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With Great Power #309... 22 Panels with Taki Soma & Mark Schey · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

• 0:01
  Tad Eggleston: Good evening, everybody. Welcome back to 22 Panels. My guests tonight are Taki Soma and Mark Shea, who's
• 0:11
  Tad Eggleston: upcoming book.
• 0:12
  Tad Eggleston: Parapsychologist is…
• 0:15
  Tad Eggleston: is funny, and poignant, and… and just… just wonderful. Just wonderful. And if… and if Dr. Ramos has anything else to say, then we're gonna beat him over the head, but I don't… I don't think he will, because…
• 0:27
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: I would never be nasty.
• 0:28
  Tad Eggleston: Smile on his face that says he enjoyed himself.
• 0:31
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: how could I be negative about a great book?
• 0:33
  Tad Eggleston: That's my point.
• 0:34
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: It's impossible.
• 0:35
  Mark Schey: I like this doctor.
• 0:38
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Hey.
• 0:39
  Tad Eggleston: I guess I didn't… I introduced him to Mark. Taki, this is Dr. Edgar Ramos, who…
• 0:45
  Tad Eggleston: heads up a group called Psychocomicology that goes to various cons and talks about using comics in their psychology practice, talks about the psychology of superheroes. When they want to really fill the room, they'll talk about the psychology of supervillains.
• 1:04
  Tad Eggleston: That sort of thing, and he's also, like…
• 1:08
  Tad Eggleston: Owns a practice with how many locations?
• 1:12
  Tad Eggleston: Five.
• 1:13
  Tad Eggleston: 4 locations, dean of a psychology school, hospital privileges, and owns two comic shops just for kicks? I don't know…
• 1:27
  Tad Eggleston: Actually, I do know when he sleeps. We talked about this recently, he doesn't.
• 1:33
  Mark Schey: It's unbreakable a little bit here.
• 1:35
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: I wear a stomach shop on.
• 1:37
  Mark Schey: on the side?
• 1:38
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: It's, you know, it's a passion, you know, and it's integrated into my career, so it doesn't go wrong.
• 1:44
  Taki Soma: No.
• 1:44
  Tad Eggleston: So as soon as I saw a psychologist, I knew I had to bring the psychologist with me.
• 1:49
  Taki Soma: Fantastic.
• 1:49
  Tad Eggleston: I bring him with me just… just because he likes comics sometimes, too.
• 1:52
  Taki Soma: I would love to talk to you afterwards.
• 1:54
  Mark Schey: Yeah, I know, like, maybe we should just book a session immediately afterwards.
• 1:59
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: It's my pleasure to actually get to meet you guys, so to be quite honest, so I'm the one that's awed by you, so…
• 2:05
  Tad Eggleston: And if you're in the Chicagoland area, we'll set up a signing.
• 2:08
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I know you're not currently, but the next time you are…
• 2:12
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: You know, I'm a great… and I'm a great cook, too, so I can definitely make a good homemade, you know… I tend to cook more myself.
• 2:17
  Tad Eggleston: It is. I can attest to this.
• 2:19
  Mark Schey: You had us at signing, I mean, but the food didn't sound good.
• 2:22
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Always a pleasure.
• 2:24
  Taki Soma: Crazy!
• 2:26
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, his main shop is, like…
• 2:31
  Tad Eggleston: It's a good-sized one, so, like, it's not like you're crammed in the corner with a line of people, like, we can put you on a couch.
• 2:38
  Tad Eggleston: I can give you a table.
• 2:40
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Well, you're gonna scare them, Ted.
• 2:42
  Mark Schey: You're like a psychology coach?
• 2:43
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: You're already…
• 2:44
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, no, no, no, like a recliner.
• 2:46
  Taki Soma: You're in session!
• 2:47
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Yeah, yeah.
• 2:47
  Tad Eggleston: No, no.
• 2:48
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: There's a big TV.
• 2:49
  Tad Eggleston: be in front of the couch. Okay.
• 2:51
  Mark Schey: Okay, alright.
• 2:52
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Regular couch, not, not a fork.
• 2:55
  Mark Schey: I want to be clear which, which version.
• 2:56
  Tad Eggleston: No, it's not really a regular couch, either. It's a big leather sectional with, with, with, footrests on both sides.
• 3:05
  Mark Schey: all scattered about.
• 3:06
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Look, as.
• 3:07
  Tad Eggleston: No, no, those things…
• 3:08
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: in the brass.
• 3:09
  Tad Eggleston: practice.
• 3:10
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Yes.
• 3:11
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Look, there'll be no credit card, no transference of money, so, you know, technically we're on safety.
• 3:15
  Mark Schey: Just insurance.
• 3:17
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: You know, no, just kidding.
• 3:20
  Mark Schey: Yeah, no, that's cool.
• 3:20
  Tad Eggleston: Does insurance cover flights to signings? Because, like…
• 3:25
  Mark Schey: like…
• 3:26
  Tad Eggleston: It does have…
• 3:27
  Tad Eggleston: cabin out at, out, out at, out at, Starved Rock, so, I mean, we could put you up somewhere. If you can get the insurance company to cover the flight, then we're, we're, we're set.
• 3:39
  Mark Schey: Yeah, they have a hard enough time paying for, like, legitimate Treatments.
• 3:44
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: I like.
• 3:44
  Tad Eggleston: Wait a minute.
• 3:45
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: You're…
• 3:45
  Tad Eggleston: You're saying that signing comic books isn't a legitimate treatment, it doesn't make you feel better?
• 3:52
  Mark Schey: You know, look, I mean, I think that's a battle for you and your fans and your listeners. I'm gonna continue writing and not get distracted by that.
• 4:02
  Tad Eggleston: Okay, that's fair. So who wants to pitch the book?
• 4:07
  Tad Eggleston: Who's got the better front counter pitch? Should we do… should we do dueling front counter pitches?
• 4:13
  Mark Schey: Taki, go for it.
• 4:15
  Taki Soma: Well… It's all in a title, it's called Parapsychologist, and if you have any questions.
• 4:22
  Taki Soma: I think you should find out what that actually means.
• 4:25
  Tad Eggleston: the doctors.
• 4:27
  Mark Schey: Well, I think that that's.
• 4:28
  Taki Soma: It's just… well, like I said… Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.
• 4:33
  Mark Schey: I was gonna say, just like, it's… it's an… you know, typically it's an elevator pitch, but you say parapsychologist, and it instantly fills your head with the promise, or the premise, and all of that, and that's kind of one of the things that…
• 4:45
  Mark Schey: when Takia and I were thinking about, like, what we're gonna write together, and
• 4:51
  Mark Schey: I… she remembers me, like, just somehow I… the words parapsychologist came up, and both of us just paused and went, like, that's an entire…
• 4:59
  Taki Soma: That's, yeah.
• 5:00
  Mark Schey: That's a series of stories right there, so… Concepts, right?
• 5:02
  Taki Soma: right there, like, it's a really solid concept immediately, so we pivoted, like, immediately. We were talking about, working on a very specific, project, and we're trying to find an angle on it, and, like, a narrative for it, and, it does involve, like, a, a psychotherapist and,
• 5:22
  Taki Soma: And… like…
• 5:25
  Taki Soma: Yeah, and I think we were just kind of talking about, things that, like, subjects that we like.
• 5:32
  Taki Soma: Which is all, you know, like, paranormal stuff and, you know, all that stuff, and…
• 5:39
  Taki Soma: somewhere along the way, yeah, he just blurted out, like, parapsychologist! And I'm like, Well…
• 5:45
  Taki Soma: I think that's the story. I think that's what we need to do, so…
• 5:50
  Taki Soma: We decided to work on that instead.
• 5:54
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Yeah, and then…
• 5:55
  Mark Schey: I'm sorry, go ahead.
• 5:56
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: If I could just ask, because that's an interesting word just to blurt out, is parapsychologist. So, was there, like, a framing behind that? Like, there was already some thoughts of… that you guys had beforehand, like, oh, you know, I have a story, but I don't know what… it wasn't really fleshed out. Was there a thought behind that before it was just like.
• 6:11
  Taki Soma: Oh, yeah.
• 6:12
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Oh, okay, good.
• 6:13
  Taki Soma: Oh yeah, definitely, like, like I said, we were already talking about, like, therapy sessions and whatever for this completely different, story, and then, we would…
• 6:25
  Taki Soma: Kind of, like, go on tangent about different subjects and, like, and…
• 6:31
  Taki Soma: around that time, I think we were talking about, like, subjects that we really like, like, oh, I like talking about ghosts, and, like, aliens, and all the paranormal stuff, and, you know, we talk about, like, how I would go, like, looking for Bigfoot, and
• 6:48
  Taki Soma: And… And somewhere along the way, I think, you know, Mark had this, like, idea of, like, combining the…
• 6:57
  Taki Soma: You know, two subjects together, and it just… it just clicked, like, immediately.
• 7:02
  Mark Schey: I feel like we both had the book instantly in our own heads, and half of it was…
• 7:08
  Mark Schey: us combining both of the books that we created in that instant. Because you hear the title of Parapsychologist, and probably just like you guys, right, you're thinking, like, what does that mean before, you know, before you crack the book open? And you all have these expectations, and I think Taki and I instantly, you know, wrote our treatment, like, in that blink of a.
• 7:27
  Taki Soma: Yeah, in that instant, like, yeah.
• 7:28
  Mark Schey: Then it was us, like.
• 7:30
  Mark Schey: Wait, that was your version, that was my version, and how do we get the two to mesh?
• 7:37
  Taki Soma: Yep, that's pretty much what happened. Yeah, it was… like I said, the concept was…
• 7:43
  Taki Soma: Really easy, because the title just said it all.
• 7:48
  Mark Schey: And to be… just for any of the listeners who don't know, so a parapsychologist
• 7:53
  Mark Schey: is a psychologist who, you know, in our case, it's a world where a… instead of going to a standard psychologist, paranormal creatures go to a
• 8:04
  Mark Schey: a therapist. So, it's about the story of this doctor, Dr. Ron Richards, and his family, and he has a practice that's attached to his house.
• 8:13
  Mark Schey: And he has, just a variety of,
• 8:19
  Mark Schey: Famous and infamous creatures that come in for therapy.
• 8:24
  Taki Soma: Yeah, werewolves, vampires, ghosts, stuff like that.
• 8:30
  Mark Schey: cryptids, you know, I mean, just… nothing was off the table, as long as it had some kind of adjacent to the paranormal.
• 8:37
  Taki Soma: And of course, they're all just metaphors for human, you know.
• 8:42
  Taki Soma: Reasons to go see therapists.
• 8:48
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: So, can I ask a couple questions?
• 8:50
  Taki Soma: Of course.
• 8:51
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: So let me, let me just first start with, one, I have to say thank you, thank you, thank you for writing such a great, great book that, essentially, for me, I mean, and I'm gonna be biased here, so please, destigmatizes, you know, therapy. So that, in of itself, is just…
• 9:10
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: you know, powerful. But the storylines, you know, the metaphors and the symbolism, you know, and I don't want to get too nerdy and too doctorous, so I'm just going to kind of talk more as a fanboy here. The symbolic nature of the character development and why they're in therapy just really kind of humanized
• 9:27
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Like, the struggle, or the human… the human suffering, humanized it throughout different mediums, you know, from a werewolf to a ghost, like, it just humanized, you know, those struggles, so that was just…
• 9:39
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: just amazing. Like, I just thought it was amazing, but my question is, is… How did you choose
• 9:47
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: The therapist.
• 9:49
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Who did the therapist represent for either of you, or both of you, or…
• 9:53
  Taki Soma: Well…
• 9:56
  Taki Soma: I, myself, and Mark, we've talked about how we've been in and out of, you know, talk therapy all our lives. And we compared notes, and we compared, you know, conditions that we suffered, and…
• 10:13
  Mark Schey: Jaws, like, I got a scar.
• 10:16
  Taki Soma: Yeah, yeah,
• 10:18
  Taki Soma: And, like, it ended up, like, we have… we had, like, a lot of the similar, like, diagnoses, like, agoraphobia, of course, depression, panic attacks, and…
• 10:33
  Taki Soma: A few other stuff, you know, but,
• 10:37
  Taki Soma: Like, but we both have had his, like, years of therapy that we can just kind of really bring into the story.
