four guys in the cop here's four guys who can't get enough of power girl is ready for rusty tap and no welcome everyone this is four guys in the comic the fantastic four of us are back featuring tap is the thing rusty as re-ritchers no say invisible woman now we'll give nova i don't know we can play uh um i'll be sure i'll i'll go to doom so that's the fantastic three and doom oh the terrific three the terrific three plus doom will do his iron man now so who knows what this steams gold exactly no dude dude dude dude on the good side now oh my goodness so much stuff going on this last week it's just amazing lot of uh a lot of controversy yeah lots of controversy yeah blowing over from last week lots of announcements being made i don't know but you guys think the biggest announcement that got me all excited got my panties in a bunch was uh invincible movie oh yes i'm sure you were super stoked on that when i read the headline for it i was just sitting there like okay red is probably at home grinning from like ear to ear here's the thing though it's gonna be adapted or whatever by seth rogan and i think it's adam goldberg now they did the preacher amc series they adapted that one as well while i really enjoy the preacher series it is nothing like the comic it's very like it has like the same characters and things but it's not following any story from the comic it's sort of a mix match of whatever throwing it with some original stuff so i have a feeling that don't get high it's too i have a feeling invincible is gonna be the same way where it's gonna be like its own take it's not going to be i'm expecting a similar background-ish type of story but all the main story i expect to be something outside the comments for the most part all right who do you want to play mark grayson me no thought i already know red school as mark gracest rusty as battle beast oh it doesn't battle beast better than the story the battle beast better be in the movie i know i know okay who who who here's gonna be on the man oh man get the guy who um i always forget his name you guys keep talking you type what are you talking about our one or one idalian yeah the what is his name allen allen allen allen allen allen the rock the rock should play allen that'd be fun i can see that alan's like my favorite character oh i love allen allen allen and great cgi and voice doe over well you have cgi the head and whatnot i think but like the rock would be like the perfect alan he's got the grandiose he's got like the bill he's got everything just he's got the move all eyebrow yeah exactly the rock is allen i i've thought that since day one it won't It won't happen because he's doing Shazam, but, or Black Adam, but... He can happen. Right? He's at this indie work, right?
Yeah, sure. Yeah, and Vince, well, I'm looking forward to it. I don't have expectation of being like the comic I could discuss, but I still think it's going to be enjoyable and hopefully bring a whole culture into the world of Invincible and get people to start reading it. Yeah.
And that's why a lot more people read it minus Rusty than we realize. I think a lot of people read Invincible. I think Rusty's actually... You have to think about it.
It wouldn't go that long and last this long without it, you know, having some kind of oil readership. That is true. Biggest things out of image have all been Kirkman stuff, Invincible, Walking Dead, Outcast. See a trend going on here.
That reminds me, I still need to watch Outcast on Cinemax. I saw the first episode when I premiered on HBO and I haven't seen any of the other episodes. Do me a favor, read it first before you watch it, please. Yeah?
Yes. All right. It's on my list of reads. I just...
I saw it on my movie box the other day and I was like, oh, I still need to watch that. I'm going to tell you, once you pick it up, you can be like, I can't put it down, I can't put it down. It hooks the Align and Sinker. I think my wife would watch Outcast too.
I think she likes Legion. She likes Legion. She loves Legion. I think it's sort of out there enough and not comic bookie that she would dig it.
See, that was the thing. I somehow got Reagan to watch Legion with me and she loved it. Yeah. It's different.
Like a significant other that is if you've got comic book stuff on TV, try Legion. Preacher. Yeah, we're talking Invincible. I know, Nova and I were talking a little bit ago.
Skybound has Invincible figures that you can get. Yup. Amazing. Cool action figures.
They are so cool. Yeah, it's just a Mark Grayson, right, that's available. Yeah, there's Mark Grayson. I have him in his regular costume and they have the bloody version.
There's also an Adam Eve. I don't know if it's an action figure as well. It might be a statue, but it's by Diamond Select. Yeah, the Adam Eve one, I actually think that was a San Diego or a New York Comic Con exclusive of Memory Source, correctly.
Maybe. Came across as Invincible ones and I was looking for a Lioncat statue, which is also too much money that I'm willing to pay that much for it, but it looks really cool. That's cool. But they haven't had a cobalt, a bunch of other stuff on there.
I had a Nigan PPCD shirt that I just, I was like, I can see me wearing that. It was at my local shop and I saw they had three loose seals. The $40 loose seals? Geez, guys.
This is crazy. I can put it together for half the cost. Give me a bath. I can find a cat in the back to give it some authenticity to it.
Oh boy. Oh man. Yes. What are some of the other big things that you guys have got really hopped about this week?
I mean, there's been a few things. I think really I've just been following all the crazy stuff that Marvel's been kind of dealing with. And just remember guys, powerful women comics, it's not the problem. No, it's the readers.
That's where the problem. That's our fault. And now the readers are the retailers. It's the retailers.
It's their fault for not pushing Marvel's books for them. Well, did you see the newest thing about the X-Men gold with the artist from Indonesia? Like he was putting different religious and political things in the background. He's got like, Karan scriptures in there and there's like panels of like Nightwing, not that she's not Nightwing.
Nightcrawler who's like a Catholic priest now or something and he's swinging a bat in the bat. You can see it like, Kitty's sitting in the background. It's like the bats hitting her face. Just crazy stuff.
There's so many like people have deconstructed that issue and there's so much bad stuff. I mean, they've just got to let that. They've just got to let them go at this point. Some of those gold variants, holy cow, they've gone up in price.
It's hilarious how like they're recoloring Jim Lee pencils and inks and it's like the most expensive variant you could buy right now. It's just it's bizarre to me. I know it's like a rare printing, but it's like this is crazy that people actually, I don't know. It's $1600 for one of those things.
Come on. Just a recolored artwork. It's a little bizarre to me. It is.
Well, you know, I think that's just everyone showing that they really, really want the old days of X-Men back. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. And it is the old days.
The storyline is basically still. Humanity hates us. It's been like 50 years. Let's do it something different.
Let's have the X-Men be accepted by people for once. Come on. It'll be cool. It'll be fun.
Turn around. Now the X-Men don't accept people. Yeah. Yeah.
I'm going to come back and go, why did it take this long for y'all to accept this? It's too late now. We're over it. You're all dead.
Yeah, I read Royals number one this week as well and they've got, I doubt any of you guys have read it. I don't know read the two. I know where it's number one. So it's like we just had this whole Thor secret.
Now Marvel Boy came to the humans with a secret for them and they're where they come from and he's not going to tell them the secret. So that's what that series is all about now. And I guess I'll spoil it. I mean, Medusa's dying apparently.
That's a big reveal. That's an everybody nowadays. Yeah, her hair's falling out. She's like, guys, I'm dying.
That's all right. She'll be there falling out of the indication. She'll be there. She'll be there.
Oh, I should be there again. Oh, for sure. It always happens that way. Maybe she'll team up with Thanos and they'll figure out a way to live together.
Yeah. Thanos does love himself with Baldhead, doesn't he? Yup. Oh, Scrum Dome.
So you guys getting revved up for a secret empire? Nope. Nope. I'm not going to happen with it, right?
After a secret. Okay, no. After a secret empire is over, Marvel announced that they're not going to do a big event for 18 months. Oh, I didn't hear that.
Yeah. No, I didn't know that. 18 whole months. I said they'll do the little mini events.
Like X-Men will have their own thing, you know, or maybe the Avengers will have their own thing, but they're going to be like crossovers, I guess. Well, 18 months is a good time span. Maybe I'll start reading Marvel then. Well, I keep saying maybe I'll start reading some Marvel.
