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With Great Power #359... 22 Panels with Tom Kaczynski · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:02
  Tad Eggleston: Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels. My guest today returning is Tom Kaczynski.
• 0:08
  Tad Eggleston: Whose new anthology series, Dregs, is on Kickstarter, since Dregs is essentially the way Tom initially.
• 0:18
  Tad Eggleston: pitched it to me was… was the international indie version of Heavy Metal, or Metal or Lot.
• 0:26
  Tad Eggleston: I've brought my brother Peter from our Heavy Metal Book Club to join as well, because I figured…
• 0:31
  Tad Eggleston: to two people who like this type of comics, to ask questions is better than one. So.
• 0:37
  Tad Eggleston: How's it going, Tom?
• 0:39
  Tom Kaczynski: It's going good.
• 0:41
  Tad Eggleston: To see you again.
• 0:42
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, thanks for having me, as a returning guest. And, yeah, I appreciate, you talking about dregs, and, yeah, I'm excited to talk about it, too.
• 0:55
  Tad Eggleston: Well, why don't you give us the initial front counter pitch, and then we'll roll from there.
• 1:03
  Tom Kaczynski: Sure.
• 1:04
  Tom Kaczynski: I mean, you know, basically it's, you know, basically what you said, sort of a… more of an indie heavy metal, also, you know, sort of, draws on, other influences, you know, things like, like, the old, the Garo magazine.
• 1:21
  Tom Kaczynski: You know, the Japanese, kind of, sort of indie manga magazine.
• 1:27
  Tom Kaczynski: And a few other things. You know, it's our own, kind of.
• 1:32
  Tom Kaczynski: spin on that idea. You know, we want it to be quarterly, we want it to have, you know, roughly about 100 pages an issue, you know, that'll be plus or minus, probably, you know, depending on sort of the amount of contributions we have and things like that.
• 1:48
  Tom Kaczynski: And we'll also have, you know, besides having comics, it'll have a little bit of, additional, content, like articles and interviews, things like that, so we wanted to
• 2:00
  Tom Kaczynski: Feel like it's,
• 2:03
  Tom Kaczynski: sort of exploring, you know, other sort of parts of the scene, you know, if you can call it a scene. We do want it to sort of maybe coalesce into maybe a little bit of a scene, we'll see what happens, but I think with, you know, with articles and that kind of content, you can kind of
• 2:23
  Tom Kaczynski: Sort of…
• 2:25
  Tom Kaczynski: you know, bubble up ideas and things, from, from the past, but also hopefully push them into the future. And.
• 2:36
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, personally, you know, like, on a more personal level, it's something that I really sort of miss. I mean, there are, you know, other anthologies out there, you know, many of them tend to be sort of Kickstarter-focused, you know, this is no…
• 2:50
  Tom Kaczynski: This is no diss on Kickstarter. Obviously, we're using it as well, and it's a really good tool to kind of, you know, to fund interesting projects.
• 2:59
  Tom Kaczynski: But, you know, we're kind of hoping that this can become a sustainable thing that can be on the newsstand, in comic book shelves, and comic book shops, and also book shops.
• 3:12
  Tom Kaczynski: Umm.
• 3:13
  Tom Kaczynski: And sort of be a space to, you know, show new talent, established talent, even like, you know, very established talent that maybe wants to play around in a sandbox and do something a little bit different than.
• 3:28
  Tad Eggleston: different.
• 3:29
  Tom Kaczynski: What they have in their bigger projects, whether that's, you know, Marvel, DC, Image, or whatever. You know, we're interested in sort of providing that space.
• 3:41
  Tom Kaczynski: And then with the articles, you know, so I'll use my article, because I'm writing an article for it, as an example. I'm writing on Relax, and I'm just going to show it to you guys. Relax, okay. Which is, it's an old Polish anthology magazine from the late 70s, early 80s.
• 4:00
  Tad Eggleston: I?
• 4:00
  Tom Kaczynski: And, you know, it's, it's a, it's a good, you know, it's definitely sort of like kids focused, but it has a lot of.
• 4:08
  Peter Eggleston Connor: Nice.
• 4:08
  Tom Kaczynski: Kind of, European,
• 4:13
  Tom Kaczynski: Stuff in there. One of the big, kind of,
• 4:18
  Tom Kaczynski: talents that was, sort of, broke out, you know, through that magazine, at least in Poland, was, Grzegorz Szuraszynski, who was the artist on Thorgull, that series. I don't know if you ever read those, but, I'm.
• 4:32
  Tad Eggleston: I haven't read all of them. I've read the first volume of Thorgal. Yeah. But it was on a Humble Bundle a while ago.
• 4:38
  Tom Kaczynski: Yes.
• 4:39
  Tad Eggleston: Like, on my stack of digital files to get to.
• 4:42
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, yeah.
• 4:43
  Tad Eggleston: you.
• 4:44
  Tom Kaczynski: And, you know, I kind of wanted to talk about, you know, the anthology, you know, more conceptually in that article, you know, at least in this Polish case, you know, I think the magazine could be seen as a sort of.
• 5:01
  Tom Kaczynski: I'm…
• 5:04
  Tom Kaczynski: a generator of what eventually becomes kind of the comics industry in Poland, you know? There were definitely comics before it, and comics after it.
• 5:17
  Tom Kaczynski: But it definitely sort of clarified the, you know, sort of the possibilities that were there, and it was just incredibly popular, so it really just popularized the…
• 5:30
  Tom Kaczynski: The, the medium to a lot of people, in that, that sort of, that time frame, that 70s, 80s time frame.
• 5:37
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 5:37
  Tom Kaczynski: And really, you know, a lot of talent sort of went on to do other things, both in Poland and abroad, and it sort of, you know, I do think that it sort of was a catalyst for something much bigger later on.
• 5:52
  Tad Eggleston: move.
• 5:52
  Tom Kaczynski: So, so yeah, so, you know.
• 5:55
  Tom Kaczynski: And this is, you know, my sort of little thing that I like to say about anthologies, that they're kind of dark matter of comics. They're sort of, like, they're a little bit underappreciated, you know, people like being part of them, but nobody really wants to work them, nobody wants to really publish them.
• 6:11
  Tom Kaczynski: You know, at least not these days, you know, it's a kind of a thankless task a little bit. And, but they do, they do sort of.
• 6:22
  Tom Kaczynski: Create a certain ground, for, for, for the possibilities,
• 6:29
  Peter Eggleston Connor: Why why do you think nobody wants to publish that? I'm sorry. I'm just asking questions because I'm curious as we're talking about it.
• 6:35
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's, you know, maybe overstating it a little bit, but it's, but it's, you know, it's definitely… everybody that I've ever talked to that sort of put together an anthology, you know, eventually becomes exhausted, and it becomes, you know, it becomes something
• 6:53
  Tom Kaczynski: You know, it's, it's a little bit of a kind of an albatross around the neck, you know, I mean, unless it's a, unless the publication is really sort of.
• 7:02
  Tom Kaczynski: geared towards that, and I think, you know, Heavy Metal obviously was very much geared towards being an anthology, and sort of proved that model, you know, among other publications out there.
• 7:14
  Tom Kaczynski: But, you know, it's always something that sort of lasts for a little while and then goes away, which, you know, every… everything has a beginning and an end, so…
• 7:25
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 7:26
  Peter Eggleston Connor: I mean, like, even heavy metal had its,
• 7:29
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean, it just has.
• 7:30
  Peter Eggleston Connor: Had its hiccups. I mean, it was a two-year hiatus. Yeah.
• 7:35
  Tad Eggleston: Year hiatus. If you look at those first 300-some-odd issues, they went through…
• 7:42
  Tad Eggleston: a ton of different publishers, a ton of different editors, you know, after 6 or 7 years of monthly, they went bi-monthly, then there were a couple of years in there where there were, like, 4…
• 7:53
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah.
• 7:54
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean…
• 7:56
  Peter Eggleston Connor: So I thought everything you were saying was in fact quite seemed like it'd be quite.
• 8:01
  Tad Eggleston: Right, right.
• 8:02
  Peter Eggleston Connor: Like, I, mostly…
• 8:05
  Peter Eggleston Connor: And obviously, I want to focus on dregs, but, you know, I think there's a very big story there where, like, essentially, like.
• 8:14
  Peter Eggleston Connor: I think anthologies are cool. I'll start with that. Like, I… I very much like getting to read heavy metal, cause…
• 8:21
  Peter Eggleston Connor: it's a way to, like, step into, hey, I'm gonna have, like, a little bit of taste of this, and a little bit of taste of that, and… You know, it's not perfect all the time. We… what was it, 1996? I got that bad translation, was that the…
• 8:34
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, no, yeah, we loved the art and hated the story, and then we found out that it was a translation that didn't go through the original artist.
• 8:46
  Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah.
• 8:47
  Tad Eggleston: And the original artist, when she saw it the first time, went, wait, what?
• 8:53
  Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah. It was a it was a really weird translation.