• 10:49
  Taki Soma: So, that was really helpful.
• 10:52
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: I mean, thank you for sharing that. That's… it definitely shows that it was a very well-thought-out and crafted novel, that it wasn't just something that was just kind of like, oh, this is just, you know, fun and, you know, you know, outlandishly put together.
• 11:07
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: you can see the very well-crafted work. I mean, just for starting the symbolic nature of the characters with the ghosts and the werewolves, and what they were suffering with. Like, how did you come up with pitching
• 11:20
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: particular disorders, I don't want to spoil it, pitching particular disorders with a particular… I don't know what to call it, monster, creature, like, how did you match those things up? That's… I thought that was just fascinating, amazing.
• 11:34
  Mark Schey: It was a tightrope, but I mean, Kaki, do you want to take it?
• 11:38
  Taki Soma: Oh, go ahead!
• 11:39
  Mark Schey: Yeah, it's a tightrope, because you also don't want to become a stereotypical trope of… you know, I… in another interview, I spoke about, you know, you can't… if the vampire is, you know, phobic of garlic, it starts becoming like a joke. So we had to be very careful where we also are delivering what we think the audience wants, right? Because they're expecting
• 11:58
  Mark Schey: like, certain things, but you also, you know, you want to humanize them. You also want to… like, it was important for me, kind of, like, touching on your original subject, and kind of what Taki was going about, when I was, in high school, I had a panic attack for the first time.
• 12:14
  Mark Schey: And as a psychologist and anyone who's had a panic attack knows, at the time, okay, so we're all in this boat together.
• 12:22
  Tad Eggleston: It's not.
• 12:23
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: If you've had a panic attack.
• 12:24
  Mark Schey: And someone could correct me, but, like, a massive amount of…
• 12:28
  Mark Schey: people who go to the ER for heart attacks.
• 12:31
  Mark Schey: It's not ins… it's a substantial number.
• 12:36
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Yup.
• 12:36
  Mark Schey: that they're having a heart attack, but they're actually having a panic attack. Correct. And I, you know, I thought I was…
• 12:43
  Mark Schey: it was just me. Something was wrong with me at the time.
• 12:46
  Mark Schey: In my teens.
• 12:47
  Taki Soma: Same.
• 12:48
  Mark Schey: And I remember just reading a book, and I don't even think it was a… it wasn't a psychology book, even, it was just, like, a story, but someone had a panic attack, and they described it.
• 12:58
  Mark Schey: And that moment where you don't feel alone.
• 13:01
  Taki Soma: Yeah.
• 13:02
  Mark Schey: was incredibly important to me. So it's kind of like mirroring, Doctor, what you're saying.
• 13:07
  Mark Schey: Where I think that our goal here in picking which monsters and which problems they have mentally and also with their family lives, even, you know, throughout the book, I think it was just important, you know, we keep saying, like, we want people to be seen.
• 13:24
  Mark Schey: For me, it's deeply personal, because the moment I realized it wasn't just me, and this is a thing that happens to millions of people, it takes a weight off of you. So we thought, hey, you can do a fun story
• 13:37
  Mark Schey: You can make people laugh, as long as the struggle is not the… the… the…
• 13:41
  Mark Schey: You know, the punchline of the joke.
• 13:43
  Taki Soma: Right.
• 13:44
  Mark Schey: kind of have free reign over mental health issues. And if this is a gateway that allows someone to open this book up, and they don't expect that they're gonna learn something, but then they see themselves somewhere.
• 13:55
  Mark Schey: I think even if it helps one person, I think that that's just an incredible, opportunity to tell a story, to make people laugh, to make people possibly even cry, but also to make them feel like, wait, wait.
• 14:06
  Mark Schey: You know, this is me, maybe look into it a little bit more.
• 14:09
  Taki Soma: Yeah, yeah, just normalizing, like, therapy, and normalizing that… again, like, I really think, you know, like, Tad, you said, you have… you've had panic attacks, and, panic attacks, and Mark's… and I think it's pretty universal. I think most people have had some kind of panic attack.
• 14:28
  Mark Schey: There are people who've had panic attacks and are liars.
• 14:33
  Taki Soma: There you go, Mike just laughed.
• 14:34
  Mark Schey: I'm like.
• 14:35
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: I heard a background laughter there.
• 14:37
  Taki Soma: And, like, and I feel the same about a lot of things, that, you know, that we suffer from, but we don't even realize that, like.
• 14:48
  Taki Soma: A lot of people actually suffer, too.
• 14:50
  Taki Soma: And we all feel very isolated in our feelings and our fears, and our, you know,
• 14:58
  Taki Soma: conditions, and only to realize, like, there's a lot of people who suffer from it, and there's things that you… we can do about it. That's another, like, really powerful thing, too, like, kind of mirroring, like, what Mark went through, like.
• 15:14
  Taki Soma: when I… went to see my first therapist, I was, like, 16, or something like that.
• 15:23
  Taki Soma: And, she gave… she gave me… Words.
• 15:30
  Taki Soma: To… er, like, a, like a… she…
• 15:34
  Taki Soma: named my conditions, and I'm like, Oh, this…
• 15:41
  Taki Soma: there's a name for this? Like, there's… that… I had panic attacks, and I was agoraphobic, like…
• 15:48
  Taki Soma: there's a name for it? And she's like, yeah, that's literally, like, your classic. He's like, you… like, I have no doubt.
• 15:57
  Taki Soma: And I was like, oh.
• 16:01
  Taki Soma: I just thought I was weak.
• 16:03
  Taki Soma: I just thought.
• 16:05
  Taki Soma: I was, you know, like, everybody else was feeling the exact same way, but I was just not handling it.
• 16:13
  Taki Soma: But, you know, yeah, she's just like, yeah, there's a name for it, and there's a lot of things you can do about it. You know, you can… it can be medication, it could be, like, more therapy, it could be, you know, many other, you know.
• 16:27
  Taki Soma: things, like, change, in perspective, whatever.
• 16:33
  Taki Soma: exercise, even, you know? But there are things you can do, not just put a name to whatever you're feeling, but to know that, like, there's a… it's an actual condition, and it's not that uncommon, and it's not that scary, you know? And that… that…
• 16:50
  Taki Soma: That feeling was, again, like what Mark was saying, like, it just… it was really powerful.
• 16:56
  Mark Schey: Especially pre-Google, right? Now, Google could be a double-edged sword, contracts, but, like.
• 17:01
  Taki Soma: Yes.
• 17:02
  Mark Schey: But, like, when it comes to, you know, mental health, and you're talking about, like, panic attacks, or anxiety, or agoraphobia, like.
• 17:10
  Mark Schey: there… unless you got lucky in a library, or used microfiche, and, you know, the Dewey Decimal System, you had to do a lot of work if you weren't seeing a professional. So it wasn't like you can casually say, like, you know, I have palpitations, and I have, you know, cold sweat, and you can't just… like, now.
• 17:27
  Mark Schey: And yes, it's dangerous, because you can go down this rabbit hole of… it always ends up being much worse than it is, but… but at least…
• 17:34
  Mark Schey: You know, with restraint, you can actually see that there's other people, you can find support, but
• 17:41
  Mark Schey: You know, I think that that was definitely an impetus for wanting to put a book out there that… you know, because even to this day, like, you don't even know what to Google sometimes, right? You can Google symptoms, and that can lead to the dangerous
• 17:54
  Mark Schey: radical, but, you know, I think there's a lot of people,
• 17:58
  Mark Schey: who'll read this book, and I hope we'll go like, wait a second, maybe I should…
• 18:03
  Mark Schey: Maybe I should look into this.
• 18:06
  Taki Soma: And there's help.
• 18:07
  Tad Eggleston: Maybe I'm allowed to. I mean, that's always the thing that, like…
• 18:12
  Tad Eggleston: sticks with me when I… when I get to see myself, and… and…
• 18:18
  Tad Eggleston: in a piece of fiction is that… that it's a permission structure. It's a, oh…
• 18:25
  Tad Eggleston: This is… this is not the evil person in the book, this is not the problem in the book, this is… this is the character that we're rooting for, and…
• 18:35
  Tad Eggleston: And they get… they go do this, so that must be… It's okay.
• 18:42
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, Mark hit it on the head earlier with, like, the, I'm not alone.
• 18:49
  Tad Eggleston: And also, like, seeing the different experiences… I mean, I've been dealing with mental health issues
• 18:55
  Tad Eggleston: since I was, like.
• 18:59
  Tad Eggleston: First time… first therapist I remember I started seeing when I was 8, but I know that I was taken…
• 19:05
  Tad Eggleston: For various stuff even before then.
• 19:08
  Tad Eggleston: And yet, like, I mean, you brought up the Google thing, and, like, I…
• 19:16
  Tad Eggleston: I actually have a couple of different types of panic attacks. I have the racing heart, feel it, sweaty, blah blah blah blah, but I also have, like, the ice pick to the chest…
• 19:27
  Tad Eggleston: You know, just… But, like…
• 19:32
  Tad Eggleston: I didn't figure out until recently that that was a panic attack, and it was because of Google. It was one of those things where I…
• 19:39
  Tad Eggleston: It always went away relatively quickly.
• 19:42
  Tad Eggleston: I know enough about what actual
• 19:45
  Tad Eggleston: heart issues are supposed to be, to know that it wasn't that. It wasn't in the right… wasn't quite in the right spots, no matter how much it hurt, no matter how close it was, etc.
• 19:56
  Tad Eggleston: But I'd never known what it was, I just knew that, like, anytime it happened, I had to, like, really stretch and breathe and…
• 20:04
  Mark Schey: But while it's happening, your brain is convincing you, it… no, that's the left side of your chest. Like, even though it's on the right, your brain is very…
• 20:12
  Tad Eggleston: For me, it's like dead center. It's like… Yeah, my brain's starting to go, oh, it's the left… but I'm like, no, no, no, because your arms are still working, you're…
• 20:23
  Mark Schey: Yeah, I mean, someone I care about was having problems with anxiety, and I got them a bracelet that on the inside says, your anxiety is lying to you.
• 20:31
  Mark Schey: And, you know, that's one of its… tricks. That's one of its…
• 20:35
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 20:35
  Mark Schey: traits, right? Because it convinces you, because you can logic… you can't logic your way out of it, you know?
• 20:42
  Tad Eggleston: I mean…
• 20:44
  Taki Soma: Well, because it's also…
• 20:46
  Tad Eggleston: way out of.
• 20:47
  Mark Schey: Hey, Mr. Locke.
• 20:48
  Taki Soma: your head or your imagination, but it's actually physically happening to you, right? Like, panic attacks are specifically, like, your, endorphins are, endorphins? Is it the issue?
• 21:00
  Mark Schey: Serotonin, I think, or…
• 21:02
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Your fight or flight response is activated.
• 21:04
  Taki Soma: Right, right. And that's an actual, like, chemical in your brain that's being released, right? So, like, it's actually really happening to you as well. Right. Right? And, what I came up with is, like, well, my brain wants to…
• 21:23
  Taki Soma: Like, whenever I have a panic attack, the first thing, usually the first thing that comes to mind is, like, I'm going to die.
• 21:30
  Taki Soma: So I'm gonna look for a reason why I'm gonna die.
• 21:33
  Taki Soma: And, as soon as I start thinking and going down that rabbit hole, I'm like, oh, this is a panic attack. And just knowing that…
• 21:42
  Taki Soma: doesn't necessarily, like… I'm instantly out of the panic attack, because my body's still going through the adrenaline and all that stuff, right? But, the fear is at least
• 21:55
  Taki Soma: calm down, but right.
• 21:58
  Taki Soma: But yeah, your brain is always looking for a reason why you're… you're…
• 22:03
  Taki Soma: adrenaline is released for whatever reason, right? So,
• 22:09
  Taki Soma: Yeah, so you… most people just go to, like, crazy places, and it's like, I'm having a heart attack, or whatever, you know? And, your brain is an amazing machine, so if you… if you really… I don't know if amazing…
• 22:24
  Tad Eggleston: is the word I would always use, but it's… Wow.
