The Comic Book Podcast Companion by TwoMorrows Publishing

THE

CB M I OO

Companion

BY ERIC HOUSTON

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TwoMorrows.Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics. (& LEGO! ) TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com

The Comic Book Podcast Companion

TwoMorrows Publishing Raleigh, North Carolina

The Comic Book Podcast Companion by Eric Houston

Book Design by David Greenawalt Cover Art and Color by Mike Manley Proofreading by Eric Nolen-Weathington

Dedication:

To Tom Gerencher, who taught me how to write.

Special Thanks:

I would like to thank all of the podcasters and professionals who participated in this book for their help and enthusiasm. This book literally couldn’t exist without them. The same goes for everyone who provided art or photographs for the book, particularly Pat Loika, Mike Oliveri, and Tony Guagliardo. I would also like to thank John Morrow, David Greenawalt, Michael Eury, and everyone at TwoMorrows for their help and encouragement.

Trademarks and Copyrights:

The All-New Atom and all related characters, Batman, Ch’p, Chaselon, DC Archives Editions, Flash, Green Arrow/Black Canary and all related characters, Green Lantern, The Green Lantern Corps, Justice League of America and all related characters, Katma Tui, Power Girl, Superman, Tomar Re, and Wonder Woman TM and © Copyright 2009 DC Comics.

Alpha Flight and all related characters, The Awesome Slapstick, Captain America, Dazzler, Doctor Doom, Doctor Strange, Fantastic Four, Fantasy Masterpieces, Ghost Rider, Hulk, Iron Man and all related characters, Marvel Masterworks, Marvel Tales, New Mutants and all related characters, Phoenix, Punisher War Journal and all related characters, Spider-Man, Spidey: A Universe X Special, Tomb of Dracula, Ultimate Spider-Man, The Uncanny X-Men and all related characters, and Venom TM and © Copyright 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. Astronaut Dad TM & © Copyright 2009 David Hopkins, Brent Schoonover, and Silent Devil, Inc. Powers and all related characters TM & © Copyright 2009 Jinxworld, Inc. Jon Sable TM & © Copyright 2009 NightSky Sable, LLC.

Nick Cardy: Behind the Art, Back Issue, and Rough Stuff TM & © Copyright 2009 TwoMorrows Publishing. Savage Dragon and Freak Force TM & © Copyright 2009 Erik Larsen. Around Comics TM 2009 Around Comics.

Word Balloon TM 2009 Shaky Productions.

Comic Book Queers TM 2009 Comic Book Queers.

The Crankcast and The 24 Hour Comic Book Podcast TM 2009 Chris Crank and Mike Norton. iFanboy TM 2009 iFanboy.

Quiet! Panelologists at Work TM 2009 Jon Sibley and Matt Watts.

TwoMorrows’ Tune-In Podcast TM 2009 TwoMorrows Publishing. The Pipeline Podcast TM 2009 Comic Book Resources. Comic Geek Speak TM 2009 Comic Geek Speak.

First Printing • June 2009 • Printed in Canada Softcover ISBN: 978-1-60549-018-2

Contents Introduction ........................................................................................4

Around Comics ...................................................................................5

Word Balloon ..................................................................................19

Creator Interview: Matt Fraction ....................................................30

Comic Book Queers ..........................................................................38

The Crankcast ..................................................................................45

Creator Interview: Tim Seeley ........................................................55

Remembering the 24 Hour Comic Book Podcast..........................................................................58

iFanboy ............................................................................................61

Quiet! Panelologists at Work ............................................................73

TwoMorrows’ Tune-In Podcast/ Collected Comics Library...................................................................82

Pipeline Podcast ................................................................................89

Creator Interview: Gene Colan ....................................................104

Comic Geek Speak..........................................................................107

How to Make Your Own Podcast......................................................121

Podcast Index ................................................................................123

THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 3

NTRODUCTION

About three years ago, All-Star Comics, the comic book store I had frequented every week for almost eight years, closed its doors forever. For the first time since I had started reading comics seriously, I no longer had a place to visit every Wednesday, not simply to buy my books (at that point you could already buy books off the Internet easily enough), but to hang out for a couple of hours and chew the fat with the shop owners and fellow customers about everything going on in comics. Once the Nineties boom, which had begun my own infatuation with comics, had ended, none of my friends at school cared to read comics anymore, and so the comic shop became my sole outlet for debating the issues of the day: “Is Hal Jordan really coming back;” “Who is this mysterious Adversary in Fables”; “Who is the Identity Crisis killer (I thought it was Captain Boomerang using the extra Atom belt and Mirror Master suit from his Suicide Squad days)?” Suddenly, that store was gone. To make matters worse, I moved from South Bend, Indiana to Saint Paul, Minnesota the following year. Now, I really didn’t have anyone to talk comics with. Even the couple of passing acquaintances back home that were comic fans were now hundreds of miles away. Sure, the Twin Cities were and are dotted with any number of terrific comics stores, but none of them were my store. Plus, my new job kept me too busy to really hang out there and try to strike up new friendships. So there I was, sitting at my desk one day, doing some mindless paperwork when I decided to take a break from work and check Newsarama. There, on the right side of the screen, in little type, was an ad for a John Byrne interview on a show called Around Comics. It was a podcast and, while I’d heard of such a thing before, I had yet to actually listen to one. Still, what I was doing hardly required much mental effort, so I figured I’d give it a shot. I was hooked immediately. I started by listening to archived episodes of Around Comics, but soon branched out to The Crankcast and Comic Geek Speak. Before long, I was a regular listener of iFanboy, Word Balloon, The Comic Book Queers, Quiet! Panelologists at Work, Pipeline, The Collected Comics Library, and many others. These shows entertained me at work and in the car. They reignited my enthusiasm for the medium and exposed me to new books, books like Matt Fraction’s brilliant Casanova, which I probably never would have picked up otherwise, but, more importantly, for the first time in years, I felt like I had someone to talk comics with. Sure, the conversation was a little one-sided at first, but via forum posts and e-mails, not to mention lengthy

4 | INTRODUCTION

interviews for a certain book from TwoMorrows, I really started to feel like part of a comics reading community again. I wasn’t alone, either. Listening to the e-mails and voice mails on each of these podcasts, I found out that my story was all too common. Time and again, listeners would write in, thanking the podcasters and singing the same tune. They didn’t have any friends in school or at work who liked comics, either. They had lost their favorite comic store or, worse, lived in an area too small or too rural to have one. Like me, they had found a community again, a community we were all part of together. Each of us had begun devouring our favorite podcasts with the same enthusiasm and anticipation we reserved for our favorite comics. It wasn’t long before I began to wonder what went on behind the scenes of my favorite podcasts, how the shows were made and what inspired the podcasters to make them. Looking around the Internet and digging through each show’s archives proved largely fruitless. For the most part, these were stories that hadn’t been told yet. I also figured I probably wasn’t alone in wanting to know these things, so I set out to write this book. I wanted to pull back the curtain for all of us faithful listeners, to find out more about the shows and the hosts themselves. I wanted to take a look at how the Internet had changed fandom, with podcasts creating the sort of communities that were once the sole domain of shops, letter columns, and fanzines. I wanted to talk to the comics professionals who have appeared on these shows, some of whom started out as fans on the Internet themselves and some of whom have had their careers forever changed by exposure from podcasts and the Internet. I wanted to put together a collection of stories and tips and tricks of the trade for those who wanted to start their own show after listening to so many but didn’t know where to start. I wanted to expose fellow fans to other great podcasts they may not have tried yet. And for those of you who haven’t listened to any podcasts yet but always wanted to, here’s a sampling of some of the best. Chances are, if you like the interview, you’ll love their show. Most of all, though, I wrote this book because I wanted to say thank you. Thank you all, podcaster and listener alike, for bringing this community into existence and for giving it a life all its own.

Eric Houston Saint Paul, MN January 3, 2009

AROUND COMICS

Chris Neseman, Brion “Sal” Salazar, and Tom Katers have been recording the Around Comics podcast from Chicago for almost four years now. Often joined by industry professionals and fellow podcasters alike, the Around Comics round table has insightfully and hilariously discussed everything from the ever-present single issue versus trade paperbacks debate to the growing trend of creator exclusive contracts at Marvel and DC. I sat down with Chris, Sal, and Tom after recording their May 16, 2008 episode at Chicago’s Dark Tower Comics and Collectibles to discuss everything in and around Around Comics. HOUSTON: Am I right in thinking Around Comics was your idea, Chris? CHRIS: No. It started with Sal and I at the same time. That was the genesis there. TOM: It was my idea. [laughter]

Around Comics hosts Christopher Neseman, Brion Salazar, and Tom Katers at the 2007 New York Comic Con. All photos in this chapter courtesy Around Comics, unless otherwise noted.