• 8:57
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 8:58
  Peter Eggleston Connor: So, there was that. You know, that's fine, like, you know, sometimes, even if you get things and it's hit or miss, it's… it is what it is, I'm not trying to… but, like, I think, like, you know, just even… I can imagine, and again, I've never done one, that anthology would take a lot of work just because you're
• 9:18
  Peter Eggleston Connor: You're talking about working with all these different artists and getting… Yeah.
• 9:21
  Peter Eggleston Connor: Getting that content in there, and then I can't even think of, like, how many technical issues there could be where you're trying to get it all formatted to the same page, its size, and…
• 9:31
  Tom Kaczynski: Right, right. Yeah, I mean, there's definitely the logistics of kind of wrangling everybody, making sure the art, fits the bill, and, you know, and then sort of putting it all together, you know, the graphic design portion of it, all that stuff. So.
• 9:46
  Tom Kaczynski: So yeah, it's you know, it's a lot of work. And…
• 9:50
  Tad Eggleston: I was…
• 9:50
  Tom Kaczynski: I do think that it's, you know, ultimately rewarding, and I do think that, you know, sort of amazing things came out of Anthologies over the…
• 9:57
  Tom Kaczynski: you know, however many decades back you want to look. Right. You know, it's… It be.
• 10:04
  Tom Kaczynski: I, you know, I feel like I owe a little bit of a debt to Anthology, so maybe it's my time to do one, and we'll see how it goes, you know?
• 10:16
  Tad Eggleston: I spent yesterday at Milk, the Milwaukee.
• 10:19
  Tom Kaczynski: Oh, yeah.
• 10:20
  Tad Eggleston: And local Comic Fest. And the last panel there was actually the organizers of Milk Cake and Slice, the St. Louis Independent Comic Expo.
• 10:31
  Tad Eggleston: Talking about putting on, like, this level of con, and…
• 10:36
  Tad Eggleston: I think that there's actually some crossover between, like, a cake milk slice.
• 10:44
  Tad Eggleston: Autoptic.
• 10:46
  Tad Eggleston: Insert name, and a good anthology, in that, like.
• 10:52
  Tad Eggleston: There's actually a lot of work that goes into it. It's hard to find a way to make money off of it, and yet they're also among the coolest things in companies.
• 11:02
  Tad Eggleston: Right, right, right. So, you know, I mean, because I imagine that that's part of the issue within anthology, is like.
• 11:10
  Tad Eggleston: It's hard enough to pay people
• 11:13
  Tad Eggleston: The way they should get paid for doing art.
• 11:18
  Tad Eggleston: for a full book that's theirs. To manage to have enough
• 11:22
  Tad Eggleston: You know, to raise enough funds, et cetera, to pay properly for
• 11:29
  Tad Eggleston: A dozen different artists or teams of artists.
• 11:33
  Tom Kaczynski: right?
• 11:33
  Tad Eggleston: You know.
• 11:34
  Tad Eggleston: Which is why I, like, I actually love that you're doing the Kickstarter, both from the funding aspect, but also, I think an under…
• 11:45
  Tad Eggleston: an undervalued part of Kickstarter and Comics today is its funding and…
• 11:54
  Tad Eggleston: Publicity all at the same time.
• 11:57
  Tad Eggleston: I think that there are a lot of people that wouldn't necessarily see a project like this if it was hiding in their lunar catalog.
• 12:08
  Tom Kaczynski: Right.
• 12:09
  Tad Eggleston: But it's… either the algorithm's gonna kick it to them on Kickstarter, or they spend real amounts of time
• 12:20
  Tad Eggleston: you know, scrolling through the comics on Kickstarter, or it's a little bit more likely that a podcaster, whatever, is gonna reach out to you, because
• 12:31
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I try to reach out ahead of final order cutoff for oddball product.
• 12:36
  Tad Eggleston: products that I see, but again, I have to find them in this mountain of stuff.
• 12:42
  Tom Kaczynski: where.
• 12:42
  Tad Eggleston: Whereas, at any given time, there are maybe 10 Kickstarters that I'm really interested in.
• 12:48
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah.
• 12:48
  Tad Eggleston: You know…
• 12:51
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah.
• 12:52
  Tad Eggleston: So yeah, I'm always thinking about the comics.
• 12:57
  Tad Eggleston: ecosystem, and the financial aspects of it, the growing readership aspects of it, you know. And I wonder, I wonder if this, like, the idea of…
• 13:10
  Tad Eggleston: You know, and it's what both Metal Erlant and Heavy Metal did as well. They kick-started their initial issues to get
• 13:18
  Tad Eggleston: back into stores. I wonder if this might be a good anthology model.
• 13:24
  Tad Eggleston: Like, drum up interest and publicity, and… and not have to…
• 13:31
  Tad Eggleston: Put your own money in out of the gate.
• 13:34
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 13:35
  Tad Eggleston: the.
• 13:36
  Tom Kaczynski: You know, it's a big project, so it needs a little bit, you know, more, sort of support, you know?
• 13:44
  Tom Kaczynski: The, you know, you know, what you say here about Kickstarter, you know, it's, it really has become, you know, again, kind of like a
• 13:52
  Tom Kaczynski: like a… Like a new appendage in the comics ecosystem, you know,
• 13:59
  Tom Kaczynski: funding projects.
• 14:01
  Tom Kaczynski: Excuse me, funding projects and things that wouldn't otherwise.
• 14:05
  Tom Kaczynski: Happen. And I think it's great. I you know I've done I've supported many Kickstarters. This is only really our only, I think, second or third Kickstarter that we've ever done.
• 14:16
  Tom Kaczynski: So it's not a model that I try to rely on too much, but sometimes a project just needs a little bit extra, you know? And, you know, I'm glad people are happy to.
• 14:30
  Tom Kaczynski: you know, see the… hopefully see the value in the project, and then also support it. So, you know, anybody who has already supported the Kickstarter, please, thank you.
• 14:39
  Tad Eggleston: I think I was number 2.
• 14:41
  Tom Kaczynski: Okay, awesome.
• 14:44
  Tom Kaczynski: We should…
• 14:45
  Tad Eggleston: I didn't quite get the one spot. I sometimes get the one spot. I didn't quite get the one spot. I think I was 2 this time.
• 14:52
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 14:53
  Tom Kaczynski: We should create plaques or something.
• 14:54
  Peter Eggleston Connor: I,
• 14:57
  Peter Eggleston Connor: I still need to go sign up. I, I should have been faster on it, cause the…
• 15:03
  Peter Eggleston Connor: the early…
• 15:05
  Tad Eggleston: The early bird's over.
• 15:06
  Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah, the early bird is over, I'm like, oh, well.
• 15:10
  Tad Eggleston: We did plug it on the last heavy metal, though I'm not certain.
• 15:13
  Peter Eggleston Connor: Dude, it's all on me, I mean, like…
• 15:16
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 15:17
  Peter Eggleston Connor: I'm not… I'm not…
• 15:19
  Tad Eggleston: What I'm trying to remember, though, yeah, we plugged it on the last Heavy Metal, which hasn't actually posted yet.
• 15:25
  Tom Kaczynski: the.
• 15:26
  Tad Eggleston: It's the next episode that I'll put up. I finished editing it yesterday, but I haven't… And by edit, I mean running it through filters.
• 15:35
  Tom Kaczynski: Right, right, right.
• 15:36
  Peter Eggleston Connor: I was gonna say, I… Do you love the,
• 15:41
  Peter Eggleston Connor: I do love the Kickstarter page. I really enjoy that you have these shares of some of the stuff that is going to be in it.
• 15:50
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 15:50
  Peter Eggleston Connor: Just single pages, and…
• 15:52
  Peter Eggleston Connor: Zac Smith, But I like seeing the art style and getting get an idea of what we're looking at.
• 15:59
  Peter Eggleston Connor: So that's fun. And,
• 16:04
  Peter Eggleston Connor: I guess, real quick, is there anything…
• 16:08
  Peter Eggleston Connor: As far as the Kickstarter goes, it looks like there's, like, essentially 3 big options for individuals, and then some options for comic shops. The options being the first issue, the first two issues, or the first four issues, is that…
• 16:23
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, so, yeah, the first issue, the first two issues, and then, like, a subscription. You know, we've run, as Uncivilized, we've run a number of, kind of, series of subscriptions, so we've kind of been building on this model.
• 16:36
  Tom Kaczynski: So we're continuing that with Dregs here, where basically, you know, you… you get it, and you have, you know, the stuff mailed to you. We, you know, we do have a lot of customers that sort of either have comic shops that are kind of far away from them, or just don't even have a comic shop.
• 16:52
  Tom Kaczynski: So they like the subscription model, because, you know, they get their stuff. And then, yeah, we don't have a lot of extras. We kind of made a choice to kind of make it really simple.
• 17:03
  Tom Kaczynski: We really want the magazine to sell, not like a bunch of other stuff. Right.
• 17:09
  Tom Kaczynski: So, you know, if it fails and people don't want to buy the magazine, then it fails, you know? But we don't want to win because everybody buys a hat, you know, or something like that. That doesn't mean in the future we won't merchandise things here and there, but we just didn't want to necessarily do that out of the gate.
