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With Great Power #310... 22 Panels with Jennie Wood · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

0:02
Tad Eggleston: Good afternoon, everybody! Welcome back to 22 Panels. My guest today, one of my favorite people to talk to. I've gotten to talk to a lot of my favorite people in the last few days. I feel like I'm starting a lot of podcasts that way.
0:17
Tad Eggleston: Like, I had David Walker, I had… I had Joe Illage, I had Stefan Frank, I had Taki Soma, and now I have Jenny Wood. So, like, all lining up for my birthday, my birthday's tomorrow, and…
0:28
Tad Eggleston: Because it's my birthday, I scheduled a baseball and comics podcast, so I get to talk to a lot of my favorite people to talk to!
0:36
Jennie Wood: Early birthday!
0:38
Tad Eggleston: Exactly! So, like, my Spring Break birthday lineup has been, like, greatest hits of my favorite people to talk to. So, Jenny, thank you so much for joining again. I love, love, love the new book. I didn't ask for this,
0:56
Tad Eggleston: Funny, thoughtful, all the things that I expect from your work.
1:00
Tad Eggleston: You want to give us the front counter pitch?
1:04
Jennie Wood: Oh, wow, this is, my first podcast about this book, so this'll be my first front counter pitch of it. It's about a group of kids whose parents are social media influencers.
1:19
Jennie Wood: And the kids are tired of being exploited, and so they're taking their lives back and speaking up for themselves.
1:27
Tad Eggleston: That… that's a…
1:30
Tad Eggleston: pretty succinct, dead on, and I love it. My first question, because one of the ways, and I won't get too deep into spoilery-type things, but one of the ways that…
1:44
Tad Eggleston: They… they wind up banding together and… and… and… and going from…
1:54
Tad Eggleston: support group to activist group is when they discover that France
1:59
Tad Eggleston: has a law that would protect them. Now, was that something you knew when you started the book, or was that something you learned while you're researching the book?
2:06
Tad Eggleston: I guess… I guess I'm using a question to get into motivations, rather than the other way.
2:11
Jennie Wood: Right.
2:12
Jennie Wood: Right, so, and that gets into the root of origin… the origin story of this book. So, I had just finished Paper Planes for Maverick, which is the.
2:24
Tad Eggleston: I have an adult.
2:25
Tad Eggleston: Go read, because it's amazing.
2:28
Jennie Wood: Thank you. And I loved working on Paper Planes, I worked on that with, Dozer was the artist, Erica Schultz was…
2:36
Jennie Wood: The editor, and then, towards the end, Mad Cave hired, Lauren Heitz-Housen as the senior editor for Maverick.
2:48
Jennie Wood: And so she came in and, just helped us get paper planes over the finish line, and it was just wonderful to have her fresh eyes on it, and she's experienced.
2:58
Tad Eggleston: Did you say that she launched the plane? I'm just in one of those…
3:03
Jennie Wood: Yes, because Erica Dozier and I have been working on it since early days of the pandemic, and it was just nice to have Lauren come in and give us that fresh, perspective. And then…
3:15
Jennie Wood: Lauren had an idea.
3:18
Jennie Wood: for another graphic novel, and it was, what ended up being, I Didn't Ask For This. And she wanted to explore kids,
3:29
Jennie Wood: how their lives are impacted by social media influencer parents, and, you know, how they would go about fighting back and claiming their own identities, finding their own identities. So that was the pitch, and she thought I would be a good person to write it. I loved it.
3:49
Jennie Wood: resonated, the kids' struggles to find their own identities, versus their parents kind of pushing their identities on them. That resonated with me. I grew up with a mom who didn't know boundaries. She would come into my room and read my journal.
4:07
Jennie Wood: and talk about it with people, and so… that was a very, like, low-grade… you know, it's not the same thing as a social media influencer, but I understood what it was like to have someone invade my privacy.
4:21
Jennie Wood: someone speak for me, all of that. So, I said yes to it, and one of the first things I talked about with Lauren is she's like, there's this law in France.
4:31
Jennie Wood: That protects minors from even their image being used on social media, so I did research it.
4:40
Jennie Wood: And that became a big part of the book, of kind of the call to action for these kids, is there's this law in France, so let's have one here.
4:50
Jennie Wood: And I started writing it in 2023, early in 2023. So, since then, there have been some laws that have been introduced, especially at certain state levels.
5:01
Jennie Wood: But at the time, you know.
5:05
Tad Eggleston: So the wild, wild west.
5:07
Jennie Wood: Yeah, exactly.
5:08
Tad Eggleston: And for that matter, I mean, right now, the United States is the digital wild, wild west.
5:14
Tad Eggleston: Period, you know, I mean…
5:16
Tad Eggleston: we seem to put nothing below… above profit. So, like, if there's money to be had, then it must be legal. That seems to be this current Supreme Court's…
5:27
Tad Eggleston: position on things. But,
5:33
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, because it's like the child star, and, and, and even the grown-up
5:40
Tad Eggleston: former child star has been a genre for a while, and it… because of that, it, like, kind of shocks me that I feel like this is…
5:49
Tad Eggleston: this is the first thing that I've seen that really falls into this category, because, like.
5:56
Tad Eggleston: we know how much being… I mean, we've been talking about how much
6:03
Tad Eggleston: Overexposure, too much fame, whatnot, can make childhood hard, for decades, maybe centuries?
6:14
Tad Eggleston: And, like…
6:21
Tad Eggleston: Drew Barrymore… Wasn't actually having her life.
6:26
Tad Eggleston: on the internet, she was playing parts. Can't imagine what it must be for a 5-year-old to literally have millions of strangers know
6:37
Tad Eggleston: Intimate things about them.
6:39
Jennie Wood: Alright, and I think we have it…
6:41
Tad Eggleston: a 12-year-old.
6:42
Jennie Wood: Alright, I think we haven't seen a lot about this.