• 22:29
  Taki Soma: Yes, but it's, you know, like, to the point where it can make you, make your heart race and all that stuff to, see what you're thinking is correct. Yes, go to the emergency, you know, stuff like that.
• 22:42
  Mark Schey: Oh, right, you still… you still… and that is a nice caveat, right? Like, you still trust your body, because you… you know, don't just always dismiss it as.
• 22:51
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Yes. Oh, yeah, no.
• 22:52
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, if you're following… I mean, like, listen to the actual… it might be time to call 911.
• 22:56
  Mark Schey: Right, there are, you know, like, so not to… and now we're gonna give more people panic attacks, but the fact is, is like, yeah, trust your… trust your body, but yeah, I mean, it's…
• 23:06
  Tad Eggleston: Edgar, our listeners can't see your face, or have the… so you should verbalize some of this.
• 23:13
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Right.
• 23:14
  Mark Schey: Is the dog.
• 23:15
  Tad Eggleston: You're in the room.
• 23:15
  Mark Schey: Dr. Edgar.
• 23:16
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: You guys are so on point with it, but the easiest way to think about it, I think, for everybody is kind of looking at it as understanding the word emotions and feelings, and we all misinterpret those two words, or we use them interchangeably, and they're not. They're two completely different things.
• 23:33
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Emotions are, defined, are physiological sensations that you have because of external stimulus. That's an emotion, so it's a physiological response.
• 23:43
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Your feelings is your interpretation of that response, so you're exactly… what you're saying is that your body, fight or flight, your heart's pumping, it's beating really fast, you're starting to sweat, your eyes are bulging, necks are… neck veins are popping out, and you're going, I'm gonna freakin' die, something's dying. Those are your feelings now. Your feelings are trying to tell you what you think your body's doing. That's… that's the dynamic that's occurring, is understanding what your emotions body is doing, and then your feelings is what your
• 24:07
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: your mind is telling you your body's doing. That's all… that's essentially what's occurring, and it's crazy, because you don't know what to do, because it's… your body does experience it. It is going through those motions, but you don't know what your body's actually really doing.
• 24:21
  Mark Schey: Yeah, I always describe it like a heat-seeking missile. So you have these feelings, and then this missile is looking for why am I feeling this way? So you start just going, you know, you just keep looking through your past, you look through physical symptoms, you try to explain it away.
• 24:37
  Mark Schey: And it's, it's particularly difficult, I think, for creatives,
• 24:43
  Mark Schey: because I call it the what-ifs, and I know I didn't, like, coin that phrase, but it's like.
• 24:48
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: I read that.
• 24:49
  Mark Schey: What if this happens? What if this happens? What if this happens? And I think that, you know, one of the reasons you could be creative is you're able to think, what if this happens? What if this happens?
• 24:58
  Tad Eggleston: Really good at footage.
• 24:59
  Mark Schey: Apparently, those same exact creative powers…
• 25:01
  Tad Eggleston: Huh?
• 25:02
  Mark Schey: Be reversed right directly on your… your.
• 25:04
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, ho. Mental health.
• 25:06
  Taki Soma: That's a… that's actually a good observation.
• 25:09
  Taki Soma: Yeah.
• 25:10
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, the real-world version of that for me is,
• 25:17
  Tad Eggleston: like, the world we live in, I get anxious about, like… and I have so many people, they're like.
• 25:23
  Tad Eggleston: you just gotta take a break from the news. I'm like, no, you don't get it. If I don't know what's going on, my brain does worse. Yeah.
• 25:33
  Mark Schey: Really, though? Really? Like…
• 25:35
  Tad Eggleston: Yes, it does. I tried after the election, I tried to check out for a month, and like… Ugh.
• 25:43
  Tad Eggleston: most of the time, I can control it if I know actually what's going on. I can have that sense of, okay, this is bad, this is what I can do, this is what I can't do, and while it's bad.
• 25:58
  Tad Eggleston: We're not here, we're not there, I can see these roads out.
• 26:02
  Tad Eggleston: Hopefully… Your control is…
• 26:04
  Mark Schey: a huge part of it, at least in my experience, too, because, like, I don't like roller coasters, but I could fly a small plane.
• 26:11
  Mark Schey: So, like.
• 26:12
  Tad Eggleston: That's kinda cool.
• 26:13
  Mark Schey: And I don't mind the motion of it, but it's the fact that I'm in control of it, as opposed to a roller coaster where I'm just sitting here and relying on expert engineers who… to check it, and also…
• 26:24
  Tad Eggleston: Expert engineers? I'm sorry? I mean, you hope expert engineers.
• 26:28
  Mark Schey: I hope.
• 26:32
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, it could be the fail son that said, hey, Dad, I've been playing RotoCoaster Tycoon all my life, will you… will you let me…
• 26:39
  Tad Eggleston: Designed the new one for the park?
• 26:42
  Mark Schey: Well, I grew up around Action Park in New Jersey, and that was kind of how they designed some of the rides.
• 26:50
  Taki Soma: They called it…
• 26:51
  Mark Schey: traction part, because of it, I think because of all the skin lost.
• 26:57
  Taki Soma: Gross.
• 27:00
  Taki Soma: Thanks for that visual!
• 27:03
  Mark Schey: There's, like, a documentary on it.
• 27:04
  Taki Soma: Oh.
• 27:05
  Tad Eggleston: -
• 27:06
  Taki Soma: Oh, is that… is that the one that came out, like, a year ago, or two years ago?
• 27:10
  Mark Schey: like, two years ago about, but yeah, they had this, like, one, like, where, like, it would do this, like, really extreme loop, and they would send, like, the employees down who were, like, teenagers, and they'd, like, come out, like, with concussions.
• 27:23
  Mark Schey: It was pretty…
• 27:24
  Taki Soma: Yeah, that's the one that you're referencing, is the one that I saw the documentary on?
• 27:28
  Mark Schey: Yeah, yeah, that was right.
• 27:30
  Taki Soma: And you went there?
• 27:32
  Mark Schey: I never went there, but I went to, like… there's, like, skiing around there as well, but I never went to that actual park.
• 27:38
  Taki Soma: Okay.
• 27:38
  Mark Schey: My parents were like.
• 27:40
  Taki Soma: I'm glad.
• 27:43
  Tad Eggleston: Taki, he's sitting there going, yeah, where do you think all the ideas for this book came from?
• 27:48
  Mark Schey: I was the person in the loop. I hit my head.
• 27:53
  Mark Schey: I want to know more about, like, so, what the doctor thinks, like, in terms of, like…
• 27:58
  Mark Schey: how we represented, and how you might be able to use, if you don't mind me, like, flipping this around a little bit, how you might be able to use this…
• 28:06
  Tad Eggleston: And I bring them…
• 28:06
  Mark Schey: patients and whatnot.
• 28:08
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Thank you. The best way I could answer that is that, I mean, it…
• 28:15
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: has a lot of portions on it that can be utilized, so I'm gonna try to make sense of it as best I can. I'm not as eloquent my words as you guys, but…
• 28:24
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: So, you break a lot of taboos, and I think that's what's really good with the book as well, is the taboos. And what I mean by taboos is just the idea of anxiety in and of itself, or depression, and whatnot.
• 28:35
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: they're not always talked about, and even more so in specific cultures. And the way I looked at the book is those different monsters represented diversity, not only from, you know.
• 28:47
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: I don't know what we call human, but…
• 28:49
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: the different species of monsters represent the different species that we have, you know, and whatnot. So there was this diversity sense, because, you know, and I'll speak on my culture, Latinos, we don't, you know, we don't talk about, you know, mental health, we don't talk about, you know, being in therapy, that's a dirty word, like, that doesn't happen, you know? So I think it was…
• 29:07
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Breaking the taboo in and of itself is something that's good, especially when working with kids or younger populations, is reading that, is just seeing that, you know, there is difference, and people of difference can talk about it, and that normalization of it, so…
• 29:20
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: that in and of itself is step one, I think, that the book really kind of is something that I'm going to use and give to specific clients, like, you know, read it, see what you think about then, you know, from a different perspective. So I thought, that's good. But also, the most pivotal part for me was the connection of the disorders that you have with the specific monsters, like agoraphobia with the ghosts. Like, when you think about a ghost, the ghost is, like, you know, depending on
• 29:44
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: I did. End of go.
• 29:45
  Tad Eggleston: I love that, because, like, the
• 29:47
  Tad Eggleston: that you can't see is afraid of open spaces.
• 29:51
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: or leaving, you know? But they're bound, you know, depending on the mythos of it, like, they're bound and they can't leave, and it's just like… so you're kind of left with that intrigue and that thought, and it's just like, you know, like, that normalization again of that disorder, so I think it's helping people see, like, one, it's okay to talk about, and you know what? Different people, different…
• 30:11
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: things can experience it, and it's okay to experience it how you experienced it. And I think that's really the beauty and the eloquency of that particular… of this book, is that
• 30:20
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: clients can read it and go, I'm not reading a how to deal with my anxiety book. I'm not reading a, you know, a textbook, a manual on, you know, this is the steps I have to do. I'm reading something that's fun, and normalizing that, you know what? It's okay to be anxious, you know, because anxiety is normal. There is a normalcy to anxiety, you know? It's okay to be anxious before a test, and that's okay, because it strives you to put, you know, to do better. It's okay to be anxious
• 30:44
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: you know, when you're having a child, when you're getting married, you know, all those things, there's a normal normalcy to anxiety, and I think that's good. You know, it's… it gets worse, and it can get worse, and I think seeing that in this book is really what helps people understand, is that I'm not alone.
• 31:00
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: I'm still okay, because it's normal to feel what I feel. It's just what I feel, and then there is options for me to take. So I think having all that gamut, I think, is the beauty of what you created. I mean, I don't know if I said it…
• 31:13
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: well enough. I really, really enjoyed this book, and really look forward to kind of integrating it therapeutically for people that don't want to talk about it. And this is where I talk a little bit about how I do it in clinics, is that you have a lot of patients that are embarrassed to talk about anxiety.
• 31:29
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: they're scared to talk about their anxiety, and worst of all, or don't know about their anxiety, which, you know, you guys were talking about, they have no idea what they're experiencing, they have no idea what it is. You can't Google and look for something that you don't have a word for.
• 31:41
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Yeah. And that's the difficult part for them, is going, what am I dealing with? So, seeing it and hearing it is already not only just in word forms, but the art also exhibited the disorders, which I thought was really good, is how it's integrated. Not only did they talk about it, but you can see the anxious state, you can see, you know, the fearful state, and I thought that was, like, I could literally…
• 32:02
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: not know the words and see those emotional responses, which I thought was… it was fucking great, because it's like, I can give it to a kid that can't fully read it and still see, like, do you see what they're… what they're…
• 32:14
  Tad Eggleston: Cat Ferris really knocked out the visuals.
• 32:17
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: It was amazing, yeah, it was amazing, like, you can see it without reading it, so I thought that was…
• 32:23
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: That was great. So, it's having all those things that I think really are useful, is having a kid kind of look through it, or an adult that doesn't want to talk about it, doesn't want to, you know.
• 32:32
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: see it or understand it yet, you know, to kind of ease them into it, but also, more importantly for those kids or individuals that don't know what they're feeling, I think is really good, because they can read it in a fun way, too, and feel good about themselves, and go, like, alright, you're not making me look like I'm crazy, you're not making me feel like I'm crazy, you're not making me feel like, you know, I'm something… I'm broken, or there's something wrong with me, and I think that's the beauty of it, is that…
• 32:56
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: It's the normalization and destigmatization of it that I thought was creative genius, I mean, by all of you guys, so I admire you guys, to be quite honest.
• 33:05
  Taki Soma: Cute.
• 33:05
  Mark Schey: I appreciate that, yeah, yeah, and I think that it's… what's amazing…
• 33:10
  Mark Schey: I think for… I could speak for, like, the entire team. Like, we set out, you know, to create just a story
• 33:19
  Mark Schey: And then having all of this as, like, bonus.
