Latest / 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast / With Great Power #255... 22 Panels with Jesse Lonergan

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With Great Power #255... 22 Panels with Jesse Lonergan · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:02
  Tad Eggleston: Evening, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels, my guest tonight for, I think, the third time? You came with Joe, and you came with Porn Sack.
• 0:12
  Tad Eggleston: But this… this… this time it gets to be just you, is….
• 0:16
  jesselonergan: Yeah.
• 0:17
  Tad Eggleston: wonderful, one of my favorite artists out there, Jesse Lonergan, ….
• 0:22
  jesselonergan: Good to be back.
• 0:24
  Tad Eggleston: I cannot express how much I like your art.
• 0:27
  jesselonergan: Oh, wow.
• 0:28
  Tad Eggleston: Because I… I still haven't found the right words, for the most part, but, like, you're… you're high on the list of people that, as I'm reading your book, I will, like, regulate… turn to my wife on the couch and just go, pretty.
• 0:44
  jesselonergan: Yeah.
• 0:46
  Tad Eggleston: The new book is Drone, which I've been loving since it's… original Patreon form.
• 0:55
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 0:56
  Tad Eggleston: Love all the more in this beautiful… hardcover.
• 1:03
  Tad Eggleston: you know, 23rd Street and 1st 2nd did a really good job.
• 1:08
  jesselonergan: Yeah, that was… It was nice.
• 1:11
  jesselonergan: It was nice working with them, and it was always something, like.
• 1:16
  jesselonergan: I intended to see, see print, like, doing it on, Patreon.
• 1:23
  jesselonergan: is good in a lot of ways, but, like, I also feel sometimes for the reader, it's like…
• 1:29
  jesselonergan: the people who were reading it on Patreon, it's more like their view on it was my view on it, where it's like, it's not read… meant to be read over the course of, like, 4 years. And so it was… it was nice to get to work with for a second, like.
• 1:45
  jesselonergan: you know, they… they let me do test pages and stuff, and like, to be like, oh, is this too dark? How does this actually print? And they let me choose all the paper, and….
• 1:56
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, this is a nice… a nice paper stock. I was… I was thinking that, like, I read it along with its creation. I read it as soon as it was done. I followed your edits. I got an advanced reader.
• 2:14
  Tad Eggleston: from… what, NetGalley? So I read it digitally in its final form a couple months ago.
• 2:24
  Tad Eggleston: You know, I had it pre-ordered both digitally and physically.
• 2:30
  Tad Eggleston: Unfortunately, my comic shop is through Diamond, so the digital one came on time.
• 2:36
  Tad Eggleston: er, well, my comic shop had ordered it through Diamond, and actually
• 2:41
  Tad Eggleston: You know, and I don't know if this is something that you'll know, but this is where I'm gonna tell
• 2:47
  Tad Eggleston: tell my listeners, this might be one that you have to go to your bookstore for, at least for now, because it doesn't look like First Second is distributing through either Lunar or PRH yet.
• 3:00
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 3:01
  jesselonergan: Yeah, I don't know, I feel….
• 3:03
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 3:04
  jesselonergan: it's… it's been available, I've seen people have gotten copies, but I know, like, Midtown Comics?
• 3:12
  Tad Eggleston: Right. Maybe you said they were getting it this week?
• 3:14
  jesselonergan: Right. As opposed to last week, you know, which is kind of, like, the biggest store in New York, I think.
• 3:21
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 3:22
  jesselonergan: So….
• 3:23
  Tad Eggleston: I bet you, I bet you The Strand had it already.
• 3:26
  jesselonergan: Yeah, yeah, ….
• 3:28
  Tad Eggleston: Because, I mean, I went digging to try to figure out for my comic shop, and I know you can get it through McMillan, but McMillan doesn't do enough graphic novels that…
• 3:39
  Tad Eggleston: That stores that don't do books… our… our game.
• 3:44
  Tad Eggleston: need to have a McMillan account?
• 3:47
  jesselonergan: Right, yeah, it is, like, …
• 3:50
  jesselonergan: It's a weird division within the comic book industry.
• 3:54
  jesselonergan: There's direct, direct market.
• 3:57
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 3:57
  jesselonergan: floppies, Marvel and DC, and then there's the… all the graphic novel companies, and they….
• 4:05
  Tad Eggleston: And then, when you.
• 4:06
  jesselonergan: They don't seem to overlap as much as they should. Right.
• 4:10
  Tad Eggleston: But when you add to that the Diamond bankruptcy, like, so, so, like, Abrams, Scholastic, whatnot, they all had diamond contracts.
• 4:19
  jesselonergan: They didn't care about….
• 4:21
  Tad Eggleston: immediately jumping to Lunar, to a certain extent, they didn't want to jump to PRH, because some of those companies are in direct
• 4:29
  Tad Eggleston: competition with Penguin Rambo.
• 4:31
  jesselonergan: Yeah.
• 4:31
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 4:35
  jesselonergan: It's… it's a bit of a mess right now.
• 4:38
  Tad Eggleston: Right, so my, my hunch is the first 2nd is gonna wind up at Lunar.
• 4:44
  Tad Eggleston: Just for the shops that don't, but it's not in their catalog yet.
• 4:49
  Tad Eggleston: And or, you know, the, the… the…
• 4:55
  Tad Eggleston: convince more shops to… to start… I mean.
• 4:58
  Tad Eggleston: they're two different sets of comic shops at this point, too. The ones that are… that are very single-issue heavy.
• 5:05
  Tad Eggleston: tend to minimize the number of distributors they work with. The… The shops that are… …
• 5:19
  Tad Eggleston: very graphic novel heavy, might have been dealing with as many as 8 different distributors BEFORE diamonds started falling apart.
• 5:27
  jesselonergan: Right, yeah.
• 5:29
  Tad Eggleston: Just because, as you pointed out, you know, particularly in the non-superhero realm, there are a lot of graphic novels coming out that, like.
• 5:38
  Tad Eggleston: The comic shop world, like, doesn't know about.
• 5:42
  jesselonergan: Yeah, it seems… To me, the… the amount of…
• 5:53
  jesselonergan: Division within the industry, on that sort of level, that, like.
• 5:59
  jesselonergan: Like, manga is its own thing, webcomics are their own thing, graphic novels are their own thing, …
• 6:08
  jesselonergan: you know, mainstream whatever, you know, the monthly floppy issues are their own thing, and to some extent that they don't seem aware of each other, is…
• 6:23
  jesselonergan: I guess has happened as a result of a sequence of events,
• 6:28
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 6:29
  jesselonergan: But, it seems strange. Like, I think it's strange to me that somehow manga has become this, like, huge juggernaut within, you know, the…
• 6:44
  jesselonergan: for lack of a better word, like, sequential art space, and DC and Marvel didn't… aren't a part of it at all. Like… like… like manga….
• 6:53
  Tad Eggleston: DC has a little bit.
• 6:54
  jesselonergan: wanting to get into the American market for so long.
• 6:59
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 6:59
  jesselonergan: And… and there's these two big companies, and somehow both of those companies totally missed the boat.
• 7:05
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, they told.
• 7:06
  jesselonergan: Totally. Which is….
• 7:08
  Tad Eggleston: They were….
• 7:08
  jesselonergan: We're talking big two, way bigger than DC.
• 7:11
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 7:12
  jesselonergan: way more sales than Marvel, like, you know, and that those companies just missed it, seems strange.
• 7:19
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I….
• 7:20
  jesselonergan: I don't know how all the business works, but….
• 7:22
  Tad Eggleston: I've picked up some, and I laugh at the number of people who still think of DC and Marvel as the big two, because they're barely the big two floppies.
• 7:35
  Tad Eggleston: And that's, you know, they wouldn't be if you took away Batman, Spider-Man, and the X-Men.
• 7:43
  Tad Eggleston: You know? And, like, Scholastic kills them. Yep. Viz kills them.
• 7:50
  jesselonergan: This would be the real… the real big, too.
• 7:53
  Tad Eggleston: Abrams probably gives them a run for their money at this point.
• 8:00
  jesselonergan: It's, it's so hard also just to, to compare, you know, like… No, because they're different stuff.
• 8:06
  jesselonergan: Finding numbers and stuff like that can be really, really difficult.