HOUSTON: I know you did some interviews for of ideas back and forth: what we wanted to do with Comic Geek Speak first. rd the show and the basic idea of it, because I hadn’t CHRIS: Yeah, it was their 43 and half episode and I really listened to many podcasts at that point and it e-mailed [Comic Geek Speak co-host] Bryan Deemer was relatively a new thing. Chris had listened more and asked him if he was coming to Wizard World than I did, but I thought it would be fun and someChicago in 2005 and they weren’t coming, so I said, thing to do. Both of us had really grown up reading “Well, I can get some on-the-floor interviews for you comics from a young age, but none of my friends and send them in.” Sal and I ended up going to the growing up were into comic books so it was a very show on that Saturday and ran around and were really singular thing for me. I read comics, but I didn’t really shocked at how accommodating the creators were. I talk about comics with anyone growing up and, at that was a terrible interviewer, but they were great in their point in my life, I was already in my thirties. responses and I sent them in to Bryan. That’s kind of TOM: It was over. [laughter] where I started as an interviewer and Sal can probaCHRIS: I came to work at the bly pick up on that weekend. same company that Sal worked SAL: I had actually met a at and I think the first week I bunch of people [at Wizard was there I hung up a Losers World Chicago] and just kind poster in my office and he was of hung out with a lot of the like, “You read comic books?” creators. Then, that Saturday, and I was like, “Yeah.” when Chris came interviewing SAL: So, yeah, we just sort of people, the idea of doing our put it together from that. The own podcast came up. The first couple of episodes were technical side of it was God-awful. We didn’t really know something that I knew that I what we were doing then. could handle. As far as a CHRIS: All Skype. website and the feed and Chris and Sal recording in a hotel room at Wizard World TOM: Loooong. that kind of thing, I knew that Chicago. Photo courtesy Pat Loika (patsCHRIS: Well, it was pre-Tom, so I could figure that out, so I ketch.blogspot.com). they were terrible. just said, “Let’s do our own SAL: Awful. [laughter] show at some point.” We didn’t really do it right away; CHRIS: A lot of tinkering around with different equipit took a little while before we decided to finally do it. ment and formats. CHRIS: Almost six moths. TOM: You couldn’t find the “interesting” button on SAL: It was a while before we got to it. We threw a lot your mixer. THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 5

SAL: It didn’t exist. CHRIS: I still haven’t found the “interesting” button on my mixer. HOUSTON: Why aren’t those first couple of episodes available online? CHRIS: Because they’re really bad. TOM: They’re terrible. SAL: Well, the first one, the actual number one, was just a test and it wasn’t an episode at all. CHRIS: No, we had a zero episode. That was the test episode. SAL: It was a test? TOM: Well, who cares if you numbered it zero or number one? It’s the first one that came out. HOUSTON: Comic fans. [laughter] TOM: Well, yeah, comic fans care. SAL: The first one we released was a test episode on the feed because Magic man Tom Katers. Photo courtesy Mike Oliveri like I said, (www.mikeoliveri.com). I didn’t know what I was doing, so I just went online and tried to figure out how to do a podcast and it was just a song clip or something that I put on there. That was the first one. Then the couple after that were just awful. CHRIS: The first one was online distribution or online comics purchasing versus the local comic store and [Dark Tower Comics and Collectibles owner] Mark Beatty was the first guest that we had, and yeah, it was obviously… TOM: It was never resolved. SAL: Yeah, we never came to a conclusion. There were no winners. CHRIS: We didn’t hit our stride for quite a while. TOM: Some would say never. Maybe we’re still searching. SAL: Chris was a big Comic Geek Speak board member and he had gotten to know other people in the Chicagoland area who were also board members, Tom and a few other guys, and they had gotten together a 6 | AROUND COMICS

couple of times. CHRIS: To drink. TOM: Stare at each other. SAL: So we started having different people on the show. It was Chris and I and then we’d have different people on the show. Did we start doing it at Dark Tower before…? CHRIS: No. The first episode at Dark Tower was on Free Comic Book Day, which would have been the first Saturday in May of 2006. That was the first one we did. It was my deep seeded and thinly veiled, Machiavellian way to do an episode at a comic shop, and it was such a great idea that we ended up coming up here every week afterwards. SAL: One of the people we had from the meet-ups was Tom. Tom was a Comic Geek Speak forum member and we had him on the show and, immediately afterwards, Chris and I talked about it and said, “You know, we should have him on every week.” We really wanted Tom to come back. He was just really funny. TOM: The magic… SAL: The magic was just instant. [laughter] CHRIS: In a very serious way, we knew very quickly that there was good chemistry between the three of us, and it worked. We recognized it and snatched him up. HOUSTON: What was your take on all of that at the time, Tom, first guesting on the show and then being invited to become a regular? TOM: I don’t have a lot going on in my life. [laughs] I read comics and drink and watch baseball or whatever sport is on at the time. I have a lot of free time, so it was just something to sort of occupy my time because none of my friends read comic books, so it was a nice way to talk about comic books with likeminded people and then we drank. It was simple enough because, if the mic wasn’t here, I’d still be drinking and talking about comics anyway. So it wasn’t that big a deal to record it and get it out to the people. Get it to the masses immediately. Huzzah! HOUSTON: How would you describe the show’s style? How is it different from other podcasts? TOM: More handsome. [laughter] SAL: We’re much better looking than other podcasters. CHRIS: You don’t pick that up in your headphones, the sheer GQ of the show. SAL: We don’t take it too seriously. We don’t take ourselves too seriously. We don’t take comics too seriously. While we can certainly talk intelligently and seriously about certain things, we always have fun and enjoy ourselves and realize that it’s just entertainment and, if we’re not having fun with it, there’s no real point. CHRIS: Tom said it right; we would be doing this even without the mics.

passion into it. What makes Around Comics Around Comics is this amazing chemistry that we were able to establish very effortlessly. Tom probably can say it better because he’s said it before, kind of what our roles are on the show. TOM: I’ve said that? CHRIS: You were drunk. But, you know, describe what you think our roles on the shoe are. SAL: Who’s doing this interview? You? [laughter] CHRIS: Sorry. It’s my thing.

Recording at Dark Tower Comics and Collectibles with Mike Oliveri, who provided the photo.

TOM: I think you won’t find us very often getting legitimately angry about anything. For some people, a review is explaining the comic and saying why they liked it or not, and some people barely talk about it, and we talk about it very loosely. Not to say that there’s nothing serious about it, but I know that, personally, I can’t get that upset about a comic book, even a comic book that I don’t like. You can play it up. I really hated the [Bilson and DeMeo] Flash book, but I wasn’t losing sleep. The stereotypical comics fans are very uptight about their stuff they love. I think we’re not at all like that. SAL: I think another thing that separates us is that, from the beginning, we wanted to talk positively about comics. We all spend a lot of time on message boards and online and there is so much negativity. The Internet has become a breeding ground for people to spout off about what they hate about anything and it’s very easy to complain about comics and complain about editors and complain about this or that or the other, and we didn’t want to do that. We wanted to talk about what we liked, celebrate comics, and maybe open people’s minds to other comics. I think that’s one of the things we do very well and one of the things we’ve gotten a lot of responses about is that we turn people on to a lot of comics they may not have read otherwise, because we talk about any type of comic. We’re not superhero driven and we’re not mainstream. We’ll read anything. CHRIS: We’ll read Jeffrey Brown and Geoff Johns in the same night. TOM: At the same time. [laughter] CHRIS: I think going back to one of the reasons we brought Tom in and I don’t want to say what makes us different from other podcasts… SAL: Makes us better! TOM: Makes us number one! [laughter] CHRIS: That’s what I don’t want, because everybody who does this puts a tremendous amount of time and

HOUSTON: Tom, would you mind describing what your individual roles are? I know you’ve talked about it before. [laughter] CHRIS: He basically said that I was the organizer, the planner, and the moderator. Sal says the smart thing. He has the good questions. TOM: The organizer, the genius… [laughter] Every group can be divided into three: the organizer, the genius, and the funny man. [laughter] Every group can be divided into those three. CHRIS: [Sal and I] kind of have these very comfortable boxes that we exist in and Tom was constantly kind of bouncing around outside of the box. He had that really funny, clever remark that sets us off. He sees the opportunity to say The genius and the organizer. something often insightful, Photo courtesy Pat Loika. but very funny. TOM: I can’t believe I put that much thought into this. [laughter] SAL: I don’t think it was quite that… TOM: Eloquent? Listen, you’re the organizer, you’re the genius, and I’m the funny man. SAL: That was closer. CHRIS: We all have very, very different personalities on the show, and it works for that reason. We’re never as good individually as we are as a whole, even though I do love [Tom’s solo podcast] Tom Versus the JLA. TOM: When I do that show I have to be all three: the genius, the organizer, and the funny man. HOUSTON: Who are the genius, the organizer, and the funny man in the JLA? TOM: Batman’s the genius. Actually, Batman is the anal retentive one. He’s the organizer and the genius. And the funny man? The writer, Gerry Conway, he’s the funny man.

THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 7

HOUSTON: What’s a regular Around Comics recording session like? CHRIS: I come in to Dark Tower at about 6:30 or 7:00, crack open a beer, and set up a portable studio. SAL: Wait for Tom to show up. He’s always late. He’s such a prima donna. CHRIS: He is such a prima donna. He’s always late, and then we record for like an hour-and-a-half and Tom starts complaining about how long we’ve been recording. TOM: We start at seven. I come in at seven. I can walk in and start. [laughter] For some reason, when I show up at seven, we don’t start recording at seven. CHRIS: The show recordings have changed so much over the course of the show. I mean there have literally been nights that we’ve been walking out of here at 1:30, 2:00 in the morning and that’s for extended breaks, having dinner, so sometimes a recording session takes two hours. Sometimes, in the past, it’s taken five. It depends on how silly we are. TOM: How many cigarettes have to be smoked. SAL: The drunker we are the longer the recording sessions go. HOUSTON: Unlike a lot of podcasts, your show is more or less open to the public. People can come into the comic store off the street and watch you record. TOM: I feel uncomfortable with people staring at me. CHRIS: It is a little odd sometimes. Obviously, it’s a public comic shop and we record during normal business hours, so yeah. Come on by. We’d love to meet you. SAL: We’ve certainly had more than our share of guests that’ve come here and we’ve met them and then they’ll come back and be on the show. Generally, we try and schedule stuff just because you never know what you’re going to get with people coming in off the street. TOM: You might get Neal Adams and Carrot Top. Carrot Top wants to come on and talk about comics.

Recording in Chris’s apartment, the original home of Around Comics.

8 | AROUND COMICS

Can’t say no to him. He’s ripped. SAL: He’ll kick your butt. HOUSTON: How often do you have people show up just to watch the show? SAL: Usually, every Friday night there’re at least two or three people sitting around, people we know or people we’ve gotten to know or people who just showed up. HOUSTON: For a long time, there was a definite formula to the show. You had the round table, “Wire to Wire Comics News,” “Top of the Stack,” “Future Stax”... TOM: I can’t believe we had all of that on the show. CHRIS: There are a lot of podcasts out there and just the guys getting together to talk about comics is not that unique. We wanted to offer different segments to the show that, I don’t want to say would set us apart, but would give people a different reason to listen to us. So, yeah, we wanted to cover the news. We wanted to do our reviews of books. The show was very segmented and it was just sort of the path we took to get through the show. SAL: Initially, when we started, it was more of a topic show. The round table would have a topic and we’d discuss that topic. TOM: [laughs] There are only about forty topics, though. We ran out of things to talk about. CHRIS: Let’s talk about trades versus singles again. SAL: So we started trying to find more things to talk about, like books that were coming out or what was happening in books. It was just this evolution of the show, seeing what worked, what didn’t work, what people liked, what people didn’t like, and what we liked doing because, at the end of the day, we have to have fun with it. That’s probably more why it is like it is now, because we got to the point where it was becoming more of a job than a hobby or fun and you get a little burned out with that. TOM: It’s very complicated. SAL: It’s a lot of work, a lot of effort, and a lot of time spent doing it, which is fine, except if it’s not fun. CHRIS: What we’ve found is with ourselves and the people we asked for feedback from (there are a few listeners out there that we value their opinion) is that the reason people listen to the show is that they like to hear us talk about comics. What we found was that the segments were kind of ancillary, a way to give us topics to talk about comics. We’d built up all these segments and we kind of systematically tore them down because we’re at our best whenever we’re just talking about comics or just talking. TOM: It’s also sort of this pretence that there is comics news is sort of a fallacy. It’s all press releases and it became sort of stupid to sit around talking about press releases like they have significance. “So and so sold out.” Alright. It wasn’t like we had any

sort of exclusive line to what sold out. And how many times can you sit there and talk about books selling out? What do you say? And somebody who’s already listening to a comic book podcast is probably already aware of places like Newsarama or Comic Book Resources, so there’s no way we can be as timely at getting the info. SAL: It wasn’t that people were listening for the news; they were listening for our comments on the news. TOM: We didn’t even need the news. HOUSTON: Tom, could you elaborate on the show being complicated? TOM: I think the thing with a lot of podcasts is that people want to emulate radio, so what they do is say, “I want to do a show that sounds like a radio show,” and all of a sudden you’re doing an interview, you’re doing the news, you’re telling the people what books are coming out next week, and, all of a sudden, it’s taking four-and-a-half hours to get out an hour of content that is interesting, really. As great as it is to tell people what the books are that are coming out next week, really, that’s info that anyone who listens to podcasts can google and find it, so it’s not something of value. CHRIS: Our show notes now are one page. We used to do show notes that were six, eight pages. TOM: It got to be so much to do. SAL: Plus, you had to do research if you were doing an interview. I mean we felt like we had to stay on top of everything that was going on in the industry. CHRIS: And it was fun because we were all passionate about it, but it really was a lot of work. HOUSTON: I assume this was the same time that the shows got to be like two-and-a-half hours long. SAL: Well, at one point we were doing two-and-a-half to three hour shows. TOM: They were just too long. SAL: There wasn’t a structure to them at all, and that’s what we thought maybe the problem was—and then we thought, “We’ll do two shorter shows and we’ll give them more structure so we can get in and out of it and get it done quick,” but our nature isn’t that. TOM: They got longer and longer and longer and, pretty soon, you had two, two-and-a-half hour shows. What happened? CHRIS: We’re there six hours on Friday night. SAL: It was supposed to make things faster, but it just got more and more complicated. TOM: Well, and how much can you talk about? As much as I love comics, I think sometimes people over-analyze everything about it. As much as I love an issue of Young Liars, could I talk about an issue of Young Liars for 45 minutes? Nor does that make it a bad piece of art. Not everything needs to be so exam-

Sal reading the once copious Around Comics show notes.

ined, and we were getting to that point. The show was twice as long as the amount of time it took me to read my comics. You realize that you’re talking about them more than you’re reading them. SAL: It was forced. TOM: We had to fill time. CHRIS: But the show has always been changing, always been evolving, because we’ve always wanted to find that comfort level that we were always searching for. That comfort level is us just sitting around talking about comics, and that’s where we are now, and it took us a lot of BS that I probably imposed on everyone. TOM: Because you’re the organizer. Genius didn’t see it coming. [laughter] HOUSTON: Compared to most of the podcasts I listen to, I think your show has changed the most often. TOM: Comic fans love change, too. CHRIS: Never announce a format change. Don’t ever do it. HOUSTON: What has fan reaction been like to the changes? CHRIS: [chuckles] Which one? SAL: You always have those people who will complain about it, but the most consistent thing has been that we’ve always gotten more and more listeners. No matter what we’ve done, we’ve always gotten more and more listeners. Going back to what we’re best at is sitting around and talking and, no matter what we do as a show, it really comes down to that core of us three talking and interacting and being friends, and that’s more entertaining than whether or not we talk about the news or talk about whatever. It’s always like that. You’re always going to have a segment of fans who don’t like this or don’t like that. You can’t please everybody, and if you do you become generic. THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 9

HOUSTON: When did you start to realize that you did have fans? CHRIS: We’ve always said that we don’t have fans; we have listeners. We track listeners every week. SAL: We knew pretty well. I knew, when we first started, it would be cool if we had 500 people listening. TOM: We’re almost there. 450 and holding strong.

Recording at Dark Tower.

TOM: I think the natural inclination when you get anonymous feedback, which is what most e-mail and Internet feedback is, is you assume the person giving you feedback is like you. It could be a 13-year-old kid. It could be a 45-year-old guy. When you get negative feedback, you think it’s you giving you feedback, and then you have to think about the fact that more and more people listen and you get someone who writes an e-mail and is, like, “I think this sucks,” I always just think, “That’s probably, like, a 13-year-old kid, and if that kid came up to me and said that, I’d just dismiss it.” SAL: I think the other thing, too, is you have the natural tendency to give it more weight. One person sends you an e-mail saying they hate something and you equate it to a thousand people. I think most people, if they like your show, they never say a word. It’s just the few who, for whatever reason, feel like they have to say something, and comic book fans are that way. It’s not about what they like; it’s about what they don’t like. TOM: Feedback is easy on the Internet. SAL: People also get very attached to things and see it as their own. HOUSTON: We’re also talking about fans of a medium that for years was about not changing. Superman for about sixty years was based on Lois Lane not being able to figure out a pair of glasses. CHRIS: Probably the worst reaction we got was whenever we started the magazine format Monday episode. That was a baby of mine, and it was hard to get a lot of that feedback because it was so different from anything we’d done. I still think that show, if it wasn’t Around Comics, if it had been something else, it would have had a listenership, but because it was such a 180 from what we had done, people didn’t take to it. I still think that a show like that has some merit, but it wasn’t us. It wasn’t our personality. TOM: I love the magazine show; I wish we did it all the time. Not this stuff. 10 | AROUND COMICS

