… Dougal Dixon is another author in that space.
10:56
christif: If you're based in the UK, OK Comics has a couple of his books, After Man, and then another one, I can't remember what it was called.
11:04
christif: A couple of his books there as well, and they're all wonderful, wonderfully written, beautifully illustrated. So yeah, I think, like, if you're interested in, like, storytelling and worldbuilding in any sense, check out some of these speculative biology books, because they'll just get your mind
11:17
christif: Pumping out ideas.
11:18
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I totally generally go more for character development than for worldbuilding, but this looks like a whole different type of worldbuilding, and way up my alley.
11:32
christif: Yeah, it's… I'm not usually a big world-building person either, but there's something just so… I think, particularly with All Tomorrows, because it's about humanity, that kind of infuses, like, you feel a connection to it, even though it's a fictitious account of humans, you kind of feel connected, and you care about what's happening to these
11:50
christif: To these humans, even though there's no named characters or anything.
11:55
Tad Eggleston: Well, both of those…
11:57
Tad Eggleston: See, the secret reason that I asked this question, and I've said this a few times, so it's not much of a secret anymore, is that it gives me more shit to read. Not that I have any lack of shit to read.
12:12
christif: You know, when, when…
12:13
Tad Eggleston: Always looking for that new, cool…
12:17
christif: Tiffany.
12:17
Tad Eggleston: Like, the more different it is from things that I have read before, the more likely it is to, like, go up the list.
12:27
Tad Eggleston: If that makes sense.
12:29
christif: Totally! Yeah.
12:31
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
12:32
Tad Eggleston: Well, Christoph, thank you for coming back to me at 1.30 a.m. my time, and a balmy 4.30 p.m. Yeah, that's…
12:42
christif: Fine, my… it's great, this works great for me, so no, you know, I appreciate you, I appreciate you being up.
12:47
Tad Eggleston: Right. Well, you know, I mean, blame the John Suntress and Brian Bendis book club. I got to hang out, listen to Fabio Moon, and I was actually still kind of riding high, and I'm like, I can't fall asleep yet!
13:03
Tad Eggleston: So, for 22 panels, this has been Chris Stock.
13:07
Tad Eggleston: Bogart? Bogart?
13:10
Tad Eggleston: Bogart.
13:12
christif: Yeah, spot on.
13:13
Tad Eggleston: We will see you after the next page.