6:46
Jennie Wood: You know, in print, or in graphic novels, or memoir, all the different formats, because the people, the kids who have had their lives put on social media are just now coming of age.
6:58
Jennie Wood: Yeah. I do think, and I hope, that we get to hear their point of view, their stories, from them, and how it's affecting them to inform the rest of us and younger generations.
7:12
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Because, I mean, even before the absolute explosion of mommy…
7:18
Tad Eggleston: blogs and TikTok and whatnot, you know, you started having…
7:23
Tad Eggleston: the learning channel shows that we're about the families, or the pregnant teenager, or whatever, and I'm sitting there going.
7:32
Tad Eggleston: Like, how is this a good idea? This is… this is even… this is an even worse idea than, like, when you're invited to come on Jerry Springer.
7:42
Tad Eggleston: When you get invited to go on Jerry Springer, you're not going to enjoy the experience.
7:49
Jennie Wood: Right?
7:50
Tad Eggleston: That means that you're gonna have a bomb dropped in your lap!
7:54
Jennie Wood: Right, and that's why, in a certain point, at a point in, I didn't ask for this, the tables are turned a bit.
8:03
Jennie Wood: And one of the social media mommy bloggers admits in an interview that she wouldn't want her life, as a kid, she would have been horrified if her life had been put on social media.
8:15
Tad Eggleston: That was a great moment. The O.
8:20
Tad Eggleston: Oh.
8:23
Jennie Wood: Right, yeah. She's very thankful that, you know, social media wasn't around when she was young.
8:30
Tad Eggleston: Well, and I appreciated that you didn't actually make the parents monsters.
8:36
Tad Eggleston: Would have been easy, too.
8:38
Jennie Wood: Right.
8:39
Tad Eggleston: It would have been easy to make the parents monsters. It would have been easy to make the parents, like…
8:46
Tad Eggleston: not actually care about their kids, but the parents do care about their kids, but the parents also think that they're doing good for the world, and the parents are also a little high on their own supply, as, like…
8:58
Tad Eggleston: Most people get.
9:01
Tad Eggleston: Like…
9:01
Jennie Wood: Right, and the parents are… are… that's how they make money to pay their mortgage, put food on the table, and that's, you know, a broken system. But I did try really… thank you for saying that about the parents. I did try really hard not to make them monsters.
9:18
Jennie Wood: Not always easy to do, but.
9:21
Tad Eggleston: I mean… Cause among other things, I mean, like…
9:27
Tad Eggleston: The hardest thing about being a parent is you know that there are times where your kid's gonna look at you as a monster and or not understand why you make a decision. Now, this is obviously that under
9:39
Tad Eggleston: a magnifying, you know, amplified.
9:43
Tad Eggleston: But every parent… I mean, that's the thing that made this…
9:49
Tad Eggleston: made me enjoy reading this book as a parent every bit as much as I imagined I'd enjoy reading it.
9:55
Tad Eggleston: as… well, I mean, I'm a child too, because, like, my parents, you know…
9:59
Tad Eggleston: still in that area where I think a lot about my childhood, and a lot about what I've tried to do for my kids' childhood, particularly because I'm in that area where it's like, the grandkids are the young ones now. So it's like, I'm both trying to learn from my childhood and, like, be able to say, hey, hey, I know you're doing that because I did it.
10:19
Tad Eggleston: I shouldn't have done it.
10:21
Jennie Wood: Yeah, yeah.
10:24
Tad Eggleston: Which is not something that's easy for parents to do. We're not good at admitting that
10:29
Tad Eggleston: I think… I mean, I think it's a human thing. Even when you know you've made a mistake, particularly when it's a justifiable one.
10:37
Tad Eggleston: You fall to… Explaining it without actually saying, yeah, no.
10:44
Tad Eggleston: even with the information I had at the time, there were better decisions that…
10:49
Tad Eggleston: could have been made. This is why I did it, this is why I don't regret it, this is why…
10:55
Tad Eggleston: I hope that you'll give me grace, but yeah, you're right to be upset.
11:00
Jennie Wood: Yeah.
11:03
Tad Eggleston: I know.
11:05
Tad Eggleston: I'm sorry, in a completely tangential way,
11:10
Tad Eggleston: I'm going through something here. I'm mostly an observer, looking at something similar in a fantasy baseball league, where it's like, you guys understand that you all have good points, and the biggest problem here is that, like, you're going to war.
11:33
Tad Eggleston: You know…
11:34
Tad Eggleston: So, like, talk to me about the process. Talk to me about how… how you put your kit… put yourself into…
11:42
Tad Eggleston: the kids' heads, how you… I mean, because you clearly also put yourself into the parents' heads, you know? I mean, you had to hold a lot of conflicting things
11:53
Tad Eggleston: a lot of two things can be true going on in Jenny's head writing this book.
12:00
Jennie Wood: Yeah, it helped that it was… we decided… I suggested setting it in Chicago. Chicago is where I went to undergrad.
12:09
Tad Eggleston: Yay! I recognized Chicago! I was happy.
12:12
Jennie Wood: Yeah.
12:12
Tad Eggleston: Nice Chicago.
12:14
Jennie Wood: Yeah, I moved to Chicago when I was 18, so I was still a teenager, and that, you know… and I put, Eleven City Diner in there, and Margie's, and a coffee shop that's no longer around. Why Not Cafe used to be in Lakeview years ago,
12:33
Jennie Wood: So, help me get into the brain space of a teenager. A lot of these characters are still in high school. Some are in college.
12:44
Jennie Wood: So, the thing they all have in common to people listening is that they all have parents who are some different kind of social media.
12:54
Jennie Wood: influencer. And they formed…
12:57
Tad Eggleston: They're also related to the kids. They're not… social media…
13:03
Tad Eggleston: influencers… influencers independent of their children.
13:07
Jennie Wood: No, they're parents.
13:08
Tad Eggleston: I think that's an important.
13:10
Jennie Wood: Yes, yes.
13:11
Tad Eggleston: You know.