HOUSTON: How many listeners do you have? SAL: Several thousand. CHRIS: That’s the most proprietary thing you can ask a podcaster. Nobody ever really talks about how many listeners they have, and if they do they’re lying. SAL: The reason for that is advertising dollars, because there’s no standard for what someone will pay. It’s based on listenership. It’s not something we want to give out. TOM: Dozens love listening to the show. SAL: But it’s always kind of odd to meet listeners face to face. We go to conventions and people come up and tell you how much they like the show, and then you find out creators whose work we read, you find out they listen and that’s always kind of interesting and weird and scary on some level. You never know who’s listening. TOM: I find it exciting. SAL: You know we got a ton of positive feedback on iTunes and that was one of the markers of people liking the show because that started to build up quickly. CHRIS: I begged for it. SAL: It’s certainly bigger than we ever thought. CHRIS: That was weird, whenever we saw an iTunes review from Ande Parks. TOM: We don’t do anything. We’re not the talented ones. SAL: People who do it listen and like it, what we talk about. That’s kind of weird. CHRIS: We had a weird Jim Cheung moment in Seattle. SAL: That’s the thing. Every convention you run into a creator who listens to your show. TOM: “Did I say something bad about you?” SAL: So the iTunes thing and then the conventions… The first couple of cons we went to afterwards, we had people coming up to us. That was pretty neat. HOUSTON: Was there any episode that was a turning point as far as gaining listeners? SAL: The Byrne episode, probably. Talking to John Byrne was probably our biggest spike in listeners. That’s probably the one. HOUSTON: I know that’s when I first started listening. CHRIS: That was our highest profile creator at that point and still, kind of. And a really fun interview. SAL: And it was pretty early on. TOM: Haven’t matched that high. CHRIS: We’ve peaked.

SAL: I said we should have quit after that, but nobody listens to the genius. HOUSTON: How did that interview come about? SAL: Well, we got some help. One of his longtime forum members was also a listener of ours and helped us set it up. He told John that we were good people and suggested to him that he come on our show. And, of course, we were thrilled to have him on. CHRIS: It was a great example of a listener being able to be involved with the actual programming of the show. SAL: Personally, John is one of my favorite creators and I was nervous for many reasons after we set it up. It’s probably been the most nervous that I have been for a guest. For one, he is one of my personal comics heroes, and also, taking into account the reputation that he has seemed to make for himself over the years, I was afraid that it might turn into one of those classic situations where you regret talking to someone whose work you really admire. Fortunately, he couldn’t have been a better guest. He was a fantastic interview. Open, fun, self-deprecating and at no time was he anything other than a good person to talk with. The man is aware of his own reputation and what people think about him. I think he actually gets a kick out of stirring up trouble online. He doesn’t take things nearly as seriously as everyone else seems to take his sometimes controversial comments. I mean at one point he actually made a joke about how he had to go and “eat some babies” after our interview. [laughter] CHRIS: He was a fantastic guest. What was supposed to be an hour-long interview turned into two hours of amazing conversation. It was then and remains to this day one of the biggest thrills I’ve had on the show. Mr. Byrne may have a negative reputation on the Internet, but after two phone interviews I can tell you that I couldn’t have asked for a more pleasant and gracious guest. SAL: The experience could not have gone any better and I hope we can get him back on the show sometime. I, for one, had a completely new respect for the guy, and a different perspective on his “image” afterwards. I also know from comments we received afterwards, that other people felt the same way. They expected some sort of monster and were surprised by what they heard.

HOUSTON: That actually brings up my next point, which is that you also have a really active forum. CHRIS: That was all part of the genesis of the show. SAL: We were a little scared at first to do it. CHRIS: From the very beginning we always thought of Around Comics as always building listenership and always doing different things. Sal, from the very beginning, he’s very good at websites and website management. The website had news stories we were tapping from different sources and we had the forum. It was all about building an Internet community. SAL: Initially, we were on the Comic Geek Speak forums. They had their forums and they had opened them up to other podcasters. CHRIS: Well, their forum crashed and we had our site, so, while their servers were down for like four days, we were very early in the podcast stage and were like, “If the forum’s down nobody’s going to listen,” and Sal was like, “we can do a forum.” SAL: Right. Well, we could have had a forum of our own from the beginning, but it was something that I was leery about doing: managing a forum and moderating it. All of a sudden you’re opening a door to very public stuff. I was very leery initially, but when Comic Geek Speak offered us a forum, we accepted. And then we started doing our own. So we did that and we always sort of ran our forum a little differently than others. I always felt

THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 11

that forum members felt that a forum is a democracy and it’s not. CHRIS: It’s a benevolent dictatorship. SAL: I have no problem shutting someone down on a forum. This goes back to our original philosophy of wanting to be positive. We didn’t want to have all of that hatred and bile and flaming on our forum. The forum members we have—I think we’ve really gotten a lot of people who are very likeminded with us and are very cool. CHRIS: It’s a Chris with 11 O’Clock Comics co-host David good group. Price and listener Dan “Dan C” Corbett. Courtesy Pat Loika. SAL: We’ve only had a couple of things that we’ve ever had problems with, but the bigger your forum gets… HOUSTON: It seems like you have a couple of forum members that have really gone above and beyond the call of duty. CHRIS: Papercut, from the beginning, Dan C. SAL: Really, he’s our friend. He’s not just a forum member; he’s a friend of ours. CHRIS: From the beginning, whenever you start a forum, you’re praying you get people who will come and post things that are thought provoking, and we were lucky enough to have Dan there from the beginning. His posts blew my mind. Then we got a little scared because we didn’t know what Dan was going to be like in person. Then he told us he was coming down for Wizard World Chicago, and when we met him I think it was one of Recording with regular Around the biggest exhales of Comics guests and fellow podcasters relief. John Siuntres (left) of Word Balloon and Mike Norton (center) and Chris SAL: Dan’s nothing Crank (right) of The Crankcast. like any of us pictured 12 | AROUND COMICS

him. TOM: He’s very good looking. SAL: He’s a very good-looking man, very suave, very professional. We’ve gotten to know a lot of guys from the forum. David Price and Vince B, who do their own podcast, 11 O’Clock Comics, with Chris. Braxton’s a great forum member. CHRIS: These are all friends of ours now, people we’ve met at conventions and gone out and had beers with, and I think it’s kind of funny that once they get over the couple minutes of “Ooh, it’s the Around Comics guys,” it’s, “Let’s go have a beer.” TOM: Chris immediately robs them of that sense of awe. The awe is gone almost immediately. HOUSTON: You’ve also gathered together a sort of extended family of regulars. Let’s talk about them, starting with Mark Beatty. SAL: Mark owns Dark Tower Comics. He looks like a frost giant. He’s about seven feet tall. CHRIS: He’s my shop owner. I talk to him every Wednesday. He’s a great person. SAL: A good shop owner. CHRIS: He really is a good shop owner, a good person, and someone I consider a friend. SAL: It was something he extended to us to come here and do the shows and always made us feel real comfortable. CHRIS: We put together a little mini-convention with him for our fiftieth episode. SAL: It’s funny because I don’t think he really listens to the show that much because he’s always here. He’s not really involved in the show, but he’s such a part of it, you know what I mean? He’s a member of the Around Comics family. CHRIS: Chicago Mini-Con 2 next Free Comic Book Day. TOM: Do I have to be at it? CHRIS: Yes. TOM: I’ve got plans next year. HOUSTON: Then there’s Mike Norton and Chris Crank… SAL: I don’t even know how we met those guys, quite honestly. TOM: Mike was at the Comic Geek Speak stuff, too, I think. CHRIS: I’m trying to think of the first time I met Crank. TOM: I’ve never seen him in person. CHRIS: Crank actually looks like Arnim Zola and he has a big chest plate that is Crank’s head. SAL: Mike was one of the first creators we got to know through the podcast and a great guy and a talented artist. TOM: Another gentle giant. SAL: Chicago comic book artists are all huge. Mike and Crank, they’re really the only podcast I only listen

to, their Crankcast. CHRIS: They’re great. SAL: It’s weird to talk about these guys without sounding too flattering. HOUSTON: John Siuntres? TOM: He’s usually here. SAL: John. That’s actually a funny story, because John was doing Word Balloon before we started up and we had heard about Word Balloon and listened to Word Balloon, obviously, and then we found out he was a Chicago radio guy. We sent him an e-mail, just sort of saying, “Hey, we’re doing a podcast here in Chicago if you ever want to get together or whatever,” and John sort of big-timed us. CHRIS: A little bit! [laughs] “Oh, you’re doing a podcast. How cute.” SAL: Then we actually ended up meeting him at Wizard World and, from there, we were just friends with John and he started coming to Dark Tower on Friday nights to be on the show. CHRIS: The thing about John, which makes him a little bit different from the other podcasters out there, is, from my knowledge, he’s one of the few radio professionals that podcasts. John’s been doing Chicago radio for years. He’s “Shaky” Siuntres.