• 17:27
  Tad Eggleston: I think a lot of the times with, like, the first issue of something, if you're gonna merchandise at all, it's better to do it as a stretch goal anyway. Like, hey, if we get to $10,000, we'll send you all stickers.
• 17:40
  Tom Kaczynski: the.
• 17:41
  Tad Eggleston: Ha ha ha ha!
• 17:42
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, something like that. But yeah, we wanted to keep it simple. You know, we do want this to be available, you know, many places. We are working with a couple of
• 17:53
  Tom Kaczynski: potential options in Europe, for example, to be able to give the European fans and customers better shipping, so we.
• 18:03
  Tad Eggleston: nice.
• 18:04
  Tom Kaczynski: We can, sort of try to create that. We're still working on that. Hopefully we'll be able to announce something in about a few days.
• 18:12
  Tom Kaczynski: And, you know, so we really wanted this to feel international, and, you know, easy to get, either via, you know, your comic shop, or, you know, if you don't have access to it, or you prefer getting your comics in the mail.
• 18:29
  Tom Kaczynski: That way as well. So, And then obviously, you know, retailers… we do have a couple of retail tiers, although we… we're pretty explicit in the beginning that, you know, if they have a preferred distributor that they work with, most likely drags will be available through that distributor, not too long from after the Kickstarter's over.
• 18:51
  Tad Eggleston: we have noticed kind of a difference in the launches between metal… or relaunches of Metal Erlant and Heavy Metal, where Metal Erlant has been doing
• 19:03
  Tad Eggleston: Almost all standalone stories, rather than continuing between
• 19:08
  Tad Eggleston: Issues, and they've also been theming their issues.
• 19:12
  Tad Eggleston: Whereas Heavy Metal has been doing lots of… serialized stories.
• 19:20
  Tad Eggleston: Do you have a specific plan or preference in terms of what you want Drake's.
• 19:27
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, so most stories will be standalone stories. But we will have a few small serials.
• 19:35
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 19:36
  Tom Kaczynski: I personally really like cereals, so I wanted to have some.
• 19:41
  Tad Eggleston: But I also love the mix, so I'm glad that you're doing both.
• 19:44
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, yeah, we definitely want, you know, we want to be able to get someone to pick up an issue and not feel like they're lost or in the middle of, like, 20 different serials.
• 19:52
  Tom Kaczynski: Right. So there will be some small stuff, but then, you know, ideally, if those serials interest them, they will, you know, look and try to find the older issues and things like that, and if there's collections in the future, those.
• 20:06
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I was about to say serials can then also become collections. Right, right, right, right.
• 20:11
  Tom Kaczynski: So you know, all that stuff is sort of like baked in. And so yeah, I I do personally like serialization a lot. You know, one of my favorite.
• 20:21
  Tom Kaczynski: bits of serialization, you know, sort of from my memory of being a, you know, a young comics reader back in the 80s was, you know, remembering that, like, you know, when Frank Miller launched Sin City, for example, in Dark Horse Presents, you know, which was an anthology that I read, you know, all the time.
• 20:39
  Tom Kaczynski: You know, it was cool that…
• 20:42
  Tom Kaczynski: you know, he wanted to try something a little bit different, and, you know, this whole great giant thing that became Sin City with, you know, with all the comics, all the movies, etc, it started, you know, basically with an 8-page, you know, serialization in Dark Horse Presents.
• 21:01
  Tad Eggleston: Backwards plans.
• 21:02
  Tom Kaczynski: That was, you know, that was kind of like an itch he wanted to scratch. He wasn't even sure it was going to be viable, because, you know, crime comics at that time were not… were not big sellers or anything like that, so…
• 21:13
  Tom Kaczynski: You know, in a way, you know, not only did he create a project that sort of a lot of people remember him for, but he also sort of revitalized the genre in general, and sort of opened the door for a lot of other crime comics that came on its heels.
• 21:29
  Tom Kaczynski: So, you know, it's, again, like, it's…
• 21:32
  Tom Kaczynski: we don't, you know, we don't really think about these things, you know, historically, like, you know, how did these things happen, you know? And so it's kind of cool to kind of think about some of these moments.
• 21:42
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and that's something that I'm already excited about, and I think Peter will back me up on this. We're notorious for not reading enough of the prose when we're doing our monthly heavy metal book club.
• 21:56
  Peter Eggleston Connor: everything.
• 21:57
  Tad Eggleston: But I know for myself, I'm way more likely to read.
• 22:02
  Tad Eggleston: An interview, or a… like, historical comic piece, than I am to read
• 22:12
  Tad Eggleston: the short story. Not because I think the short story will be bad or whatever, but, like, I came for comics. If I was coming for a short story, I'd go somewhere else.
• 22:22
  Tom Kaczynski: Right, right, right.
• 22:23
  Peter Eggleston Connor: Kind of it does kinda depend on the interview. I've I've known a few interviews that you just skipped just because of
• 22:28
  Peter Eggleston Connor: various things, but… Oh, yeah, I mean… …that are actually around comics help normally.
• 22:33
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, I skip all sorts of things for time, but…
• 22:38
  Peter Eggleston Connor: Sometimes it's time, and sometimes I… I won't go into it.
• 22:42
  Tad Eggleston: I know that I've also jumped… yeah, no, I'm certain that there are interviews that I've, like, started reading and gone, yeah, I'm not interested in anymore.
• 22:51
  Peter Eggleston Connor: I think it was on, like.
• 22:53
  Peter Eggleston Connor: Was it crypto? It was on those weird little images like it was.
• 22:59
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, was there an NFT interview?
• 23:01
  Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah.
• 23:02
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, okay, yeah, no, I might have gotten…
• 23:04
  Peter Eggleston Connor: one.
• 23:04
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, we're going way back. This had to have been before the heavy metal…
• 23:10
  Tad Eggleston: Relaunch, because I don't think they've done anything…
• 23:14
  Peter Eggleston Connor: No.
• 23:15
  Tad Eggleston: that on the relaunch, I think, so, yeah, okay.
• 23:17
  Peter Eggleston Connor: Was it?
• 23:19
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know.
• 23:19
  Peter Eggleston Connor: Oh, I think it…
• 23:21
  Tad Eggleston: I know the interviews, like…
• 23:23
  Peter Eggleston Connor: I feel like it was like.
• 23:24
  Tad Eggleston: There was an Alan Moore interview in one of the Metal Erlants, and then the one that I thought was really cool, because it was kind of outside the box, they had, like, an actual science interview with an actual physicist who just happens to also be the, like, science consultant to Star Trek.
• 23:43
  Tad Eggleston: So, like, there was, like, one part of the interview
• 23:48
  Tad Eggleston: was about, like, her Star Trek stuff, and, like, 9 parts of the interview was about, like.
• 23:53
  Tad Eggleston: science and sci-fi, and where they meet, and what's cool about the two of them, and how sci-fi got her into science.
• 24:01
  Tad Eggleston: You know, and that's… that's the sort of stuff that, like, again, like, when I'm reading for the monthly issue, or the monthly episode, like, sometimes I won't get to, but… but it's the stuff that I like more, is stuff that, like.
• 24:13
  Tad Eggleston: makes me want to read something that I haven't read before, and that's where, like, the history pieces come in, or gives me a different perspective
• 24:22
  Tad Eggleston: on what I'm reading, or what I could be reading, because it's like, oh, like.
• 24:27
  Tad Eggleston: We just took you on time travel. Let's have somebody talk to you about the realities and unrealities of the possibilities of time travel in a very literal sense.
• 24:39
  Peter Eggleston Connor: Yeah.
• 24:39
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, no, for sure, I mean, that's, you know, obviously every magazine, you know.
• 24:45
  Tom Kaczynski: You know, there's gonna be things that really interest you, and then there's things that.
• 24:48
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 24:49
  Tom Kaczynski: Don't interest you, and ideally, you know, more things interest you, and that's why you pick up the magazine. So, you know.
• 24:56
  Tom Kaczynski: But yeah, that's… that's the kind of stuff that we're interested in, too. I mean, I… you know, I don't think we'll be…
• 25:02
  Tom Kaczynski: I don't want to limit us necessarily to just like interviews with artists as as.
• 25:06
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 25:07
  Tom Kaczynski: You know, I wanted to write these more sort of historical pieces on either older anthologies or older kind of like
• 25:14
  Tom Kaczynski: Scenes or moments in, in, in, sort of, sci-fi, fantasy.
• 25:20
  Tom Kaczynski: things, you know, happening, back then. And then, you know, it'd be cool to bring in, other stuff too, you know, sort of a little bit outside the…
• 25:32
  Tom Kaczynski: The comics realm, but still within the sort of the sci-fi fantasy frame, you know, as you suggest, maybe scientists, maybe, you know, other writers who are.
• 25:42
  Tad Eggleston: Well.
• 25:42
  Tom Kaczynski: do comics and want to talk about it.
• 25:45
  Peter Eggleston Connor: economics.