13:12
Jennie Wood: They're social…
13:13
Tad Eggleston: Children are… are involved… I mean, it…
13:17
Tad Eggleston: just like it says in the title, I didn't ask for this. The children have to be part of this social media journey.
13:24
Jennie Wood: Right. And they're all exploiting.
13:26
Tad Eggleston: Even though they were not given… an option.
13:29
Jennie Wood: Right.
13:30
Jennie Wood: And, the kids come together and form a group that meets via Zoom.
13:37
Jennie Wood: Every Sunday, and they talk about what they're gonna do to claim their identities, what they're gonna do to get a law passed.
13:46
Jennie Wood: to protect future kids. You know, a couple of them have siblings, they want to protect their younger siblings, things like that.
13:55
Jennie Wood: And,
13:57
Jennie Wood: the process of it was exciting to set it in Chicago, so that helped me get into that kind of teenage space. The story already resonated with me and how to…
14:07
Jennie Wood: break away from… kind of parental expectations or, or pressure, and exploitation.
14:17
Jennie Wood: And I just created characters that…
14:22
Jennie Wood: I could relate to, and with the hope that other people would too. So, each of the kids have something very near and dear to me, whether it's Casper's love of theater.
14:35
Jennie Wood: Our lead character, Daisy's love of music, I gave Daisy a best friend and a best friend's family that was there for her, much like what I had in high school.
14:48
Jennie Wood: And I just, worked really hard to flesh out the characters, to make them familiar to me, to make them feel like people that I know. The challenge is where there's a lot of characters.
15:00
Jennie Wood: They also, there's a lot of Zoom meetings.
15:05
Jennie Wood: Right. And how do you make the reader… how do you get the reader to learn to get to know these characters when there's a lot of talking heads? So I mix that up with action.
15:18
Jennie Wood: We get to see the world of each of the characters. One character's parents are extreme sports influencers traveling all over the world, so we get a lot of.
15:29
Tad Eggleston: That's the one that I felt horrible for.
15:32
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. To have to film your parents… doing…
15:37
Jennie Wood: Yeah.
15:37
Tad Eggleston: And I'm sitting there going, what's the added value to having their kid be the one doing this? Why couldn't they have just hired a camera person, or used a.
15:46
Jennie Wood: Saves money!
15:47
Tad Eggleston: Or, or, or…
15:48
Jennie Wood: Saves money, yeah.
15:50
Tad Eggleston: whatever. I mean, that was the set of parents that I had the… Hardest time, like, really…
15:57
Jennie Wood: Yeah.
15:59
Jennie Wood: Yeah.
16:01
Tad Eggleston: accepting, and that's when I had to remind myself that, yeah, sometimes humans are just jerks, even to their kids.
16:08
Jennie Wood: Yeah.
16:10
Tad Eggleston: Because.
16:10
Jennie Wood: But, you know…
16:11
Tad Eggleston: I just had to let myself think of that at them. Right.
16:14
Jennie Wood: And, you know, as a human, whether you're a parent.
16:19
Jennie Wood: Or, you know, you tell yourself, well, I'm doing this to be close to this person, I want this person with us. You don't necessarily see the trauma that you're causing.
16:29
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
16:30
Jennie Wood: Yeah.
16:31
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean, as you say it, I can see it more, and I'm feeling bad for calling them jerks, but I still…
16:39
Tad Eggleston: No, they were. I mean, you know, or they are.
16:42
Jennie Wood: I try to see all sides, but so yeah, the process was giving all the characters,
16:49
Jennie Wood: aspects of me, and then… but fleshing them out to where they're, you know, hopefully three-dimensional, and their own characters, and their own actions, and doing things I would never do, and…
17:02
Jennie Wood: And then just mixing up the action with those Zoom meetings, and then the characters do start to come together, and visit each other, and work on this bill together in person, and…
17:13
Jennie Wood: But it was a… that… it's a… it was a challenging book, with all the characters and with those Zoom meetings, definitely.
17:21
Tad Eggleston: And how did you decide,
17:25
Tad Eggleston: what types of… I mean, because the one, the mommy blogger, That's… that's… That's an easy call.
17:35
Jennie Wood: Yeah.
17:35
Tad Eggleston: But, but, like, that's the only one that's, like, the obvious, oh…
17:41
Tad Eggleston: This is… this is what… this is… this is how we're gonna… you know, again, without giving too much away, you know, you've got a couple…
17:49
Tad Eggleston: that shared their passions. You've got one where they took the kids
17:57
Tad Eggleston: Not quite disability, but, but, but…
18:00
Tad Eggleston: A unique medical factor about the kid, and turned it into a business thing.
18:07
Jennie Wood: Yeah.
18:08
Tad Eggleston: Which, it made it easy for them to feel like they were doing great things.
18:13
Tad Eggleston: But, like, again, the kid didn't decide that they wanted… I mean, I work in autism, so I've seen that sort of thing.
18:21
Tad Eggleston: Where it's, like, the parents have started crossing over into…
18:25
Tad Eggleston: I mean, what I appreciate the most, and I see this a lot, too, is the parents that are able to cross over into serious autism activism, but not make their kids come along with them.
18:37
Jennie Wood: Right.
18:38
Jennie Wood: Right, yeah.
18:40
Jennie Wood: Some of these were suggestions from Lauren, because we'd already had a working relationship, and, you know, it was her initial baby, and her idea, and she's like, I'm thinking, you know, the situation with Casper,
18:55
Jennie Wood: You know, where his parents make, you know, turn his… Limitation or illness into,
19:07
Jennie Wood: into a positive, right? And then, the amusement park, so one character's parents are amusement park influencers, and there was a list of ideas that Lauren had, and I just took
19:21
Jennie Wood: some of them and just ran with them, and then… because we wanted different ones, and then the Extreme Sports was one that I came up with out of necessity. I thought, we need to have some panels and pages with action, and not just thinking about our readers, but also thinking about the artist, right?