We all know I do. There's some books that I do read. And that's because they don't have the crossover events. They're like, they're single standalone books.
They don't have those events. And that's why I like them. And for those of you out there that do read Marvel and also redeem those digital codes, Secret Empire is having a special bonus for the insider points. And so we know there's going to be nine titles for the main issue of Secret Empire.
And when you redeem those codes, you're going to be able to pick up a thousand bonus points per code. And if you redeem all nine, they'll give you an additional 10,000 bonus points, which is pretty cool considering if you want to save up those bonus points and hit that 750,000 mark to be drawn into a Marvel comic book. You literally have to buy everything for 12 months. Be on log in daily and do every little thing just so you can have a hope to hit that number.
That's crazy. Well, the good news is Marvel is bringing back their digital copies. That was also been recently announced. They heard that fans were pissed.
And so they were like, how do we gain them back? Because Marvel's PR department hasn't had the best track record the last couple of weeks. And I think they're trying to save her some stuff right now. They're trying to, yeah, they've seen how it works out.
There's been a lot of controversy in the world of Marvel. DC's got to be grinning ear to ear right now. Laughing, laughing, laughing. This whole, we're not going to do events for 18 months.
I don't believe it. It's the same way DC said all of our books are going to be $2.99 with rebirth and there's already $3.99 books. So it's sort of like, they're going to say these things. It's sort of like whoever's running for president's going to make all these promises and stuff.
What actually happens is we'll have to wait and see if you look at Marvel's sales, their events give them so much money. There's no way they're going to stop for 18 months. I don't buy it. I don't.
I'll be shocked. What I'm hoping is we're going to get the focus back on the stories again, right? Yes. Everyone wants what you hear every month, right?
I hope. That's implied. That should be implied. Yeah.
Captain American and Hydra are pretty big these days. Nick Spencer's working on it. So I don't know. I'm actually going to get high hopes, which is sad to say because I always get disappointed with events.
But I figured this event would be like right up your alley. I mean, when was the last time that Hydra got this much attention? They haven't. You know, it's just the last thing that I enjoyed reading really was, oh my God, what the heck was it?
But the watcher was a theory of original sin. That was the last event that actually semi enjoyed. Yeah. You know, that one was a good one.
I'm surprised though. I mean, I know it's not necessarily the Nick Fury that you like and you know you collected and grew up with and stuff. But I'm surprised you're not all over this new Nick Fury title. Yeah, it's I got to I know it has a marble hitter on it.
Yeah. Well, you should try it. I mean, you might be surprised. You never know.
You know, there is an issue that came out from Marvel last week and it was a thunderbolt. The new thunderbolt issue. And the whole basis was Kobe sent Bucky back to the 1940s and the whole issue was drawn out and like Bucky was like old Bucky like young Bucky and then cap and it was kind of a rewriting history kind of issue, I guess. But the whole thing was just set in the 1940s during wartime and everything.
It seemed really cool like a throwback issue that you actually sounds like it would be when I enjoyed it since I really enjoyed my wartime comics. Yeah. And it's being a marble also. They announced that they're putting out their Star Wars collection and a galaxy size huge slip case thing.
I forget how many books are inside of it. It looks awesome to tell you the truth, but it's pricey. I don't remember what the price was. But something I think you said it was.
Yeah. Ooh, that's a lot too much. Yeah. But it's pretty.
Yeah, it looks good. Oh, so what else? We can tap anything that excited you this week in the world of comics? Yeah.
This is all older stuff though. It's nothing like new issues or anything like that. But I've been so last week I finished off six gun. Well, the deluxe is a little more issues to go like 16 issues to go, but I'm kind of waiting for the hard covers on that one.
But so this week I've jumped over to scalped because I have the deluxe edition of those and so I've been reading those about halfway through the second volume of scalped and it really, really is picking up. And so it is an older title. So I'm sure a lot of people have already read it, but if you haven't, are you even sitting on the fence on the deluxe editions? By all means get them and read them.
It's absolutely amazing. Jason Aaron, Arm Guere, it's phenomenal stuff, man. It's kind of a little bit of a slow start for me and I wasn't quite sure. I'm like, and then but just keep going.
It really, really, really, really picks up and becomes really, really amazing. And then also I've been bouncing back and forth between scalped and then the original like 92 to 96 run of Madman by Mr. Michael Red. So I've been reading a lot of Madman lately as well.
And I remember reading some as a kid and kind of enjoying it, but not really getting it because now reading it now, I don't think that was really meant for younger. I think I was like around 12, 13 at the time. I don't think that those kind of books was really meant for me at that age. So but reading them now, oh my god, they're so good.
I love it. Like there's like all these like inside jokes, but there's all these jokes about Madman fighting street beatnicks and things like that. When I was a kid, I was kind of like, eh, whatever. Like street beatnicks.
Okay. And like now that I'm older, I find it more humorous. It's great. Mike and Laura already on art and coloring and stuff is phenomenal.
I was telling Nova too that the thing I love about Madman that I appreciate now is he kind of talks like he's from the 50s like that. Gee golly, gosh, like stuff like that. It's so epic. It's like a wholesome super hero.
I don't know. It's just so fricking good. And so I've been going to town on Madman lately. It's funny because Rusty's like, oh, I've been reading Madman as well.
And I'm like, yes. Like, and I know Nova has been reading a lot of the newer, the image run of Madman. A little bit. Yeah.
And it's just, and I will say if you have an opportunity to read the older stuff from like the 90s, read that first and then read the stuff from image in like the mid 2000s because there's a lot of things that happen in the beginning books that they mention and the image. And you don't have to read it. It's not like a necessity, but it's kind of a really cool like, oh my god, they went back to it. It's like a cool like nod to the past.
And so it's, yeah. And so I've decided I want to make that a binding project at some point in my life, get the 16 trade paperbacks of everything Madman and then bind them into three separate hard covers. I did the math. It'd be three hard covers.
Oh, wow. I priced it all out and everything just to be like just out of curiosity. It's not horrible. But I'm going to say my binding project this week is taking some leaps and bounds.
Yeah, I saw you rip up some comics. Yeah. I've got 61 new pages of a hostess advertisements. So are you done ripping apart comics yet?
Or are you still on like a IRA? I'm still around 200 more. Oh gosh. And what's funny is, you know, I have a list of the ones that I've found throughout time, but a couple of years worth of just, oh, okay, here's a pic of me throwing in this file with this file.
So I actually took the time in Excel spreadsheet, put everything in there. Thought I had everything. You know, I thought I had 253 all of them that existed this week. I'm telling you I found 16 that weren't on my list.
Really? Yeah, I was like, wow. Holy cow. It was more than you thought.
Yeah. And one actually a penguin one that I didn't know existed either. So I was like, oh, cool. Penguin like the Batman penguin?
Yes. Oh, wow. Yeah, give me my hostess. Yeah.
Basically. What I was going to say, have you had to rip up like anything that you were like kind of cringy about ripping up? Yes, there was a God. What was it here?
You'll probably cringe a little bit to give me one second. Everyone that's listening prepare yourself, right? Let's see. Okay.
There's a one here at Justice League of America, number 178. X-Men volume one, number one. What? No, where's that cringe?
That was hard for me. Uh, bear with me. I'm sorry. Oh, God.
You're building the inside. I know that's what I'm doing. Fung through it. And of course I can't find it off the top of my head.
It was a green lantern. The green lantern core, number one. For one year. Um, 78.
I think it was. Oh, buddy. Yeah, but I'm telling you though, it was it was a bad, bad shape, really bad shape. So are you exacto, knifing these ads out of the comic?