• 8:09
  Tad Eggleston: But this is also why… this is one of the reasons that I have always loved you, beyond the fact that I just… I read your work, and look at your art, and just am always in awe of trying to deconstruct how your brain worked to put it together, is that you're the one person that, like, crosses
• 8:32
  Tad Eggleston: all boundaries.
• 8:34
  Tad Eggleston: You have books coming out from Booligon, you now have a book from First Second, you've worked at Indie Publishers. I think you've done at least something at Marvel or DC, not a ton.
• 8:44
  jesselonergan: I've only done, like, 4 pages at DC.
• 8:48
  Tad Eggleston: I feel like I saw your name on something.
• 8:51
  jesselonergan: Yeah, they have their, like, little… the new gods, the…
• 8:56
  jesselonergan: recent series, it has, like, four-page guest spots each issue, and that's one of those, yeah.
• 9:01
  Tad Eggleston: Right. So, so, like, you… you have somehow managed to be that guy that, like.
• 9:10
  Tad Eggleston: everybody in the industry knows who I'm talking about when I say Jesse Lonergan, and that's weird for me, because I'm… I'm normally the only guy that, like, goes to the teeny tiny zine fest, and the mid-level…
• 9:26
  Tad Eggleston: independent show and C2E2. You know, you don't have many crossovers, even among fans.
• 9:32
  jesselonergan: Yeah.
• 9:33
  Tad Eggleston: go to all of those events.
• 9:35
  jesselonergan: Yeah, it's kind of weird for me, too. I don't know that…
• 9:42
  jesselonergan: I often feel kind of out of place, at wherever I'm at.
• 9:47
  Tad Eggleston: Isn't that just the definition of pretty much anybody in comics, period?
• 9:51
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I think so. That's why we get together at these cons. We feel out of place everywhere, including the cons, but at least at the cons, we're a little less out of place.
• 10:00
  jesselonergan: Right, yeah.
• 10:03
  Tad Eggleston: … So…
• 10:07
  Tad Eggleston: They wrote good copy on the… or did you… did you write the copy on the inner flag?
• 10:12
  Tad Eggleston: they wrote… they wrote good copy on the inner flap. Do you want to… do you want to introduce your book, or do you want me to read their inner flap copy? Because I was kind of impressed.
• 10:22
  jesselonergan: I mean, if you want to read it, you can.
• 10:25
  Tad Eggleston: No, it's up to you.
• 10:26
  jesselonergan: Yeah, go ahead.
• 10:28
  Tad Eggleston: First, there was nothing.
• 10:30
  Tad Eggleston: Then there is life, and an endless cycle of violence begins. From the depths of the ocean, a mighty demigoddess emerges to teach a language of peace. Civilization takes root.
• 10:44
  Tad Eggleston: The champions of order reign, but chaos has a champion of its own. And then they call you a visionary creator, Jesse Lonergan. Jerome is a creation myth for the modern age.
• 10:57
  Tad Eggleston: So, give me your…
• 11:01
  Tad Eggleston: front counter pitch for Jerome, or, or, or, like, since you finished it before you started shopping it, how did you shop this book?
• 11:10
  Tad Eggleston: What was your, what was your….
• 11:11
  jesselonergan: I didn't….
• 11:12
  Tad Eggleston: Quick, quick, you know….
• 11:14
  jesselonergan: My, my phone.
• 11:15
  Tad Eggleston: That's what it's about.
• 11:16
  jesselonergan: I mean, I shared it with people, and one of the people I shared it with was Matt Kint, who I've become friends with, and he was like, oh, let me show this to him. I haven't met him.
• 11:30
  Tad Eggleston: Cool guy.
• 11:32
  jesselonergan: He's a great guy. I love, I love Matt, and he said, let me show it to his agent, and then, you know, the agent can kind of open doors that I can't open myself. So it ended up with 1st, 2nd, and McMillan.
• 11:51
  jesselonergan: I didn't really… I wasn't really…
• 11:55
  jesselonergan: involved… I'm really bad at pitching. You didn't have to come up with a way to pitch it. Like, and it's…
• 12:03
  jesselonergan: It's kind of…
• 12:05
  jesselonergan: something like at shows, I realized, like, very early on, I cannot talk someone into buying anything. You know, like, and so I… I felt like…
• 12:18
  jesselonergan: whatever it is on… on my table had to sort of speak for itself, because my talking would not do anything. And so…
• 12:28
  jesselonergan: You know, creating this thing that… that has kind of an immediate, like.
• 12:36
  jesselonergan: I feel like you sort of understand…
• 12:40
  jesselonergan: what it is you're looking at really quickly, but there's still more to find out, and so, like, it…
• 12:47
  jesselonergan: I feel like it immediately says it's… it introduces itself, and … I feel that that's been my technique, maybe, for the last 10 years of comics, is to try and do…
• 13:02
  jesselonergan: Everything so that the comic is sort of speaking for itself, without me having to say much of anything.
• 13:10
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's not a bad strategy.
• 13:12
  Tad Eggleston: … I, I, I, …
• 13:18
  Tad Eggleston: I'm trying to decide… you know, it's a great strategy when we're a visual medium, but we're an audio medium. I'm trying to….
• 13:25
  jesselonergan: Yeah, yeah.
• 13:26
  Tad Eggleston: Got it.
• 13:26
  jesselonergan: ….
• 13:27
  Tad Eggleston: Mom, get this!
• 13:29
  Tad Eggleston: library. I don't know why… I don't know how to tell you why, but you're listening. Get the library.
• 13:34
  jesselonergan: Pretty good.
• 13:34
  Tad Eggleston: Rome by Jesse Lonergan from 1st, 2nd.
• 13:37
  jesselonergan: Yeah, yeah, I mean.
• 13:39
  Tad Eggleston: There, we got you a sale.
• 13:41
  jesselonergan: Yeah, it's the… I think one of the things…
• 13:46
  jesselonergan: with it, that also, I think, is sort of a challenge for words, is that so much of it is conveyed in… visually. That, like, it's not…
• 13:57
  jesselonergan: It's not just, like, a narrative that's… And I, I feel…
• 14:04
  jesselonergan: And I've felt the same thing with other books I've done, where, like, to say the narrative
• 14:09
  jesselonergan: is… is to miss a lot. It's like….
• 14:12
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 14:13
  jesselonergan: It's like telling the story of a song, and it's like, well…
• 14:17
  jesselonergan: Just because someone told you what happened in this song doesn't mean you've heard the song.
• 14:24
  jesselonergan: Yeah, I mean….
• 14:25
  Tad Eggleston: I have that kind of feeling about it, where… It's…
• 14:29
  Tad Eggleston: It's a love story, and a revenge story, and a creation myth.
• 14:34
  Tad Eggleston: And….
• 14:35
  jesselonergan: Yeah.
• 14:37
  Tad Eggleston: It's…
• 14:40
  Tad Eggleston: it looks like… I mean, even people familiar with your work, it looks like nothing you've ever seen in a comic before. It hints at everything, but is his own thing.
• 14:53
  jesselonergan: Bye.
• 14:54
  Tad Eggleston: I love your use of shadows in this book.
• 14:58
  Tad Eggleston: …
• 15:00
  Tad Eggleston: I love the panels that are… that are two or three… er, I love the pages that are two or three different things at once.
• 15:08
  jesselonergan: Yeah.
• 15:09
  jesselonergan: Yeah, it feels like a lot of things that I had been…
• 15:13
  jesselonergan: working on previously, sort of, like, it's… everything is sort of coming together in this, …
• 15:22
  jesselonergan: you know, sort of visual ideas, I started playing with, narrative ideas, you know, also, I think, just sort of my… my personal skill set as well, in terms of what… what I am able to do.
• 15:35
  jesselonergan: Sort of coming together as well.
• 15:39
  Tad Eggleston: So… like… This is… this is longer than any other work that you've done, and…
• 15:48
  Tad Eggleston: And also, while it was kind of set up in chapters that could have been issues, you know, it's… it's really kind of clearly a…
• 15:57
  Tad Eggleston: A big work, almost from the get-go, so….
• 16:01
  jesselonergan: Yeah.
• 16:02
  Tad Eggleston: Like, how did you plan it out? How did you approach it? What was the same? What was different in terms of how you approached this project?
• 16:10
  jesselonergan: … I think, … I approached it like the…
• 16:17
  jesselonergan: The ideas had sort of been, like, …
• 16:22
  jesselonergan: bouncing around in my head of… of, like, this… this type of narrative that I wanted to tell, and sort of this…
• 16:31
  jesselonergan: Tapping into this mythological stuff that's sort of, you know.