19:40
Tad Eggleston: artists don't like to draw zoom screens over and over and over again. I'm shocked, Jenny! Shocked!
19:49
Jennie Wood: where there was an artist attached to… I mean, I, you know, obviously, I write traditional novels, too. I write in other formats. When I…
19:57
Jennie Wood: I started out as a playwright. When you're writing plays, you're writing for the actor. When you're writing screenplays, you're writing for the director. When you're writing a traditional novel, you're writing for the reader. When you write a graphic novel, you're always writing for the reader, but when you write a graphic novel, you are also writing for the artist. And there is no way… I was just like, oh my god, we've got to do something to mix this up.
20:20
Jennie Wood: And we had amusement parks.
20:21
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it wasn't enough just to put a filter on.
20:24
Tad Eggleston: No. The cat ears.
20:26
Jennie Wood: No, no, no.
20:27
Tad Eggleston: Funny glasses.
20:29
Jennie Wood: Yeah, so the parents that got to you, got under your skin the most, that came out of necessity because we needed some action.
20:40
Tad Eggleston: I will actually argue having one set of parents that do get under your skin, I think is necessary to make this book as good as it is, too. So, like, there's a storytelling necessity, as well as an artist's necessity.
20:54
Jennie Wood: Yeah, and you need levels to evil, right?
20:57
Tad Eggleston: Right. Well, I mean, like, it's twofold. Like, watching them makes you… much more…
21:10
Tad Eggleston: Much more able to… to… have empathy for the mommy blogger, the… the…
21:19
Tad Eggleston: the gluten-free business people, right? And for that matter, it even makes the roller coasters, like, nothing compared to, oh, I get to watch my… my parents…
21:31
Tad Eggleston: Rock climb without a nat.
21:34
Jennie Wood: Right. Yeah, it's a little… and it's a risk because they're different stakes, right? So, we're asking the reader to care about…
21:43
Jennie Wood: All… all these kids and young adults, because there are… there's, the… one of the leaders of the group is in college,
21:52
Jennie Wood: But we're asking the reader to care about these kids, and the stakes are different. The stakes are different from, for Casper, the gluten-free.
21:59
Jennie Wood: with the gluten-free business kids, and Sasha, the amusement park.
22:04
Tad Eggleston: parent. Right.
22:05
Jennie Wood: Per amusement park parents. The stakes are very different for them and then Byron and his extreme sports parents, who are risking their lives and asking him to record it, right? And that was on purpose.
22:19
Jennie Wood: But you're also… you are asking the reader to care about them, if not all equally, to at least care about them all.
22:25
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean, one of the things that you do brilliantly in this book, really brilliantly in all of your works that I've read, is, like.
22:34
Tad Eggleston: you don't allow yourself to fall into traditional protagonist-antagonist, like, you're gonna absolutely love this person, and absolutely hate this person, and… and the person you love will make no mistakes, and the person you hate will… will never do anything good.
22:51
Tad Eggleston: But that's… that's… that's a hard place to be, both as a writer and as a reader. As a reader, particularly, you know.
23:00
Tad Eggleston: as soon as you start feeling for the kid, you want to be on the kid's side, not the parent's side. So when you have to think about, oh, wait a minute, how will the parent keep a roof over their head?
23:14
Tad Eggleston: It's both, like… a more difficult read and a better read immediately. But… but then… but then, like…
23:22
Tad Eggleston: You become much more empathetic of the… how…
23:27
Tad Eggleston: Are they gonna keep a roof over their head when it's like, oh, wait, these people have a roof over their head, clearly have a roof over their head, because if they can afford to go off and do all this shit… and traumatize their kid…
23:41
Jennie Wood: Right, right.
23:42
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I guess they want him to have a sense of adventure, and like…
23:47
Tad Eggleston: That's not bad, but maybe a little more agency.
23:52
Jennie Wood: Right.
23:53
Jennie Wood: Very, very selfish. We've got some selfish… selfish parents.
23:58
Jennie Wood: Some that are actually… think that they're, you know, in their minds, doing a good thing, like the gluten-free business that, you know…
24:05
Jennie Wood: making those products available for other kids that need to be gluten-free, but…
24:12
Jennie Wood: We've got some selfish parenting going on, definitely.
24:15
Tad Eggleston: Well, but then also, like, by having that many layers and whatnot, it sets up things like the non-influencer kids are like, I don't know what you're complaining about and have to understand, but then you also have some of that inside of the influencer kids. It's like.
24:34
Jennie Wood: Right.
24:34
Tad Eggleston: have to go on roller coasters. I just got outed by my mom.
24:39
Jennie Wood: Right.
24:39
Tad Eggleston: Right.
24:40
Jennie Wood: Yeah.
24:41
Jennie Wood: Yeah.
24:43
Jennie Wood: Yeah, so Shane is Daisy's best friend, and I created them to kind of be this voice of…
24:50
Jennie Wood: Just this outside voice of, like…
24:53
Jennie Wood: because there is a certain amount of privilege that's going on here, and kids traveling the world and stuff, and so I wanted Shane to be this grounded character, to be like, why are you guys crying about this? You know, and kind of offered that point of view, especially
25:08
Jennie Wood: today's world.
25:09
Tad Eggleston: I mean, actually, I appreciated that a lot as an educator, because, like, I have kids that, like, you ask them what they want to be in life, and they want to be an influencer, and it's like…
25:22
Tad Eggleston: I guess not all influences are evil, first of all, I have to remind myself of that. And second, that…
25:30
Jennie Wood: That is true.
25:32
Tad Eggleston: maybe some of them are actually living enjoyable lives, but, like, I think of all the burned-out rock stars, because they didn't realize that, like, being famous is not nearly what it was cracked up to be.
25:48
Jennie Wood: Right.
25:48
Tad Eggleston: That, like, that, like, not being able to go grocery shopping on your own kinda sucks.
25:56
Jennie Wood: Yeah. Yeah.