Is that what you're doing? No, actually I'm taking the staples out removing. I'm putting it into a bag and board and then on the other side of the bag and board I put in the cover. Uh, the ad itself, I'm just basically folding it in half nice and neatly.
Then when it comes time to talk to the guy for binding, does he want to do the cutting or should I do the cutting beforehand? I would talk to him. He does. He'll do it like he's doing all my prep work.
I'm not doing anything. So yeah, so I'm not doing a damn thing. He's doing everything. But if I cut it, I'm going to go out and I'll buy a nice actual cutting professional cutting board, make sure it's all done.
Very nice and pretty. So are you going to, when you go to buying the ads, are you going to put the covers in with them to it? No. So you're going to have like your hostess, right?
But then you're like, open it up and then you're going to cover like, this is the issue that this hostess ad came out of. Like that could be kind of cool. Well, you have to understand some of those issues that I have to get. For instance, like if I want to host this ad from featuring Sad Sack, I have to pull out Harvey Comics from the late 70s that can be rather pricey, even some of those Archie ones.
So I'm finding covers that are just basically destroyed to make the issue worth 25 cents to a dollar. And typically the pages themselves are in great shape. It's just those covers. So I can get issues with beat up covers really cheap.
That makes sense. Yeah. I'm not going to go about it. But speaking of covers and issues, I read one issue I have to put out there from image this week.
And I think somebody else here read it, black cloud. I have not read it yet. It is on my replay. No, I haven't.
I haven't. A letdown. Well, Jason, the tower. Oh, my gosh.
It's a really interesting issue. I can't wait to dig into the second one. It's already sold out, gone into second printing, you know, within the same week. And basically, you know, without spoiling too much, it's kind of like this homeless gal is able to take people and put them into a psychedelic alternate dimension type of thing.
Best way to play it. And there's still so much more to learn about it because it's only the first issue. So I have a feeling it's going to end up being really, really good. Yeah, it's gotten rave reviews.
It is on my list. I haven't even read any rebirth this week, to be honest with you. Like we got our advanced copies three days ago, and I still haven't read any of them. I've only been reading scalp and madman, and that is it.
I have read nothing else. Well, that's what it's like. I read it at the advanced copy we got on Monday and I'm like, okay, you know what, I've got to go pick this up. So Wednesday I went out and luckily I was able to pick one up and I was like, okay, I'm glad I got it.
Yeah. I'm going to go ahead and read it in the next couple of days. Yeah. I need to catch up on a lock and key again.
Yeah. And then read any this week last week. No, I didn't read any this past week. I was literally reading a bunch of madman.
And then I also read Thunderbolts, some tales from the cribs, and I read an X-Men issue. Right. That's because you have that. 70 something.
That's because you have that five issue per week quota, right? Yeah. Totally. I mean, I even got like 4550 issues read this week.
Only. I don't know. Y'all are machines. I finally finished my Star Wars stuff.
The last, I swear to God, I saved the best for last. And that was the new series, Doctor Alpha. Alpha. I'm telling you, holy cow, that's my new favorite Star Wars.
Right there. Hands down. She is kick ass. Imagine Han Solo mixed with Indiana Jones as a bad guy with females.
There's some Ford basically. Yeah, kind of like. I was going to say, you know, it's funny last week that you brought her up on the show. I believe and you're like, I don't know.
We'll see what happens. And now this week you're like, yeah. It was good. I was like, it's only five issues.
I was like, oh my God, I need more. No. She hasn't popped up in a movie yet, right? Not yet.
Hoping fingers crossed. Yeah, really. Speaking of, I finally, this week, finally saw the Star Wars Rogue One. Geez.
That was a long, that took a while. You got three kids. I'm super super stoked. Until you read Invincible, Rusty.
You can't believe whatever you judge someone. Whatever you judge someone for taking a long time, I just, where do you, how do you, how dare you? I've been on this podcast for over a year now and the whole Rusty Reads Invincible thing started before I joined the podcast. Yeah.
It's been a while, a couple of a year. What is like two years now? Almost. Almost two years.
So the movie was awesome. I'm just, and I regret I didn't see in the theater because I've seen every Star Wars movie, all six of them in the theater and I miss, or seven of them now, I guess, I miss this one. That is so good. K-2, that's my favorite droid.
I had to watch the last five minutes twice. It was the first time I was jumping up and down and screaming my head off of, you know, that Darth Vader's in the end. Holy smokes. I was just going to believe it.
Comes out of nowhere, right? I know it was the guy with the air. He's the lightsaber and slash. I was just like, did you see Carrie Fisher?
I'm like, what? Throws the lightsaber? And it's like, boom. Yeah.
It's like, boom. FMR at my other pot. We're doing, you see, everybody knows how May 4th is you know, Star Wars May the fourth, May the fourth be with you. Well, at the end of all of our podcast, we always end it with May the forks be with you.
And so we are declaring, this year May 4th FMR day, and it's on a Thursday, which is there on a project. And we're actually going to be doing reviews of Rogue One, and then we wanted to do like a crap review too, but it had to be Star Wars related. So we dug deep and decided, we're going to do the Star Wars Christmas special. Yeah.
Nice. I'm sure of it. We were going to do Return of the Jedi or because Adam really wanted to see Ewoks and something, So we discussed the ewoks movie because I don't really dig the ewoks, but we went with the the the horrible the one that knows Star Wars Fan will ever claim as their own the Star Wars Christmas special So it'll be a fun. It'll be a fun time may for I just don't acknowledge.
Okay, didn't Boba fat pop up in the Star Wars Christmas special Was it that? Yeah, I don't remember it's been a long time since I've seen the Star Wars Christmas special It's I remember like there's like two pocketers ewoks. There's I don't know It's been a long time so I'm actually kind of looking forward to watching it again It's been so many years since I've seen it well if he likes ewoks tell him to read the Star Wars shattered Empire for issue of mini Yeah, yeah, there's a little bit of ewoks. I keep trying to get those guys to read comics.
They're not really into it They're not big comic guys Josh was growing up. I will say he was growing up and so Adam kind of was a little bit growing up But uh yeah not anymore For shame right I know Things can change but anyway, you know, you know talking about selling out of comics and diversity and stuff with the Marvel thing I can't get over it. I'm still stuck. You know, okay.
None of y'all have read America, right? No, no issue one and two It's just gone now like issue two sold out same day. It was crazy. So I'm wondering here now, you know I told you right here on that though.
Yeah, we're gonna see by issue five But we're starting to see kind of like a change in Marvel I guess you could say we're not gonna get the you know the long period of just event after event We're getting Scarlet spider back in a whole like revamp Like the costume no, no, it's got a hood no like Yeah, it's got a hood. Why the hell does he have a hood spider green has a hood man? Don't you know hoods are everybody everybody's got hoodies and hoods? No, no sense.
No those hoods would never stay on their heads Well Make a team called the hood and it just have just have it's a mark bagley on art, isn't it? Yes, it looks cool. Yeah, I said that the I really dug the art however I didn't like the character design and there was there was a spidey's foot looked really weird and hamish and And Garland spiders foot looked like it was three feet long like there was a couple badly drawn feet But aside from the badly drawn feet. No, it looked awesome.
I really really dug the artwork a lot I mean, that's kind of cool. They're a little on edge to a life-ill into it. You know, it's okay. Maybe that's what it was I don't know they're like how can we make this super identifiable with the 90s crowd?