• 25:45
  Tom Kaczynski: So that'd be, I think that'd be cool.
• 25:48
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, one of the reasons that that popped into my head is I feel like uncivilized books
• 25:54
  Tad Eggleston: already does that. Yeah. Sometimes, you know, whether it's the Karl Barks… yeah, I mean, because you also print.
• 26:03
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, so this, yeah, this, yeah, this kind of continues my, my little, you know, I have a line of books about comics called Critical Cartoons.
• 26:12
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 26:13
  Tom Kaczynski: where we've done, you know, a lot of stuff now. I think, like, there's, like, 7 volumes. But yeah, we started with, with Brian Evanson, who's a well-known, horror fiction writer, writing about, Yummy Fur.
• 26:28
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 26:29
  Tom Kaczynski: And interviewing Chester Brown as well.
• 26:32
  Tom Kaczynski: And it's a cool… it's a cool piece, because, you know, Brian sort of comes out of, you know, kind of a very religious upbringing, and can kind of bring… bring some of the… some of his, sort of, understanding of
• 26:45
  Tom Kaczynski: storytelling, but also kind of the religious background of a lot of Chester Brown stuff. Because you know, it's got those a lot of those yummy furs also serialize the this the gospels in in as part of the the comic.
• 27:02
  Tom Kaczynski: So it was really kind of a comprehensive, deep dive into, sort of, the work.
• 27:07
  Tom Kaczynski: And, so I hope we have stuff like that in Drake's as well into the future, you know, definitely, sort of, you know, we're fishing around for some interesting stuff right now, so…
• 27:19
  Tom Kaczynski: And yeah, and sometimes people can't do a full book, so but they'd be happy to do an article. So, you know, that's a that's a whole, you know. I I definitely know a lot of writers who are just like, well, I want to write something, I don't have time. But yeah.
• 27:30
  Tom Kaczynski: For, you know…
• 27:31
  Tad Eggleston: Or even.
• 27:32
  Tom Kaczynski: I don't know where to put it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 27:35
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, particularly if they're cartoonists, you know, they don't always…
• 27:38
  Tad Eggleston: It's like, oh, I want to write something, but where do I put this thing that I write?
• 27:43
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 27:44
  Tad Eggleston: I know where to get a comic book, but I don't know.
• 27:47
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah.
• 27:47
  Tad Eggleston: What did that say? Exactly.
• 27:51
  Peter Eggleston Connor: For sure.
• 27:53
  Tad Eggleston: You know, you did it the last time you were on, but we've got a floating audience.
• 28:00
  Tad Eggleston: And I, and I feel like it's a, probably always a, a…
• 28:07
  Tad Eggleston: What's the word I'm looking for?
• 28:10
  Tad Eggleston: evolving thing. How would you describe the mission of Uncivilized Comics?
• 28:16
  Tad Eggleston: Or uncivilized books.
• 28:18
  Tad Eggleston: Because I know what it is in my head, but I'd love to hear what it is in your head.
• 28:23
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, I mean, you know, the mission evolves always over time, you know.
• 28:29
  Tom Kaczynski: But, you know, I'm basically interested in the medium of comics, like, on a hopefully, you know, deep level.
• 28:38
  Tom Kaczynski: And, I'm interested in publishing good stories, you know, number one. Number two, there's something kind of deeper going on on the medium level of the book.
• 28:53
  Tom Kaczynski: You know, it's almost like a kind of an intellectual art project for me, you know, on Civilized Books. You know, I kind of call it boutique comics publisher, sometimes I call it a think tank.
• 29:06
  Tom Kaczynski: you know, it has all these different epithets. But, you know, it's a pretty eclectic endeavor that sort of follows, you know, my…
• 29:17
  Tom Kaczynski: sort of whims in… on some level, but I think there is a through line through all the titles, that, that sort of hold together as a line, you know?
• 29:31
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, if I had to… if I had to put that through line into words, I think…
• 29:37
  Tad Eggleston: I think I would say an appreciation of both the medium and the history.
• 29:42
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, I, yeah, I do think that that's, that's accurate.
• 29:47
  Tad Eggleston: Because, like…
• 29:50
  Tad Eggleston: There are two things that pretty much all of your titles have in common. The first is… they're a little weird and might not get published by anybody else, so you're kind of… you're kind of the king of finding orphans and giving them a home.
• 30:05
  Tad Eggleston: But the second is that they're… they're comics through and through. Like, they're stories that need to be told in comics. They're stories that… that…
• 30:22
  Tad Eggleston: Utilize the medium for the storytelling.
• 30:26
  Tad Eggleston: Or, or their, their thought pieces on.
• 30:30
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Utilizing the medium for storytelling, you know?
• 30:33
  Tom Kaczynski: Right.
• 30:34
  Tad Eggleston: You know. So, I mean, that's… that's… I think that's why we've gotten along since the get-go. You're one of the few people I know that's as fascinated by the medium as I am, you know, the how… how does this wonderful thing work?
• 30:52
  Tom Kaczynski: Absolutely.
• 30:53
  Tad Eggleston: So, I mean, that, that, that's what, I mean.
• 30:57
  Tad Eggleston: Like, I've been watching for it to pop up on Kickstarter for… since the summer. You and I had coffee, what, back in…
• 31:05
  Tad Eggleston: June, and you told me about this project, and it's like, it's been in my head since. I'm like, I can't wait to see this, because…
• 31:12
  Tad Eggleston: I love anthologies. I love sci-fi fantasy anthologies most of all.
• 31:20
  Tad Eggleston: And I love your curation of comics, so being able to see all of those things, I mean, and even now.
• 31:27
  Tad Eggleston: going through… going through artists, you know. Issue 1, we've got Matthias Berger, Michael DeForge, Richie Pope, James Romberger, Del Perez, Don, Tom Neely, Keenan Marshall Keller, Glodark, Suzanne Jana, Jana?
• 31:42
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know how to pronounce that one. And Jean-Marc Assen.
• 31:47
  Tad Eggleston: I know two-thirds of those names and love them, which means I assume that the other third will be equally great. And then for issue 2, we already have Ronald Wimberly, one of my favorite artists in the world.
• 31:59
  Tom Kaczynski: laughs.
• 32:01
  Tad Eggleston: Yum.
• 32:05
  Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna… I'm butchering this one, is it… Guillema?
• 32:08
  Tad Eggleston: Gariba, Tim Peacock, Yelang.
• 32:11
  Tom Kaczynski: I don't know the pronunciations as well either, but
• 32:16
  Tad Eggleston: This is what happens in an email world.
• 32:20
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 32:21
  Tad Eggleston: Suzanne, Jenna, again, Kevin Catalan, and Jake… Jake Zaup.
• 32:27
  Tom Kaczynski: Zavlatsky.
• 32:28
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, lucky, yeah.
• 32:29
  Tom Kaczynski: I mean, I don't know how he pronounces it in English, but
• 32:32
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 32:32
  Tom Kaczynski: I'll say the correct Polish phrase.
• 32:34
  Tad Eggleston: Polish way.
• 32:35
  Tom Kaczynski: the.
• 32:35
  Tad Eggleston: So, like… I mean, again, this is… this is what… this is like the entire uncivilized line. When I know the artist, they're already one of my all-time favorites. And when I don't, I can just assume that I'm gonna love them, because…
• 32:55
  Tad Eggleston: That's… that's the level you work on.
• 33:00
  Tad Eggleston: So, what's been the… the… well, actually, no, let's do a process question. How did you go about
• 33:09
  Tad Eggleston: Like.
• 33:10
  Tad Eggleston: asking for stories? Did you go to specific people? Was there a way that you just put out the word?
• 33:16
  Tom Kaczynski: year.
• 33:16
  Tad Eggleston: Anybody want to do this?
• 33:18
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, so, you know, the process is, you know, this is one of the few projects where I have, some collaborators working with me, so I'm working with Al Gopha, who's done a couple of other anthologies called Dagger Dagger, Cry Punch.
• 33:32
  Tom Kaczynski: They were both Kickstarter anthologies, and, you know, I really like those. We met a couple years ago in Montreal, he's in Montreal, and, you know, we see eye to eye on many things, and he's sort of the…
• 33:47
  Tom Kaczynski: You know, the behind the scenes, wrangler, of all the artists, so he's done most of that work.
• 33:54
  Tom Kaczynski: Bringing in the various artists, even people that I've already worked with before, that I would have… certainly have asked, if I was the person doing all the asking, he's already kind of brought them on board, like, you know, people like James Romberger.
• 34:09
  Tom Kaczynski: So, so yeah, it's a little bit of a, you know.
• 34:13
  Tom Kaczynski: There's both of us, and we sort of made a list of people we like.
• 34:18
  Tom Kaczynski: And, you know, and it's been sort of his job to sort of to do this, most of this. You know, I, you know, I'm definitely sort of more on the publishing side here, making sure that we have as wide distribution as we can get.
• 34:33
  Tom Kaczynski: Kind of handling a lot of logistics, that's sort of the technical printing logistics. We're also working with a graphic designer that helps offload a lot of things.