• 33:23
  Mark Schey: was just like, you know, we… this was, you know, first and foremost, you gotta think, what will the characters do? And it all has to make sense. So I want to be clear that it's also… we're talking a lot about the psychology aspects of it. This is not like a self-help book. This is still like a…
• 33:37
  Mark Schey: Fun, comedy, family drama, you know, but with all of this on top of it.
• 33:44
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: And that's the beauty of it, is that, and I want to make sure I say it, it was… it's not a self-help book, you know, by any means, but it's a helpful book by every means. And I always tell people… my quick story is that I learned to read, write, and speak English by reading Captain America comics. And, you know, Captain America comics aren't an English book.
• 34:03
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: But they helped me, and that's the beauty of this book, is that it's not a self-help book, but it still helps you, and that's…
• 34:09
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: That's the beauty, because it's not an in-your-face, it's not a, this is going to do this, and that's…
• 34:14
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: the creativeness, I think, of it.
• 34:15
  Mark Schey: I think, like, a lot of superheroes, right, like, are based upon…
• 34:19
  Mark Schey: problems that people have, you know, like, whether it's, like, the Hulk has anger issues, you know, like, Stan Lee was an expert at that.
• 34:27
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: or without trauma. Yeah.
• 34:28
  Mark Schey: I mean, you just can't have… right. So, I think that, you know, it's… you know, we kind of hit it on the…
• 34:36
  Mark Schey: hit it at its head, because we… it's about a psychologist more. But in the end of the day, most…
• 34:42
  Mark Schey: good stories, and especially superhero stories and comic stories, tend to have that background of a trauma. Batman is origin story. There's trauma, there's anxiety, there's rage, there's a lot of things, and I think we just went a little bit further with it, I guess?
• 35:01
  Mark Schey: By actually presenting it in a therapeutic setting.
• 35:05
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Well, it makes you feel for the characters, and I know I may be biased, and I really felt for Dr. Ron there. You start to identify with them and feel what they're feeling and what they're experiencing, and that's the hallmark of a good read in any genre, in any realm, is that identity, that identifying with that…
• 35:22
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: with someone in that book, and I think that's what's good, too, about it, is that you can identify, and you have a lot of people that you can identify with, and I think that's strong.
• 35:31
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: It's a strong example of a well-written and crafted book.
• 35:35
  Taki Soma: Thank you.
• 35:36
  Mark Schey: it.
• 35:36
  Taki Soma: Yeah, no, we, I mean, I love… every single character.
• 35:42
  Taki Soma: That we created in there.
• 35:43
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: You have a favorite?
• 35:45
  Taki Soma: Mmm…
• 35:48
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: I'm analyzing now, sorry.
• 35:49
  Taki Soma: I mean, I guess it has to be Dr. Richards, because he's the protagonist, and we spent the most time with him.
• 35:57
  Mark Schey: Yeah, Dr. Richards, for me, had, had the most,
• 36:04
  Mark Schey: Analogies with my own personal life, hit the work-life balance, he had, there is power.
• 36:14
  Tad Eggleston: They're supposed to be, that's something…
• 36:16
  Mark Schey: You might want to talk about the doctor with as well.
• 36:18
  Tad Eggleston: The work-life juggling…
• 36:23
  Mark Schey: Yeah, I mean, that's…
• 36:23
  Tad Eggleston: balls do you have in the air right now, Edgar?
• 36:26
  Mark Schey: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Two of which are comic stores, yeah.
• 36:31
  Mark Schey: But yeah, I mean, I think that, that I, I really related to the, the buildup of, of…
• 36:40
  Mark Schey: I don't want to give away too much, but his arc, and his struggles of wanting to help his patients, but also wanting to help his family. And I think that that's a…
• 36:48
  Tad Eggleston: your choice of mentor for him, too. I'm not gonna give anything away beyond that. Your choice of mentor for him was…
• 36:57
  Mark Schey: That was one of the first decisions, and again, I don't want to give that away either, but that was one of the first decisions
• 37:02
  Mark Schey: And it could have been Taki's choice, I think it was, actually. But it was kind of where the book started really taking its form in terms of quirkiness, and it's kind of like Kat Farris's artwork.
• 37:14
  Mark Schey: We're, we're, you know, it's a family drama with horror characters, that's a comedy, that's about therapy, like, it's a lot of hyphenates happening.
• 37:24
  Tad Eggleston: Alright.
• 37:25
  Mark Schey: But Kat's art, the second you open the first page, you get it. It's not a horror book, it's not a children's book, it's not a…
• 37:38
  Mark Schey: totally… you actually… her art is, like, one of the only styles, I think, that conveys exactly what you're seeing from the first page, before the first line of dialogue is even spoken. And I think that's her brilliance.
• 37:50
  Taki Soma: How did you…
• 37:51
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Pick that, because that was my… that was, like…
• 37:54
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: either you guys are really, really lucky, or just really, really creatively genius. Like, how did you guys pick.
• 38:00
  Mark Schey: We're really creative geniuses.
• 38:02
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: That's what I thought. Yeah, I mean…
• 38:04
  Mark Schey: I mean, in the air, it wasn't.
• 38:05
  Taki Soma: Incredibly lucky, too.
• 38:07
  Mark Schey: Well, it's always a combination of the two, but Taki and I were looking for a very distinct, slightly cute.
• 38:16
  Mark Schey: style, that… that…
• 38:18
  Mark Schey: wasn't full-on horror, because if we used a horror illustrator for this, it would have felt dark no matter what our script was.
• 38:26
  Taki Soma: Yeah, it would have been a different book.
• 38:29
  Taki Soma: Even if it was the same script, it would have felt differently.
• 38:33
  Mark Schey: So when Taki and I saw sequentials from Kat.
• 38:37
  Mark Schey: And I know Taki had a, you know, had known Kat,
• 38:41
  Taki Soma: Yeah, I mean, we're, like, casually friends in town.
• 38:44
  Mark Schey: But when we, when, you know, Taki, I think, forwarded, like, some sequentials, or at least some of the, another book that, that Kat had illustrated, and…
• 38:52
  Mark Schey: I think it just, like, the light bulb went off. So, you know, we had that parapsychologist moment where we said the word parapsychologist, and it's like, we got it. And then Kat's art came in, it was like, another light bulb went off. So this was a project of just a lot of confluence of…
• 39:07
  Mark Schey: like, luck, and timing and skill of us just, like, you know, like, knowing what… you know, when Taki and I agree on something, it means it's really good. I'm gonna be, like, a little… like, because we don't always agree, and that's kind of the fun of the collaboration.
• 39:23
  Mark Schey: Is… is fight our… we have, like, idea fights, you know, and then… but…
• 39:28
  Taki Soma: I like to call them debates.
• 39:29
  Mark Schey: Because they're idea fights with us. But, like, so, like, they go into, like, a grudge match, and we fight it out, but we both have the friendship and the collaboration that…
• 39:43
  Mark Schey: we… when we lose, we go, that was the better idea. And then… and then I think the story is better for it. And I think that's part of the fun, because when you're writing it alone, you don't have that, it's just you, in your own echo chamber.
• 39:55
  Taki Soma: Absolutely, agree 100%. And, like…
• 40:02
  Taki Soma: Also, like, it just kind of tells you so much about, like.
• 40:06
  Taki Soma: what kind of, like, writers Mark and I are, is that we just care. We care so much, and that's why we debate and, you know, fight for certain ideas, and whatever comes…
• 40:19
  Taki Soma: comes out, and, ends up on the, on the page is exactly what needed to be there. And, you know.
• 40:28
  Taki Soma: we're the happiest when it happens. Like, if it's Mark's, debate that won, I'm happy, because we, like, we talked it out to death, which way is better?
• 40:41
  Mark Schey: That's an understatement, but… Yeah.
• 40:44
  Taki Soma: No, but I'm serious, like, it makes me so happy. I'm like, well, I know I fought against this, but the reason why it's on paper means that this was the idea that was supposed to be there.
• 40:57
  Mark Schey: And, like, 9 times out of 10,
• 40:59
  Mark Schey: like, I'll fight for an idea, and eventually, you know, Taki loses her WWE match, and then goes, okay, go for it, right? And then, it's nice when we get Kat's art back, and, you know, Taki will go, you know.
• 41:13
  Mark Schey: You're right, it worked. And same thing happens back and forth. So, there are times where I was, you know, heading a little bit more toward, you know, like, X-Files or Buffy, a little bit more, genre, and Taki was pretty strongly
• 41:32
  Mark Schey: lean.
• 41:33
  Taki Soma: I was leaning…
• 41:33
  Mark Schey: Family drugs.
• 41:34
  Taki Soma: More like,
• 41:36
  Taki Soma: not… not genre, because it's… it was already a genre, so I'm like, well, I… I was kind of picturing, like, Dr. Cat, the cartoon show, and .
• 41:48
  Tad Eggleston: Sorry.
• 41:49
  Taki Soma: And that…
• 41:49
  Tad Eggleston: Our time is up.
• 41:51
  Taki Soma: Exactly, right?
• 41:52
  Mark Schey: Alright, sorry, bye, good to see you guys.
• 41:54
  Taki Soma: And, like, something a little bit more, like, mundane, and, like, everyday so that, like.
• 42:01
  Taki Soma: Even though these creatures are, you know, supernatural creatures, you can relate to them?
• 42:12
  Taki Soma: You know?
• 42:13
  Taki Soma: But I think we also, because of Mark, we have a pretty good balance of them being supernatural,
• 42:22
  Taki Soma: Creatures or characters or whatever, but also still… relatable.
• 42:28
  Mark Schey: Yeah, I think mine would have been, like.
• 42:31
  Mark Schey: more explosions, and Takis might have been more therapy, for example, and I think that with the two of us together, it's like the peanut butter cups.
• 42:41
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: No.
• 42:41
  Tad Eggleston: Well…
• 42:42
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: And that makes for a great dessert.
• 42:44
  Tad Eggleston: I was just gonna say, since we're on the food, I gotta give a quick plug. On the shelves right now is, is,
• 42:53
  Tad Eggleston: Godzilla vs. Portland, and your artist, Kat Ferris, did a fantastic story in that.
• 43:00
  Tad Eggleston: Involving hot dogs. And Godzilla.
• 43:04
  Mark Schey: she…
• 43:05
  Taki Soma: Mom's just like her.
• 43:08
  Mark Schey: That doesn't shock me, because, like… so, and also to shout out to Kat and how lucky we are, you know, so this takes place in the Pacific Northwest, and Kat's…
• 43:19
  Mark Schey: familiar with this area, and we would get art back, and there would just be inside jokes that we didn't even write, and so it was really, like, a really nice collaboration, where Kat knew where we were going, she knew the style of the writing and where we wanted to be, and she just fleshed it out.
• 43:36
  Mark Schey: We all had a lot of fun writing, Dr. Ron's mugs.
• 43:40
  Mark Schey: And Kat wrote a couple of those. Taki wrote a couple, I wrote a couple, but, like, each time, like, he has these mugs, and we just put little… little interesting sayings on them. But also, like, some really good Portland flourishes that I personally wouldn't know from being on the East Coast. So I couldn't… I couldn't write to that, and…
• 43:59
  Mark Schey: Kat basically gave it a Northwest Pass.
• 44:05
  Mark Schey: knows it as well, but, like, she cat took it.
• 44:07
  Taki Soma: Oh, yeah, but she, like, really brought it on visually, like, yeah, she nailed it.
• 44:12
  Taki Soma: Yeah.
• 44:13
  Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna… I'm gonna take us on a brief tangent here, because… obviously, this is Taki's third time on the show, so I knew that I knew Taki.
• 44:23
  Tad Eggleston: And when I saw the press release, I'm like, Mark Shea, I don't know that name, but as I finally got around to doing research while we're talking.
• 44:31
  Tad Eggleston: You guys have worked before… together before. You guys did the Black Box Chronicles, which is, like, one of the more underrated sci-fi collections
• 44:43
  Tad Eggleston: Ever, frankly, but certainly of the last few years.
• 44:47
  Mark Schey: I appreciate that, and it's like, that, yeah, that's where Taki and I met, and Mike…
• 44:52
  Tad Eggleston: That was gonna be my question, is… Yeah.