Let's mess up the food any powder some of them Well, and let's be honest It could have been the colorist because there's times where we've like made fun of an artist And we actually go and find out if you look at the pencils like what the what the artist had turned his pencils into the colorist And then what the colorist did and the final result are oftentimes two completely different things So it very well could have been the colorist issue not necessarily the artist issue. So maybe even the anchor missing a line or something, you know Yeah, maybe yeah, it's possible. It's possible But it's interesting because like I said, we're getting that and then we're getting the whole I guess they revealed that the Wolverine Hulk thing is gonna be a hydroproject. So not only are we gonna have you know Captain America has the bad guy But we also have a hydropole and what was dead kind of it's a show a new Hulk.
Oh, we awesome. Okay. Yeah rusty my eight-year-old son asked me this week Why there are so many different hulks and why there's different Captain America's and why there's different Wolverines and stuff like that. I say because Marvel can't come up with anything original anymore Like that's the only answer I can give him an eight-year-old is questioning why they're not coming up with just brand new characters Like why they're re-re-invisioning I guess you could say they're classic characters even my son is confused by that Actually, my daughter brought that up and on to goes like why is that why is there's two different spider-man's and why is it?
You know space is the exact same thing. I'm just like honey read image I don't know if I remember the weird alternate stuff though. I don't know I kind of think it was weird, you know in some ways I kind of wish that whenever the ultimate universe ended it just like ended because I think a product a byproduct of you know With secret Wars is it pushed all that stuff into one universe and now we have one million versions of everybody just running around I mean it was big enough to where we had spider verse and now we're gonna have venom verse so it's just I gotta say I can't like Spider verse was amazing. I loved spider verse.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it But see that was kind of like a self-contained cross- You know what I mean? That was only involved in the spider books like it didn't cross over in the X-Men or Captain America or anything else That was sort of sick. It was contained within the spider books. I don't mind those types of crossovers It's the huge ones that you have to buy Every X-Men issue every X-Force issue every cat and they all get or else you're not gonna know what the hell's going on?
And then you have a little editor notes about go back and read blah blah blah. It's like great now another comic I have to go read like that's what I don't like here's a thought I love the editor's notes Marvel How about you just kill everybody off start whole new fresh with all new characters? What no, I like the classics just bring back the original one the classics go pick up a back issue Bring back the originals like have Steve Rogers be Captain America Like you don't it's like the same thing with like Batman where people are like No Batman supposed to be 70 something 90 something years old at this point Why isn't he that old in the comics who cares you don't need him to be you don't have to explain that stuff Let Steve Rogers remain young you don't have to explain it bet man is still Bruce Wayne and he's kicking ass like you don't have to Explain why they don't age it's comic books people you don't have to explain that just accept it for what it is if you're questioning why your favorite comic book character Is not aging look at the Simpsons. Okay, Maggie's been a baby for almost 30 years.
All right, like nobody questions that like just let it be I think I think in terms of new characters Marvel is just sort of handling it wrong there and it comes down to you know You can blame that it is as much as you want, but maybe not telling a good story No one's gonna care about that character. No one is sure you know, I mean if you look at if you look at something like and again I'm gonna mention DC because I mean they're direct competition. It's a great little pun there as well But they've done I mean they've got they've added diversity to their character lines without getting rid of people They needed they wanted to do green lantern. So they did they've got a Spanish Yeah, just make new ones there and they have their own book now And it's selling and people like it because it they took their time with it They didn't just something say iron man is gone.
We're gonna have doom and this re-re-girl replacing You don't have to do yeah, you can have a new generation of characters being trained Why couldn't re-re-re trained by Ironman would have been amazing it would have added a whole new element to Tony Stark He's got this kid. He needs to you know mentor and teach and he has to deal with his alcohol addiction all this stuff Well doing it could have been amazing it could have been so well. I mean especially makes sense with what's happened with Rody recently, so it's like why not it would have been perfect, but no they just Doesn't make sense to me What they're doing with or isn't too bad. No, I do dig I well on about the female Thor the Jane the Jane Thor I've really read much of that, but the unworthy Thor stuff like the Thor Oden's in Thor No, I like that.
That's good. I'm really excited actually for ultimate Thor I think they just need to handle it a different way get it's all about and they're doing the generations event which is you know Anyway Where it's gonna be doing they're gonna be looking at legacy again, and that's a great thing to do I think that's the best way to go with introducing new characters introducing someone completely brand-new is difficult I can imagine but doing like a legacy character where you have a established character mentoring someone the best way to go about it I don't know how the new notebook is but apparently it's it's rich rider mentoring young Sam Alexander's that should be cool I'm sure it's I've heard it's good The few issues I've read it I didn't like the first issue, but then I read the second third it actually got better I'm not from somebody. It's never really been read Nova, so I'm a huge know fan I own them I'm waiting to for it to stack up a high before I've injury Yeah, I'm enjoying the first one is kind of and but I did enjoy the second and third one And so yeah, it's well written. It's like you said it depends on the writing.
It's very well written I want to bring back the original fantastic for that's what I want and I don't mean the I don't mean the maker read Richard's not the old thing I want the original FF back in my life, okay 26 not never one. Let's just follow it back up 100% on they do it they did it with action and detective yeah, but those were in like that's because of the thousand That's because they're gonna get up there to the number one You gotta think about it this way too like even though of venom isn't like one consecutive thing They're gonna be celebrating the 150th issue next month, you know what I mean? So they could do something like that. Yeah fantastic for makes makes it through 300 issues again depends on the writing I'm all for it.
I mean get what is a human torch that doing with the human is even human after all he broke up with whoever He was like I think I'm in love with one of them What's is so even around anymore? Is she like she didn't read her the original soon reader? Yeah, they're gone. They're just petting in what's his new molecule man They're just feeding him and changing his diaper and all that and getting Franklin to fling dimensions into space I cheers.
Yeah. Well, there you go bring back the original FF You can still leave Franklin to the sideline. I do want to go back at some point in the semi near future and read the old John Byrne Fantastic Four run. I think it was like issue 232 to 294 something like that.
I do bring his back Yeah, well he brings back Phoenix to yeah And he has like she holding the fantastic four replaces thing for a while there apparently it's I've never read those ones Because those came out in the early 80s and obviously I was just a young and I wasn't reading back then but apparently those are really really good Really good run. So yeah, that's what I hear too. Yeah. I don't need to bring back FF.
That's what I say That's what's gonna save Marvel. Yeah, bring it back. It's the rest of your it's Marvel's first family. It's possible Then they bring back one you could bring doom back is like the doom we all know and love not as Iron Man do you know Like something happens and oh god.
Yeah, there's so many things you do it. Oh man. Bring it with clearmont I wish hey, who's on the podcast? He said he would do something all that Maras is reach out to say that was his words Well, you know, it's uh interesting about that Iron Man Doom situation or whatever is come to find out that read that From the book and then dooms mom are both in hell technically and they're like casting up So I'm wondering if we're gonna end up seeing like mofisto or someone.
Well, that's the thing. That's kind of an Old arc. It's a rehash is what that is. Yeah, doom enlisted the help of dr.
Strange I don't remember how long ago this book is a while ago He enlisted to help a dr. Strange to go to hell to bring his mom back Mm-hmm, and so basically they're just rewriting stuff. That's already been done Which is I guess my kind of issue with it because he enlisted it is called dr. Strange I brought it up on the pocket.
I remember the title. It's not the oath it's uh I don't know anyway It's a dr. Strange dr. Doom book and dr.
Doom basically reaches out to strange and listens help to take him to hell basically To try to get back his mom and it's a really good book. Don't give me a lot. I loved it really really really awesome book But that's I feel like that's what they're doing another just rehashing an old storyline with instead of dr. Doom It's oh reads here now like I don't know yeah, but the thing is is that this storyline is supposed to be Spanning they said they think it's gonna be going longer than a year So we'll see what happens I guess because they want it apparently you're talking about a long haul on the series I think you're it sounds like a long time when you break it down to one month.