• 34:43
  Tom Kaczynski: So, his name is Domo, and
• 34:48
  Tom Kaczynski: You know, so I… to me, this is actually, like, a kind of a dream project to have some collaborators that can, you know, we each kind of bring our own strengths to this, and you know.
• 35:01
  Tom Kaczynski: Hopefully, it all kind of congeals into a much larger whole, so…
• 35:06
  Tom Kaczynski: So it's been great to kind of see what they're doing. You know, I get to chime in as well every now and then, say, hey, I've got someone for you, and I, you know, throw them over there. But really, Al's been doing most of the, kind of, like, the technical, you know, on-the-ground outreach for most of the artists.
• 35:26
  Tad Eggleston: Very cool.
• 35:29
  Tad Eggleston: Were you about to say something, Peter?
• 35:31
  Peter Eggleston Connor: No, I just said very nice. Go ahead.
• 35:37
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, this would be… I don't know if I'd be doing this if I didn't have other people.
• 35:42
  Tad Eggleston: No, I mean, I think that's another way that it's, like, I made the analogy to.
• 35:50
  Tad Eggleston: To, to, to small… to smaller, And, and generally free.
• 36:00
  Tad Eggleston: Comic-cons already, like, it doesn't feel like the type of thing that can be done… without help.
• 36:13
  Tad Eggleston: It doesn't feel like the type of thing that… You know…
• 36:20
  Peter Eggleston Connor: I.
• 36:21
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm certain that there are some anthologies that are taken on by one person, but it just feels like such a Herculean task to… to both.
• 36:28
  Tom Kaczynski: I mean, honestly, it happens all the time.
• 36:31
  Tad Eggleston: Of course, it does.
• 36:33
  Tom Kaczynski: And, you know, God bless every one of those people who want to wrangle and do this. But yeah, it's, you know, in this particular case, again, we, you know, we have a kind of a larger ambition that hopefully we can
• 36:49
  Tom Kaczynski: We can do, and, you know, definitely not a one-man job, you know, one person job.
• 36:54
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 36:56
  Tad Eggleston: And I will say that both Dagger, Dagger, and Cry Punch Comics are available at Algolfa's
• 37:03
  Tom Kaczynski: They're also available as add-ons, so if you,
• 37:06
  Tad Eggleston: Cartel store.
• 37:07
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah.
• 37:08
  Tad Eggleston: Are they?
• 37:08
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, yeah. So if you are already doing something and you want to check out some of the older stuff, both from Uncivilized and from
• 37:16
  Tom Kaczynski: From, from Al…
• 37:18
  Tad Eggleston: Here you go, trying to get me to spend more money right off the bat.
• 37:22
  Tom Kaczynski: I…
• 37:24
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, I see it! Oh, well, but that's a better price than he's got at his store for Dagger Daggers. Oh, no, that's the shipping… that's the shipping price. That's… that's not the…
• 37:37
  Tom Kaczynski: So, you know, they're available, if you want to check out some of our older projects, bundle it all together.
• 37:45
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, bundles are good, and I'm certain, just because it always happens, that when it comes time to finalize my pledge and
• 37:57
  Tad Eggleston: stuff I'll wind up adding.
• 38:00
  Tad Eggleston: add-ons before shipping. Because… because I've managed to force myself to wait till then, Tom, so I don't have the… as many of the sudden $100 coming out of my bank account for that Kickstarter that I backed a month ago.
• 38:18
  Tom Kaczynski: Listen, comics are it's an expensive hobby. I I you know I feel you.
• 38:23
  Tom Kaczynski: But yeah, you know, with the add-ons, we wanted to kind of highlight, you know, some of the other anthologies, but then also a few uncivilized projects that, you know, that are relevant to the creators that are inside of Drag, so…
• 38:38
  Tom Kaczynski: you know, we have James Romberger's For Real, I don't know if you've ever seen that comic, but it's the… Yeah. His, his retelling of a Jack… like, a real-world Jack Kirby story, that happened to him during World War II.
• 38:52
  Tom Kaczynski: And also an essay on sort of how all the World War II experiences influences comics later on in general.
• 39:01
  Tom Kaczynski: And, they also… the jungle, you know, you can kind of add that on. Yeah, and
• 39:09
  Tom Kaczynski: I think there's one more.
• 39:12
  Tom Kaczynski: blanking on the add-ons now.
• 39:15
  Tad Eggleston: Well, that's what… that's why I'm going… unfortunately, you can't look… you can't look at… the add-ons accept.
• 39:23
  Tom Kaczynski: Oh yeah, Wound Manager.
• 39:24
  Tad Eggleston: part.
• 39:25
  Tom Kaczynski: The email Emil Friss Ernst, 32-pager that we put out, earlier this year.
• 39:34
  Tom Kaczynski: That's, you know, I really love that project. Emil is a really great Danish young cartoonist that I met when I was teaching over there at the animation school in Denmark.
• 39:49
  Tom Kaczynski: And, yeah, he's… he's great, super hyperkinetic cartoonist. We also… the print job on this… on this comic was great, because we… we, instead of printing standard CMYK, you know, cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.
• 40:05
  Tom Kaczynski: We took out the magenta and put in a fluorescent pink instead, so it mixes, really wild… wildly throughout the… throughout the comic, and really gives all the colors
• 40:17
  Tom Kaczynski: A vibrancy that they wouldn't otherwise have.
• 40:22
  Tad Eggleston: No, I… you… you… Womb Rider, I… I have, and… and love, and you sold it to me just like that at CAIC, only you were able… you were able to open it up and show me!
• 40:35
  Tom Kaczynski: It's, yeah, you know, I've been doing a lot of this, I've been, you know, I've really been kind of,
• 40:40
  Tom Kaczynski: using… trying to, you know, print is hard enough these days, and I really want, you know, I really want to kind of distinguish, print projects.
• 40:53
  Tom Kaczynski: from the way they used to be done. I mean, you know, there used to be a lot of great print fans, don't get me wrong, but I just want to make sure that everything we do has a little bit of something extra in it that really can't just be replicated, you know, by your desktop printer, you know, that prints, you know, in four colors.
• 41:09
  Tom Kaczynski: Or even just a standard, you know, offset printer. But, you know, we've been adding a lot of Pantone colors, and special kind of printing techniques.
• 41:18
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean, that's something that I should also
• 41:21
  Tad Eggleston: just point out, I mean, you said it as well, but I'm gonna put it even more simply, like, not only does Tom curate comics as well or better than almost anybody working in the industry right now, he has such an appreciation for the artifact that whatever you buy from from uncivilized is going to be…
• 41:42
  Tad Eggleston: Like, high quality and special.
• 41:46
  Tad Eggleston: Like, whether, you know, it just feels firmer, or it's got, you know, the cover flaps, or it's got weird printing, or… didn't you sell me the Infinite comic? Wasn't that you?
• 42:01
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, that was us.
• 42:02
  Tad Eggleston: what.
• 42:03
  Tom Kaczynski: With, Eero Johnson, Eric Johnson, who's a Minneapolis-based cartoonist and designer, and he put together this…
• 42:13
  Tom Kaczynski: this… this comic, and, you know, it's a caveman and a spaceman trapped in a time loop, and it's an infinite comic. You can kind of read it forever, because it's… it's a kind of an accordion comic that sort of reconnects itself.
• 42:25
  Tad Eggleston: Oh.
• 42:26
  Tom Kaczynski: And it's it was such a cool project that you know we we we ended up collaborating. And you know, I can't I I have a hard time.
• 42:35
  Tom Kaczynski: saying no to caveman projects, you know, I lo- it's a… it's a weakness of mine, kind of like barbarian caveman stuff, and maybe that's why Uncivilized is called Uncivilized, you know? Yeah.
• 42:46
  Tad Eggleston: There you go.
• 42:47
  Tom Kaczynski: Barbarians. Barbarians at the gates of, you know.
• 42:52
  Tom Kaczynski: So, so yeah, I, I do, I do, I do really, like the artifact, and that's actually something we're doing with dregs. We're not gonna offer digital copies of dregs, at least for now. I mean, this might change in the future, maybe, we'll see, you know, but for now, we really want it to be a print-first project, that is available in stores.
• 43:12
  Tom Kaczynski: You know, and as much as I personally buy digital comics and use that format, you know, in this particular case, we want to keep it print, print only.
• 43:25
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 43:25
  Tom Kaczynski: Again, we may reconsider this in the future, but that's kind of how we want to go and make sure that retailers benefit on every level here as well.
• 43:36
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I will say, I both appreciate things being done to benefit the retailers, and there's definitely a benefit to the retailer to the physical being available ahead of the digital.
• 43:49
  Tad Eggleston: But as somebody who reads comics on the go a lot.
• 43:55
  Tad Eggleston: It's so much easier to carry one tablet with a thousand comics on it than 40 comics in your backpack.
• 44:03
  Tom Kaczynski: I also understand that dilemma.
• 44:07
  Tad Eggleston: And I'm often willing to pay for things twice for just that.