• 16:36
  jesselonergan: Early people's narratives, where it's sort of, …
• 16:41
  jesselonergan: Not necessarily a creation myth, but something like an epic, where it's…
• 16:47
  jesselonergan: you know, Song of Roland came up as, like, thinking of something like that. And so all these ideas were sort of, like, cooking in my head for a number of years, and then finally I sat down and
• 17:02
  jesselonergan: Came up with an outline of
• 17:05
  jesselonergan: Of the story, and then, that was only, only probably about 2 pages. … Because… I… I knew…
• 17:17
  jesselonergan: it was… it was best… I think the more narratively that I plan, the…
• 17:24
  jesselonergan: the less interesting it is. I feel like I… my…
• 17:30
  jesselonergan: My narrative thinking mind, my editing mind is… is not that creative, but my drawing mind is pretty creative, and so leaving
• 17:41
  jesselonergan: Leaving a lot of, like, the details, and so really just sort of having this, like, basic structure, and then sort of filling it in, basically very slowly over, you know, the period of 4 years.
• 17:53
  jesselonergan: And… and kind of… Trusting myself, that… that it would…
• 18:02
  jesselonergan: That it would hold together, which, …
• 18:06
  jesselonergan: definitely felt potentially foolish at times that, like, oh, this… this might… I might not be able to make this work the way I want it to work. But then…
• 18:17
  jesselonergan: You know, as it went on, it sort of felt like pieces were falling into place, and ideas…
• 18:24
  jesselonergan: Ideas were sort of just clicking together visually.
• 18:28
  jesselonergan: And narratively, at the same time.
• 18:32
  Tad Eggleston: So… And I kind of know the answer to this, But just because it… like…
• 18:41
  Tad Eggleston: is mind-boggling to me. Do you work mostly in order?
• 18:48
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, he….
• 18:48
  jesselonergan: ….
• 18:49
  Tad Eggleston: Start drawing page 1, and finish a page, and look at the next page, and….
• 18:55
  jesselonergan: Yeah, yeah, I generally work in order, …
• 18:58
  jesselonergan: And… but I do… I do go back and edit, so, you know, I… I worked… In order for…
• 19:07
  jesselonergan: I don't know, for 320 pages, 340 pages, I don't know how many, and then… then went back and sort of looked… looked at what I had and changed things or moved things around, or shifted things. But generally, yeah, I try… I try to work in order.
• 19:27
  jesselonergan: I don't always. Other projects, I haven't worked so much in order. Like, they might start off with sort of a… a middle idea, and then build out from the middle. But this… this one…
• 19:42
  jesselonergan: It started mostly… in order?
• 19:45
  jesselonergan: I think there's a few false starts before, things that sort of ended up being, just in different sequences, and, like, the very first page
• 19:55
  jesselonergan: was actually drawn very late. You know, I… it was… the first page of it is drawn after the whole thing was finished, and there were edits in that earlier section that I felt
• 20:09
  jesselonergan: would make it stronger in terms of tying into the end and stuff. But that… that's sort of more… more of the editing process. ….
• 20:25
  Tad Eggleston: … I mean, that's… that's a… that's a good next step, like, once you've got
• 20:32
  Tad Eggleston: this big thing, and I know you've mentioned that first, second, you know…
• 20:39
  Tad Eggleston: was relatively happy with it. They didn't say that anything needed to be taken out. They encouraged you to add things back in. What is the editing process
• 20:51
  Tad Eggleston: like at that point? I mean, how… I mean, because I know that you combined some pages, I know that you….
• 20:59
  jesselonergan: Yeah, I mean….
• 21:00
  Tad Eggleston: Added some stuff.
• 21:03
  jesselonergan: I think, like… …
• 21:07
  jesselonergan: Yeah, to me, I sort of… I make things because I want to make them, and…
• 21:14
  jesselonergan: And then I'll… I…
• 21:16
  jesselonergan: I guess I sort of trust that I'm doing work at enough of a level that someone will publish it when I'm done.
• 21:26
  jesselonergan: And… and so, like, I have my own editing, sort of, that I go through, just to make things make sense. If I think something needs to be stronger, or if I think a sequence is too long, I'll just redraw… redraw it to be shorter, or just cut the
• 21:42
  jesselonergan: sections out, or if I just don't like a drawing, I might just go back and redo it.
• 21:49
  jesselonergan: And then when… when I got it to 1st Second, they didn't…
• 21:54
  jesselonergan: they didn't have any removal notes. They did have, like, one sequence they felt could be a little bit…
• 22:04
  jesselonergan: They felt like one of the characters sort of got lost within a sequence, and they wanted me just to add
• 22:12
  jesselonergan: Add in a section with that character, just sort of as, like.
• 22:17
  jesselonergan: this is where this character is, and this is what's happening. …
• 22:22
  jesselonergan: And… and other than that, there wasn't… there wasn't really too much else, in terms of editing.
• 22:30
  jesselonergan: there might have been some, like, text editing, as well. I don't really remember. Not much, because there's not that much text.
• 22:38
  Tad Eggleston: No, I, I was, I was at a Zine Fest this, this, … weekend, and… and…
• 22:47
  Tad Eggleston: There was actually a… a guy… Who had a zine that
• 22:53
  Tad Eggleston: that was reminiscent of you, which is why I was surprised when he didn't actually know who you were, and I was trying to describe this book to him. So when I said it had words, he's like, I don't like him with words. I'm like, well.
• 23:04
  jesselonergan: doesn't have a lot of words. I wouldn't….
• 23:07
  Tad Eggleston: I wouldn't be surprised, and I haven't gone to count yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if there are more pages than words.
• 23:13
  jesselonergan: Oh, I wouldn't be surprised at all.
• 23:16
  Tad Eggleston: And there are certainly way more panels than words.
• 23:19
  jesselonergan: Oh yeah, but I mean, I don't know if there's 300 words. Like, with words….
• 23:25
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 23:26
  jesselonergan: Not… I just… I guess I just don't think of them as, sort of, necessary to the….
• 23:35
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah?
• 23:35
  jesselonergan: the type of story I wanted to tell. Like, I think of…
• 23:40
  jesselonergan: Working, sort of, in this, like.
• 23:43
  jesselonergan: mythological concept… construct, and when I think of, like.
• 23:48
  jesselonergan: the story of Theseus, or something like that, or Perseus, or, you know, like, these stories, I don't think of actual lines of dialogue. There's not that much talking. They're more, like, action-based. And so, you know, like, the… maybe there's…
• 24:06
  jesselonergan: one famous quote, but, like, Hercules, I'm like, I don't know anything that Hercules said, supposedly. I know the things he did, and the challenges he was given, and so, like, that's kind of where my mind's at, is it's… it's about showing these actions, and…
• 24:24
  jesselonergan: having this sort of action-forward thing, and so… If words don't feel…
• 24:30
  jesselonergan: like they're necessary? I don't… I just don't really use them. But… but there are times where… where words are…
• 24:41
  jesselonergan: Are helpful, and they… they can convey an idea Much more quickly.
• 24:47
  Tad Eggleston: No, you couldn't quite call them necessary there. You had to look for the word and said helpful.
• 24:54
  jesselonergan: Yeah, yeah, well, I mean… I think…
• 25:00
  jesselonergan: sometimes I think about it, I lived overseas, I was a Peace Corps volunteer, and I was in Turkmenistan, and there would be movies on in Russian, and I didn't learn Russian. The language I learned while I was there was Turkmen, which I didn't get very good at at all, but …
• 25:17
  jesselonergan: the movies would be in Russian, but, like, you… I would watch them, and there might be a few points that were unclear, but otherwise, it's like, I can follow what's going on, like, I don't…
• 25:30
  jesselonergan: I don't… I'm missing nuance, and, like, comedies totally didn't work. Like….
• 25:37
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 25:37
  jesselonergan: you know, things like that. And there are certain types of movies that just wouldn't work, but, like, an action movie, it's like, you can follow an action movie without any… any of the words or the talking. And… and to some extent, I feel like with that kind…
• 25:54
  jesselonergan: of movie, the talking is there because there's sound, and it's… and it's… people talk, you know, and… and I feel like with comics, there is no sound, you know, there's…
• 26:07
  jesselonergan: So, you can write PAL, but it… there's no sound there, and so I just find myself sort of not…
• 26:18
  jesselonergan: Not feeling the need to put it in. ….