• 44:56
  Mark Schey: We had a mutual friend, so I was working on Black Box Chronicles with my
• 45:01
  Mark Schey: I have a company called Horrible Future, and we're kind of, like, trying to create IP for, for the comic industry.
• 45:09
  Taki Soma: Okay, good, you said for the.
• 45:10
  Tad Eggleston: comic.
• 45:10
  Taki Soma: I have to step away for one second.
• 45:12
  Tad Eggleston: No problem.
• 45:13
  Mark Schey: Absolutely.
• 45:13
  Taki Soma: horses.
• 45:14
  Mark Schey: She gets bored when I… I told this many, many.
• 45:16
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: He's like, I don't want to hear this story anymore.
• 45:18
  Mark Schey: again, and it's not about her, so, you know… So, my partner Chris Northrop and I created Black Box Chronicles. That was with, Magnetic Press.
• 45:27
  Mark Schey: Right. Makes these gorgeous ladies.
• 45:28
  Tad Eggleston: I've had Mike Kennedy on, too.
• 45:30
  Mark Schey: Yeah, there you go. So, so, Mike.
• 45:32
  Tad Eggleston: Kennedy is on at least one of my panels this weekend.
• 45:36
  Tad Eggleston: So, yeah.
• 45:37
  Mark Schey: Yeah, so, yeah, I mean, we… Chris and I, you know, we wanted to come up with an anthology idea, and we thought it would be really cool to have these, you know, the whole concept very quickly, without going on too much of a tangent, is that
• 45:51
  Mark Schey: you know, we're finally going into the stars, but, like, you know, spaceships still crash. And this is the… each story is a short by a different illustrator.
• 46:00
  Mark Schey: That tells the story of what happened in the final moments, and what caused that ship to crash.
• 46:05
  Mark Schey: And,
• 46:07
  Mark Schey: I had a mutual friend, with, Taki and Mike, and in the middle of this, I think it was just, like, on Twitter at the time, I was making a 3D print for the mutual friend, and suddenly Mike Goming responds to it, and I'm like, wait, wait, you know Mike Goming? And,
• 46:26
  Mark Schey: We're, like, good friends, and I'm like, do you think you'd want to do a short?
• 46:30
  Mark Schey: he signed on to do a short, and then, like, that exact, like, within the same amount of time, without anyone talking, I went to a Comic-Con, and
• 46:39
  Mark Schey: David Mack agreed to do the cover.
• 46:41
  Mark Schey: And so, like.
• 46:43
  Mark Schey: I mean, we kind of, like, stumbled into, like, some of the greatest artists and talent in the comic industry.
• 46:49
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, I'll be honest, it was Mike's name that made me see the Kickstarter and back it.
• 46:57
  Mark Schey: Appreciate that, yeah.
• 46:58
  Tad Eggleston: So that's why it even managed to hit my radar, and… but I'll still say it's way under the radar. I… I'm…
• 47:07
  Tad Eggleston: Edgar Herbage.
• 47:08
  Mark Schey: more than that.
• 47:08
  Tad Eggleston: shop.
• 47:09
  Mark Schey: Yeah, yeah, Taki and I co-wrote two of the shorts in it, and…
• 47:13
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 47:13
  Mark Schey: that's kind of, like, why we were having that discussion about sci-fi and, like, psychiatry, and that's why we were having that brainstorm. It's like, what else can we do now, now that we're done with this… these black things?
• 47:25
  Taki Soma: Yeah, we had so much fun, we're like.
• 47:29
  Taki Soma: I think we have more stories in us together, so… And also.
• 47:33
  Mark Schey: That's really…
• 47:34
  Taki Soma: neuropsychologist.
• 47:35
  Mark Schey: Black Box is, like, really depressing, kind of. Like, it's about, like…
• 47:39
  Taki Soma: Especially the tomb that we worked on.
• 47:41
  Tad Eggleston: moments, you know, so, like…
• 47:43
  Mark Schey: Like, you know, I think… I tried to make it, like, hopeful depressing, but, like, in the end of the day, like, I think that that's one of the reasons why I was interested in, you know, trying a comedy, because in the end of the day, it's about characters, and I also didn't want everyone to just think I'm, like, this depressing…
• 48:00
  Mark Schey: Like… Horrible, like, trying to make you cry all the time.
• 48:05
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: That's… that's my job.
• 48:06
  Mark Schey: Yeah, yeah, they're…
• 48:08
  Tad Eggleston: I think I asked you a similar question last time you were on for Alienated, because you are…
• 48:14
  Tad Eggleston: an accomplished artist in your own right, like, like, I still… visually…
• 48:20
  Tad Eggleston: Sleeping While Standing is one of my favorite books. It's one of my favorite books
• 48:26
  Tad Eggleston: not, you know, in terms of book, book, too, but, like, I… not having seen a lot of your work before that…
• 48:34
  Tad Eggleston: book, I found myself
• 48:36
  Tad Eggleston: particularly blown away by the visual style. So it's always interesting to me to hear when people who are very capable of
• 48:48
  Tad Eggleston: Drawing the story themselves.
• 48:51
  Tad Eggleston: do the writing, like, how…
• 48:55
  Tad Eggleston: how did you feel about Kat's artwork as it came in? Were you… were you, like, immediately… I mean, it sounds like you guys picked her out based on her feel, but, like.
• 49:06
  Tad Eggleston: I just… I guess where I'm going is, like, you know, there are plenty of people that's like, oh, I can't read anybody else's Spider-Man. I can't read, you know, so what's it like when you have these characters that I assume you envisioned in your head.
• 49:21
  Tad Eggleston: that you then get back, you know? Were you guys so on the same page that it was easy? Did you have to remind yourself that this is a collaborative process? Like, the therapist is in the room if you need to use him.
• 49:36
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: It's all confident.
• 49:37
  Taki Soma: You know, maybe because I'm an artist, it was much easier, but, everything she brought…
• 49:46
  Taki Soma: brought in, like, I really didn't have any notes.
• 49:51
  Taki Soma: At all. Because I, you know…
• 49:55
  Taki Soma: like, I guess maybe because I'm an artist that, like, I understood where she was coming from and what she was thinking.
• 50:01
  Taki Soma: And it was really interesting to see what
• 50:07
  Taki Soma: she saw in the script and descriptions of the characters, versus what I was seeing. And it was so interesting, and I loved seeing
• 50:17
  Taki Soma: Like, how different…
• 50:23
  Taki Soma: the characters looked, from what I was picturing to what she brought, and the moment that she brought… she… she handed in the character sheets, I was like, this is what they look like. I can't see them.
• 50:37
  Mark Schey: Yeah, Taki and I…
• 50:38
  Taki Soma: any other way but how she put them. It was…
• 50:42
  Taki Soma: It was… and it was like that with, Alienated 2, like, as soon as John… the characters, I'm like, yep, this is what they look like. Like, I don't even remember what they looked like in my head before.
• 50:53
  Tad Eggleston: Thanks.
• 50:54
  Mark Schey: We had a lot of talks, like, Taki and I, when we would describe, like, one of the characters… actually, I won't even say, because I don't want to place even, like, what our original thoughts were, but we would talk about, like, actors or characters in movies and be like, yeah, someone like this kind of character. And purposely, though, didn't…
• 51:12
  Mark Schey: put in the script, you know, think of this character from this show. We wanted… when you have… see, I think one of the flaws people have, I mean, to your question, is that
• 51:23
  Mark Schey: If you hire a professional at catch level.
• 51:27
  Mark Schey: Oh, absolutely. Use it, and if you… you know, guiding too much, you're not taking advantage of it, you know? Like, it's kind of like how when… I could write the whole thing myself.
• 51:37
  Mark Schey: with Taki, it becomes something better than the two
• 51:41
  Mark Schey: individuals. And the same thing happens when the third comes in, which is the illustrator.
• 51:46
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 51:47
  Mark Schey: So I think that for us, and we've talked about it, but, like, I mean, when we saw… there were certain characters in particular that…
• 51:55
  Mark Schey: Nothing like what we had thought. But…
• 51:58
  Mark Schey: we were just like, wow, that's… we saw it, it was just cool. It was kind of nice to see, a third…
• 52:06
  Mark Schey: highly talented person take the words that we handed them without guidance, and give something back. And,
• 52:14
  Mark Schey: Yeah, yeah, I could see some people maybe getting frustrated by that, but it was the opposite.
• 52:18
  Tad Eggleston: Well, I brought it up because, like, because I'm into all sorts of comics, I get to talk to everybody from indie cartoonists to big-name collaborative comic people to, you know, people…
• 52:34
  Tad Eggleston: And it's funny, like, that for the most part.
• 52:39
  Tad Eggleston: You know, people wind up where they're most comfortable, but, like…
• 52:44
  Tad Eggleston: there are some people that it's like, they couldn't dream of drawing somebody else's story, or letting somebody else draw their story. They're like, I don't even get how that works, you know? I need to have my vision up.
• 52:58
  Tad Eggleston: page, and there are other people that it's like, thank God for great artists, because I can't draw, you know? Or thank God for great writing, you know, like a friend of mine who's a marvelous artist and does fantastic writing as well, but they find the writing portion so much harder.
• 53:17
  Tad Eggleston: That they're much happier.
• 53:20
  Tad Eggleston: most of the time, to have a script to work from, from somebody that's gonna give them a lot of space, you know, they don't want the overbearing, you know, do this, do that, but like…
• 53:31
  Tad Eggleston: they don't want to have to think about dialogue. They don't want to have to think about plot. They want to… they want to have that taken
• 53:37
  Tad Eggleston: of.
• 53:38
  Taki Soma: Yeah.
• 53:40
  Tad Eggleston: And just be the director, and the actors, and the lighting director, and all of the other stuff that the artist has to take care of when they're not doing the other.
• 53:48
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 53:50
  Tad Eggleston: But because I've experienced so much of that from people, I'm always really fascinated by people like Taki, people like, Chyna Flores,
• 54:00
  Tad Eggleston: I haven't gotten to talk to Jeff Lemire, but he falls into that category. People who…
• 54:05
  Tad Eggleston: seem to actually float between the roles. Sometimes they write and draw their own stuff, sometimes they write for other people, sometimes they draw for other people. Like, to be able to float between the roles, like.
• 54:19
  Taki Soma: Yeah.
• 54:20
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, again, it popped into my head as much because we're talking psychology already. You gotta have a certain mentality to always want to just…
• 54:31
  Tad Eggleston: Play whatever role is gonna make the book work the best.
• 54:34
  Taki Soma: Yeah, that's pretty much it, yeah.
• 54:36
  Mark Schey: I think as creators, you're kind of like the…
• 54:39
  Mark Schey: the directors, and I don't want to overstate it in terms of blocking, because obviously that's the illustrator. There's a lot of weird overlapping in terms of if you try to translate it to, like, film or TV.
• 54:49
  Mark Schey: But as the creators, picking the artist.
• 54:54
  Mark Schey: You know, like, that's… that was the creative choice we made, and then you live with that choice.
• 55:00
  Mark Schey: And you're comfortable with it. But, and we're particularly happy with it.
• 55:06
  Taki Soma: Yeah.
• 55:07
  Mark Schey: So, yeah, it's cool.
• 55:08
  Taki Soma: But yeah, it just…
• 55:09
  Tad Eggleston: take any of the pages and go, I'm just gonna fix this. I don't like this.
• 55:12
  Mark Schey: I think I had more notes than Taki did, to be honest, because I…
• 55:17
  Taki Soma: Yeah.
• 55:17
  Mark Schey: I ha- I have.
• 55:18
  Tad Eggleston: I was just suddenly remembering that Kirby's Superman faces always got replaced by DC in his Jimmy Olsen run, because they didn't like the way he drew.
• 55:31
  Tad Eggleston: Superman's.
• 55:33
  Taki Soma: That's insane. But… but no, like, I, you know…
• 55:40
  Taki Soma: It takes very little effort to rewrite something, to work with the art that came in, than to do the opposite.
• 55:51
  Taki Soma: Yeah. Right.
• 55:52
  Mark Schey: Yeah, if anything, we changed dialogue to… or lost dialogue, because…
• 55:57
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 55:58
  Mark Schey: you don't need it, like, we would write, like, why'd you do that, right? But the cat would give a panel, and it would be saying that already.