SAL: Sporting News Radio. CHRIS: Interviewing John Byrne was a big deal for us, but John has interviewed Muhammad Ali. John is a radio guy and you can obviously hear it in his interviewing skills, but, yeah, he turned into a fixture around the show and will continue to be. HOUSTON: I know Doctor Doom has even been on the show. CHRIS: Doctor Doom’s Skottie Young sketches for his fans at the 2008 Windy City Comic Con. in the room right now. TOM: He’s sitting quietly in a corner, nodding and thinking, “Don’t talk about me.” SAL: Doom just popped up and took over. TOM: Doom is very easy to do. There’s very little audio mixing knowledge required to lower your voice. CHRIS: Just make sure you annunciate. TOM: It takes very little knowledge to lower your voice. Not that that’s how it’s done. I don’t want anyone to steal that idea [laughs]. I was so lazy I did an interview with Black Bolt, which was silent. That’s how lazy I am creatively. How can I think of something where I don’t actually have to do anything? SAL: Doom is just the perfect complement to the show because he probably is the stuffiest of all super-villains. CHRIS: Pompous egomaniac writes itself. TOM: He hasn’t been on in along time. Maybe he’ll be around soon. SAL: The one thing you have to know is there’s not much planned. Any of our bits just happen and then we forget about it and the people bring it up and it’s like, “Oh, yeah.” We don’t really plan much stuff. CHRIS: We’ve actually been very good about not letting bits hang around too long. We see when a bit has lived its cycle. SAL: Well, we’ve beaten a dead horse more than once. TOM: We will again! CHRIS: We’re not still talking about monkeys. HOUSTON: The other guy who was really a regular for a while was Skottie Young. TOM: Good old Skottie Young. HOUSTON: How did he get on the show? TOM: Showed up. THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 13

SAL: Skottie was friends with Mike and Crank and had been on The Crankcast. TOM: Sal talked trash about him. SAL: Well, yeah. I heard him on The Crankcast a couple of times and I knew we were going to meet him sooner or later, but, before I knew he lived in Chicago, before I knew he knew anyone, it was Free Comic Book Day and we were talking about the comics that came out and one of them was the X-Men/Runaways he had done with Brian K. Vaughan, and I made a comment about it, like, “Well, they could have gotten a bigger name.” After that happened, I found out he knew Mike and was on The Crankcast. You run into everybody in Chicago in the comics scene at the shows or wherever. CHRIS: Gene Ha will find you. SAL: Listening to him on the show, I was like, “I’m not going to Skottie and Tom. like this guy. I can’t stand this cocky SOB. I will not get along with him,” and then he showed up once with Mike and just hung out and came back I think. CHRIS: He did our hundredth episode with Cecil Castellucci. SAL: Came back and did the show and just liked hanging out with us and we invited him back to be a member of the show, and for us it was cool because he was a Marvel Comics artist. What other podcast has a Marvel Comics or mainstream comic artist on their show? TOM: The Crankcast. SAL: Well, yeah, but Skottie added a different flavor to the show certainly, but then, funny enough, he and I really got along. TOM: You’re going to get married. CHRIS: Thick as thieves. HOUSTON: Well, it seems like your first impression of him was a lot like most of your listeners’ first impressions of him. CHRIS: Oh, he’s polarizing. TOM: I like him. He’s good people. SAL: He’s definitely polarizing and I think a lot of that is that people don’t really understand that. Comic book fans don’t ever want to be made fun of and sometimes Skottie can come off as cooler than you, but Skottie’s the first to admit that he’s as big a geek as anyone. 14 | AROUND COMICS

CHRIS: The thing about Skottie is that he lives behind the curtain we sometimes peek behind. I think the thing is, with Skottie’s views on comics, he has to always be kind of careful because he lives on the other side of the fence, so his view is skewed compared to that of most comic fans. SAL: If you were to see him at a convention with his fans… CHRIS: He treats his fans great. SAL: One of the most engaging guys with his fans. CHRIS: He may tell you to go f*ck yourself, but he does it with a smile on his face. SAL: And you can’t tell on a podcast what he’s really like. Yeah, he can come across as abrasive sometimes, but for me that’s part of what I liked about having him on the show was that he added a little edge. HOUSTON: We already talked briefly about the Monday magazine show and, as a listener, I really enjoyed it in part because it helped to introduce listeners to other podcasts. That’s how I found out about Quiet! Panelologists at Work, for example. CHRIS: Cool. That’s why it was there. The whole genesis of the Monday show came out of a couple different things. The round table show was changing and not because Skottie was here, but we were already going through all the frustrations that Tom had already talked about. It was starting to become a grind. The news was kind of a pain to talk about and we just wanted to get together and talk about whatever we wanted to talk about. But we still wanted to have a show that was centered around comics, and the Monday show was able to do that and tap into this network of other great podcasts that we had gotten to know. So the idea was to be able to provide interviews, and history on comics, and funny bits, and new releases, and movie and DVD news from a comic book writer in Will Pfeiffer. So, yeah, it was very much an NPR style show, something I always wanted to do. SAL: Unfortunately for Chris, his nature and Skottie and Tom’s and my nature are complete opposites. CHRIS: I’m an organizer. SAL: He’s very organized. That’s not even a joke. He likes thing very structured and very organized and we’re much more seat of the pants, crazy, go off in

any direction, and it was always a battle for Chris to try and wrangle us. There were nights where I know it was very difficult for him to try and deal with three very strong personalities, all going off in different directions and part of that was because we were getting a little bored with what we were doing. I honestly was getting a little bored with comics in general and reading so many of them and talking about them and keeping up with all the news, and I know that was part of it, too. Chris wanted to do something that was more along his vision. CHRIS: Well, more along my tastes as a listener even, and that’s what that show was. The pendulum was swinging to this monkey room on one side and to this very dry magazine format on the other. I think we know that kind of in the middle is where we are strongest. I think there was a place for the crazy kind of zoo crew type show and the very dry NPR show. There are listeners that are going to like both of those. Going back to what we said at the beginning, we’re always stronger whenever we’re in the middle, talking very intelligently about comics, but having fun with it. I don’t think it needs to be on either extreme. I think there’s room for both shows. That Monday show was really a lot of work to put together from the editing standpoint, and it’s much more fun to put your work into reading your comics and getting together with your friends and, while I think there’s still a viable audience for both of those shows, I don’t think that either one is for us. HOUSTON: Talking about your relationship with other podcasts, you’ve featured John Siuntres and Mike and Crank and Quiet! Panelologists at Work on the magazine show, and it seems to me that that is a really good example of the lack of rivalry or competition in the podcasting world. But I see you shaking your head there, Chris. Apparently, I’m wrong. CHRIS: Not as much as there used to be. SAL: I think, initially, when all the podcasts started coming out, it was just natural to want to be the best. TOM: You’re either number one or you’re in last place. SAL: Everybody was sort of scrambling for the same listeners, so I think there was a lot of competition initially, but, for us, we just thought it was stupid. We’re obsessing over something that really doesn’t matter at all. TOM: You know what points out how silly it is for comic podcasts to compete at all, when you go to iTunes and you search for the term comic books, the most popular podcast is a New Yorker that had one article about comic books. CHRIS: Like Michael Chabon talking about writing about comics. TOM: Seven times more popular. There are not that

many comic book fans. SAL: It’s a very small pond. TOM: It’s pointless to argue and fight. SAL: Not that there was, but you certainly felt in the beginning that while everyone was very gracious and friendly—there was never any sort of nasty backbiting or anything like that—but there was this underlying, not tension, but underlying thing between a lot of the different podcasts where you could tell there was a competition—not in the sense of anyone doing anything nasty, but wanting to be the best. CHRIS: We’ve all been athletes in our life and there’s a competitive gene in all of us, some stronger than others. I’m ultra-competitive. TOM: Not me. SAL: We’re all sort of fighting for the same listeners. When you go to a convention, you’re all sort of fighting to get the same creators on your show. TOM: And then you just sort of feel like… SAL: This is really dumb. And I think initially when podcasting first came along, nobody knew where it was going to go, and they thought maybe this will go someplace bigger than it is. CHRIS: “I don’t want them to Sal with fellow Chicago podcaster Mike Norton, co-host get the XM Radio deal and of The Crankcast. not me,” but there is no XM Radio deal. SAL: There’s just no money in comics. TOM: The iFanboy guys work with Revision3. SAL: Yeah. They made it. CHRIS: But back to your original comment, we’ve THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 15

always been pretty proactive about trying to promote other podcasts that we like to listen to. The reason I asked the Quiet! Panelologists at Work guys to do “The A-Z of British Comics” is that I love that show, and I love Chris Marshall, who does Collected Comics Library. SAL: Mostly it’s because we’re friends with people who have their own podcasts or have since started their own podcasts. CHRIS: These are our friends, and I want people to listen to them because it’s good and it’s fun and it’ll turn you on to comics. HOUSTON: It seems like a lot of these friends are centered out of Chicago. CHRIS: It’s a hub. SAL: You have John. TOM: You have a lot of people in Chicago. CHRIS: It’s the greatest city in the universe. SAL: We didn’t know how many podcasters were in Chicago until we started doing it. CHRIS: One of the first comic podcasts came out of Chicago, Neil Gorman’s Comicology; John, who we talked about; The Comic book Queers are out of here. Scott Cederland and Wednesday’s Haul, The Crankcast, and I’m probably forgetting some. SAL: I don’t know. I don’t listen to podcasts. TOM: Sal reads newsletters. CHRIS: By the way, the whole “from Chicago” thing? Totally stole that from Cinecast, which is now called Filmspotting and is also out of Chicago. “From Chicago, this is Cinecast.” TOM: They invented “from Chicago”? SAL: I guess. CHRIS: That’s where I got the inspiration to do that. TOM: We’re the first comic book podcast to announce that we’re from Chicago. We started a trend.