• 26:21
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 26:22
  jesselonergan: But it… but it, you know, you… you can convey ideas, and… and I think…
• 26:28
  jesselonergan: a different type of story would benefit from more talking. But this type of story, I just didn't think it was necessary.
• 26:38
  Tad Eggleston: No, it absolutely was not. I think…
• 26:44
  Tad Eggleston: Every word that you have in here has a purpose, and, and, like…
• 26:52
  Tad Eggleston: I don't necessarily think that a lot of them could be cut, but there's… there's no place where I'm like, I need somebody to tell me what's going on.
• 27:02
  jesselonergan: Right, yeah.
• 27:04
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean, I think…
• 27:09
  Tad Eggleston: And… and, like… Part of it is that you're…
• 27:19
  Tad Eggleston: How… how… how much time do you envision?
• 27:23
  Tad Eggleston: Taking place in world.
• 27:26
  Tad Eggleston: I'm just curious as to whether….
• 27:27
  jesselonergan: Whether you hear….
• 27:28
  Tad Eggleston: Thoughts on it.
• 27:29
  jesselonergan: beginning of this story, to….
• 27:31
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 27:33
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 27:34
  jesselonergan: Oh, hello.
• 27:35
  jesselonergan: I don't know. … I think…
• 27:40
  jesselonergan: I don't think I show that much, but years, you know, like, I feel like it's a…
• 27:49
  jesselonergan: long period of time, but not, like, eons or anything, but, like, I don't know, maybe the whole thing is within 5-10 years.
• 27:58
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, see, that's tighter than I would have put it. I feel… to me, at least reading it.
• 28:05
  Tad Eggleston: And I'll have to, you know, with your thoughts, I'm gonna have to go read it again. I kind of feel like…
• 28:12
  Tad Eggleston: The middle part is 5 or 10 years, but there's the buildup, and even that 5 or 10 years, it's like… you… you… you realize that, like.
• 28:24
  Tad Eggleston: this whole… Action and revenge and love and jealousy thing going on is, like…
• 28:33
  Tad Eggleston: an eventful 5 or 10 years, and the way that you, like… the… and, like, the lack of words is part of what makes it flow so well, you know? You…
• 28:45
  Tad Eggleston: You're able to express that, like.
• 28:50
  Tad Eggleston: These are campaigns that are happening, not….
• 28:54
  Tad Eggleston: not… conversations, or one-off fights, or….
• 29:00
  jesselonergan: Yeah, yeah, maybe that might… that might be another… another reason
• 29:06
  jesselonergan: why I avoid words, is there a time aspect of….
• 29:11
  Tad Eggleston: Man.
• 29:12
  jesselonergan: Conversations are so short, and the creation of an army is long.
• 29:19
  Tad Eggleston: Nice.
• 29:20
  jesselonergan: So those sorts of… Having a conversation go over it might create a different sense of time.
• 29:29
  jesselonergan: Bye.
• 29:30
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and more and more, I realize that that's what I love about your… …
• 29:41
  Tad Eggleston: Innovative use of panels.
• 29:44
  Tad Eggleston: The small panels that aren't always strictly panels is… is by.
• 29:50
  jesselonergan: Yeah.
• 29:50
  Tad Eggleston: breaking them, they force me to spend more time. It's like the… you've taken a little tiny bit of control over….
• 30:01
  jesselonergan: How the time passes, which is, like, not something that a comic artist can….
• 30:08
  Tad Eggleston: can normally… I mean, that's normally in the… the…
• 30:15
  Tad Eggleston: it's one of the reasons I can do horror in comics, is that I get to decide the pacing.
• 30:21
  Tad Eggleston: I get to the page that I can't handle, and it's like… Oh, God.
• 30:27
  Tad Eggleston: Whereas, because of the way you split stuff into panels, even that page that is essentially a splash page, because it's, like, a 20-panel splash page, I spend a little bit more time with it than I might otherwise, just because my brain has to figure out
• 30:47
  Tad Eggleston: And I've come to realize that sometimes what it is, is, like.
• 30:53
  Tad Eggleston: Is that it's just telling me that time is passing.
• 30:58
  jesselonergan: Right.
• 30:59
  Tad Eggleston: But… You know, my brain has to stop and figure out what the gutters mean.
• 31:05
  jesselonergan: Yeah.
• 31:06
  Tad Eggleston: Doesn't always have to stop long.
• 31:08
  Tad Eggleston: But, like.
• 31:09
  jesselonergan: Yeah, I, I… I like a density, you know, having a sort of a large number of
• 31:19
  jesselonergan: of panels to… to play with, and I… and I think… …
• 31:25
  jesselonergan: I think in order for a lot of that panel stuff to work, I need to create sort of an expectation
• 31:32
  jesselonergan: of it with the audience. So, like, you know, the first page starts off, and you're gonna get a ton of panels, and it sort of sets up, like, the way this comic works.
• 31:44
  jesselonergan: … And then… yeah, I like…
• 31:50
  jesselonergan: I like the possibilities of, like, moving the…
• 31:53
  jesselonergan: having it be a little bit of a puzzle sometimes, you know, that's, an enjoyable puzzle, to sort of figure out. But that also…
• 32:06
  jesselonergan: I like the idea that you can look at a page, and if you don't look closely, you can miss something.
• 32:13
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 32:14
  jesselonergan: And, and sort of, like, you know, approaching it, sort of.
• 32:20
  jesselonergan: not necessarily with comic book influences, but, I mean, which there are a ton of, you know, influences, like Chris Wearer was a huge influence, you know, Mobius is an influence, Jack Kirby's an influence, and so it's not like….
• 32:35
  Tad Eggleston: All three of those definitely, definitely come out, and I don't know how many people say those three in the same sentence.
• 32:44
  jesselonergan: … I, …
• 32:47
  jesselonergan: I feel like Mobius and Chris Ware, I've definitely gotten a lot. Kirby, I'm getting more in….
• 32:53
  Tad Eggleston: No, I meant how many artists say, yeah, my influences are Jack Kirby, Mobius, and Chris Ware.
• 33:01
  jesselonergan: Oh, yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I think that's it.
• 33:04
  Tad Eggleston: I think I have even used those words to describe your art, but I almost feel bad when I say the Kirby, because it's like…
• 33:12
  Tad Eggleston: he feels like a different beast, but… but you do have that beast in with….
• 33:18
  jesselonergan: Yeah.
• 33:19
  Tad Eggleston: of beasts.
• 33:21
  jesselonergan: Yeah, I guess I see… Different things in each one, and… and with…
• 33:29
  jesselonergan: with Kirby, it, you know, there's just… it's just pure creativity. Like, like, it's… the… the…
• 33:36
  jesselonergan: So many ideas come out, and so much… so much energy in the drawings, and so much…
• 33:44
  jesselonergan: I don't know, it's just… yeah, it's just… Yeah? It's pure creativity, pure energy coming out of it, and… Right, right.
• 33:51
  jesselonergan: You know, that's….
• 33:52
  Tad Eggleston: But, but, but this is, this is also a place where, like.
• 33:56
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, you said that, and I had just stopped… this is page… you know, for anybody reading along at home, what I'm holding up for Jesse right now is pages 102 and 103.
• 34:07
  Tad Eggleston: Which is, like… You in microcosm.
• 34:11
  Tad Eggleston: Because… like… the action… Is hidden in 10 panels in the bottom left.
• 34:25
  jesselonergan: Right, yeah.
• 34:27
  Tad Eggleston: And because… You split the big splash, into… what, 20 panels? Only in….
• 34:38
  jesselonergan: Probably 50.
• 34:40
  Tad Eggleston: Well, no.
• 34:41
  jesselonergan: I'm sorry.
• 34:41
  Tad Eggleston: Sorry. It's… it's 5 by….
• 34:46
  jesselonergan: Sickly, it should….
• 34:47
  Tad Eggleston: 7.
• 34:48
  jesselonergan: panels, I think, yeah.
• 34:49
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, 5x7, so… so 35… yeah. ….
• 34:56
  Tad Eggleston: Because you split it into 60 panels, even though it's a splash.
• 35:02
  Tad Eggleston: It's like, that moment of anticipation sits there.