• 44:11
  Tom Kaczynski: Yes.
• 44:12
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I go back and forth, like, lots of Kickstarters will give you the PDF for free, and I love it when they do that. But I go back and forth on whether I even care, you know? I'm often willing to pay…
• 44:26
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah.
• 44:27
  Tad Eggleston: Pay the extra to have it in both formats.
• 44:29
  Tom Kaczynski: Right.
• 44:30
  Tad Eggleston: It's kind of like back when you'd buy something on…
• 44:34
  Tad Eggleston: On vinyl for at home and cassette for the car, you know, because it was worth spending 10 bucks not to have to tape it yourself.
• 44:42
  Tad Eggleston: It's worth spending 10 bucks for me not to take my phone and take pictures of every page. Right.
• 44:53
  Tad Eggleston: But, yeah. What… what else do you have going on at Uncivilized right now?
• 44:59
  Tad Eggleston: What recent releases have you been really excited about?
• 45:03
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, yeah, so we finally brought back Matt Madden's Ex Libris, because that's been sold out for a little while now, actually, almost, like. Almost 2 years, I think.
• 45:14
  Tad Eggleston: It's been a while, yeah.
• 45:15
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, so that came out in a hardcover format, you know, sold through its print run pretty quickly, and then we've been working on the second edition, which is a softcover, and it's.
• 45:29
  Tom Kaczynski: And it's finally the books are on their way from the printer. You know, we had a few advanced copies at SPX that I think we pretty much sold through most of them.
• 45:43
  Tad Eggleston: Probably in the first couple of hours?
• 45:46
  Tom Kaczynski: No, it wasn't that quick, but you know,
• 45:49
  Tom Kaczynski: it was cool, and I, you know, I almost… I almost like it more… I wish I had a… I don't have a copy here to show you, but, I wish I… you know, I really almost like it better than the hardcover, like, I… you know, we… we sort of…
• 46:03
  Tom Kaczynski: We changed the color scheme a little bit, to match the… because there was a French edition that came out, long after our edition.
• 46:12
  Tom Kaczynski: And we really liked the color scheme they did, so we kind of wanted to adapt
• 46:17
  Tom Kaczynski: keep some of the things that we've done with our cover, but then adapt their color scheme. And, you know, again, I'm using two Pantones on the cover, so it's really impossible to reproduce those colors in CSS.
• 46:30
  Tad Eggleston: No, what you're telling me is what I kind of knew already. I'm buying X Libris again.
• 46:35
  Tom Kaczynski: And then Matt added some cool stuff, like, there's… we do have French flaps, and the back flap is really fun, kind of, talks about some, you know, non-existing, book reviews and things like that. Like, all this kind of meta stuff, I, you know, I…
• 46:51
  Tad Eggleston: I was already buying.
• 46:53
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah.
• 46:54
  Tad Eggleston: X Libris again. Now I might be… it's available on your website right now, it's even… Yes. It's like $5 off. Yes, yes.
• 47:04
  Tom Kaczynski: Pre-order so you can get it a little cheaper right now, absolutely.
• 47:07
  Tom Kaczynski: And then we're also, you know, we're also working on this, this new manga line, which, it's called Mangalith, and…
• 47:17
  Tom Kaczynski: The first title will be called Fire Exclamation Point, kind of like Greg.
• 47:22
  Tad Eggleston: Exclamation point. So good.
• 47:24
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, it's a really wild story,
• 47:28
  Tom Kaczynski: It's from the kind of late 60s, early 70s. Hideko Mizuno is the artist. She was kind of a protege of Osamu Tezuka.
• 47:40
  Tom Kaczynski: And, big pioneer in shoujo manga, and, you know, eventually the, you know. you know, Moto Hagio and all those other, sort of names came after her, and she was a big inspiration to them.
• 47:57
  Tom Kaczynski: And, the story essentially is, follows kind of a… it's a rags-to-rog-star story, you know, this… the young boy, ends up sort of getting thrown into juvenile detention, and meets this… this kind of.
• 48:14
  Tom Kaczynski: protean character, Wolf, learns how to sing, eventually gets out of juvie, and, you know, kind of
• 48:21
  Tom Kaczynski: forms a band, and they become huge. It's just this kind of, like, rags to rock star, I call it, instead of rags to riches. And then, in the meantime, of course, he has lots of relationships with beautiful pop stars and other women, but also has this
• 48:38
  Tom Kaczynski: Relationship to, to his, to his mother, you know, and that's kind of like a key shoujo or at least early shoujo, component is like, there was always
• 48:47
  Tom Kaczynski: an important relationship between the mother and daughter. Here, this is the first… this is the first shoujo that ever had a male protagonist, and so some of these dynamics are kind of just put on the male character.
• 49:01
  Tom Kaczynski: And has this long-running relationship with his mother throughout the comic.
• 49:06
  Tom Kaczynski: But yeah, it's wild. It's all set in Detroit. There is, you know, battles of the bands, there's, like, you know, biker gangs, there's, like, racial tension, there's all kinds of stuff going on in there. It's really just a… this really…
• 49:21
  Tom Kaczynski: wild capsule on that period in American kind of music history.
• 49:28
  Tom Kaczynski: You know, kind of…
• 49:29
  Tom Kaczynski: seen through the lens of this, you know, important Japanese cartoonist who has, by the way, never been published in America before, so this really key pioneering shoujo artist.
• 49:43
  Tom Kaczynski: And, yeah, it's just an amazing, amazing book, almost a thousand pages. And, yeah, it's I could go on, but it's a it's a it's a.
• 49:52
  Tad Eggleston: No, it looks beautiful.
• 49:55
  Tad Eggleston: $49.99 feels like a steal, because like you said, almost a thousand pages.
• 50:01
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Comes with a Pink Floyd story, there's gonna be… there's a short comic about Pink Floyd in there. Just wild, just great, great stuff.
• 50:10
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it does, it looks… it looks just flat out.
• 50:14
  Tad Eggleston: Flat out amazing.
• 50:18
  Tad Eggleston: I'm… it's… it's… it's one of my very much anticipated Comics of the Year.
• 50:26
  Tom Kaczynski: Well, cool, yeah.
• 50:28
  Tad Eggleston: Just not my pocketbook.
• 50:29
  Tom Kaczynski: Ha ha ha!
• 50:31
  Tom Kaczynski: I hear ya, you can, you know, we do, I should mention this, you know, we do have a Patreon that's very small, not a lot of people are on there, but we have a way where you can just subscribe to our graphic novels and comics all in one go with a low monthly price.
• 50:47
  Tom Kaczynski: And, and then get them all, so you don't have to kind of shell out a ton of cash up front, you know? You can kind of…
• 50:53
  Tom Kaczynski: Getting.
• 50:54
  Tad Eggleston: This, I did not know. You should have told me. I would have been…
• 50:58
  Tom Kaczynski: You can get on it. It's Patreon. I think it's just Uncivilized Books on Patreon. If you search for that, you should be able to find it.
• 51:07
  Tad Eggleston: I am… I am doing so right now.
• 51:10
  Tom Kaczynski: Our comic book, club. It was originally created for the… mostly for the floppy comics, but it just.
• 51:16
  Tad Eggleston: Uncivilized comic book club. There's also uncivilized, but that's.
• 51:20
  Tad Eggleston: Are they… are they the same? No, I'm assuming that the one that's got your… your caveman is you. Yeah, that's…
• 51:27
  Tom Kaczynski: That's ours, yeah.
• 51:29
  Tad Eggleston: is Because there's another one that says creating entertainment rooted in.
• 51:35
  Tad Eggleston: Digital Media Network, no, that's not.
• 51:37
  Tom Kaczynski: That doesn't sound right.
• 51:39
  Tad Eggleston: No, that sounds like a very.
• 51:40
  Tom Kaczynski: Even though we are using digital media networks here right now, that's not what I do for a living.
• 51:47
  Tom Kaczynski: But yeah, that's so yeah, so check check check that out. Yeah, we just put in like a kind of a graphic novel and and floppy tier. But originally it was mostly for this all the serialized stuff. And so yeah.
• 51:58
  Tad Eggleston: $15 a month gets all of the graphic novels.
• 52:03
  Tom Kaczynski: Yes, yes.
• 52:04
  Tad Eggleston: $20 a month gets all of the graphic novels and all of the floppies, and is that digital downloads?
• 52:11
  Tad Eggleston: one.
• 52:11
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, yeah, we do digital downloads on the Patreon for the comics. You know, again, Dregs is going to have its own tier and it'll be added. There'll be like a slightly more expensive version of that tier. Dregs will be.
• 52:25
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 52:25
  Tom Kaczynski: That won't be getting any digital copies.
• 52:28
  Tom Kaczynski: But, but yeah. And then I post on there sometimes, like, I posted…
• 52:34
  Tom Kaczynski: some recent stuff from my… I was in Italy, in June. My girlfriend went to a film festival, she's a film person, and she was watching, like, 30-some movies over 10 days, and I just went to a ton of
• 52:51
  Tom Kaczynski: museum looking at medieval art, Roman art, Egyptian art, things like that, just looking for, interesting, examples of narrative art, in the… in our history. And, and I have some… posted some musings about that, here and there.