16 | AROUND COMICS

HOUSTON: What podcasts do you listen to? CHRIS: I can’t say that. TOM: I’ll tell you. SAL: I listen to The Crankcast. CHRIS: What about the people whose podcasts we don’t listen to? TOM: Nothing against any of them. I don’t listen to our show. [laughter] SAL: I don’t listen to Tom’s show. TOM: It’s fine. SAL: I listen to The Crankcast. I listen to a podcast called Big Ideas that has nothing to do with comics. I listen to some writing podcasts. Audiolab is really cool. I don’t listen to any comic book podcasts. TOM: I listen to lots of comic book podcasts. I have a tendency to pick one that has a topic because there are too many. I don’t even know if I’d listen to ours. HOUSTON: That Tom Katers guy just doesn’t appeal to you. TOM: No. I listen to iFanboy, The Crankcast. SAL: I do listen to iFanboy occasionally. TOM: I listen to Comic Book Noise occasionally. Marvel Noise. There’s not too much that I listen to regularly. I think that’s funny because there’s a weird pressure where you’re supposed to listen to everybody’s podcast. You can’t, though. That’s the thing. SAL: I have a twenty-minute commute. In a week, I can listen to maybe four or five podcasts. TOM: Nothing against it. Everyone does shows. I mean, I love DC comics. I occasionally listen to Raging Bullets, but their shows are also like four hours long. That’s the show they do and there’re people that love that it’s four hours long, and for me it just doesn’t fit my lifestyle when I like to listen and that’s fine, there’s nothing wrong. That’s the way it is. Maybe there are people who don’t listen to Tom Versus the JLA. I don’t know why. It’s only ten minutes long. I don’t know what kind of lifestyle you can’t fit that in there, but it’s the same thing with comic books where people think that there’s going to be some magical comic book that’s going to unite everyone and that perfect comic. When people criticize comic book podcasts it’s like there’s some magic formula that everybody keeps missing that everybody’s going to like. CHRIS: And believe me, we keep trying every one of them. TOM: Like that’s the goal. That can’t be the goal. You can’t have everyone listen to you. You can’t have everyone love you. You can’t be everything to everyone or you just end up sucking. Just do what you do. SAL: I don’t have that much time to listen to podcasts. I just don’t find comic book podcasts that entertaining. CHRIS: Okay, Warren Ellis. TOM: I go through moods where I won’t listen to comic book podcasts for a while and some where I listen to a bunch. The nice thing about podcasts is

What if Around Comics really was sponsored by Marvel?

that you can listen to them when you want to. So if one week I’m sitting there and I’m thinking I really want to listen to 11 O’Clock Comics... I’m really bored. [laughs] I mean, I’ve got nothing else. CHRIS: And you can go back and listen to as many as you want, except Around Comics episodes one and two. TOM: Which we will release on a collector’s edition DVD. HOUSTON: Why do you think people listen to podcasts? CHRIS: Because it is niche entertainment and we live in an increasingly niche entertainment world. With the advent of the Internet and cable TV you can drill down and find things that fit exactly your entertainment profile. I mean, there’s podcasting on podcasting. TOM: There’s a book on podcasting. SAL: Look at us three, we started a podcast because we like talking to people about comics and we grew up not having people to talk to about comics, so you hear more often than not it’s like hanging around with a bunch of friends talking about comics. CHRIS: Gordon, our fan in Seattle, was like, “I hate the people I work with. I don’t have anyone I can talk comics with, and you guys fill that. I feel like I have conversations with you guys every week.” SAL: It’s a little one-sided, but I suppose it’s a conversation. I think that’s been part of it, at least in comic book podcasting. CHRIS: I’d like to think that there’s some little kid out in Montana, and his friends don’t read comics, and he listens to comic book podcasts. SAL: I think another part of it, too, though, is unbiased commentary. So many things in this country are so conglomerate and corporate run. Are you going to listen to Marvel’s podcast where they’re not going to give you an unbiased view of their books or three guys who have nothing to gain or lose by saying what they think about a Marvel book and giving their honest opinion about that kind of thing? I listen occasionally to podcasts about other products, but you have to be careful, too, because even podcasting has become more corporate. In the time that we’ve been doing it,

it’s gone from mostly amateurs doing it out of their basement to the majority of podcasts out there being corporate podcasts, and it’s taken over the medium a little bit. CHRIS: Not that’s it ever been offered, not that it ever will be offered, but we will never take a Marvel sponsorship. SAL: I would. TOM: How much money is it? CHRIS: Okay, if we did take a Marvel sponsorship, it would distill our message if we spoke well of Daredevil or Captain America. SAL: We’ve always tried to be truthful and honest about stuff. CHRIS: Our general rule is, for the most part, we don’t talk about something if we don’t like it. TOM: It seems sort of pointless. HOUSTON: Getting Tom Katers with longtime Flash penciler and back to Around personal hero Carmine Infantino at the joint Comics, you recentAround Comics/Hero Initiative booth at the ly took a four-month 2007 New York Comic Con. hiatus. What caused that? CHRIS: Burn-out. TOM: Tired of looking and talking to each other. [laughter] SAL: A little bit. We’ve been doing two years straight every week. I mean, we just got to the point where we really didn’t have much more to say. We needed a break to recharge a little bit. I’m not going to be on the show as much as I was for a couple of reasons. I live in the suburbs and driving here every Friday is a pain. I have kids, and also I recently started a company, so that’s taking up some of my time. Nothing comic book-related and, honestly, for me my hobby was starting to be taken away a little bit. I was starting to learn way more about the comics industry than I ever wanted to learn. Peeking behind the curtain sometimes is a bad thing and learning some of the things that go on and meeting some of the people who do the work that you used to enjoy. CHRIS: You learn about Mike Norton’s dog fighting rings. Nobody wants to know about that. SAL: But no, I mean, I was reading comics feeling more like I had to, as opposed to because I wanted to, and I just got burned out on it, so I personally just needed a break from it. CHRIS: A lot of what was going on with Sal, but for me, me being the master organizer and having this THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 17

vision for the show and being anal and stubborn, the direction of the show was going in ways I wasn’t enjoying nearly as much, and it just got to a point where we needed to stop and regroup and see if this was something we wanted to do, and luckily it was. We’re back. It’s different. It’s not as tight of a schedule. SAL: It was close to like— we weren’t sure if we were

going to stop completely. CHRIS: And it was starting to hurt Sal and my friendship a little bit because of the tension, and it’s not worth that. And Tom had tax season. TOM: I don’t really like the show. [laughter] SAL: Chris and I take the show far more seriously than Tom ever has. He just shows up to have a good time and doesn’t really care what happens. Chris and I took things way more seriously than we ever should have. CHRIS: But no regrets. No regrets. The first two years of the show, I’ll always look back on very fondly and I feel like we actually did something. It’s silly. It’s ridiculous. We made something very much out of nothing, but I’m proud of it. One of the things I’m most proud of is our involvement with the Hero Initiative. We got really involved with a great charity and I’d say, very probably, in the last year, we helped raise over $3,000 for the Hero Initiative, and that’s something that really matters. HOUSTON: Chris and Tom, in the meantime, you both started new podcasts, as well. CHRIS: He started one. I got roped into one. TOM: I regret it. It takes a long time. HOUSTON: Do you want to say anything about Tom Versus the JLA? TOM: It’s masochistic. It’s painful. I’m really looking 18 | AROUND COMICS

forward to the Detroit era. I’ve been reading an issue a day and it gets really boring sometimes. I mean, it doesn’t take a lot of time to do. I’ll probably end up doing it again. It’s harder in the summer because there’s stuff to do. CHRIS: Do you have nightmares where Diana walks into your bedroom and says, “Tom, why aren’t you on monitor duty?” TOM: No, I don’t think about it that much. I forgot about it one day. I got all the way to midnight and I was like, “Oh, man. I didn’t do a show. I got to do this show. Ahh!” It’s fine. I think it’s funny when people ask me, “How long until you get caught up with 2008?” and I’m like, “Forget that.” [laughter] That’s not going to happen. It might be another 20 years before I get around to that. I sort of regret doing it five days a week. CHRIS: Do you work ahead? Get several in the can? TOM: No, no, no, no. CHRIS: Really? You’re hardcore. TOM: It gets boring, sitting in the room for hours talking to yourself. You sound like a lunatic. They’re like the last thing I do every day. You would think I would plan ahead, but I wait until the last possible minute, like an hour before I go to bed. HOUSTON: What issue are you up to now? TOM: Number 230. The next issue is a JLA/JSA crossover then after those two issues is Justice League Detroit, so I’m really looking forward to that. I can’t stop though. I’m so close. Imagine if I did the whole thing. HOUSTON: Did you start with issue one? TOM: I did a blog of it for a while, but that was just ponderous. CHRIS: You skipped over the Gardner Fox stuff. TOM: It’s the same story every time. Aliens invade. They figure something out. CHRIS: The characterization—there’s no difference between Green Lantern and the Flash. TOM: It’s pretty flat. People have asked if I’m going to go back and do the earlier ones and I’m like, “No.” I did 100 blog posts and I’ll do 100 episodes. CHRIS: And 11 O’Clock Comics was just a chance for me to talk to two of my buddies, Vince B. and David Price. We talk about comics every Wednesday at 11 o’clock and it’s nice for me because I don’t have to host, I just get to be snarky.