• 35:07
  Tad Eggleston: And then you've got the two-panel
• 35:10
  Tad Eggleston: Where you see the fear in his eyes, and then…
• 35:14
  Tad Eggleston: The charge, and then you drop the color so that you can see the… the hand go to the sword, and… and… just…
• 35:25
  Tad Eggleston: Like, it's all there, and like, the decisions for where the panel crosses the body, and where… where… like…
• 35:35
  Tad Eggleston: The multi-swordsman is all in front of the gutters, as is his.
• 35:40
  jesselonergan: No.
• 35:40
  Tad Eggleston: the… the…
• 35:42
  Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna call him an ogre, for lack of a better term right now. It has the panels on top of him. It shows, like…
• 35:54
  Tad Eggleston: You know, and then the next page is just frantic, crazy action with curves, and….
• 36:03
  jesselonergan: Yeah, I mean, it's… with that… with that fight sequence, you know, like, part of it is trying to….
• 36:14
  Tad Eggleston: And yeah, I should point out that the page.
• 36:16
  jesselonergan: as I'm talking.
• 36:17
  Tad Eggleston: about are in the middle of a fight sequence. There have been
• 36:21
  Tad Eggleston: of pages of fighting, and there will be a couple more, or a couple more spreads.
• 36:27
  jesselonergan: I think, yeah.
• 36:30
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah, no, I'm sorry, I thought we were at the end of it sooner. So, yeah, no. That was 102 and 103. The fight, I think, ends on….
• 36:41
  jesselonergan: 1.15, and it had started….
• 36:45
  Tad Eggleston: on… … depending on how we decide, it started… well, the Justice by Combat… Is 94.
• 36:59
  jesselonergan: And then the next page, you're at the arena.
• 37:03
  jesselonergan: So, so yeah, so, yeah, yeah, 20 pages. Yeah, …
• 37:09
  jesselonergan: Yeah, it's sort of, you know, trying to use…
• 37:13
  jesselonergan: use the medium to sort of create, like, you know, these relationships between things. So, like, there's this swordsman, and he's sort of…
• 37:23
  jesselonergan: above the panels? Like, like, he, for much of the flight, is sort of free of the panels, because
• 37:30
  jesselonergan: he's trained and able to move while, who you call their ogre, I call Red, is sort of bound by the panels. Red works for me.
• 37:41
  Tad Eggleston: that better.
• 37:42
  jesselonergan: He's, like, restricted, you know, and sort of, like, held…
• 37:47
  jesselonergan: In place, and sort of, like, him…
• 37:50
  jesselonergan: He's this being of nature, but he's in an arena, which is, you know, the swordsman's space, and so the swordsman almost, like, works, like, on a magical
• 37:59
  jesselonergan: level, where he's able to move between the panels, he's able to move above the panels, while, Red is sort of… sort of trapped within them, sort of using that kind of play and relationship. And I don't know how… how immediately
• 38:18
  jesselonergan: it comes across to a reader, but it… I think it has that effect, that feeling of, like, this guy's free, this guy is trapped. ….
• 38:28
  Tad Eggleston: Something… something that I didn't… just… didn't, like, notice until, like, my eighth or 9th reread of.
• 38:36
  jesselonergan: Yeah, you might have read this, though.
• 38:38
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, of Saga was… was that all violent sequences Are… crooked panels.
• 38:49
  Tad Eggleston: So rather than nice, level panels, the panels are askew.
• 38:56
  Tad Eggleston: But as soon as I noticed it, I went.
• 38:58
  Tad Eggleston: I've been feeling this the whole time. This is part of the reason why… so, whether people notice what you did that made them feel….
• 39:11
  Tad Eggleston: That, or not, they noticed, and for that matter, I'm noticing right now, when Red turns the tables.
• 39:20
  jesselonergan: He's.
• 39:20
  Tad Eggleston: on top of the panels.
• 39:22
  jesselonergan: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's….
• 39:26
  Tad Eggleston: Starting precisely when he manages to reach forward and grab the arm, or the leg of the swordsman, he is now… he is reaching out from the pan… you know, one half of him has panels on top of him, the arm that reaches out…
• 39:43
  Tad Eggleston: Is on top of the panels, and then on the next page, where he slams him to the ground.
• 39:49
  Tad Eggleston: A, he is completely on top of the panels, and B, the swords are starting to fall under the panels.
• 39:56
  jesselonergan: Yeah.
• 39:57
  Tad Eggleston: That's just… that's brilliant!
• 39:59
  jesselonergan: Having fun with the medium, you know, …
• 40:04
  jesselonergan: Which is sort of, like.
• 40:06
  jesselonergan: how my brain works, I guess.
• 40:09
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, so that's where I'm gonna go with my next question, is that…
• 40:14
  Tad Eggleston: like, I have to imagine that by… by the time you were done with it, you… you…
• 40:22
  Tad Eggleston: were very conscious of what you were doing to make it consistent across the pages, but was that something that, as you started to write the fight, you went, I'm gonna do it this way, or did you start drawing it that way and notice it?
• 40:39
  jesselonergan: It was a conscious… decision to… to have…
• 40:47
  jesselonergan: you know, a character enclosed and a character not. And to use…
• 40:54
  jesselonergan: use that relationship to sort of convey the power dynamics and their shifts through the fight. I think, like.
• 41:03
  jesselonergan: Sometimes ideas, though, will just come from drawing and laying something out.
• 41:09
  jesselonergan: And… it…
• 41:13
  jesselonergan: it's like you have, like, you're drawing something, you're like, oh, that's an interesting idea, and then that leads to another idea that I think is interesting, and then another idea, another.
• 41:22
  jesselonergan: So it's… it's sort of this back… back and forth of, like, intention, because sometimes, like, I have an idea, and I'm like, oh, this'll work great, and then as soon as I start trying to draw it.
• 41:35
  jesselonergan: it just doesn't… doesn't work. Like, it's like, oh, this… this doesn't really read, there's no… there's no energy in it.
• 41:44
  jesselonergan: And I guess that's… that might be also part of the thing with why I try and write
• 41:50
  jesselonergan: like, literal writing, to a minimum, is like, I can have an idea for how something will work, but I won't know whether it… it does unless I actually draw it. And so, I find it better to
• 42:07
  jesselonergan: To not be dealing in hypotheticals, and just sort of like, well, work on the page and see…
• 42:15
  jesselonergan: what ideas, you know, … That sort of thing.
• 42:21
  Tad Eggleston: So, another process question.
• 42:25
  Tad Eggleston: …
• 42:28
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, first, and I think you've answered this before, but with any given artist, it sometimes changes, …
• 42:36
  Tad Eggleston: project to project, how do you work? What tools? What… … Yeah, it's just….
• 42:45
  jesselonergan: schools. Yeah, I work, on paper for all the…
• 42:51
  jesselonergan: the… all the drawing, and so all the penciling, all the inking that I do on paper.
• 42:57
  jesselonergan: … I mean, to get technical, it did change over the course of this. I think when I started
• 43:05
  jesselonergan: I… I've… always do the panel borders with a Micron 08, and …
• 43:13
  jesselonergan: I think when I started, I was using a… A Pentel Pocket Brush.
• 43:18
  Tad Eggleston: Brush pen for most of the drawing, but then also sometimes,
• 43:23
  jesselonergan: a zebra brush pen, which is…
• 43:26
  jesselonergan: More of a marker than a… than a brush pen.
• 43:29
  jesselonergan: But by the end, I'd switched to a Intel Foode brush pen, and basically using that for as much as possible, except for very, very fine details, which I'd use, like, a Micron 01.
• 43:46
  jesselonergan: And sort of… but I do find, like, my…
• 43:50
  jesselonergan: my appreciation for tools, like, change. Like, it's like, oh, I used to like…
• 43:56
  jesselonergan: Yeah, I used, like, the butt brush pen a lot, the pocket brush, and then all of a sudden, it was just like, no, this…
• 44:04
  jesselonergan: This pen gets too affected by humidity, and it glops, and it just puts too much ink out.
• 44:12
  jesselonergan: the food A, it has more of a control of the ink flow, and so the humid Pennsylvania weather doesn't… doesn't affect it. …
• 44:21
  jesselonergan: I like the brush pens basically because…
• 44:25
  jesselonergan: I guess they're neater, but also they're…
• 44:28
  jesselonergan: to me, their quality remains the same longer than, like, a traditional pen. Traditional pens, I would always just sort of… I think I'm just kind of hard on tools,
• 44:40
  jesselonergan: would always just, like, I need to be buying more, and they're… and the brush pens are cheaper and work just as well.