It's only 12 issues like most It's a little bit of a car well issues. Yeah, who knows if they might remember it like eight out of twelve issues Throughout the way have you guys ever read this a this story called books of doom written by a brew baker? I have started the first issue at one point. So good If you guys want to read some just top notch doom, that's the place to go at brew bake It's it's all about doom.
It's basically his origin story and why he is the way he it's so good It's amazing. It's a brew baker. So I mean that guy leaving Marvel was a huge hit for them looking back now Whatever he touched was gold That is making so much money We got a month left a month until free comic book day. I was thinking about that earlier today.
Yeah driving King's coming to Krypton this year. Mm-hmm. Okay. Who's that guy you brought David Finch?
Is that his name? He does Batman. Yeah, I've met David Finch and Jason fabric at a free comic book day once and there was one year My store had Jeff Lemire and I didn't make it could make it Well, David is actually coming down to one of the local shops here in Denton and is doing a signing thing I for free comic book day and I'm actually they asked Poppner to help cover it and so I'm supposed to go there and be on air talent for that day I'm supposed to try and get an interview with him. So we'll see how that goes.
That dude's great I was just gonna say I dearly regret not getting a sketch from Jason fabric as I Exploded massively shortly thereafter he was doing like detective comics at the time and his artwork was amazing But now he's like he's the cream of the crop I wish I'd gotten a sketch from him back then but for all you Virginia listeners out there the place to be for free comic book day This year go to fantasy escape We'll have the 66 Batman will be all out there You can get pictures in there and I will be there to do a podcast live and you guys can come on over and talk some comics on Well, cool stuff. So fantasy escape is in Virginia Beach Still not as cool as Dean Kane I'm kidding. It's Dean Kane. Ripley's believe it or not.
Yeah At some point go back to Superman lowest in Clark That's rough. Oh, you should get him to you have that like on DVD or anything. Oh You're totally fine to get him to sign it. I'm sure you're gonna pay like he's gonna charge for like 10 or 15 bucks Of course 20 bucks or whatever.
I don't usually when I go through those lines I just shake their hands say nice to meet you and then I keep moving But cool cool. I think we have an interview. Don't we yes it is time? Yeah, just got some planet comic-con.
Yeah, let's break out the bat phone and give it a ring Alright everyone welcome back to brand a new interview this week We have mr. Kirk Kriton from Planet Comic-Con Kansas City Planet Comic-Con where Nova and I will be attending here in in a few weeks And so he's gonna join us and talk about the con and let us know what to expect this year. So Kirk welcome to the show Hey, thanks for having me. It's great to talk to you.
Yes. Yeah, it's a pleasure So what is your role with the with the con and your job title? I guess you could say and then how long have you been doing it? I'm the chief marketing officer of Planet Comic-Con Which sounds like I have one particular like highfalutin job what actually means is I do a jack-of-all trades master of none The show's been around as our 19th year 19th show although we did they did two shows the first year and they skipped a year due to construction on their venue So it works out to be 19 both ways I've been involved with it for nine of those years about half the time And we just had you know like the whole sort of comic-con experience We had a tremendous growth over that period of time, you know 10 times the size of what it was back when I first started volunteering back in 2008 So what would you say is?
The biggest difference from when it started to now like what growth have you seen over that period? Well, it's just I think that what we've really seen is the whole comic book Fantasy geek culture thing has just so much taken over Culture in general and so the popularity of all these things that we love and you know many of us loved a long time ago Suddenly the rest of the world's caught up with us And so what we really see is a tremendous growth of people who are more hardcore fans So there's a bigger number of hardcore fans, but also a wider variety of just people who like pop culture stuff and have an interest in it And are like they're aware of San Diego the show in San Diego. It's got so much media coverage They're like I'd like to go to that You know I worked with a lady who was in her I think probably late 50s at one point just a couple years ago She was thrilled that a couple of years ago We had a Kent McCord from Adam 12 He's an actor that was like got to start back on adventures of Aussie and Harriet in the 50s and stuff like that She was just like that was so cool to her And so this you know, you know, what's gonna bring people in and certainly when we've had Some big name guests that everybody's aware of you know, will Wheaton being on Big Bang Theory It's been a huge factor in just spreading popularity and Big Bang Theory alone The fact that it is such a geek culture focused show and it's been the number one comedy on television for 10 years That's really helped the general public knows what's going on with us And they know that planet comic on here in Kansas City is the region's, you know fan fest, you know, geek Cultural event of the year and they want to be in on it So it the growth has been tremendous Like I said, I mean like 10 times the number of attendees we've grown from being in a essentially a small room at a kind of a Suburban Expo Center, essentially the size of maybe a hotel ballroom to now being in Bartle Hall Which is the largest convention center in Kansas City and we've grown in the time that we've been in Bartle Hall since 2013 The exhibition hall is actually broken into five different sections Initially we were in two of them the next year we went to three of them then four and now we're in all five of the exhibition halls with actual Exhibits and things going on in the hall. So it's just been phenomenal Yeah last year I attended and it was the first year I'd been there and it was incredible I wasn't real sure what to expect especially like a midwestern con I think really when people think midwestern cons they think c2e2 and that's really about it But little do they know, you know, Kansas City planet comic con was it was amazing.
It was I had the time in my life It was absolutely incredible and fabulous massive. How many attendees did you guys have last year? 71,000 attendees Was the final number that we tallied up and announced right after the show So again, it goes to like that ten times growth I mean probably the first show that I was involved with had five or six thousand people there So what uh, how many you guys projecting to have this year? Um, it's it's a little hard to read we'll have at least as many as last year, but I don't have a firm Handle on kind of the growth and my best guess is that we will pretty much equal what we did last year, but we won't know till we do all the math at the end Yeah, no, it's it's an absolutely incredible show.
So if anybody's in like the Kansas City I'm from Omaha, Nebraska So I'm I'm a few hours away, but you know anywhere in the midwest you guys got to go check out the show April 28th through April 30th Um this year friday saturday sunday and you guys actually have some new things going on this year that you didn't have last I think like friday night. I read that you guys are gonna have like some almost like a block party really right right outside of bardle hall That is right. It's called the the party on Barney It's Barney alas plaza, which is kind of the central square of downtown kansas city Right adjacent to the convention center and all of the hotels that surround that area So that's gonna have some live music disc jockey Uh, we're gonna have the uh, the national wrestling league is a new kansas city in st Louis based professional wrestling association They're actually gonna have a reak set up and do a full uh event during that party as well Uh, and so just friday night's gonna be a lot of fun. We've got some other after hours stuff going on as well There's an official planet comic con after party that's arranged by elite comics.
Uh, there is a drinking draw going on Uh, yeah with the alima draft house. Uh, so we just got a tremendous nothing fact Thursday night before the show We've had a got a trivia showdown. So people who are in town a little bit earlier early can uh join up for the trivia showdown thursday night No, you mentioned the wrestling thing. I'm like, maybe I want to go to right Picture of a tap dropping the elbow on nova Um, I'm very excited.
It's gonna be my first con and the the guest list just I can be more excited Yeah, I started running off the guest names to him and i'm like you gotta come down like half joking because he lives in toronto So i'm like half joking like you gotta come down and the guest list alone. He's like dude. I gotta do it I gotta do it. I'm young.