25:57
Tad Eggleston: You know? So, like, I like that there's this thing that even has kids…
26:10
Tad Eggleston: Kids who are like, well, that looks like an awesome life to me, then being able to interact with, well, yeah, here's the thing.
26:18
Jennie Wood: Right.
26:19
Tad Eggleston: You think it's awesome, but can you imagine having to do this?
26:24
Jennie Wood: It's important to explore all sides of it, right?
26:28
Tad Eggleston: Right.
26:29
Jennie Wood: Yeah.
26:30
Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, like everything in the world, I mean, I don't…
26:34
Tad Eggleston: With a handful of exceptions, you know, like… Torture…
26:40
Tad Eggleston: demonic despot, serial killer, there aren't a lot of jobs that are inherently good or bad. It's all about how you do them.
26:52
Jennie Wood: Right.
26:52
Tad Eggleston: We do them in service of.
26:54
Tad Eggleston: Right.
26:55
Jennie Wood: Yes.
26:56
Tad Eggleston: how they fit your personality, etc.
27:00
Tad Eggleston: But, like, I came up with a handful that I think are inherently bad, you know? Again, demonic… demonic despot.
27:10
Tad Eggleston: torturer and serial killer. I can't imagine situations where those are… Good.
27:18
Tad Eggleston: But I can't think of a job that's automatically good.
27:22
Tad Eggleston: Every job I can think of.
27:24
Tad Eggleston: It's gonna be good for some people, and really not for others.
27:28
Tad Eggleston: It, you know…
27:30
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's easy for us to look at movie stars, or baseball players, or rock and roll stars, and, oh, they get to do this, and they've got all that money and whatnot, and not think about, oh, but, like, they need that money for security, because they have crazy people who think that…
27:49
Tad Eggleston: They're good or evil because of things that they sang.
27:52
Tad Eggleston: Or… they need that money for security, because we… we have a multi-billion dollar industry in… in… not just sports betting now, but, like, political betting. There was a story last week about… about…
28:07
Tad Eggleston: A reporter that was threatened for… for…
28:13
Tad Eggleston: Reporting the truth, but truth that had lost people bets.
28:19
Jennie Wood: Hmm.
28:20
Tad Eggleston: You know, they started… they started with offering him money to change his report so they'd win the bet, and when he wouldn't, shifted to threatening him.
28:32
Jennie Wood: Oh, wow.
28:33
Tad Eggleston: And this was on a bet I don't want to get, like, into the bet, into the bet, but it was on a bet that, like, never should have been allowed to be betted on.
28:43
Tad Eggleston: you know, it was, it was A,
28:47
Tad Eggleston: a horrible thing that happened, and B, a horrible thing that, like… and it wasn't chance, it was somebody decided to do this, and did.
29:02
Jennie Wood: Oh, God.
29:02
Tad Eggleston: It's like, how do we have a market on that? But once you do.
29:06
Tad Eggleston: So now, that's another thing that, like, a reporter has to worry about, is, oh…
29:11
Tad Eggleston: What if somebody bet money on my… I mean, there's just… There's no perfect…
29:17
Tad Eggleston: That was just in the back of my head. It probably wasn't as apropos to this conversation as it was. Let's go back to rock and roll stars.
29:27
Tad Eggleston: Or actors, you know, people are like.
29:29
Jennie Wood: Yeah.
29:30
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, they get paid so much, I'm like, yeah, they get paid so much, but like… Be Scarlett Johansson!
29:35
Jennie Wood: Sue.
29:36
Tad Eggleston: I mean, that too, but be Scarlett Johansson and go to Jewel.
29:41
Jennie Wood: Right.
29:45
Tad Eggleston: I don't like Tom Cruise that much, but I wouldn't want to be Tom Cruise and go shopping at JCPenney.
29:52
Jennie Wood: Right.
29:52
Tad Eggleston: a baseball game.
29:55
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. You know, sitting in an audience for 3 hours, where people can see you?
30:01
Tad Eggleston: I mean, they have to go… they have to sit in the skybox.
30:04
Tad Eggleston: Or they're not gonna be able to watch the game.
30:08
Tad Eggleston: Right. And yeah, they chose that, but, like, so many of these jobs, and this is… this is where I didn't ask for this, is…
30:18
Tad Eggleston: is apropos. So many of these jobs, they didn't really choose them when they had a good idea of what they entailed.
30:29
Jennie Wood: Right, yeah.
30:31
Tad Eggleston: You know, who decides that they want to be a star actress when they're 50 and then succeeds?
30:40
Jennie Wood: Right, because you're not going to get the roles that.
30:42
Tad Eggleston: Right. People decide when they're teenagers, and generally have succeeded by their 20s, and figure out the downside sometime in their late 20s or 30s, after they're already experiencing the downside.
30:56
Jennie Wood: Yeah, while you're saying that, so the image of John Lennon popped in my head.
31:01
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
31:01
Jennie Wood: You know, if we could ask him…
31:04
Jennie Wood: You know, if he had to do it over again.
31:07
Jennie Wood: You know, what road would he have taken?
31:10
Tad Eggleston: Nope.
31:11
Jennie Wood: To change the ending.
31:14
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I grew up… in the grunge era. I've grown up with Pearl Jam. Like…
31:21
Tad Eggleston: one of the things that Pearl Jam did, and one of the reasons why they're the last man left standing.
31:27
Tad Eggleston: Is they started burying their singles.
31:31
Tad Eggleston: They took the songs that were gonna keep them on top of the world, and they made them B-sides.
31:39
Tad Eggleston: They made a deliberate effort to be able to continue making music, to not necessarily kill their fanbase, but also not really try hard to continue growing it.
31:53
Jennie Wood: Because it's…
31:56
Tad Eggleston: they watched Kirk go, and they watched Lane Staley go, and… and Eddie had a crazy stalker that drove her car
32:04
Tad Eggleston: Through his front window.