• 44:47
  Tad Eggleston: My, my, my wife, is an art teacher and artist, and, like.
• 44:53
  Tad Eggleston: she just… like, that… when you ask her what to get her for her birthday, Christmas, whatnot, it's just art supplies. It's like, well, which one? She's like, it really doesn't matter. I'm gonna go through them all. You know what I like? I mean, there have been times where I've given her the same present.
• 45:10
  Tad Eggleston: three events in a row without, like, realizing it, and, like, I'll realize it because, like, I come across the unopened last one, and I'll go.
• 45:22
  Tad Eggleston: And then, like, a month later, she'll have gone on a tear with that particular type of…
• 45:29
  Tad Eggleston: Pencil or whatnot, and….
• 45:32
  jesselonergan: Yeah.
• 45:32
  Tad Eggleston: Be almost out of them.
• 45:34
  Tad Eggleston: So yeah, I get the artist and the… the stuff.
• 45:39
  jesselonergan: Yeah, the stuff….
• 45:40
  Tad Eggleston: vanishes.
• 45:43
  jesselonergan: Yeah, and there's… I think…
• 45:46
  jesselonergan: for me, I like a certain amount of unpredictability, and so when things get too predictable, possibly with a tool, I'll want to try something different.
• 46:01
  jesselonergan: sort of be figuring things out. But yeah, so I draw everything on paper, first, and then scan it in and do all the coloring, digitally.
• 46:13
  Tad Eggleston: And… and… So the coloring's digitally. So, then my follow-up question to that is, like.
• 46:22
  Tad Eggleston: Do you pencil… do you…
• 46:25
  Tad Eggleston: Do you pencil, ink, and color a page at a time? Do you do it a section at a time? I mean….
• 46:32
  jesselonergan: ….
• 46:33
  Tad Eggleston: How are you making your decisions on… Are you somebody….
• 46:40
  jesselonergan: I would… so, so what I would…
• 46:45
  jesselonergan: I would try to do as many pages as possible as I could within a week.
• 46:50
  jesselonergan: But, no, I was working on Drone, my four other books, concurrently. So, you know, like, you talked about me being on the show other times. I was working on Drone.
• 47:05
  Tad Eggleston: On the… oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 47:07
  jesselonergan: And so, the drone was always, like, the thing on the back burner, so, like, when I had finished
• 47:14
  jesselonergan: my… my pages, you know, my page for the day for Ghost of Science, or my page for Man's Best, then I would work on Drone. And, I would try to do at least two pages, draw in a week, hopefully more, sometimes.
• 47:30
  Tad Eggleston: Drawn and inked, or just pencil?
• 47:33
  jesselonergan: So, drawing and ink, yeah. Okay. Inked. I don't… I try and…
• 47:39
  jesselonergan: I don't really count penciled as anything, so it's….
• 47:43
  Tad Eggleston: And that was what I was trying to get at, is like, so do you pencil and ink a whole page, and then move on, or are you….
• 47:53
  jesselonergan: I prefer….
• 47:54
  Tad Eggleston: a sequence.
• 47:57
  jesselonergan: No. No, I prefer to…
• 48:01
  jesselonergan: I've heard chunks that can be, like, considered done. Like, I think this just comes from having a day job of, like, a page that goes unfinished for a week is a really hard page, no matter what you've drawn, like, just like that.
• 48:19
  jesselonergan: that lag, that, like, negative… that static inertia is really hard to overcome. And so, like, trying to be able to, like.
• 48:30
  jesselonergan: get to a finished state in a sitting, was always sort of one of my goals. So, like, my…
• 48:39
  jesselonergan: I feel like my penciling… I feel like my layouts, I spend more time on than most people. My penciling, I spend less time on.
• 48:48
  jesselonergan: And my inking….
• 48:50
  Tad Eggleston: Okay. So you also consider the pencil and layout stages as separate stages?
• 48:57
  jesselonergan: Yeah, yeah, so I'll, like….
• 49:00
  Tad Eggleston: Did you lay out some thumbnails, or…?
• 49:03
  jesselonergan: Yeah, like, little 2x3 inch drawings of what I've…
• 49:08
  jesselonergan: And mainly, they're just squares. They're just the panels. They're… they're not really much content of the panels. I do all that, and pencils.
• 49:19
  jesselonergan: …
• 49:20
  jesselonergan: And then… and then ink it. And I try… try to do that, if possible, within one sitting. It's not always possible. And then…
• 49:30
  jesselonergan: One of the great things about Patreon was this feeling of having an audience, try and…
• 49:36
  jesselonergan: color two pages a week, so I'd try to be, like.
• 49:40
  jesselonergan: I tried to be at least, like, 10 pages ahead in terms of drawing, and then…
• 49:45
  jesselonergan: color the two pages I would post on Monday, on Friday.
• 49:48
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 49:48
  jesselonergan: So it was, it was sort of like…
• 49:52
  jesselonergan: constantly, I guess, producing finished work, …
• 49:57
  jesselonergan: And I think also another one of the big things that sort of… I think a lot of other people do, like, full book
• 50:06
  jesselonergan: planning. Like, they'll do, like, thumbnails for the entire book.
• 50:10
  jesselonergan: But then… But… I don't do that, because that…
• 50:17
  jesselonergan: That just seems like a lag for me, personally. Okay.
• 50:20
  jesselonergan: But my… the payback is that, oh, I go back and edit, like, and throw away finished pages, and I think people who thumbnail the whole thing in advance don't throw away finished pages, while I do it.
• 50:37
  jesselonergan: Embarrassingly regularly.
• 50:40
  Tad Eggleston: Oh my god.
• 50:41
  jesselonergan: Like, Hedra is probably the worst example. I mean, I'm gonna, I'm gonna… Deidre.
• 50:47
  Tad Eggleston: I'll tell you right now….
• 50:48
  jesselonergan: There were 56 pages thrown away as well.
• 50:51
  Tad Eggleston: You're officially famous enough that you shouldn't throw away pages. Sell them as outdated.
• 50:56
  jesselonergan: Oh, I, I, I, they, they, they just go into a, they, they just go into a crate. Okay, okay. Like, I don't actually throw them away. They just get taken out of the… taken out of the book. ….
• 51:09
  Tad Eggleston: Every once in a while, there's an artist that means it. They're like, I decided that was crap, and….
• 51:15
  jesselonergan: Yeah, I don't really….
• 51:18
  Tad Eggleston: language. She didn't.
• 51:21
  jesselonergan: Yeah, I don't really throw that much away. It is… it is starting to become, like, a storage…
• 51:28
  jesselonergan: thing? Like, there's all the sketchbooks, you know, like, there's so many sketchbooks, and they're, you know, from going back, like, 20 years, and there's nothing good in that 20-year-old sketchbook.
• 51:43
  jesselonergan: Like, like, you'd like to think that there's some, like, gem in there. It's like, no, it's all garbage. And so it's like, why? Okay, would I think it was all garbage?
• 51:56
  Tad Eggleston: the guy.
• 51:57
  jesselonergan: Maybe not, but it… maybe not, but, like…
• 52:04
  jesselonergan: I don't know, it's at best the kind of stuff that's, like.
• 52:08
  jesselonergan: oh, you really like the Beatles? You'll really enjoy this really urgent… early version of the one after 909. Like…
• 52:20
  jesselonergan: And you'll enjoy listening to another early version of the one after 909, and another one. Like, which to me….
• 52:29
  Tad Eggleston: I am that nerd.
• 52:31
  jesselonergan: There are those people, but I'm talking about the Beatles. Like, you know, I'm talking about, like, highest level of esteem fame that you can get, and I'm just a guy, I don't think that there's that much interest in.
• 52:45
  Tad Eggleston: I, ….
• 52:46
  jesselonergan: bad drawing I did. That went nowhere. It didn't even become….
• 52:49
  Tad Eggleston: I don't know, I just….
• 52:51
  jesselonergan: The one before, ….
• 52:53
  Tad Eggleston: I just want to be the first one to say it out loud, or at least pretend that I'm the first one to say it out loud, because I bet you I'm not.
• 53:00
  Tad Eggleston: Give it 20 years, and people will call you the modern Mobius.