Let's just do it. I'm like, yeah come on down Well, we love to have you so i'm curious who pushed over the break what what guest was the one that was like I've got to be there for that Uh, well, we've talked to quite a few guys here, but Jason air and i've always wanted to meet um, he's written some of my favorite stuff I mean those guys at greg smallwood calling bun Um, um, for you for you Williams a second I can't wait and then there's announcements like found out chris clairmont's coming a few days ago You guys announced it um dandelio just to sort of easement Yeah dandelio just to pick his brain a little bit even though he's uh, you know not the not a creator for us But I mean there's so many people here the list goes on and on Yeah, we've had Oh, yeah, we've actually had quite a few guests that are gonna be there this year that were there also last year Um, that have actually been on our show um and went on they've come on and been interviewed and stuff So it's it's kind of cool to kind of go back and meet all these people again and say hi and and whatnot as well That's great for sure But i'm impressed that it's all comic book people you can tell it's comic book podcasts Into the creators and it's always a challenge for a show It's quite a balanced creators and celebrities and cosplay and uh, you know All of this type of stuff that goes on and it's it's a real focus of our show Uh to try to keep you know All of the elements that make kind of a general pop culture or comic book convention popular and and give them all uh fair do You know, and that's that's the commitment i'm bringing in you know chris clairmont and um, um, Kevin easement and uh storango frank brooner people like that to really say let's let's uh make sure that the comic book fans that are the source of all of this pop culture are well served and are getting what they need I mean how we're jakin new adam's there's just great names great names You can go wrong if you're in that area you need to stop my kids. Um, if you're a comic fan there's just tons of comic legends to meet Uh, no doubt it would be when you'll adam's and storango both in town. There's two of the seminal late sixties guys who brought Um really an advertising agency and our advertising illustration sensibility into comics I really think that they were there they're one of those pivot points where you know They really changed the way especially superhero comics were drawn Uh from from really being a An illustration style that was more influenced obviously by curvy that marvel Uh, but and then also though by more of the milton kenif 1930s or 1940s kind of style of illustration that had been a big influence for a lot of the creators suddenly you know adam's and gem strangled and it was just like people's eyes popped out You know So kind of the same way that you had with um with thott mck farland uh back in his day Where he just like everyone's like oh redefined what people thought about in terms of drawing superheroes What are some of your favorite uh moments over the con over the years like do you have anything like sticks out?
We were just like this was like one of my all-time favorite moments being a part of comic con Yeah, you know we did in 2014 we did a that was a really rough show for me behind the scenes the fans all thought that it ran really well Little do they know but it was there were some real tough moments behind the scenes of just getting that show done and challenges that were going on But we were doing sunday night. We were doing what we called the tectacular and that was most of the cast-a-star trek the next generation On stage along with the william shatner moderating their panel And before that really got going I found myself kind of stepping through the curtain to the backstage area Where it was just me shatner's next generation people and a few other agents and handlers and me, you know And i'm like, okay, this made it worthwhile for the weekend This is kind of cool all this is that that that rocks and so you know a lot of my satisfaction comes from just pulling the show off You know from hammy grade event and having a lot of fun things going on But then you know there those geek out fan moments too that uh, you know I'm not the sort of person who grew up in hollywood or something and was hanging out with actors all the time So you know the celebrity moments sometimes are it's just nice it's nice to interact with them in a professional context So it's not you know I've never been the site that's comfortable going up on as in front of an autograph or getting a photo op or something like that So, uh, it's nice. I always like to have business to conduct when i'm interacting with people anyway because i'm a nerd It's easier than small talk So is there any big names or anything special you like to have for future cons? Oh, you know, I think the the wish list there is infinite and whenever we put out a like we'll put a post on social media It's like who do you want to have at the convention and I mean the people immediately shoot for for the rafters and all of that stuff Um, i'm a dr.
Who fan so when it comes to the celebrity side, I'm always up for for dr. Who guests i'm I like deep cut classic dr. Who guests but those are for our type of show not necessarily the type of people that we book Um, it was very nice to have um I'm gonna sit here and blank on the man's name on the podcast. Um, the guy who plays boba fed him Yeah, anyway, the actor played boba fed back in the in the first trilogy Uh, it was also on classic dr.
Who and I didn't realize that until after we'd had him uh, germany bulk We'd had him at the show the first time and i'd shake in hands with him and then i'm like oh wait a minute He was like guest acted on like Old school doctor who and uh, there's a scene where he uh, with the first doctor William Hartnell He reaches down and as his character, uh, William Hartnell's fallen to the ground He like touches him on the shoulder and i'm like, I shook that hand But I would you know, i'm always excited when we bring in the doctor who, uh, yes, uh from the comic book world Um, i've kind of been in that world I don't have a lot of the celebrity crushes there although i'm always thrilled to to get to interact with People who are role just spectacular at what they do and to be able to hear about what their process is and how they make what they do And um, you know, I really consider great comics to be the ones where I can't see how they did it It looks like magic, uh, and uh, just just to see that no it really was a matter of a writer putting down one word at a time And an artist putting down one line at a time, uh, you know, it's craftsmanship and along with the talent and imagination Yeah, one of the coolest things i've seen on a youtube i haven't been able to experience myself I did uh, david finch and jason fabric red, uh, might one of my local shops for free comic book They once I got to see them sketch but watching some of these guys sketch is unbelievable Yeah, it's just something fascinating to watch especially in the items he sort of just draws all these crazy lines and then it ends up being batman Over because i'm like you can't tell what's going on and each one's so different with their style and the way they do it So i'm excited to see them, you know, work we're climbing in front of me I always thought it's fun when would you get the chance to see an artist kind of instruct a aspiring artist? I were back in the days and this is before planet comic con and earlier cancel city convention, uh, dik jordiano was at the show And he um, it's time he was executive at her dc, but he was still inking some comics and stuff like that Uh, uh, so my brother portfolio up and he's and has had some batman stuff in there and jordiano's like, well, that's you know, it's interesting You know what you need to understand is that batman is all about, uh, angles That's all about straight lines and points and so he's like do you mind if i like he flipped over some piece of paper I'm like, why do i draw this here? And so he sat there and he drew batman with straight lines and all this stuff and he stepped through the whole process of how you How you saw batman and it was just fascinating. Yeah, the other cool experience i've had in a Kerry kalen's a comic book creator who he has a Is done a book in the past for um, called halo and sprocket that was published by slave labor graphics He's currently doing a web series called dirt nap that you can look up online as well terrific guy He's a local can city guy he works for hallmark in their licensing department And so his job is to draw all of their licensed characters when they don't have Artwork of that character doing what they need for the particular card So he has specialized in drawing peanuts characters for example And he demonstrated one time again just kind of on the back of a piece of paper how he can draw charlie brown From all the various eras of the peanuts all the way again look at 1950s look through maybe the 70s look and even the later run when Shults his hand was not a steady and he can do it with like a wobble in the line and stuff You just sit there and it's like wow wow that made it It's magic, you know, it's like oh you can just you know sit there and out comes like a charles shults style drawing from any era Wow, oh peanuts character So what would you say makes this convention stand out compared to others?