WORD BALLOON

John Siuntres is the host of Word Balloon, the comic book conversation show. A vocal fan of talent from the Silver Age to today, John’s guests on this one-on-one interview show have included everyone from comic legends like Marty Pasko and Denny O’Neil to modern super-stars like Brian Michael Bendis and Greg Rucka. On March 9, 2008, John and I talked about how he took his experience from years of radio broadcasting and created one of the most respected shows in not only the world of comic book podcasting, but in the comics industry as a whole.

HOUSTON: What is Word Balloon is all about? SIUNTRES: Word Balloon is primarily a one-on-one interview show where I speak to mostly comic book creators. I’ve dabbled occasionally in talking to Word Balloon host John Siuntres. Photo courtesy Pat Loika other podcasters and other people around the (patsketch.blogspot.com). comic book business, but, normally, I talk to writers Dick Tracy strip and many other comic books in his and artists and I discuss not only their current books career, and Brian Azzarello, the 100 Bullets guy, and I and current stories but the thought process behind the thought, “Gee, I really don’t want to see these things craft, especially writers. I think my having a broadcast go to waste,” and I thought it would be fun to put up a and writing background, I’m always curious about how website and start posting these interviews. Maybe these storytellers go through their paces in terms of people would come and listen to them. how they construct a story and some of their influI hadn’t actually heard of the term podcasting at that ences and just the ideas they have as they put the stopoint, and it wasn’t until a couple of months later ries together. when one of my listeners told me, “You know, you’re really just doing a podcast, why don’t you place it in HOUSTON: How did Word Balloon first come about? the normal sort of aggregate places, like Podcast Alley How did you get the idea? and iTunes and make it available, because this is realSIUNTRES: Well, I had a career in radio broadcasting ly starting to happen.” So it was about three months in and the primary focus of it has been talk. I was workthat I decided to really make it a podcast, and that’s ing at a sports talk network, Sporting News Radio when the listenership really started to get bigger. Network, and had gone from being an active reporter I think my first big boost in terms of getting people to suddenly finding myself behind the scenes and not was the convention season of 2005. I was at Wizard having the opportunities to do interviews. So, in the World Chicago and, at that point, I had maybe 20 intersummer of 2005, I decided to possibly make a video views and burned documentary where I would be talking about my city of a CD of MP3s of Chicago and a bunch of history—the writing in Chicago a bunch of them and the various mystery writers and I thought it would and sort of circube interesting to include a comic book component to lated them that, given that things like Dick Tracy started with The around a lot of Chicago Tribune and also modern people like Brian creators, guys Azzarello writing 100 Bullets and also the Moonstone like Greg Rucka Comics as well publishing some mystery and susand Brian Bendis, pense stuff. I thought it would be kind of interesting Mark Waid, peoand give it a sort of different spin than the traditional ple like that were kind of documentary. there, some of So I worked with a friend of mine who was a videothe top writers grapher and got about four interviews done and my and stuff, and I friend found himself too busy to continue the project. really wanted So I found myself sitting with these great interviews Noted crime fiction writer and Dick Tracy scribe Max Allan Collins was one something I that had already been conducted, among them an of John’s first guests on Word Balloon. could get in their interview with Max Allen Collins, who used to write the Photo by Alan Light.

THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 19

hands, and some of them were really interested. I remember Greg Rucka telling me, “I have your CD in my knapsack and I’ll listen to it on the plane ride home,” and it was great and I really had a great positive response from everybody and everybody seemed to enjoy it and it just got easier once I made those initial connections. Also, at the time, I don’t think there were many other podcasts. I think Fanboy Radio and Comic Geek Speak at that point had already begun, but I wasn’t really aware of them and I think the pool was empty enough and the novelty was there that everyone was really kind of interested in this new way of doing interviews, and that kind of intrigued a lot of people. I think my radio background really kind of helped them feel comfortable that they could talk to somebody who knew how to conduct an interview.

a solo show instead of a group show, the conversation can go anywhere that I and the guest want it to go to and, if there’s an idea that I want to build on, I don’t have to worry about Host B asking his question and the conversation going off on a different tangent. There’s nothing wrong with that. Co-hosts can certainly come up with other ideas and it’s a difference on my show I think, versus some of the others out there, that it really is just me and the guest without these distractions or obligations of having to remind a radio audience of who you’re talking to or to make sure that your co-host is getting his chance to talk. It just really makes for a conversation that can go in interesting directions without distractions and you can just let it grow organically and I think that just allowed for revelations in terms of who the guest was or their influences. You weren’t getting that on Fanboy Radio or some of these other multi-host shows where it really is almost a tennis match; where it’s, “Okay, I’ve answered your question. What’s the next question?”

HOUSTON: It seems like comic book podcasting came out of nowhere that summer. SIUNTRES: Yeah, you know, I remember this Alan Moore documentary, Mindscape. He talks about how a bunch HOUSTON: I think that the of different people around spectrum of guests, from the world at the same time John with Ron Richards of iFanboy, one of several comic book guys like Max Allen Collins podcasts to also debut in 2005. Photo courtesy iFanboy. had come up with this to new guys like Greg © Copyright 2009 iFanboy. invention in the 1800s and Rucka or even Marty Pasko, I do think there is kind of a thing in terms of a collecis hard to find anywhere else. tive, you’ll forgive the phrase because it sounds preSIUNTRES: That plays to my age I guess, because that tentious, zeitgeist, where a there’s a common idea out is another thing that I’ve noticed and, again, not as a there. I mean, I was aware of Fanboy Radio and I have knock, but, in terms of what I’ve noticed, in terms of to give them their due. And certainly at that point they other podcasters out there, there is a kind of scope of had been around for at least three years and I had interest that only goes as far back as they’ve been heard them stream their show, and you’re right; they reading, and that’s fair because everybody’s like that. did start posting their MP3s and I think, in fairness, it They’re only as well versed as whatever their personal was a response to their show that I came up with experiences are. I think growing up when I did and Word Balloon. I don’t mean that in a negative way to being in my forties, reprints were right along side the Scott Hinze, because I think that it’s a fine show, but I main stuff and I kind of got an appreciation for not found that the information that I was looking for was only what was currently out there but what had come not being covered by his interviews. before and actually further back than guys like Marty Also, his show was still a radio show and I think one Pasko, guys like Gene Colan and Denny O’Neil. I mean, of the advantages of a podcast versus a radio show is I was seven years old in Denny O’Neil’s prime at DC. that fact that you can really focus on the guest and the Even before that, really, because my first comic books conversation itself and not be concerned with the trapwere back in the early Seventies, and Denny had made pings of, “By the way, we’re talking to so-and-so. If you his mark in the early Sixties. want to call in with a question, here’s the phone numI kind of grew up reading the whole history of ber and we’ll be right back after this commercial comics. I read the Golden Age reprints right alongside break.” You don’t have to worry about that in a podthe new stories being put out by Denny O’Neil, Elliot S! cast. The person, if they’re downloading an interview Maggin, and the great Cary Bates. And it’s just really with Geoff Johns, they know that that’s what they’re curious because it’s so easy to dismiss those Bronze going to be listening to for the duration of the podcast. Age stories, and certainly the Golden and Silver Age So I thought that was kind of an advantage. I was just stories, as just being stories for little kids, but there is more interested in really getting into their train of some thread there. And if you consider a guy like Will Eisner as far back as the Forties with The Spirit, a thought, and I think one of the advantages I have with 20 | WORD BALLOON

grown-up could enjoy the stories as much as a sevenyear-old kid. I think there was a real level of inventiveness and creativity in those Bronze Age stories, and they get dismissed as being written for ten-year-olds because they’re so dialogue-heavy, and “Look at those thought balloons. That’s so antiquated.” You can see the progression to what the product is today. I just think it’s as fascinating to find out what was going on in the minds of guys like Marty Pasko and Denny O’Neil when they were creating stuff in the Seventies as it is to hear what Greg Rucka and Brian Bendis and Ed Brubaker are thinking today. They came up with so much of the hard concepts back then that the guys of today could turn into subtle and more interesting characterizations. You go back to those hard ciphers and it started with those guys, so I think it’s important to hear what they were thinking and why they pointed a hero in that direction in terms of characterization and get past the silliness of some of those stories. Really, there are character moments in any decade of any of these heroes and it’s important to acknowledge the guys who wrote those.