• 56:08
  Taki Soma: Or even if it kind of didn't work exactly, what we were picturing.
• 56:18
  Taki Soma: We'll just fix it so that it matches the art better, versus, like, asking her to, like, redraw something.
• 56:28
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
• 56:28
  Taki Soma: Right? And that… I mean, I try to avoid…
• 56:33
  Tad Eggleston: Even when I think about it.
• 56:34
  Taki Soma: to art as much as possible.
• 56:36
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 56:37
  Taki Soma: Because, like, because I've… I know all the…
• 56:39
  Tad Eggleston: Because you know, right.
• 56:41
  Tad Eggleston: I mean.
• 56:42
  Tad Eggleston: I'm not an artist, but I know enough artists that anytime I even think about somebody asking to have a page redrawn, I just shiver. I'm sitting there going.
• 56:52
  Taki Soma: Unless it's actually, like, detrimental to the actual storytelling.
• 56:57
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm not saying…
• 56:58
  Taki Soma: Those are the only times I'm.
• 56:59
  Tad Eggleston: We don'.
• 57:00
  Taki Soma: Ask the artist to change anything.
• 57:02
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 57:03
  Mark Schey: Yeah, I think that this is, what, like, 122 pages, somewhere in that vicinity?
• 57:08
  Taki Soma: Yeah, something.
• 57:09
  Mark Schey: Maybe 3 pages had changes.
• 57:11
  Taki Soma: Oh, Mark, you heard, like, barely any notes in, like…
• 57:16
  Mark Schey: clear, like, we, we really, I mean, like.
• 57:17
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 57:18
  Mark Schey: The notes were, like, you know, early on, we had the characters, and then we also had Ron's office designed.
• 57:25
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 57:26
  Mark Schey: Once we approved that, It was kind of like, run with it.
• 57:30
  Taki Soma: Oh, yeah, like, yeah, like, Mark, like, you barely had any notes, so, like, serious.
• 57:35
  Tad Eggleston: The notes were probably along the lines of, the baby really shouldn't be smoking a cigarette, and she was like, I was just making certain you were.
• 57:41
  Mark Schey: I mean, to be honest… But I think.
• 57:43
  Tad Eggleston: I could just take it right out.
• 57:45
  Mark Schey: I think it's okay to say this, but I think there was one shot that I just was like, and this might be ridiculous, but
• 57:50
  Mark Schey: I think she drew him driving while on the phone, and I was like, can we just make him parked?
• 57:56
  Mark Schey: Because I didn't want… I was like, we're doing, like, a good thing with this book, and, I didn't want to have, with my name on it, a guy driving on the phone, and possibly, like, doing something dangerous.
• 58:09
  Taki Soma: We want everyone to be, responsible.
• 58:10
  Mark Schey: I wanted him to put him on…
• 58:11
  Tad Eggleston: a hands-free unit.
• 58:13
  Mark Schey: Yeah, like, so, right, so, so, I think we ended up
• 58:17
  Mark Schey: You'll see a scene with a car and a phone, and that was probably one of the notes where it was like.
• 58:22
  Mark Schey: it wasn't anything wrong with the yard, it wasn't… it probably annoyed Kat a little bit, tiny bit, hopefully.
• 58:28
  Tad Eggleston: Yes.
• 58:29
  Mark Schey: But it was like, you know, I just don't see Ron being irresponsible like that. He's… Yeah.
• 58:34
  Taki Soma: And, like, it was really our fault, because we didn't really think about describing that thing.
• 58:39
  Tad Eggleston: There's a psychology…
• 58:40
  Taki Soma: He should be in the car driving while he's on the phone.
• 58:45
  Taki Soma: Right?
• 58:45
  Mark Schey: I think we said he's in the car, and it was supposed to be parked, but we didn't.
• 58:48
  Taki Soma: But in the script, and, like, you know.
• 58:50
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, seriously, he's a psychologist in Portland who works from home and owns a car? That doesn't feel right.
• 58:58
  Taki Soma: Hmm…
• 58:59
  Mark Schey: He's like a Flintstone car, I mean, he walks… he walks his feet.
• 59:02
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, okay.
• 59:02
  Mark Schey: Yeah, it's cardboard.
• 59:05
  Taki Soma: Certain things are, you know, fictional, I guess.
• 59:10
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Will we get to see Dr. Ron Richards' merchandise?
• 59:14
  Taki Soma: Hopefully tomorrow, maybe. I don't know.
• 59:17
  Mark Schey: Yeah, we're… I mean, sure, I mean, like, look, we are open to… depending on the response of this, we are open to continuing his adventures and continuing his merchandising. But yeah.
• 59:28
  Tad Eggleston: Oh, continuing the adventures, I like that word.
• 59:31
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: The future for Dr. Richards.
• 59:33
  Tad Eggleston: Man.
• 59:33
  Mark Schey: I mean, I think that… There are certainly more, interesting patients that we can throw at him.
• 59:41
  Taki Soma: Well, yeah, the concept itself is, kind of an evergreen idea, right? It can kind of keep going for quite a long time, because it's a very, very simple, simple concept.
• 59:53
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Even some spin-offs.
• 59:55
  Mark Schey: I mean, there are options that we have spoken about, and it really comes down to what, you know, what the readers think.
• 1:00:04
  Mark Schey: And, you know, sometimes you get these breakout characters that we might, like, we have ideas of which ones we think people are gonna like, but it could be one that comes out of left field, and, you know, suddenly we go, wait, maybe the spinoff should be this one.
• 1:00:17
  Mark Schey: You know, but, at this point, it's just, let's… we want to get it out there, and we want to, you know, hopefully people enjoy it, and then… and then we'll…
• 1:00:27
  Taki Soma: Go from there.
• 1:00:27
  Mark Schey: you know, You know, what.
• 1:00:29
  Tad Eggleston: So, releases on Comixology…
• 1:00:32
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: 31st?
• 1:00:33
  Tad Eggleston: a week from tomorrow, so, so, so March 31st.
• 1:00:37
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Is it only on digital?
• 1:00:39
  Tad Eggleston: Right now.
• 1:00:40
  Taki Soma: Digital first.
• 1:00:41
  Tad Eggleston: That was literally where I was going, Edgar, because I know you want it in the shop.
• 1:00:46
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: I'm excited, okay?
• 1:00:47
  Tad Eggleston: Are there plans yet for a physical release? Do you have… We don't…
• 1:00:53
  Taki Soma: I don't have any word on that yet.
• 1:00:55
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 1:00:56
  Taki Soma: Yeah.
• 1:00:56
  Tad Eggleston: I know that there are a few different companies that have been picking up Comixology Originals and printing them physically, and…
• 1:01:04
  Tad Eggleston: I know that… You have connections to at least two of them, Taki.
• 1:01:10
  Tad Eggleston: And I think that this would actually be perfect, perfect for one of them.
• 1:01:17
  Tad Eggleston: So, I'm hoping that it will… it will get picked up, because this is definitely a one that would be useful
• 1:01:23
  Tad Eggleston: to have physical… I mean, I know Edgar would keep.
• 1:01:25
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: I will sell it at both stores. Absolutely.
• 1:01:28
  Tad Eggleston: Not only would you sell it at both stores, I imagine you'd have, like, 3 copies at each of the 4…
• 1:01:33
  Tad Eggleston: for clinics.
• 1:01:34
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: I would actually start using it for some of the patients, yeah, absolutely.
• 1:01:37
  Mark Schey: Might have to just have it in the waiting room.
• 1:01:40
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: You know, that's great, yeah.
• 1:01:42
  Mark Schey: But yeah, right now it's digital because, I mean, it's… Amazon Comixology has been incredibly supportive. They had… speaking of, like, our discussions with Kat, like, Amazon was incredible, had, like, no notes, right, Taki? Was there a note, even?
• 1:02:00
  Mark Schey: I mean, I don't… I don't know.
• 1:02:02
  Taki Soma: No, I don't think there was any note.
• 1:02:04
  Taki Soma: So…
• 1:02:05
  Mark Schey: So, I mean, I think, like, when you have a partner like that, you know, like.
• 1:02:08
  Mark Schey: you let them do their thing, you let them sell it the way that they want to first, but certainly I would love to have it. There's just something about being able to hold it.
• 1:02:16
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Yep.
• 1:02:17
  Taki Soma: Agreed. Agreed.
• 1:02:18
  Tad Eggleston: Alright, before I move on to the, the traditional closing questions,
• 1:02:26
  Tad Eggleston: Dr. Ramos, do you have anything else that you wanted to.
• 1:02:30
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: No, that was my question, was, when do we see it in print, and merchandising for it? Because I can't.
• 1:02:37
  Tad Eggleston: He wants the action figures.
• 1:02:39
  Mark Schey: Yeah, do you want, like, stuffies, action figures? Like, what are you thinking?
• 1:02:42
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: You know, I think.
• 1:02:43
  Tad Eggleston: All of the above.
• 1:02:44
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Hugs, I think that'd be great, you know?
• 1:02:46
  Mark Schey: August, there we go.
• 1:02:47
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: When you're highlighting the doctor, I think that's just, you know, it feeds into my narcissism, so I would just love to see that.
• 1:02:53
  Tad Eggleston: He wants to know if he can grow a beard for the next volume?
• 1:02:57
  Taki Soma: Well, maybe?
• 1:02:59
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Can you make him Latino, I don't know, you know, tad it up a little bit? I think that's kind of cool, you know? I'm the coolest.
• 1:03:05
  Taki Soma: Oh, I agree, you got it.
• 1:03:05
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Maybe…
• 1:03:06
  Taki Soma: Way cooler. I mean, our Dr. Ron Richards, is kind of…
• 1:03:09
  Tad Eggleston: Edgar is offering to join the practice, if he, if he…
• 1:03:13
  Taki Soma: Yeah, he could be the next-door neighbor, like the…
• 1:03:17
  Mark Schey: Yeah, do you want to be a rival, or do you want to be.
• 1:03:19
  Taki Soma: Yeah, rival, therapist next door.
• 1:03:23
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: You know, I mean, those are ideas, those are ideas. No, I think it's great. I just… I can't wait. I hope that you guys are successful with this book. You know, I can't see it not being that way. I can't wait to see it in print, and sell it myself, and have my own copy. I think that's great.
• 1:03:39
  Tad Eggleston: And remember to put it on every psychologist's message board that you're part of.
• 1:03:43
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Actually, we'll be doing that, actually.
• 1:03:46
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: I'll be speaking to a few people about it, so I think it's, yeah, I think it's great.
• 1:03:50
  Tad Eggleston: Actually, you know, a great way for books to make money is when they're on syllabi, so you teach, Lee teaches, I mean, you just put it on.
• 1:04:00
  Mark Schey: Nothing is better than forcing the students to buy a copy.
• 1:04:03
  Taki Soma: And what we can do…
• 1:04:04
  Mark Schey: We look, we'll work something out, like, every year we'll make one little tweak, and have to buy the new copy.
• 1:04:09
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: The updated version? Yeah.
• 1:04:11
  Mark Schey: new and improved DSM version.
• 1:04:14
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: That required re… it's recommended reading, but you won't be able to pass without reading it. Exactly.
• 1:04:18
  Mark Schey: I mean, I'm all… listen, that's your ethics, not mine.
• 1:04:22
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Good evening.
• 1:04:23
  Mark Schey: You feel comfortable doing.
• 1:04:25
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: I think that's fair play. You guys did great. It was a great read, and it was just a pleasure. You guys are so cool to talk to, so I was, you know…
• 1:04:33
  Taki Soma: Hmm.
• 1:04:33
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: I want to say thank you, guys. You're such humble people, for being celebrities in my eyes, so…
• 1:04:38
  Tad Eggleston: Well, don't, don't get too, too leaving yet, because we do have the traditional closing questions.
• 1:04:45
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: No, I know, I'm sorry, I'm just…
• 1:04:46
  Taki Soma: Well, I also want to add that, like, you know, without therapists, without psychologists, without psychiatrists.