Well, I touched on it a little bit before and that's that balance between the various aspects of the comic stuff the celebrity stuff and the cosplay Which I think are the you know three of the major areas there The people who like the costuming stuff one of the things that we definitely do different is our cosplay showcase area Which is a whole area set aside for cosplay and for also costume photography We bring in a lot of set pieces that fans can get up on and take their picture You know in job is throne room or you know a game of thrones set or whatever So there's a whole section of our floor set aside for that sort of element And of course then we've got the the art of sally with all the comic book people in the celebrity row and the vendors vendors Of course another key part of all of that another thing that we do that is different and it's new this year So we call the planet entertainment zone. Yeah, that's really that is really geared towards families and kids and people who want to get in our Things so the planet entertainment zone has a lot of kind of local attractions in there So the amusement park our big amusement park areas worlds of fun Worlds of fun is going to be in with a whole maze set up for people to go through Our local lego land discovery center is going to have lego build competitions going on throughout the the show and we'll have all kinds of lego activities going on We have a local attraction here called science city that's going to be doing presentations And there's also a stage there so there's going to be demos of kind of maker type stuff in terms of cosplay how to Had a craft metal type equipment how to various sorts of cosplay stuff that I don't really know enough about to speak to very effectively But just a lot of stuff puppet theater all kinds of things going on and so we're really trying to make it To continue expand out so there's a that family element that kind of brings in the general audience as well And you guys are gonna have like a virtual reality room or some setup as well, right with the the planet entertainment area Yeah, there's there is a virtual reality setup. I'm gonna be honest I don't know a whole lot about exactly what they're doing there But there are a couple of different I think virtual reality setups going on that are in setup. Yeah, it's gonna be awesome Yeah So you said that your your past your history isn't just with the con that's something that became you know in the last 10 years or so But previous to that, um, you like you said in the 80s and whatnot you had done some comic work yourself Um, yeah, not a whole lot to speak But I did I did do some comics work.
So um, I I wrote for a while for now comics in the late 80s They had a book called die comic cosy that I uh, that was my first professional comic book writing I came on with the fourth issue and and wrote that through its conclusion I think the noteworthy thing about die comic cosy was actually that uh The uh, they previewed as her boy in the first issue and that was like a huge hit at the time and drove the collector's price of the first issue But it was a giant robot comic it probably suffered from the fact that I had never been a fan of nor even really seen giant robot stuff at all Uh, so being you know, hey, it was my first assignment. I was gonna take it and I was gonna write it but uh, yeah I maybe was not the perfect person to be writing that book in in hindsight. I'll I'll say that you know 30 years on Uh, and then I co-created a book that was published by uh, malibu graphics Uh called velvet, uh, which was about a female bounty hunter in the distant future of the year 2019 which does not seem that consistently in the future now Uh, but it was an early uh, girl with a gun book that I kind of we had the idea and had it going kind of before there was a huge girl with a gun craze Unfortunately, they beat us to market. So uh, but now it's a lot of fun.
I did that with a a friend of mine that I'd known since uh, middle school days Very cool. Yeah, and then during that time as well. I published a um Uh, magazine which I called comics career newsletter that I started publishing that late 80s and published it through the early 90s Like 28 issues and it was all about how to break into the comic book business So there were interviews with tik to toronto and tom defalco who was executive editor at marvel at the time Uh, basically editors from all of the major publishers at the time as well as comics creators and a lot of columns and things like that um, and unfortunately Uh kids came along and I kind of it kind of ran its course and then um, then wizard magazine came out and suddenly there was a huge Boom and people publishing stuff and making lots of money money about how to break into the comic book business and uh, I was a I zigged when I should have zagged So it sounds like you kind of grew up loving comics then like comics is it sounds like it's always been a big part of your life Absolutely dive into comics fans since uh About sixth grade was when I really got serious when I learned you could actually collect comics and make sure you had every issue and follow the story lines Uh, I got involved a friend below me a vinchers 141 through 148 which was you know george perez's really first run on the book and a classic era Uh, what steve inglehart writing the book and I just fell in love with it He had started the collection and tracked which issues he had and had his want list and stuff like that I was like I was in so, uh, you know week or so later avengers 149 came out on the new stand and that was my first acquisition as a comic book collector And avengers was always always my book then so I was deep into the avengers Getting all the back issues and really following it, um through Uh, you know through the late 70s and into the early 80s, which is important because that's that's the period right now that the avengers movies are focused on Um, I the first avengers movie I walked out of that and I told my family. I'm like, oh my gosh on my 14th birthday I must have wished really hard because it just hates me And I went home and I was reading up on the movie and they were they were quoting um joss weeden about it And he was citing like, um the avenger story that wrapped up in a marble two and one annual number two It's like part of his inspiration and i'm like, yes, that is the greatest avenger story ever and it turns out that joss weeden and i are about two months apart in age So we were we were right that that middle school age golden age sweet spot together loving the same comic books Very cool.
So what are you reading currently like you have anything I know you're busy with the con do you have time to even read? That's a shameful it's a great question with a shameful answer, which is i'm not really following anything carefully right now Certainly not in the months to month floppies the last thing that I was getting month to month was um It was fables. I followed scalp and followed i had several books i was falling but they kind of came to an end I was following all the doctor who stuff when it was being published by idw but my subscription I just didn't continue over with the new publisher and so what i'm doing now is a little bit more focused on uh trades and things like that So i've i'm into squirrel with that squirrel girl i recently read which i just love that book i've always liked The also not just the superhero stuff but more kind of what we call alternative but it's not really alternative superhero stuff though the alternative stuff uh but um So my friend dawmour uh by derf bakter i don't know if you guys have read it but it's literally Sure, uh you should check it out graphic novel It's a memoir because uh bakter if he was a an alt comic strip artist so i can uh you know All the alternative weekly newspapers and cities and stuff Uh turn he actually went to junior high and high school with jeffrey dama the serial color Uh, and this is the story of dawmour in high school before he started the murders Uh, and it's it's gripping as well done i had interviewed derf for one of my websites I don't know probably 2007 2008 for one of his earlier books punk rock and trailer parks and I had read a digital copy of an early version of my friend dawmour and i was encouraging it's i'm like this is just amazing Uh, and i'm not gonna take credit for that He's heard that from a lot of people but he uh expanded it to the graphic novel I'm a huge fan of that There's a can't-the-city artist also that i love her work. She's just recently moved to new york and she's doing a lot of illustration work now Her name is kelsey roton wroton and her very alternative Very creative literary type stuff That uh you can find her stuff on jukeboxcom jukebox comics comics with an x Dot com, um, she's just a phenomenal panel.
She's the kind of the daniel clouse sort of uh personal storytelling weird creative stuff that uh, i've always really loved and peeled to me Very cool. Very cool. Um, so you said that you had been following scalp and the reason why i found that i didn't actually read all the deluxe hard covers right now as we speak So, uh, you know in jason air and once again absolutely amazing stuff. Did you finish scaltered?
I did my my I actually came into it mid-run so my weak spots in the story and i'm actually not good at remembering plot But my weak spots in store actually in the earlier arcs of it because i probably joined at an issue 20 or something So, uh, yeah, no, you know, jason's just such tremendous creator Uh, and there's so many stories and i mean it's amazing to me how he can do something Uh like scalp that is you know crime noir sort of stuff, but then also jump over and be doing for and be doing all these things Yeah, I mean and just really taking each one of them and just kind of twisted new unexpected directions But in you know in ways that are different and appropriate for each one So i it sounds like a couple of the artists and writers and things that we've talked to are uh, it almost they made it sound like almost like planet comic Con was sort of their their home con Um, like a colon bun. I know it's tens like every year Uh jason air and I believe it tends almost every year greg smallwood, uh, tester Yeah, no the you know the people you've talked about with philton, Iowa, but he's uh, he's good buddies with andy parks Obviously they've collaborated a lot together. Um, and so phil's been coming down to the cancer city show since literally before planet comic con back when I was Uh, tabling at the the Kansas city. Um, what we call back in mokan comic con back in the uh, the late 80s early 90s uh phil was down Uh, and uh, and in fact their very first published work together was a cover of my comics career newsletter, uh, that they did Shows, um, calling buns over in st.
lewis along with uh brian hurt and, um, yeah, i heard you guys talking about it on the last episode I'm so incredibly geeked the dam six gun. Oh my god. Yeah, uh, you know, uh, they're in st lewis but they come over all the time, uh, along with i'm blanking you the third part So they come i think as well Yes, the third the third of the three amigos there that come over every year, uh, that's phenomenal as well Um, and uh, so yeah, they come over but you know, jason aran is a local guy. Uh, greg smallwood is uh here in the area freddy Williams is in the area.