• 53:09
  Tom Kaczynski: We'll probably be doing more than that because we're going back to the Medieval Festival in Kalamazoo next year.
• 53:18
  Tad Eggleston: nice.
• 53:19
  Tom Kaczynski: I'm gonna be talking some, you know, some medieval and some comics.
• 53:24
  Tad Eggleston: There was a symposium at, The Newberry Library.
• 53:30
  Tom Kaczynski: Yes.
• 53:30
  Tad Eggleston: Last year, about…
• 53:32
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, I know about it, I didn't… I couldn't go. Yeah, and they're gonna do another one, so I'm hoping I'll be able to participate in that, in the future. But yeah, we've been participating in this, it's called the…
• 53:43
  Tom Kaczynski: The International Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo, and it's the largest North American medieval academic conference.
• 53:53
  Tom Kaczynski: That's been going on there every year for a long time.
• 54:00
  Tom Kaczynski: And then I'm also putting together a small symposium at another book festival around post-literacy in comics, but I can't talk too much more about it. It's just a teaser. Maybe that's something we can talk about in the future.
• 54:14
  Tad Eggleston: Absolutely. I mean, you know you're… you know that you're welcome back literally anytime, Tom.
• 54:20
  Tad Eggleston: I love talking comics with you, I love promoting uncivilized, and just gave you, like, $40 plus shipping between ordering.
• 54:30
  Tad Eggleston: ex-libris and joining your Patreon while you were talking!
• 54:38
  Tom Kaczynski: Oh, geez.
• 54:40
  Tom Kaczynski: Thank you so much. I appreciate… I appreciate you, Tad.
• 54:44
  Tad Eggleston: I have this habit when I hear about cool things on the podcast.
• 54:49
  Tad Eggleston: Well,
• 54:50
  Peter Eggleston Connor: I, during this during this call, I I support the Kickstarter, so I.
• 54:57
  Tad Eggleston: Ha ha ha ha.
• 54:58
  Tad Eggleston: using.
• 54:58
  Peter Eggleston Connor: Same… same issue.
• 55:00
  Tad Eggleston: So, so whether or not we manage to get other people to spend money with Uncivilized Tom, you've probably made about a hundred bucks just from talking to us for an hour.
• 55:12
  Tom Kaczynski: Man, she did it more often.
• 55:20
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 55:21
  Tad Eggleston: We… I'm gonna start rolling into wrap-up time now, because I could otherwise go forever, and I haven't spent enough time with my wife this weekend, and I have the regular episode of the podcast still to record today.
• 55:39
  Tad Eggleston: So, I think…
• 55:43
  Tad Eggleston: can't remember how long ago you were on last. The first of the two closing questions might be new for you, because it's been… it's been one that I've been asking
• 55:54
  Tad Eggleston: this last year. You know, I've been… I've been doing…
• 56:01
  Tad Eggleston: This podcast for, like, 5 years now.
• 56:03
  Tad Eggleston: And…
• 56:08
  Tad Eggleston: I feel like I've fallen into the Twilight Zone.
• 56:11
  Tad Eggleston: Like, the number of ways that my life has changed.
• 56:17
  Tad Eggleston: you know, the friendships I've made, the things that I've gotten to experience or see, or whatnot, that if even, like, 7 years ago, you'd say, hey, this is gonna be a regular part of your life, I would have gone.
• 56:30
  Tad Eggleston: What drugs are you on?
• 56:32
  Tom Kaczynski: the.
• 56:33
  Tad Eggleston: No.
• 56:34
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, the most recent example, and it's up on Instagram, I spent yesterday sitting at a table with Dennis Kitchen at a con.
• 56:42
  Tom Kaczynski: That's awesome, that's awesome.
• 56:43
  Tad Eggleston: keeping him company in between customers, you know? And, like, my little brain is going, how did that sentence come out of my mouth?
• 56:54
  Tad Eggleston: And be true.
• 56:56
  Tad Eggleston: But I find that that's true of, like, everybody in this business. Everybody in this business
• 57:03
  Tad Eggleston: lives a life slash experiences things, whatnot, that, like, if their 10-year-old self had known that this was gonna be
• 57:13
  Tad Eggleston: What happened to them? They'd go…
• 57:16
  Tad Eggleston: What? And, or, even now, they look back and they're like, was that really me in that room, or that elevator, or that whatever back then?
• 57:28
  Tad Eggleston: So I've started collecting those stories, Tom. Tell me one of your, like, surreal… I can't believe that Tom Kaczynski got to do this, experience this, see this, whatever, stories.
• 57:44
  Tom Kaczynski: Okay, let me think about it for a sec.
• 57:50
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, I mean, I think one of, you know, one of, sort of.
• 57:56
  Tom Kaczynski: I, you know I'll, I'll keep it, I'll keep it to publishing for the most part. But, I, you know, I really enjoyed working on, ginseng roots with craig thompson. You know someone whose work I liked such a.
• 58:10
  Tad Eggleston: Great book too.
• 58:11
  Tom Kaczynski: From, you know, from a while back, and we'd, you know, we'd sort of been tangentially sort of connected every now and then, and then sort of getting to work on this project, seeing kind of his commitment.
• 58:25
  Tom Kaczynski: to the art form, and, you know, as each issue was coming together, kind of having conversations, getting to know him as a cartoonist.
• 58:34
  Tom Kaczynski: And as a friend, just, you know, it was really, you know, definitely, like, a peak experience, you know? So, and there's others, but, like, that's the one I'll sort of talk about. But yeah, I'm really, really proud of that, how that project
• 58:48
  Tom Kaczynski: Turned out, and, yeah, that's, that's one, that's one, for sure.
• 58:54
  Tad Eggleston: That was literally how I… how I discovered Uncivilized.
• 58:58
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, I mean, it definitely showed, you know, you know, our name just became a lot wider known, you know, mostly due to Craig's, you know.
• 59:10
  Tom Kaczynski: Your popularity and…
• 59:11
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 59:12
  Tom Kaczynski: Reach as an artist, and
• 59:14
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and the fact that it was, like, the companion story to his best-known graphic novel didn't hurt.
• 59:21
  Tom Kaczynski: either.
• 59:22
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I'm sure.
• 59:22
  Tom Kaczynski: Sure, yeah, exactly. You know, it was… but it was cool. It was cool to kind of, like, see him, you know, not only kind of do great stuff, but also stretch into sort of using the second color and seeing that evolve over the issues. It was just, yeah, it was great. It was really…
• 59:39
  Tom Kaczynski: inspiring, and, I, you know, I, you know, it kind of… it made me think about certain things differently, and yeah, just… it was good, it was great.
• 59:51
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. I love that.
• 59:53
  Tad Eggleston: Alright, I know you've had to answer this one. That's one of my favorite questions to answer, or ask. I don't remember what you said, so you might get away with using it again.
• 1:00:03
  Tad Eggleston: Unless it jogs my memory. But, tell me something you love, preferably a comic, but we don't really have rules. Preferably storytelling, but again, with the rules, but something that you love.
• 1:00:16
  Tad Eggleston: And not enough people around you have experienced it, and you really, really would like them to, so you have more people to talk about it with.
• 1:00:26
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, I don't remember what I said. I think I may have either said…
• 1:00:30
  Tom Kaczynski: I may have even said the Thorgil comics, because I, you know.
• 1:00:34
  Tad Eggleston: possible.
• 1:00:34
  Tom Kaczynski: They're, they're definitely not as well known in, stateside, you know? They're, you know, they're big… it's a big property in Europe, but not so much in the U.S.
• 1:00:46
  Tom Kaczynski: And I've recently just been kind of like thumbing through, I don't know if you ever read this comic Roach Mill.
• 1:00:53
  Tad Eggleston: Roach Mill?
• 1:00:54
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, by Rich Hayden and Tom McWeeny. It's a…
• 1:01:00
  Tad Eggleston: Actually, you know, you know what?
• 1:01:02
  Tom Kaczynski: is.
• 1:01:02
  Tad Eggleston: Funny, you said Thorgal and Roachville last time.
• 1:01:05
  Tom Kaczynski: See, see, I said, I said exactly those things.
• 1:01:08
  Tad Eggleston: I.
• 1:01:09
  Tom Kaczynski: I should say something different. Let's see. What else can I talk about?
• 1:01:13
  Peter Eggleston Connor: See, because you were thinking.
• 1:01:14
  Tad Eggleston: about it, I looked it up.
• 1:01:16
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, yeah, yeah, there you go, there you go.
• 1:01:18
  Tom Kaczynski: I knew that I had something.
• 1:01:20
  Tad Eggleston: You also mentioned Funky Koval.
• 1:01:24
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, Funky Koval, I mean, that's never been released in the US.
• 1:01:29
  Peter Eggleston Connor: He mentioned it on the first time, so that means that he's good.
• 1:01:31
  Tad Eggleston: wait.