• 53:08
  jesselonergan: Oh, my…
• 53:11
  jesselonergan: I don't think so, but, we'll see. Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully I'll just be able to keep doing this, for 20 more years.
• 53:20
  Tad Eggleston: I'm… I'm certain, certain, certain that you will. Before I let you go, and for that matter, even before I get to my favorite final question, I wanna… I wanna talk…
• 53:31
  Tad Eggleston: And these things are kind of even tied together. I'm… I'm flipping through your… all of your TeePublic images that… that are available as t-shirts and stickers and whatnot, and… and… and, like, the pandas have… have… have turned into Panda Delivery Service, so… so tell me…
• 53:50
  Tad Eggleston: Tell me where… because I love these. I have… I think I have 5 of the Panda stickers already that I bought from you.
• 53:58
  Tad Eggleston: at C2E2, … And I just, like…
• 54:03
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, you're the only person I've ever bought a remark from, and it's like, oh, the reason I'm doing this is because you're doing these absurd things, and here I have this copy of Man's Best that has some of the old designs. I don't know if you remember, I had you… I had you draw it in, so mine has.
• 54:21
  jesselonergan: Oh, okay, yeah.
• 54:22
  Tad Eggleston: One extra drawing of a… One extra drawing in the drawings inside the.
• 54:31
  jesselonergan: Yeah.
• 54:33
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I think, ….
• 54:38
  jesselonergan: Because I think that this also leads to why your books are so good, is that you design characters that.
• 54:45
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, they have a certain level of absurdity to them, but they also have…
• 54:53
  Tad Eggleston: It's not just a pen… …
• 54:56
  Tad Eggleston: A panda in a pirate hat, like….
• 54:59
  jesselonergan: Yeah.
• 55:00
  Tad Eggleston: I'm seeing emotion from him.
• 55:02
  Tad Eggleston: I'm sick.
• 55:03
  jesselonergan: Oh, yeah.
• 55:04
  Tad Eggleston: He, he seems stern and ready.
• 55:07
  jesselonergan: Yeah.
• 55:08
  Tad Eggleston: ready to… whereas… whereas the panda shark, it looks more like the… the… really, how many more hours do I have to be…
• 55:19
  Tad Eggleston: Dressed up.
• 55:21
  jesselonergan: of the shark.
• 55:22
  Tad Eggleston: Like, like, the stupid… the stupid thing at the amusement park, but the panda gorilla is like, this one's kind… this is kind of cool.
• 55:34
  jesselonergan: Yeah.
• 55:34
  Tad Eggleston: You know, he's looking up through the eye, you know, with this… I mean.
• 55:38
  jesselonergan: Yeah.
• 55:39
  Tad Eggleston: You… part of drawing great comics is the acting.
• 55:44
  Tad Eggleston: And even… even with your silly drawings, you know, before I went back to the pandas, I was… I was looking through the category that you literally call absurdity, only, like.
• 55:58
  Tad Eggleston: I'm looking at it and going.
• 56:02
  Tad Eggleston: the iHeart Donuts is just re… I mean, yes, it's absurd, but like….
• 56:08
  jesselonergan: Yeah.
• 56:09
  Tad Eggleston: I think, ….
• 56:11
  jesselonergan: I think it's… that sort of thing started with, like, ….
• 56:16
  Tad Eggleston: Lone Bird and Chick, I might have to order.
• 56:18
  jesselonergan: Yeah.
• 56:19
  Tad Eggleston: myself.
• 56:21
  jesselonergan: Looking at, like, old… DJ Minotaur?
• 56:26
  jesselonergan: … like, old sci-fi books, and they have these amazing covers that almost have, like, nothing… like…
• 56:33
  jesselonergan: like, these magnificent covers that no… that no story can do justice for. Like, part of the joy of this cover is you imagining
• 56:47
  jesselonergan: What… what is going on, and what the story is, and kind of when you read what the story is.
• 56:54
  jesselonergan: it…
• 56:55
  jesselonergan: it just loses that dream-like quality, and so I think with these sorts of drawings, like, they started off with that sort of idea of, like, suggesting dreams, and then they sort of took their own turn and started just getting, like.
• 57:12
  jesselonergan: Weirder and cartoonier, like, much more of a…
• 57:18
  jesselonergan: I don't know, like, I think, like, a literal, like, pop cartoon look, as opposed to the way I sort of draw comics most of the time.
• 57:27
  jesselonergan: And that… that panda shark is, like, far and away the most popular thing I've ever drawn. Like, like, the number of… of panda sharks I've sold on TeePublic.
• 57:40
  jesselonergan: the number of bootlegs that people have made of it, like, the number of stickers I sell at any convention, the, you know, like, if I post it on Instagram, like, or any social media, the amount of likes it gets, the attention it gets, people talking about it, there is something… there's something in that image
• 57:58
  jesselonergan: that… that hits in a way nothing else I have drawn, has. And… and it's something that, like, I wanted…
• 58:10
  jesselonergan: I wanted to sort of take all these ideas, and I know I just said, like, oh, they don't benefit from having a story, but try and figure out a form where I can put, like, a sequence together, a sort of narrative together with these kind of crazy, outlandish ideas.
• 58:27
  jesselonergan: That's this kind of constant dream state, and that's what Panda Delivery Service is, is sort of…
• 58:36
  jesselonergan: These… this absurdist… Crazy things, like… Basically, like, trying to…
• 58:44
  jesselonergan: To jam as many ideas onto a page as possible, and much less, like, layout-focused, much less, you know, not really worry about paneling or that sort of thing, and just sort of this kind of
• 58:58
  jesselonergan: crazy fun energy. And yeah, I'm about 20 pages into that. It's going up on Patreon, one… one page a week, not… like, droma I was able to do two, but with this, the… the way the drawing works, it's, like.
• 59:18
  jesselonergan: the… the… letting my ideas flow and connect, the way they do, I actually find it's much, much more time consuming, and so it's a much slower process. But I think…
• 59:32
  jesselonergan: I think it'll probably end up being 50… 50-ish pages, sort of a… Unpublishable medium-length, ….
• 59:41
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, no, it's totally publishable.
• 59:44
  jesselonergan: Oh, no, no, 50's a difficult….
• 59:47
  Tad Eggleston: out.
• 59:47
  jesselonergan: number for publishers.
• 59:49
  Tad Eggleston: You're right.
• 59:50
  jesselonergan: It's not… it's….
• 59:50
  Tad Eggleston: 48 they like better.
• 59:53
  jesselonergan: a floppy… no, even 48 is sort of problematic. Like, it's not big enough to be a graphic novel, it's a little too long for a floppy, it can be a one-shot.
• 1:00:02
  Tad Eggleston: This is….
• 1:00:03
  jesselonergan: One-shots do notoriously badly.
• 1:00:06
  Tad Eggleston: 50 is… 50 is very common in the European market, which I don't think you've done anything as a Band-Aid as Nefers, so… so now's your next challenge. Again, you've gone….
• 1:00:18
  jesselonergan: Hedra, Hedra's come out in France, came out in France this year.
• 1:00:22
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, no, but did it start there? No, what I mean is, you see.
• 1:00:26
  jesselonergan: Oh, I go, I go….
• 1:00:27
  Tad Eggleston: start somewhere. You know, 50 pages means that.
• 1:00:33
  jesselonergan: You should just….
• 1:00:34
  Tad Eggleston: Pitch it to….
• 1:00:36
  jesselonergan: Pitch it, pitch it in France. I think I will be… I will be at an expo later this year, so, yeah, I'll try.
• 1:00:45
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, if you want, I'll get you in contact with Matt Madden, see if he'll do the French translation. I don't know if he's gone from English to French before. He's gone from French to English a couple of times.
• 1:00:56
  jesselonergan: Yeah, well, there's not that many words, so, ….
• 1:00:59
  Tad Eggleston: Well, so he should be able.
• 1:01:00
  jesselonergan: Probably be doable in French.
• 1:01:05
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I'm flipping through the pages right now, it just makes me giggle. …
• 1:01:11
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah. So this is… this is my favorite question to ask anybody, which is why you've gotten it a couple times before.
• 1:01:21
  jesselonergan: Remember.
• 1:01:22
  Tad Eggleston: The C, nobody ever does, and that makes it perfect, because it's one of those that, like, I expect the answer to be different every time, even if you're not trying.