• 1:04:53
  Taki Soma: I wouldn't be who I am today, and I…
• 1:04:56
  Tad Eggleston: Me neither. I wouldn't even be here today. I'll be, like, very, very, very…
• 1:05:02
  Taki Soma: about that. They've saved my life, saved my sanity, and, you know, without…
• 1:05:10
  Taki Soma: my therapist in my life, you know, we… Mark and I probably wouldn't have come up with parapsychologists, so this is an ode and a love letter to all my therapists out there.
• 1:05:23
  Mark Schey: I certainly would have… I would not have approached this subject matter if I didn't feel comfortable enough
• 1:05:29
  Mark Schey: with it, because of the sensitivity behind it. And I don't mean sensitivity like a taboo, I mean sensitivity because… out of respect. And I hope that anyone who reads it can really feel that coming through, that the people who wrote it, weren't teasing, were not making fun, were actually… we're… we care about the subject.
• 1:05:45
  Taki Soma: Yeah.
• 1:05:47
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Definitely shows.
• 1:05:49
  Tad Eggleston: Alright, so…
• 1:05:52
  Tad Eggleston: One of these questions Taki's had to answer multiple times before, but one of them's a little bit newer.
• 1:05:57
  Tad Eggleston: The newer one is,
• 1:06:03
  Tad Eggleston: I'm in my fifth year of doing this, and I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone.
• 1:06:08
  Tad Eggleston: I feel like my life has just become this cool, amazing thing where I regularly have to pinch myself to go, wait a minute, did…
• 1:06:18
  Tad Eggleston: am I talking to Takisoma again? You know, was that Mike Avon Oming in the background? Did I get to say out loud, hey, that last issue of Powers was good, for that matter? And this is the first time I get to say it with Edgar here.
• 1:06:35
  Tad Eggleston: I wouldn't know Edgar without this podcast, and aside from the fact that he's already become one of my best friends over the last couple of years, like…
• 1:06:44
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: A month?
• 1:06:44
  Tad Eggleston: A month ago, my wife and I had both of our cars break down in the span of a week.
• 1:06:50
  Mark Schey: Hmm.
• 1:06:50
  Tad Eggleston: And we… you want to talk panic attacks? We both drive 40 miles a day to be able to work.
• 1:06:57
  Taki Soma: Agunos.
• 1:06:58
  Tad Eggleston: And we knew we were gonna have to replace one of them, but the other one we expected to have, you know, 5 to 7 more years on, but, you know, a deer decided otherwise.
• 1:07:07
  Mark Schey: Oof.
• 1:07:08
  Tad Eggleston: And I… and I, like, as I'm trying to figure things out, I'm like, do I know anybody who I think might know somebody? And I went, you know what? Edgar always seems to know somebody. So I just said, Edgar, you've got a guy for everything, please tell me you've got a car guy.
• 1:07:25
  Tad Eggleston: And his wife, Sam, who's also a friend, her brother is the manager of a car dealership that their uncle owns.
• 1:07:34
  Taki Soma: Oh, wow.
• 1:07:35
  Tad Eggleston: Came in off of maternity leave.
• 1:07:39
  Tad Eggleston: And, like, Kelly and I had low expectations. We were just like, we have no idea where to start, so we're gonna start with somebody who knows what they're doing. We wound up starting and finishing. We walked out the door…
• 1:07:52
  Tad Eggleston: Like, 4 hours later, with 2 cars, just inside of our comfort zone, and what we thought was gonna be 2 years of… not 2 years… a couple of weeks of going nuts, trying to figure out how to…
• 1:08:07
  Tad Eggleston: rideshare, how much could we afford the rental, blah blah blah, became, oh my god, we don't even have to take our day off on Monday and spend it car shopping. We could just relax.
• 1:08:21
  Mark Schey: So your psychologist got rid of your what-ifs?
• 1:08:24
  Taki Soma: He did!
• 1:08:26
  Tad Eggleston: That's it!
• 1:08:27
  Taki Soma: But, but, but…
• 1:08:28
  Tad Eggleston: But I'm actually tossing it in with, like, going to a baseball game with Dennis Kitchen, or whatever, among those, like, surreal things that are just part of my life now that never would have been without comics. And I found that everybody in comics has at least one, and generally.
• 1:08:45
  Tad Eggleston: Tons of them, which is why it can be an every-time question, because I guarantee the next time Taki comes on, she'll think of a different one. Next time Mark comes on, I hope Mark will come on too, but I'm certain that Taki will come on again, even if it's just a sword in the background.
• 1:09:02
  Taki Soma: I'll come.
• 1:09:03
  Mark Schey: Come on next time Mike's on. Oh, that's distract you.
• 1:09:06
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, okay. You can co-host. I mean, that's how I roll.
• 1:09:12
  Tad Eggleston: Takes a village, man.
• 1:09:14
  Mark Schey: Let's do it, let's do it.
• 1:09:15
  Tad Eggleston: Right, right. I'm gonna hold you for that.
• 1:09:16
  Mark Schey: I'm gonna interview Mike and Taki with you.
• 1:09:18
  Tad Eggleston: Okay.
• 1:09:19
  Tad Eggleston: We'll work on Saturday.
• 1:09:20
  Mark Schey: I know where the bodies are buried.
• 1:09:26
  Tad Eggleston: So, that's… that's the question here. Share a… a surreal…
• 1:09:31
  Tad Eggleston: pinch yourself, either experience or… or sometimes bigger than experience, it's… it's just, like, a state of being. Something that, like, comics have brought you that, like.
• 1:09:43
  Tad Eggleston: Just every time you think about it, you're like, wow.
• 1:09:49
  Taki Soma: For me, it's every day. My life is incre- like, it's comics. It's,
• 1:09:58
  Taki Soma: I live and breathe comics, I live and breathe, storytelling, I live and breathe, art and colors and even lettering, you know?
• 1:10:08
  Taki Soma: I don't know any other language, I don't know any other way of living. Actually, we're in the middle of actually, getting our house up for sale.
• 1:10:19
  Taki Soma: And, you know, I'm going through a lot of artwork that I have to take off of, you know, and, putting them out of, getting them out of the frames, and, like, putting them together, and…
• 1:10:34
  Taki Soma: a lot of friends ask, like, are you gonna bring them… bring them with you? And I'm like.
• 1:10:39
  Taki Soma: of course, like, I'm not bringing anything else but my art. Like, I will die without them. So, you know, like, without comics, I wouldn't… well, again, like, it's the same thing, like, therapy, right? Like, without comics, I wouldn't be here, so…
• 1:10:57
  Taki Soma: Yeah.
• 1:10:58
  Tad Eggleston: And you managed to do that and have a roof over your head, because some of the people who live in Die Comics, you know, do so from their cardboard boxes.
• 1:11:05
  Tad Eggleston: So I'm just adding that surreal part, that you guys have managed to get paid, at least a little.
• 1:11:14
  Taki Soma: We're surviving.
• 1:11:16
  Tad Eggleston: Right?
• 1:11:17
  Taki Soma: So…
• 1:11:18
  Tad Eggleston: Surviving is rich in comic sternums.
• 1:11:21
  Taki Soma: Absolutely. I agreed 100%.
• 1:11:26
  Taki Soma: How about you, Mark?
• 1:11:27
  Tad Eggleston: Mark?
• 1:11:28
  Mark Schey: Yeah, I mean, I think that the thing that surprised me the most is just how humble and kind and how many genuine friends I've made. Yeah. The likes of
• 1:11:40
  Mark Schey: Taki, and Mike Oming, and the kindness of people who you would look up to as a… as a… as a…
• 1:11:49
  Mark Schey: Younger version of yourself, who you would assume would not have the time for you.
• 1:11:54
  Tad Eggleston: But they'll just…
• 1:11:55
  Mark Schey: Talk with you for an hour.
• 1:11:57
  Mark Schey: You know, and I'll purposely not name drop, because I don't think that's even necessary. But the point is, is that the vast majority of the people I've worked with, and on BlackBox, we have, like, 15 art teams, and then we have parapsychologists. I worked on the revival of A1 Deadline, and…
• 1:12:16
  Tad Eggleston: Oh.
• 1:12:16
  Mark Schey: There's just…
• 1:12:17
  Tad Eggleston: 2?
• 1:12:17
  Mark Schey: Yeah, that, yep, I have a store, I have a show coming up.
• 1:12:20
  Tad Eggleston: Mine's in the… mine's in the mail at some point.
• 1:12:22
  Mark Schey: So, my, my, I have a short called, Self-Aware and I.O.5 that's coming out in that.
• 1:12:27
  Tad Eggleston: So I've just managed to figure out that I've purchased all of the things that you've done without managing to put you together with all of them.
• 1:12:37
  Mark Schey: Hopefully, hopefully I'll start, you know, you'll start knowing…
• 1:12:40
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, now that I've talked to you, it's gonna click more.
• 1:12:41
  Mark Schey: Yeah, no, yeah, yeah.
• 1:12:42
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, to be fair, like, before I was even in, like, the surreal… like, another one of my best friends I met at…
• 1:12:50
  Tad Eggleston: because he was a regular at a comic shop that I worked at, and like…
• 1:12:55
  Tad Eggleston: First time he came in, we talked about
• 1:12:57
  Tad Eggleston: baseball for, like, 2 hours. And the second time he came in, we talked about…
• 1:13:03
  Tad Eggleston: music for, like, 2 hours. The third time he came in, we talked… we actually talked about comics for 2 or 3 hours. The fourth time he came in is when I realized that he was the same guy from all of those other 3 times.
• 1:13:18
  Tad Eggleston: He was cool with that. He's like, no, dude, every time I come in, I see Tad.
• 1:13:24
  Tad Eggleston: Every time you come in, A, you might not see Andy, B, you see, like, a hundred other people.
• 1:13:32
  Mark Schey: Oh yeah, yeah.
• 1:13:33
  Mark Schey: That's fantastic.
• 1:13:35
  Tad Eggleston: But that was when I'm like, maybe we should, like…
• 1:13:38
  Tad Eggleston: Deliberately get together somewhere other than the comic shop.
• 1:13:44
  Tad Eggleston: Traded phone numbers, and, you know…
• 1:13:46
  Tad Eggleston: So, I get that, like, I've made more friends in my 40s than I did in my teens, and that's…
• 1:13:53
  Mark Schey: It's like finding your people.
• 1:13:54
  Tad Eggleston: day.
• 1:13:55
  Mark Schey: You know? And there's not a lot of people you can…
• 1:13:57
  Taki Soma: they're not…
• 1:13:57
  Mark Schey: you can nerd out, too, and like, you know, Taki and Mike, and like, a lot of times Mike is working off to the side, and I'll be talking with Taki, then Mike pops in, and…
• 1:14:06
  Mark Schey: Or, like, the laugh you heard before, like, that's, like, par for the course.
• 1:14:10
  Taki Soma: Oh, yeah.
• 1:14:12
  Mark Schey: It's just like, I mean, and we could just, you know, we can go for a couple months, and then just pick up like this, and…
• 1:14:19
  Mark Schey: talk, like, as if we were talking yesterday. And, you know, it's like this, and to be honest, like, Mike and Taki are on the closer side compared to
• 1:14:28
  Mark Schey: a lot of the artists, but but there are plenty of artists that I've met that I…
• 1:14:35
  Mark Schey: deeply respect. I also appreciate the fact that there's… there wasn't a lot of gatekeeping. I am relatively new, and especially in comparison to… to these guys, and… but there was no… I think that once…
• 1:14:47
  Mark Schey: I… I don't know, I guess I…
• 1:14:48
  Tad Eggleston: get.
• 1:14:49
  Mark Schey: I know that I knew enough.
• 1:14:50
  Tad Eggleston: Later.
• 1:14:51
  Tad Eggleston: You get treated like a peer really quickly.
• 1:14:54
  Mark Schey: Yeah, like, once I, like, had… like, after Black Box came out, which was my first published book, I think people were kind of like, well, if he could put that together, I mean, like…
• 1:15:01
  Tad Eggleston: Right.
• 1:15:02
  Taki Soma: Yeah, it's
• 1:15:03
  Taki Soma: incredible feat, but really, like, the thing that people don't know about Mark is that, like, he's so much more accomplished than, like, most of us in comics.
• 1:15:15
  Taki Soma: Like, I'm like, oh, you're coming in here to make comics? But you can… you did so much.