• 1:01:32
  Peter Eggleston Connor: 3… 3…
• 1:01:33
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, Ryan.
• 1:01:35
  Tad Eggleston: laughter.
• 1:01:36
  Tom Kaczynski: That's right.
• 1:01:37
  Tad Eggleston: That's not.
• 1:01:37
  Tom Kaczynski: Yes, I get a pass.
• 1:01:38
  Tad Eggleston: No, that actually means that I need 3 more this time. No, I'm ready. I'll sign.
• 1:01:44
  Tom Kaczynski: So one of my. So you know, I'll give you some like anthology inspirations, since we're talking anthologies today. So you know, one of my big inspirations is for sure Rubber Blanket by David Miscavige.
• 1:01:58
  Tad Eggleston: because.
• 1:01:58
  Tom Kaczynski: So it's, you know, it's a sort of like one man anthology, but there are okay.
• 1:02:02
  Tad Eggleston: Well, no, there were…
• 1:02:03
  Tom Kaczynski: There are other questions.
• 1:02:04
  Tad Eggleston: contributors.
• 1:02:05
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, yeah. So, it's, you know, just in terms of the print quality, you know, in terms of the stuff that's in there, just like one of my all-time, favorite, sort of, like, comics.
• 1:02:16
  Tad Eggleston: Owning those 3 are among my… my, like, holy grail items.
• 1:02:23
  Tad Eggleston: You know.
• 1:02:24
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:25
  Tad Eggleston: Probably would still be if it was ever collected, because I also, like, of all the things that have never been reprinted, Raw and Rubber Blanket, and I understand with both of them, among the reasons they haven't been reprinted is they didn't have weird stuff that reprinting them in a way that does them justice would be difficult.
• 1:02:43
  Tom Kaczynski: Yes, yes, yes.
• 1:02:45
  Tom Kaczynski: I'll do it, I'll do it. Come to me, I'll do it.
• 1:02:49
  Tom Kaczynski: The. But yeah, I love.
• 1:02:52
  Tad Eggleston: somebody who knows him so maybe I'll pass that message along okay.
• 1:02:57
  Tom Kaczynski: But yeah, just, just a really, really great, great series. Yeah.
• 1:03:02
  Tad Eggleston: David Mazzucchelli is one of my favorite.
• 1:03:06
  Tad Eggleston: artists, period.
• 1:03:08
  Tad Eggleston: So, yeah, no, I… I feel like I need…
• 1:03:14
  Tom Kaczynski: there you know.
• 1:03:16
  Tad Eggleston: Most of the time, we try to… we try to, like, talk about stuff that's easy to buy.
• 1:03:21
  Tom Kaczynski: this.
• 1:03:22
  Tad Eggleston: Just because, like, it's more of a greater impact for, I guess.
• 1:03:28
  Tom Kaczynski: Sure, for sure.
• 1:03:28
  Tad Eggleston: Podcast to, like, actually talk about something that is not impossible for somebody to go out and pick up a copy themselves.
• 1:03:35
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:36
  Tad Eggleston: I might make an exception for rubber blanket.
• 1:03:43
  Tom Kaczynski: You know, I do, you know…
• 1:03:44
  Tad Eggleston: An in-depth talk on rubber blanket could be very.
• 1:03:48
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah.
• 1:03:51
  Tom Kaczynski: And then, you know, so again, a lot of these analogies are probably not something that's available, like that's not new. You know, if I, if the, if the, if the question is about new stuff.
• 1:04:02
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, no, I wasn't, I wasn't saying…
• 1:04:04
  Tom Kaczynski: show.
• 1:04:05
  Tad Eggleston: In general, no, that's a perfect answer for you. You don't have to give me any more than you've given me. I meant when I do, like, a book club or whatever, I try to make it be something that, like, we're promoting that somebody can…
• 1:04:17
  Tad Eggleston: can go out and buy, rather than something that they have to… dig the dredges of the internet, or find the right library, or… or…
• 1:04:25
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 1:04:26
  Tad Eggleston: Pay way too much money on eBay for.
• 1:04:30
  Tom Kaczynski: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 1:04:31
  Tad Eggleston: You know?
• 1:04:33
  Tom Kaczynski: My other anthology that I really, I mean, I read that pretty religiously was, you know, was Dark Horse Presents. And there was a lot of really great work.
• 1:04:40
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 1:04:41
  Tom Kaczynski: Roach Mill was in there, so that's where I encountered it first.
• 1:04:46
  Tad Eggleston: And I think all of that is available digitally, so that's a… that's one that I could.
• 1:04:50
  Tom Kaczynski: Oh, that's pretty cool, I didn't know that.
• 1:04:52
  Tad Eggleston: my.
• 1:04:52
  Tom Kaczynski: Gotcha.
• 1:04:53
  Tad Eggleston: I know it was. Yeah. I'm not 100% certain that it still is, but I think it is. Yeah. Because I've even bought some of it.
• 1:05:00
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah.
• 1:05:01
  Tad Eggleston: Digitally, because I wanted to read this or that story that I found out was, like, in these issues of Dark Horse Presents.
• 1:05:07
  Tom Kaczynski: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:08
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:05:09
  Tom Kaczynski: I really liked, at that time, Ron Randall's The Trekker comics. Like, those were really great. They're really, you know, he sort of, like, moved on and did some different stuff later on, but those, like, first few Trekker comics, they're so, like, well-paced and well-drawn, and really…
• 1:05:28
  Tom Kaczynski: really, just kind of… he just knocked it out of the park. They're really, really cool comics.
• 1:05:34
  Tom Kaczynski: And then, obviously, and, you know, I just… I also like every now and then to go back and, like, look at just the way
• 1:05:42
  Tom Kaczynski: Like, you know, Sin City kind of came to be, just like reading it serially, you know, just just like.
• 1:05:49
  Tom Kaczynski: Because it's so easy to just kind of lose that fact when you read the book, but, you know, just how it originally was, it's really cool to kind of see how little kind of got you really into it, you know?
• 1:06:03
  Tom Kaczynski: And then, and then I would, you know, also pitch MOM, which is an anthology that I was in.
• 1:06:09
  Tad Eggleston: yeah.
• 1:06:09
  Tom Kaczynski: In the early 2000s.
• 1:06:11
  Tom Kaczynski: And yeah, that was just a you know, for me, a very formative you know, sort of experience as an artist.
• 1:06:18
  Tom Kaczynski: getting to be in MOM, and it was, you know, very much sort of a book… bookstore-oriented anthology, had a spine, and…
• 1:06:27
  Tom Kaczynski: You know, kind of wanted to sort of…
• 1:06:32
  Tom Kaczynski: sort of carry over the sort of the graphic novel into the anthology format. And, you know, I think.
• 1:06:39
  Tad Eggleston: I actually…
• 1:06:39
  Tom Kaczynski: seated west of.
• 1:06:41
  Tad Eggleston: bound.
• 1:06:41
  Tom Kaczynski: 22 issues. Yeah, go ahead.
• 1:06:43
  Tad Eggleston: I wound up coming across, like, 14 of those one day at a half-price book in their…
• 1:06:50
  Tad Eggleston: in their closeout section, so I got them for, like, $2 and $3 a piece.
• 1:06:55
  Tom Kaczynski: Great. No, it's a steal.
• 1:06:56
  Tad Eggleston: I felt like I was rescuing them. I'm like, no, Kelly, you don't understand. Yes, I need to buy them all. They need to go to a good home.
• 1:07:05
  Tom Kaczynski: I think they were really great, and you know, like, I joined the roster along with… I think Eleanor Davis was, joined the same issue as I did. We were kind of coming up at this… around the same time. And I just, you know, after a few issues, I remember, like, talking to her, and she was just like.
• 1:07:23
  Tom Kaczynski: She's like, I think you're my rival! I'm trying… I'm always trying to undo you in the… in the anthology, and I'm like, oh, that's so great. I never… never had a, you know, like, someone tell me that they were, like.
• 1:07:33
  Tad Eggleston: I never had a rival before.
• 1:07:34
  Tom Kaczynski: the.
• 1:07:35
  Tad Eggleston: I don't think it was…
• 1:07:36
  Tom Kaczynski: It was more, you know, it's just, but it was cool to just have like a kind of, you know, an experience of trying to sort of one up each other a little bit.
• 1:07:45
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:07:46
  Tom Kaczynski: And, you know, it was, it was, it was a great experience, and I, you know, I… it's one of the reasons I love analogies, you know, I definitely have participated, myself, so… And then all those stories ended up being, beta testing, the apocalypse, the collection. Right.
• 1:08:05
  Tom Kaczynski: With some additional stuff, so… yeah.
• 1:08:09
  Tad Eggleston: Well, thank you so much, Tom, again.
• 1:08:12
  Tom Kaczynski: the.
• 1:08:12
  Tad Eggleston: You are always welcome back. I love talking comics with you.
• 1:08:18
  Tad Eggleston: And for 22 Panels, this has been Tom Kaczynski, and we will see you after the next page.
• 1:08:24
  Tom Kaczynski: All right, thanks and nice.