• 1:01:32
  Tad Eggleston: Tell me something you love.
• 1:01:36
  Tad Eggleston: Preferably a comic, but we don't really have rules.
• 1:01:39
  Tad Eggleston: Preferably storytelling, but again, with the rules, but something that you love, that not enough.
• 1:01:45
  jesselonergan: ….
• 1:01:46
  Tad Eggleston: Other people have experienced, and you need them to, so you have more people to.
• 1:01:50
  jesselonergan: Oh, a com- … you know what, I've been… been reading…
• 1:01:58
  jesselonergan: double check on the name. … I love Jordan Crane, ….
• 1:02:04
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 1:02:05
  jesselonergan: Like, … The book I've been reading is called, like, Getting To, I think?
• 1:02:12
  jesselonergan: Keeping two, sorry, my apologies.
• 1:02:15
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:02:15
  jesselonergan: …
• 1:02:17
  jesselonergan: like, and I was just reading it, and … the… the narrative things that he's doing, and the…
• 1:02:26
  jesselonergan: the level of storytelling that he's doing with panels and times and, like, what's imaginary and what's real, it's… it's just fantastic. …
• 1:02:37
  jesselonergan: And, Jordan Crane is one of those artists, like, I discovered him when I was in college, you know, so, like, 25 years ago, in a book, a series called Non,
• 1:02:52
  jesselonergan: And, which is….
• 1:02:54
  Tad Eggleston: Maybe it's getting collected, or has gotten collected by Phante Graphics, but… Right now, they've got… they've got Ghost Like This, which I know collected… that's his most recently…
• 1:03:07
  Tad Eggleston: ….
• 1:03:09
  jesselonergan: Yeah.
• 1:03:10
  Tad Eggleston: Collects all the acclaimed short stories from…
• 1:03:13
  Tad Eggleston: Self-published magazines and anthologies such as Now and Uptite.
• 1:03:19
  jesselonergan: Okay, but yeah, Naan was this one that he did, you know, in the early… late 90s, early 2000s, and it's just…
• 1:03:30
  jesselonergan: he has been, like, such, like, an influence, and I feel like… Jeez…
• 1:03:37
  jesselonergan: it doesn't get… I mean, nobody gets as much attention as they should, but I feel like Jordan Crane's work, like, I was just looking at it, like, this is…
• 1:03:45
  jesselonergan: this is mesmerizing, what he's doing in keeping 2, and it's just a fantastic book.
• 1:03:52
  Tad Eggleston: No, I….
• 1:03:52
  jesselonergan: Because color.
• 1:03:53
  Tad Eggleston: I need to….
• 1:03:53
  jesselonergan: Wonderful.
• 1:03:55
  Tad Eggleston: I need to re-read it again now.
• 1:03:56
  jesselonergan: Drawing, his drawing's amazing, … like…
• 1:04:01
  jesselonergan: the… that non is… is probably… like, I… it was only one of them that I could get, and it is probably the most read comic I've had. He's not the only artist in it, but he's the….
• 1:04:11
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:04:11
  jesselonergan: remember the most.
• 1:04:13
  jesselonergan: And yeah, so, so Jordan Crane, I'm somebody I love.
• 1:04:20
  Tad Eggleston: That is a fantastic recommendation.
• 1:04:24
  Tad Eggleston: Well, no, that's now… the new comics anthology.
• 1:04:31
  Tad Eggleston: Here I am, going to find….
• 1:04:33
  jesselonergan: collected, none might be out of print, like, completely, because it's not just his stories, there's a bunch of other ones.
• 1:04:40
  Tad Eggleston: there as well.
• 1:04:41
  jesselonergan: And… so it… and I think if… if you want to buy…
• 1:04:47
  jesselonergan: copies of non, I think you're gonna pay a lot of money.
• 1:04:51
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, that's what it looks like.
• 1:04:54
  Tad Eggleston: Particularly because it looks like they did some interesting things with packaging. I'm just looking at number 5.
• 1:05:00
  jesselonergan: Yeah.
• 1:05:00
  Tad Eggleston: hell.
• 1:05:01
  jesselonergan: Yeah.
• 1:05:03
  Tad Eggleston: Th-th-this, this… This feels very, …
• 1:05:07
  Tad Eggleston: Raw-inspired in terms of, let's make the whole book an experience.
• 1:05:14
  jesselonergan: Yeah.
• 1:05:18
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I don't care.
• 1:05:22
  Tad Eggleston: But, no, that's a fantastic… I mean, again, I… I…
• 1:05:26
  Tad Eggleston: I haven't read enough Jordan Crane, I don't know if I knew none, but now it's officially…
• 1:05:32
  Tad Eggleston: On… on my… my list of things to… Look out for, because….
• 1:05:39
  jesselonergan: Keep an eye out for. I don't know if that one's gonna pop up. I feel like that's, like… like, there are things where you can go places and you might find weird stuff.
• 1:05:48
  Tad Eggleston: Well, this is definitely one of the ones that if I go trying to find it, the only way I'm gonna find it is if I pay way, way, way too much for it. But if I have it in the back of my head, where every… every indie comic shop
• 1:06:05
  Tad Eggleston: use.
• 1:06:05
  jesselonergan: Yeah.
• 1:06:06
  Tad Eggleston: or whatever I'm in. It's one of the things that I'm looking for. I stumble across.
• 1:06:12
  jesselonergan: Oh my god, copies….
• 1:06:13
  Tad Eggleston: Here and there.
• 1:06:14
  jesselonergan: Yeah. Yeah, I remember I bought it on Church Street in Burlington, Vermont, like, ….
• 1:06:20
  Tad Eggleston: Alright.
• 1:06:24
  Tad Eggleston: No, well, Jesse, thank you so, so much. It's always a pleasure. The book is Drone. Thanks for having me. I love it, love it, love it, which people who have been listening to this show knew already, because it may have come up once or twice over the last couple of years since you finished that first drone.
• 1:06:43
  jesselonergan: Process a lot, yeah.
• 1:06:45
  Tad Eggleston: I was actually looking back during the show, I think… I think I put it on one of my best of 23 lists, so it wasn't on the.
• 1:06:52
  jesselonergan: Oh, really?
• 1:06:53
  Tad Eggleston: You were on the best of 24 list.
• 1:06:56
  jesselonergan: Oh, with men's buzz.
• 1:06:58
  Tad Eggleston: made it with Man's Best and, and, your, your Truestale.
• 1:07:03
  jesselonergan: Okay, yeah.
• 1:07:04
  Tad Eggleston: like, every list I've ever made for this podcast has involved Jesse Mark.
• 1:07:10
  jesselonergan: Yep.
• 1:07:12
  jesselonergan: Boom.
• 1:07:13
  jesselonergan: I'll have to do something good next year.
• 1:07:15
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and I discovered you, like, roughly because… not quite exactly because of the podcast, but, like, you, you…
• 1:07:25
  Tad Eggleston: I had read Hedra, and it was on my radar, but I think it was when you did… …
• 1:07:33
  Tad Eggleston: he did Ghost of Science Pass with Joe, so when I had reached out to Joe, he's like, oh, I'll bring Jesse with me.
• 1:07:40
  Tad Eggleston: And I went, cool, and then I looked, I'm like, oh, I know Hedra, and then I reread Hedra, and I liked it even better than I had the last time.
• 1:07:47
  jesselonergan: Oh.
• 1:07:48
  Tad Eggleston: And I started… and I started, like, looking for other stuff, and like… and then he's just started doing more and more awesome work, and…
• 1:07:58
  Tad Eggleston: You know, it's been a pleasure watching you
• 1:08:04
  Tad Eggleston: finally be appreciated by the rest of the comics world, too. I mean, I also remember, like, I think I had emailed you and Porn Sack within, like.
• 1:08:16
  Tad Eggleston: 30 seconds of seeing the announcement for Man's Best. I'm like, wait a minute.
• 1:08:20
  jesselonergan: Or Zach and Jesse?
• 1:08:26
  Tad Eggleston: So….
• 1:08:27
  jesselonergan: Yeah.
• 1:08:27
  Tad Eggleston: Thank you so much, thank you for your work, thank you for your time, ….
• 1:08:31
  jesselonergan: Thanks.
• 1:08:32
  Tad Eggleston: I can't wait to see what comes next, and … for 22 panels, this has been Jesse Lonergan, and we will see you after the next page.