32:08
Jennie Wood: Right, well, and you're talking, like, 90s grunge, and the whole not wanting to be famous, and becoming famous for not wanting to become famous, and the… this very, like, go-away relationship with fame that Kurt Cobain had, and so many of the people…
32:24
Jennie Wood: I mean, that's when I started playing guitar, so I watched all these…
32:27
Jennie Wood: all this happened… I was watching very closely, and Courtney Love being raked over the coals because she's a strong female and she was his wife, and because everyone was in the John and Yoko, and everyone blamed Yoko Onos, everyone blamed Courtney Love. I mean, there's a direct line.
32:45
Tad Eggleston: I wanna state for the record that I have never blamed Yoko Ono. If anything, I think Yoko is why they had the White Album, and further on, I think John was…
32:58
Tad Eggleston: Either ready to call it quits, or ready to go completely self-destructive.
33:03
Jennie Wood: Yeah.
33:04
Tad Eggleston: When he met Yoko, and I think Yoko reigned him in, and that's why we got…
33:09
Tad Eggleston: the second half of the Beatles, not why.
33:11
Jennie Wood: Right.
33:11
Tad Eggleston: broke up.
33:12
Jennie Wood: Right, that's why we got what we got, absolutely.
33:14
Tad Eggleston: Also, I think that the greatest Beatle is Ringo Starr, for two reasons. First.
33:21
Tad Eggleston: He is the most underrated drummer ever.
33:24
Jennie Wood: Yep.
33:25
Tad Eggleston: But second, I think he was the glue.
33:29
Jennie Wood: Yes. And he was the one…
33:30
Tad Eggleston: that always treated it as, hey guys, we're in a band, let's just have fun.
33:34
Jennie Wood: Right, yeah. He always just rolled with it. Ringo, okay, it's funny because when I was a little, little kid.
33:42
Jennie Wood: I… Paul was my favorite, but it was all about aesthetics, right?
33:46
Tad Eggleston: Right.
33:47
Jennie Wood: And then when I was a tormented, angsty teenager, of course, John was my favorite.
33:53
Jennie Wood: And since then, and I've come into my own as an adult, Ringo has become my favorite. Poor George has never enjoyed time as my favorite, maybe that'll happen.
34:01
Tad Eggleston: No.
34:01
Jennie Wood: senior years.
34:02
Tad Eggleston: But he might… he might be my second favorite at this point.
34:06
Jennie Wood: Oh, wow.
34:07
Tad Eggleston: Because as much as I love John and Paul, and I do, and they're geniuses.
34:12
Jennie Wood: They were also pains in the ass.
34:14
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
34:16
Tad Eggleston: And they had 2 more geniuses in the band that I don't think they ever fully…
34:21
Jennie Wood: No? Yeah.
34:23
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I think Paul knows how much of a genius the other band members were.
34:28
Tad Eggleston: NOW?
34:30
Jennie Wood: Yeah.
34:30
Tad Eggleston: But I think it took breaking up for him to figure it out.
34:34
Jennie Wood: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, George is probably my second, and it's probably gonna be Ringo 1, George 2 for the rest of my life, so… it'll all even out.
34:43
Tad Eggleston: And then it's like, John's… John's the songwriting genius, and Paul's the musical genius for me, and I have trouble… and I have trouble then deciding… it depends on the day of the week.
34:57
Tad Eggleston: which one I like more, because, like…
35:01
Tad Eggleston: John was a poet and a prophet, and Paul… Did melodies in ways…
35:08
Tad Eggleston: That nobody had ever even conceived of before.
35:11
Jennie Wood: Yeah.
35:12
Jennie Wood: Yeah, and then bringing this conversation full circle back to parenting.
35:17
Jennie Wood: I would then, because they're both equally musical geniuses, one lyrically, one melody-wise, then I have to go into the personal.
35:28
Jennie Wood: And then I have to go into how John treated his first son.
35:32
Tad Eggleston: Oh, John was an asshole until he got back from LA.
35:38
Tad Eggleston: You know, Yoko sent him to LA because it was like, okay, John, I know you have potential in you, but I'm tired of your shit.
35:46
Tad Eggleston: Go get it out of your system, and if you come home.
35:50
Jennie Wood: Yeah.
35:51
Tad Eggleston: then we'll go from there. And if you don't, well… It's been nice.
35:56
Jennie Wood: Yeah.
35:58
Jennie Wood: So my Evolved Adult ranking is Ringo 1, George 2, Paul 3, and John 4, which… go back and tell the four.
36:08
Tad Eggleston: Though, though, I think the one that I would have liked to hang out the most with is John Circa79 or 80.
36:15
Jennie Wood: Mmm… I would love to hang out with Ringo today.
36:20
Tad Eggleston: Well, yeah.
36:22
Tad Eggleston: But, but, but, I mean, Ringo's enough of a caricature sometimes that I don't know… I don't know how the hanging out would be.
36:30
Tad Eggleston: That's okay. Does that make sense?
36:32
Jennie Wood: Yes, absolutely.
36:33
Tad Eggleston: I don't… the experience would be fine, but, like, but, like, just… like, if I was actually able to hang out, if I was able to, like, kick back at the apartment, drink coffee, and talk about…
36:46
Tad Eggleston: TV, or the books that we read, or whatnot, I think John circa 79 or 80 is the one that I would get along the most with. Because I think he'd… I think he'd shed most of his ego by then.
37:00
Tad Eggleston: And was focusing on trying to be a dad.
37:06
Tad Eggleston: That's what it feels like.
37:08
Jennie Wood: I can see that.
37:11
Tad Eggleston: But you gotta go in a minute, and I have…
37:14
Jennie Wood: Thank you.
37:14
Tad Eggleston: closing questions, so I gotta, I gotta hit them rapid fire now.
37:18
Jennie Wood: Alright.
37:19
Tad Eggleston: Because I want your answers, because they're great questions. I'm not saying that big-headedly. Lots of people have told me that, and I enjoy getting the answers, even though I ask people these questions all the time. So the first one is, I've been doing this for about 5 years now, and I feel like I've entered the Twilight Zone.