• 1:15:24
  Taki Soma: You know.
• 1:15:25
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I was reading his biography here on Amazon. What does it say?
• 1:15:34
  Mark Schey: We don't have to… we don't have to…
• 1:15:35
  Tad Eggleston: You don't want to go through the biography? You've done a fair amount.
• 1:15:39
  Taki Soma: accomplished in so much, and I'm like.
• 1:15:42
  Tad Eggleston: I mean, I kinda like…
• 1:15:43
  Taki Soma: I guess comics is so much better because Mark said it.
• 1:15:47
  Tad Eggleston: Tester for Sierra Online, I remember Sierra.
• 1:15:49
  Mark Schey: Yeah, I mean, like, one of my favorite little anecdotes for that I could share with you is, like, Leisure Suit Larry, if you remember? Yeah.
• 1:15:55
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:15:56
  Mark Schey: but I was, like, a teenager, and I was a playtester for that. And in the beginning of that game.
• 1:16:00
  Taki Soma: Oh, sure.
• 1:16:01
  Mark Schey: He would ask…
• 1:16:01
  Taki Soma: Nuts.
• 1:16:02
  Mark Schey: they would ask those questions, do you remember, like, there was… it was, like, to prove you're an adult. I guess, like, to be, like, ethical, they would… they would ask, like, a few questions, are you an adult? And they had been doing, I think this was the third Legion Suit Lowry, and they were kind of, like, probably, like, sick of just making these questions, so they let the playtesters write them. So I, as a teenager.
• 1:16:21
  Mark Schey: wrote questions to prove you're an adult. And Al Lowe, the creator of that game, made me a little certificate that I wish I still had, that said, this is to certify that Mark is old enough to write this game, but not old enough to play it.
• 1:16:36
  Mark Schey: So that was my… but that was a really fun time. It was a time when, like, playtesters actually were talking with the programmers and the writers. Now it's like, you know.
• 1:16:44
  Mark Schey: massive conglomerates where you're, like, just a cog. But it used to be, like, we'd hang out on CompuServe, and we'd hang out and we'd all chat together.
• 1:16:53
  Tad Eggleston: Though I do have to ask a question, because you're… it also says here that you're a patented inventor.
• 1:17:00
  Mark Schey: Yeah, I, I invented… Two patents for.
• 1:17:01
  Tad Eggleston: home energy systems. So talk to me for a second about home energy systems before.
• 1:17:06
  Mark Schey: Yeah, so…
• 1:17:06
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah, see, Dr. Ramos, and we went through all the things that Dr. Ramos does, is shaking his head right now.
• 1:17:14
  Mark Schey: So I came up with this concept that eventually… substantially similar to the Powerwall before the Powerwall was announced, which is basically a way to create a UPS battery backup system for your house.
• 1:17:28
  Mark Schey: Because I always thought, like, we have a UPS for our computer, but with technology and the new types of batteries coming down in costs, because of electric cars and whatnot, that you'd basically be able to set up a UPS on the panel level per circuit, so when the power went out, it would instantly keep your power on.
• 1:17:46
  Mark Schey: So, that, that was, that was that subject.
• 1:17:49
  Tad Eggleston: There you go.
• 1:17:50
  Mark Schey: We've really gone on a tangent here, but that's the problem with, like…
• 1:17:53
  Tad Eggleston: That's what I… I mean, that's… that's… that's how I differentiate myself from other podcasts, and also how we know that
• 1:18:01
  Tad Eggleston: there aren't as many people who are seriously neurodivergent and like going on massive tangents, because, like, I've got… got a small, dedicated audience, rather than…
• 1:18:13
  Tad Eggleston: You wanna sell your book? Go talk to John Sunters. Great guy, I love him. Chicagoan. You wanna… you wanna have a crazy conversation? I'm your man.
• 1:18:24
  Mark Schey: I am here for it.
• 1:18:25
  Tad Eggleston: So, my last question, Taki's had to answer this a few times. Tell me something you love.
• 1:18:32
  Tad Eggleston: Preferably a comic, but we don't really have rules. Preferably storytelling, but again, with the rules. But something that you love.
• 1:18:41
  Tad Eggleston: And not enough people around you have experienced, you'd really like them too, so that you have more people to talk about it with.
• 1:18:50
  Mark Schey: That's an interesting…
• 1:18:51
  Taki Soma: Love that.
• 1:18:53
  Taki Soma: To do, or…
• 1:18:55
  Tad Eggleston: Again, preferably a comic, but we don't have rules. Preferably storytelling, but we don't have rules. Like…
• 1:19:03
  Tad Eggleston: I'd love to get a comic recommendation with this, but if what's on your… like, when Andrew Iden was on the last time, he just… he'd just harvested his tomatoes, and he really liked his homegrown tomatoes, and he wanted more people to experience his tomatoes, so he could talk to him, you know. It's kind of the tell me an underrated thing, but, like, the last time Nate Powell was on.
• 1:19:27
  Tad Eggleston: he said.
• 1:19:28
  Tad Eggleston: Jonathan Hickman's X-Men comics, because, like, I live in the indie comic world. My friends don't read X-Men anymore, but I discovered it, and I've become a Wednesday Warrior again, and I've got nobody to talk to about it.
• 1:19:42
  Tad Eggleston: So, so it's that thing that, like, is a personal… love…
• 1:19:49
  Tad Eggleston: That, like, you just, you wish more people knew about, or experienced, or did with you.
• 1:19:56
  Tad Eggleston: Or just make something up, whatever works.
• 1:19:58
  Taki Soma: Well, I guess I…
• 1:20:00
  Tad Eggleston: No rules, remember?
• 1:20:01
  Taki Soma: If somebody asks, like, you know, like, what's your favorite comic, it's hard to really pinpoint what that is, but I always bring up, Jason Comics.
• 1:20:12
  Tad Eggleston: Oh!
• 1:20:13
  Taki Soma: Yeah, he's a Norwegian cartoonist.
• 1:20:18
  Taki Soma: And he just goes by his name, Jason, and he generally draws and writes, anthropomorphic stories that are kind of…
• 1:20:27
  Taki Soma: Kind of esoteric and weird and.
• 1:20:32
  Tad Eggleston: Some noir, some…
• 1:20:34
  Taki Soma: Yeah. And I would love to talk to people about Jason comics.
• 1:20:41
  Tad Eggleston: I can talk to you about Jason.
• 1:20:43
  Tad Eggleston: all you want. If you want to do a Jason book club, I will do it in a heartbeat.
• 1:20:47
  Taki Soma: I would be totally down with that. But yeah, that's, that's, that's always my top recommendation, and I…
• 1:20:57
  Taki Soma: I freaking love it!
• 1:20:59
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:21:01
  Mark Schey: Yeah, I mean, so, so for me, I mean, like, It's adjacent, but I'm…
• 1:21:07
  Mark Schey: I really like, the work, the short stories of, Ted Chang. He has, he, he wrote Arrival, and he has a lot of collections of short stories, and he's absolutely brilliant. There's a story that he wrote called Exhalation. It's like…
• 1:21:25
  Mark Schey: under 10 pages, but…
• 1:21:28
  Mark Schey: he's one of those writers who makes me mad, because, like, he's just, like, so good. And, to be honest, when I read Sleeping Well Standing before I knew Khaki, that was my reaction. I was like.
• 1:21:38
  Mark Schey: Damn it, like, I will never be able to write this authentic.
• 1:21:41
  Tad Eggleston: Have you read that, Dr. Rommel?
• 1:21:43
  Dr. Edgar Ramos: Oh, I just put it on my list, though, to…
• 1:21:46
  Tad Eggleston: That was so fucking good.
• 1:21:47
  Mark Schey: Yeah, it was fantastic, because, like, the mutual friend sent it over, and I was like.
• 1:21:51
  Mark Schey: She has to work on this book.
• 1:21:54
  Mark Schey: I like,
• 1:21:57
  Mark Schey: Junji Ito, I like the Amagara Fall. I mean, I think that existential dread that he…
• 1:22:04
  Mark Schey: Creates is just absolutely some of the best
• 1:22:08
  Mark Schey: I mean, it's just like… and the one with the whale that has.
• 1:22:11
  Tad Eggleston: Kickstarters I've seen in a long time. There is currently a Kickstarter For a vinyl audio adaptation.
• 1:22:20
  Mark Schey: I did, I was… that's recent, right?
• 1:22:22
  Tad Eggleston: It's going right now.
• 1:22:24
  Mark Schey: Yeah, I had… I was like…
• 1:22:26
  Mark Schey: I mean, I… some of these, I mean, your listeners are like, of course we all know, but, like, I think more people need… you know, when I go to Barnes & Noble, there's just so much Marvel in DC.
• 1:22:37
  Mark Schey: But there is so much more to comics, and a lot of the foreign stuff, that's why I like Magnetic Press, bringing a lot of the French or Italian artists over here.
• 1:22:48
  Mark Schey: I… I also just… it's also already pretty popular, but I like it's lonely at the center of the Earth. I feel like…
• 1:22:55
  Tad Eggleston: I have, like.
• 1:22:56
  Mark Schey: Almost like they're cousins to…
• 1:22:57
  Tad Eggleston: The thing that I… C2E2 is this weekend, and Zoe Thorogood will be there. I have not gotten to meet or talk to her, so, like…
• 1:23:07
  Mark Schey: Zoe is…
• 1:23:08
  Tad Eggleston: Very, very high on my list of…
• 1:23:11
  Mark Schey: She is, that's another one where you're just like, oh my god.
• 1:23:16
  Tad Eggleston: Club with me on.
• 1:23:17
  Mark Schey: Yeah, absolutely, I mean, it…
• 1:23:21
  Taki Soma: Phenomenal.
• 1:23:22
  Mark Schey: You just go through it, and the creativity is just exploding, and it's raw, and it's just so authentic, and
• 1:23:31
  Mark Schey: It's, again, when you're a writer, and you're trying to create, like, this, like, really cool stuff, and then you read this… there are certain artists…
• 1:23:40
  Mark Schey: Who you just look at and you're just like, ugh, how will I ever get to that level?
• 1:23:45
  Taki Soma: Oh, yeah, she makes me feel that way, for sure.
• 1:23:47
  Taki Soma: Yeah, like, I'm done.
• 1:23:52
  Tad Eggleston: made that?
• 1:23:52
  Mark Schey: Well, that's… well, don't rub it in even more, but yeah, like, I mean, it's just like, yeah, like, most people need to, you know, iterate and make a couple really, really horrible ones, you know, like, beforehand, and when you hear, you know, and…
• 1:24:04
  Tad Eggleston: Well, and her book before that was… was, you know, the impending Blindness of Billy…
• 1:24:10
  Mark Schey: Yeah, and then to go on and do a show is…
• 1:24:12
  Mark Schey: You know, like, it's like, you know, I mean, but, yeah, so I would say, you know, she's another one that just keep on your radar, because it's… especially in this day with AI and slop and, you know, corporations, like, committees forcing people to write garbage,
• 1:24:31
  Mark Schey: these authentic voices, of which Taki and I hope to be, and I hope, like, even the deadline…
• 1:24:39
  Tad Eggleston: You are. You are.
• 1:24:40
  Mark Schey: I appreciate that.
• 1:24:41
  Tad Eggleston: You are.
• 1:24:42
  Mark Schey: you know, I'm trying, you know, like, my best, because I think that's gonna be the thing that helps comics survive, ultimately, is because you can talk to us, we're people, and we become… we become our brand, right? People will be like, oh, that's the kind of story I'm gonna get from Taki, or that's the kind of story I'm gonna get from Oming or Mark.
• 1:25:02
  Mark Schey: You know, so I think that, like, that's our, our…
• 1:25:06
  Mark Schey: anti-AI proof, and you know, and that's the kind of thing that I think that Zoe excels at.
• 1:25:11
  Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
• 1:25:11
  Taki Soma: I agree 100%.
• 1:25:14
  Tad Eggleston: Well, thank you guys so, so much.
• 1:25:18
  Tad Eggleston: Stick around for just a second after I close up, for Mark Shea and Taki Soma. This has been 22 Panels, and we will see you after the next page.