Uh, Kansas city really has a really more jammy han Yeah, exactly. Now we've got a tremendous, uh, number of people here who are locals. It's just a great community Uh of comics creators I'm trying to think you know, alex grecian who you may know from um, he was doing proof for image for a long time Uh, he's a local guy as well, but then he's turned into uh, you know, best selling new york times best seller novelist of uh, victorian crime so, uh, if people like that he's kind of really interesting cool careers as well And we've got you know, we've not touched on the the go comics creator showcase yet, which is also in this year And so one of our local guys is actually the cartoonist of the comic strip flocks trot bill amnd He's here locally, but what go comics which actually is headquartered here in um in kansas city That's uh, andrew's mcmeill universal they publish all the calvin and hobs books and the it's the largest News page syndicated newspaper comic strip company They're bringing in more than 30 cartoonists from across the world to be at planet comic con Um, and so, you know, we have uh bill amnders here stuff impastus from purls before swine Uh, we'll be at the show on saturday. Uh, we have the creators of like brian gordon from foul languages super popular strip is going to be here um, sarah, um, sarah anderson from sarah scribbles.
She's a web comic that she's like a million followers in social media Um, just uh huge and so it's it's wonderful that our folks are partners at go comics have kind of brought uh all of these creators in so it's going to be anybody who's into web comics or Um or syndicated newspaper strips, uh just needs to be at the show and just spend the weekend hanging out at booth 10 11 Uh at the co-comics creator showcase Very very cool very cool. So just real quick. I I personally have one last question on anybody else Um, but I guess my thing how did you get involved with uh planet comic con so you said you started off volunteering Is that just how you just kind of grew and you just got came to know, you know, the the founders of the owners or whatever And you just kind of built that relationship from there Yeah, no literally I you know, I spent all the years before that uh publishing stuff for having you know writing comics and whatever and like I said earlier having business to conduct with people at a show And I started going to some as my kids got older going to some conventions just as an attendee and found out that I was really bored Um, and we moved to the Kansas City area in 2007 and I'm like well rather than just going to the local show as an attendee and being bored I'll volunteer to help do stuff Uh, and so it really did start out simply as volunteering and the areas that that the owner chris jackson Uh needed help on uh really most that I was able to help with was the panel programming initially No, it was a small venue. We just had one room for panel programming It was all done very informally and so celebrities would just come and get up on stage and you know do their bit and stuff like that or Some comics creators would be rando up to do a panel that had been announced a couple weeks in advance or whatever And I really helped kind of Structure that a little bit more and make sure that we had moderators and we arranged for backstage area So the celebrity could be announced to a big fanfare and come out and get a big round of applause And then as a show grew some we had two tracks of programming and then we had four tracks of programming And then last year and I started to hand off responsibilities to this at that point We're at like nine tracks of programming And it just becomes a exponentially bigger job as so many things running a comic book convention too as you start to grow in size It's just it's not uh, you just there's so much more complexity So I just grew with the show and my background is in Marketing and database marketing social media.
So as we grew also we needed that and I've done more on them on that side So I've stayed involved until this year with the programming I'm nearly completely out of the programming element of that Other than helping get the program guide together. That's what I was doing right before we got on the call It's just furiously typesetting all of the event listings for for all of the programs and stuff Oh speaking of um, has it been released yet online the the panel the panel uh schedule schedule? Yes, we do actually have the schedule up under our events heading in the on the website Um, it's mostly final. Uh, we've had some last minute kind of rearranging of things So people can can watch that also we're getting ready to a big push on the mobile app So a great thing for people to do if they're coming to the show is go to iTunes or google play and download that app It is out there right now for uh for people who are loading it for the first time anybody who loaded it last year on the apple side We're still kind of fighting through a last minute thing that's not having the uh, the app isn't fully updating With the new version so um, that's supposed to be fixed by tomorrow or if you're just desperate to get it in your hands You can always delete last year's app and reinstall on On iTunes and that works just great.
Uh, but uh, get that app but we do have the panel schedule out there Awesome fantastic. I'm just excited to go. Yeah, right? How can we make the time go by fast?
Yeah, I know Yeah, now so I will as a party shot here. I'll share a couple of favorite stories with you So I um I had the opportunity to moderate the karen gillen dr. Who guardians the galaxy q&a two years ago We were looking for a moderator for that panel. It's like, okay I got this person to a man and that person my wife's like you should do it and I had not moderated a panel for like five years Because it was just too busy.
I'm like, okay, I'll do it So it was cool got to interact and had some fun adventures with karen buying the scenes at one point I was I was her cousin katelym blackwood who plays young ebe pond on dr Who was also at the show that year and I was leading them from katelym's panel down to karen's panel And I just kicked myself later on because I don't know how much you guys watch dr. Who but I'm like I had the perfect opportunity to say come along pawns and it didn't occur to me until after the show Um, uh But we had we had karen on on stage and I had my son's fess Up there to pull names out of a hat and ask for kind of a lightning round set of questions And as we were doing audience q&a one of the people in the audience said But on the fess so karen gillen will wear my son's fess and we had arranged it then for katelym to do a surprise appearance The last five or ten minutes of the thing and get up on stage as well and look over at one point and then katelym's wearing the fess So we then took my son's fess later on and had had katelym and karen both autograph that So that's kind of just a special kind of thing to be able to interact with you know performers that you like that way and I told katelym this i'm in all seriousness My favorite doctor who companion is amelia pond not not amy amy's great amelia's better It's okay when blackwood is my favorite doctor who companion It was cool to see her the other uh fun story that I have Is um, my daughter was doing some of the escorting she was 19 20 something like that maybe even a little bit but she was escorting some of the celebrities to their panels Um, and so her job was she was like talking to my wife's like well I'm just nervous about this what I do. I was like, you know what? They're just people you have the same conversation with them.
You would if anybody's not from Kansas City You know talk about whether it's her first time in Kansas City Maybe you recommend some of the good barbecue restaurants and stuff which was fine. So that was her plan I'm gonna talk about barbecue she came back from escorting Michael dorn and marina serdis to their panel she comes back to my wife with her eyes wide She's like nobody told me the cling on is a vegan Yeah, it's hard to barbecue recommendations didn't go over so well Oh, yeah, that reminds me. I've been to can's i've been growing up in Nebraska in the Kansas City numerous times Nova have you ever been to Kansas City before in your life? No, no, I haven't been to very many states Oh, sir, but Kansas City barbecue is the best Oh god, can't see them all forward good.
Oh, well, right so and you can have a whole you can put a whole summer here Just going to different restaurants that is so Of the vegan so right Yeah, you can run those all kinds of trendy ones. I mean there's there's a chose Kansas City and q39 Kind of the standby kind of family dining jack stack the old guards like Arthur brian's and zarda and um gates and oh, yeah Kansas City barbecue is amazing. Yeah, and I'm spoiled for barbecue anywhere else in the world So I was like does can't eat barbecue if I'm not here in town Awesome. Well, sir.
Thank you very very much for coming on and excuse me discussing planet comic con with us Like I said me and over are definitely gonna be there. We're very very very excited and uh hopefully we run into you and we can say hi Person as well you will recognize me as the guy with a panic expression on his face At top speed so I do hope we get to meet up. It'll be great to see you guys uh, you know Come back to the show come this year and come back every year. I think Definitely definitely so all right.
Well, thank you once again, and uh, we look forward to seeing you. That's right. Thanks guys. Thank you That's a wrap on another fun podcast.
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