37:37
Tad Eggleston: I feel like… I feel like my life has become so cool, in so many ways, that if you told me when I was 15 that I was gonna live this life, I would have been like, yeah, fuck you.
37:51
Tad Eggleston: Whatever.
37:54
Tad Eggleston: You know, whether it's friendships I've made, experiences I've had, connections I've made,
38:01
Tad Eggleston: And I find that everybody who's been in this business, no matter how long, no matter how…
38:07
Tad Eggleston: big or small they are, has stories of just things that when they think about them, not only do they smile, but they, like, have to pinch themselves to go.
38:16
Tad Eggleston: really? Did I… did I get to do that? Or… or… or did that happen to me? Or… whatever. So what is a surreal experience that you've had in comics?
38:26
Jennie Wood: Well, this is very timely, because he just left Dark Horse, but,
38:31
Jennie Wood: So, I finished… so, obviously, I'm talking about Mike Richardson. I had just finished, the third volume of Flutter, my first, very first graphic novel series, which I published through my good friends of 215 Inc.
38:47
Jennie Wood: And I took Flutter as far as I could with 215 Inc, and I had their blessing, and…
38:53
Jennie Wood: Ever since I started working on Flutter, which again was my first comic, I saw it as a Dark Horse book. It just had a Dark Horse feel to it.
39:04
Jennie Wood: And it wasn't my dream.
39:06
Jennie Wood: And while working on the three versions of Flutter.
39:10
Jennie Wood: or the three volumes of Flutter, Dark Horse Entertainment optioned it for film and TV, but explained to me that
39:20
Jennie Wood: Dark Horse Entertainment and Dark Horse Comics were two very different things. Like, separation of church and state. So if I wanted Dark Horse to publish it, I needed to go through Dark Horse Comics.
39:31
Jennie Wood: And,
39:34
Jennie Wood: I finished Volume 3, was just having a really good day, feeling very good about things, and I just reached out directly to Mike Richardson, who I had met along the way over the course of the 10 years of working on these 3 volumes of Flutter from the very beginning.
39:50
Jennie Wood: To the very last page. It's a sprawling 300-page…
39:56
Jennie Wood: Opus, right? And I reached out to him via email, and he said, yes, I… I, we, Dark Horse, would love to publish it. And they published the collection of Flutter, and that was a dream come true.
40:10
Jennie Wood: It was something that I made happen. It's something that I had the audacity to ask, it's something that I went on my gut feeling.
40:18
Jennie Wood: And I got to work with and get a yes from this absolute legend of indie comics. And I think…
40:28
Jennie Wood: Here I am telling you the story right after he has left Dark Horse, and it is a tribute to him. I've met so many amazing people in comics.
40:40
Jennie Wood: We could be here for hours talking about.
40:42
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
40:43
Jennie Wood: And he is on that list, and he helped make one of my dreams come true.
40:48
Tad Eggleston: Very, very cool.
40:50
Tad Eggleston: Now the question that I always ask you, tell me something you love, preferably a comic, but we don't really have rules, preferably storytelling, but again with the rules, but something that you love.
41:00
Tad Eggleston: That not enough people around you have experienced, and you'd really like them too, so you have more people to talk about it with.
41:07
Jennie Wood: This is not a comic this time, but it is a book, and it is going to be made into a movie, and it is the sequel to the book in the movie Election. It is called Tracy Flick Can't Win.
41:22
Jennie Wood: And it is… so, one of my all-time favorite fictional characters is Tracy Flick, because I've actually always viewed her as a hero, not a villain.
41:31
Jennie Wood: In the book election, in the movie, played by Reese Witherspoon, and I think…
41:35
Jennie Wood: Here we are on the other side of Me Too, even though so much still needs to be reckoned with with that.
41:42
Jennie Wood: Tracy is…
41:44
Jennie Wood: I think more and more people are seeing Tracy Flick as the hero, and Tracy Flick can't win…
41:50
Jennie Wood: This sequel, this book.
41:53
Jennie Wood: that's the sequel to Election, is showing her in that light, and she's in middle age.
41:58
Jennie Wood: I don't want to give away any spoilers as to what she's up to, but, it just addresses all that, like, how she was vilified, you know, we just… I just mentioned… we were talking about Yoko Ono and Courtney Love, Tracy Flick was another female, although she's fictional, who was vilified, and this, this, brings her full circle.
42:18
Jennie Wood: And it's a book that I want people to read. It was released, I think, in 2023.
42:24
Jennie Wood: But I just recently read it, I think it was under the radar for a lot of people, and I want people to read it, and then when the film comes out, we can see it, and just talk about…
42:37
Jennie Wood: Why this character was vilified when that movie came out, and.
42:42
Tad Eggleston: I mean, you've made me decide that I… and I've never read the original book, and so now I want to read both the original book and
42:51
Tad Eggleston: And this book, and go back and watch… rewatch the movie for a long time, because…
42:57
Tad Eggleston: I… I never really thought of… I never really thought of… Tracy is the villain?
43:08
Jennie Wood: See, you didn't think of Yoko as the villain.
43:10
Tad Eggleston: No, no, but… but I also didn't particularly like her. I didn't necessarily think of her as the hero, either. And Matthew McC… Matthew Broderick's character went so far off the rails.
43:25
Jennie Wood: Right.
43:26
Tad Eggleston: that… and I love Matthew so much, it became very hard for me to watch the movie.
43:32
Jennie Wood: Right.
43:33
Tad Eggleston: So I'm gonna have to… I'm gonna have to go watch the movie again first.
43:37
Jennie Wood: I think that's part of this author's… one of the genius of the author is, you know, all the characters are flawed, none of them are extremely likable, except for maybe Tammy in Election, the surly teenager,
43:51
Jennie Wood: But even Little Children, his novel that also became a movie with Kate Winslet, like, none of the characters are really likable, but you still care about what happens, which I think is the magic, if you can… if you can do that, because
44:06
Jennie Wood: You know, to create extremely flawed characters, layered characters that people still…
44:13
Jennie Wood: care, you don't have to like them, but you care about them. That's… that's, the secret sauce.
44:19
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it is possible to go so far in…
44:23
Tad Eggleston: in not liking characters that… that… I mean, everybody loved American Beauty.
44:30
Jennie Wood: That movie does not age well.
44:32
Tad Eggleston: And even without the aging, and even without the spacey and whatnot, I didn't like it at the time, because I'm like…
44:39
Tad Eggleston: They're all assholes. They deserve.
44:42
Jennie Wood: Yeah.
44:42
Tad Eggleston: why the fuck am I watching this?
44:45
Jennie Wood: Well, and it's never meant.
44:46
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I guess…
44:47
Jennie Wood: Who's…
44:48
Tad Eggleston: I'm gonna quickly answer my own question, because I guess the difference is, I disliked all of them. It wasn't that I didn't like any of them. I disliked all of them.
45:02
Jennie Wood: I can't imagine why. No, I hear you. You know, that's the magic of Tony Soprano and Walter White. You…
45:11
Jennie Wood: Care about what happens to them. You like them even though they're doing things that you don't like, or that you're not supposed to like.
45:19
Jennie Wood: And that, that's the magic.
45:22
Jennie Wood: And…
45:22
Tad Eggleston: And they're not alone in terms of likability in the show, you know? Right. I mean, even if you decide that you don't like Tony, it's easy to like his therapist, or his daughter, or his wife, or…
45:34
Jennie Wood: Yeah.
45:35
Tad Eggleston: There's so many characters that… None of… none of those shows have zero characters that you…
45:43
Jennie Wood: Right.
45:45
Tad Eggleston: And again, I think this is one of those places where it's important to note the difference. Like, there's a difference between not liking any of them and actively disliking.
45:55
Jennie Wood: That is so true.
45:56
Tad Eggleston: I think as society, we forget this sometimes, that there… it's not… it's not binary. Like, things that you…
46:04
Tad Eggleston: don't like doesn't mean you dislike. It might mean you don't care.
46:09
Jennie Wood: Right.
46:11
Tad Eggleston: Don't care is…
46:13
Jennie Wood: Yes.
46:13
Tad Eggleston: Better than dislike.
46:17
Tad Eggleston: In terms of, like, your likelihood.
46:19
Jennie Wood: LinkedIn.
46:19
Tad Eggleston: To be willing to engage.
46:22
Jennie Wood: That is true.
46:24
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I guess some people hate watch, but I've never gotten that either. There's so much great… Media.
46:31
Tad Eggleston: Whether it's books, comics, poetry, music… Why would you hate-watch something?
46:38
Jennie Wood: Right, and life is short. Yeah, I…
46:40
Tad Eggleston: What do you get… what do you get out of watching something that you don't like?
46:47
Jennie Wood: Transference, maybe?
46:49
Tad Eggleston: Maybe.
46:50
Jennie Wood: I don't know.
46:53
Jennie Wood: So Tracy Flick can't win, that's my.
46:56
Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, you sold me.
46:58
Jennie Wood: If we talk, I'll have a comic for you.
47:00
Tad Eggleston: You know, I… I… I…
47:03
Tad Eggleston: I always ask for the comics, because we're a comics podcast, and because… because, I mean, that's kind of my eco thing, because I'm… I'm wide enough read in comics that, like, it's always interesting to see if somebody's gonna bring up something that I go, oh yeah, I love that, or something that I go.
47:21
Tad Eggleston: I don't actually know what that is.
47:24
Tad Eggleston: like…
47:27
Tad Eggleston: But, like, I'm not near… I mean, I'm pretty… I guess I'm well-read and well-versed in movies compared to the general public, but not really compared to people who…
47:39
Tad Eggleston: have been up on literature over the last 20 years, or people who are hardcore movie people, that sort of thing. So, like, when somebody brings up a book or a movie or whatnot, it's way more likely that I haven't read or seen it. So then it becomes, do they wind up selling it to me in a way that makes me go.
47:58
Tad Eggleston: Oh, I have to go read this.
48:00
Tad Eggleston: And I've actually… I've had a lot more luck in terms of discovering the things that I love that I didn't know about before, when people wind up telling me movies or books.
48:12
Tad Eggleston: than with comics, because half the time with comics, they tell me stuff that I already love.
48:17
Jennie Wood: Right, yeah.
48:19
Tad Eggleston: I know. Yeah. Which is.
48:21
Jennie Wood: It's still cool.
48:21
Tad Eggleston: because… because I'm… I'm the host, not the listener. It's supposed to be… supposed to be for other people. Hi, Mom. Hi, Adam. Hi, Britt. Hi, John.
48:30
Tad Eggleston: There's probably at least a couple other people.
48:34
Tad Eggleston: There used to be Phil, but he's a host now, so I don't know how much he listens anymore.
48:41
Jennie Wood: Tell me how that happens.
48:43
Tad Eggleston: You have to go, so I'm gonna say…
48:44
Jennie Wood: Ew, and I…
48:45
Tad Eggleston: Jenny would…
48:47
Jennie Wood: Yo.
48:47
Tad Eggleston: For Jenny the Wood, the book is I Didn't Ask For This. It is in stores on April 28th for Maverick Mad Cave. I think, actually…
49:01
Tad Eggleston: No, I think we're just past final order cutoff, but still, still tell your comic shop if you want it. Final order cutoff's not quite as important on graphic novels, because, you know.
49:10
Tad Eggleston: If nothing else, Barnes & Noble will have it.
49:13
Tad Eggleston: And they also tend to do a different…
49:17
Tad Eggleston: different level of overprint than they do on single issues. But yeah, I didn't ask for this as the name of the book. It is fabulous. It's always great to talk to you, Jenny, and we will see you after the next page.