HOUSTON: I think that’s part of why I like your show so much. I have sort of a similar mentality as a reader. I started reading comics in the Nineties and I remember not liking what was on the stands. I was fortunate to have an uncle who went out of his way to expose me to classic Silver and Bronze Age stuff. SIUNTRES: I checked out in that time period for the same reason. I really found in—and I don’t mean to fault the creators of what became Image, but that’s how we refer to it, I guess—that post-Image era, the focus was really on art instead of story and also the crassness of being a collector’s item. The foil covers and the 3-D covers—it was really more like baseball cards than stories. It’s so funny. People ask me, “Don’t you like soand-so or whatever artist?” and I do, or, “Why don’t you keep your comics in bags and treat them more carefully?”, but when it comes right down to it, I grew up reading the stories and I still follow the stories; it’s like soap operas. For me, it’s always been, “Is the writing up to par?” And there are good examples in that period as well. You had Garth Ennis writing Preacher, you had Gaiman writing Sandman, you had Marvels and Kingdom Come. So there were good stories, but the art was more dominant and that was to the detriment of the books and that just made for poorer stories. I read less. I read a lot less, and I know there was a year or two where I didn’t read any. It was really 1999 that brought me full swing back into comic books and Brian Bendis and Kevin Smith on Daredevil. 100 Bullets really piqued my interest and also guys like Greg Rucka writing Batman. I was just really excited that they had real mystery writers. That’s what brought me back. HOUSTON: Let’s talk about what goes into the making of an episode of Word Balloon. How do you decide whom you want to interview? SIUNTRES: Really, whoever interests me. I don’t do book reviews or any type of critique of books. Sometimes, I can appreciate if people think my show is too positive because I’m, like, “Man, you’re really great,” because I’m interested in speaking to the people I enjoy reading and the art that I enjoy. That’s my line. It really is kind of a personal indulgence. I do understand and I like to maintain a bigger audience, so I do keep in mind that I would like to have mainstream Marvel and DC and make sure that I talk to top creators like that, but I’m just as excited about talking to first-book people. I talked to Brent Scoonover, who THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 21

Interviews with Golden and Silver Age creators, like Golden Age Green Lantern artist Irwin Hasen (pictured here) help to distinguish Word Balloon from other podcasts. Photo courtesy Pulp Secret (www.pulpsecret.com).

was working on Astronaut Dad and I thought that was a really neat book. It doesn’t really matter. They don’t have to be big sellers; they just have to be stories that interest me. So, unfortunately for X-Men fans, I’m not a big X-Men guy. I haven’t really talked that much about the X-Men or to X-Men writers and artists. I’m sure that’s scary when you consider how much of the market share they have in terms of readers, but those books just don’t interest me, so it really is kind of a personal thing. I contact the publishing company or a lot of these guys are online, so I’ll find their websites. I’ll send them a list of people that I’ve talked to so they know what I’m doing if they’re not aware of me. That’s become less of a challenge. I’m pleased to say that and I’m so excited when I find out that someone is aware of my show. Dave Gibbons, no lie, a week ago, I ran into him on Facebook and he replied with, “Great podBrent Schoonover’s Astronaut Dad. cast. I really enjoy your © Copyright 2009 David Hopkins, Brent show,” and I’m like, Schoonover, and Silent Devil, Inc. “You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s awesome.” Mark Waid, at that first 2005 Wizard convention, when I introduced myself and he said, “Oh, I’ve heard of you,” and that’s crazy. I had 700 or 800 people listening and Mark Waid was one of them and that’s awesome, just that feeling. That’s cool. I just contact them and, if they haven’t heard the show, I explain and say, “We’re going to talk for an

22 | WORD BALLOON

hour and if that’s too long, as much time as you can spare.” I do like a half-hour because I do want to have more than a ten-minute conversation. I don’t buy this whole MTV, short attention span generation. I think people find the time if they want to listen, but I do get complaints that my interviews are too long. “I’d much rather hear a ten- or 15-minute interview,” and to them I say, “Find another podcast,” because sometimes it takes five or ten minutes to break the ice and then they feel really comfortable and start talking from the heart and not worrying about saying “um” too much or, “Do I stammer too much.” I want to make them comfortable, and that’s when the interesting stuff starts to happen. When you’re comfortable with the person asking the questions, it becomes a conversation. That’s when the more interesting thoughts start to organically grow. That’s why it’s as long as it is. Sometimes it goes on a lot longer than I anticipate, and I always worry about that, because I don’t want to wear out my welcome, so I always ask the guest if they’re okay with that. HOUSTON: Do you do a lot of prep work for each interview? SIUNTRES: Absolutely. Some of it is easy, being as avid a reader as I am. I don’t know if you can call it prep work, reading your comics every Wednesday. I do kind of sit down and try to spend at least an hour coming up with what I’ve noticed about a writer in terms of the style of stories that they tell. There’re a few stock questions of, “Is there a genre you haven’t written or drawn in that you’d like to?” Mostly, it’s derivative of whatever their work is. I do have a lot of repeat people, and I do think the great thing is that these story arcs are only four to six months long and that a lot of these guys are working on more than one book at once, especially in the case of writers. I check in with them a couple times a year to see where the plot is in terms of a monthly book or if they have a bunch of new projects, in the case of a guy like Rick Remender. “Oh, you’re doing this now. Tell me about that.” So I’m always thinking of things to talk about, and I’ll read some other interviews as well and look at quotes and not so much to catch them and say, “You said this three years to go, but now you’re writing this story,” but more to inform the conversation, or if they’re on record with an interest or a philosophy of writing, I want to explore that. Again, I think the interest comes from hearing it in their own words versus through the filter of a written interview, where it may not be an actual, literal transcription, but the writer has some license in terms of what he keeps or what he trims out. I do that to a degree, but I really only trim out the dead silences or the blind alleys of, like, “Do you like Superman?” “No, I’ve never liked Superman.” I try to keep the interviews reasonably edit free and make sure the guest is reasonably represented by his own words. HOUSTON: Do your guests ever come back and ask

you to remove someI know that’s the big thing if, for example, complaint right now. Well, they’ve talked about sometimes life intersomething that hasn’t venes and nobody likes been announced yet? a late book, but I’m not SUINTRES: Yeah, somegoing to harass sometimes, and I’m always body about being a late happy to do that. My artist. I don’t care, and show isn’t a journalistic I think, eventually, the pursuit, and also—forend product and certainly give me, but I think these days with the “comic journalism” is a trade paperbacks and bit of an oxymoron hardcovers, it’s not going when you get down to to matter. Maybe Dickens John Siuntres versus Pat Loika, who provided the picture. it, because it really is was late with Great publishers releasing Expectations, you know? books, putting out a press release, or making a marWho the hell cares? It’s on the bookshelf now. It’s a keting proposal about that book and then us kind of good story. Let it be. Unfortunately, that’s the struggle following the books, reading the books, and liking it or the monthly publishers have to deal with and it’s fair not. This isn’t politics. This isn’t sports. It’s entertainfor consumers to complain about it. I just don’t think ment. If a writer misspeaks and talks about a project it’s necessary to continue on my show. I’m just happy they wanted to make a big push for at MegaCon, of to talk about the product as it’s done, and if it’s a course I’m going to let it go. It’s okay. I’m not a gotcha story I’m not crazy about, I just won’t talk about it guy. I’m not a journalist. It’s an entertainment show. I then. If it’s a book I don’t read, it just won’t come up. want them to be relaxed so they can talk about things My last interview with Ed Brubaker, we talked for 90 and not worry about misspeaking, because there’s a minutes and the X-Men never came up. I didn’t feel bunch of it on the Internet quite frankly and something bad about it. We talked about his other books, like I’ve seen on talk radio, too. You can lull somebody into Captain America and Criminal and things like that, and a false sense of security and get them to accidentally I suddenly realized we didn’t talk about The Uncanny Xsay something that they shouldn’t. It’s life. I get so Men, but there’re enough podcasts and written stuff angry when I see people who get tripped up by that out there; it will get covered. kind of scenario and then for the next two weeks they’re in the news cycle of, “Oh, man, I shouldn’t have HOUSTON: You mentioned that you have a lot of said that.” Life’s too short. They’re superhero books. repeat guests and one of them is Brian Michael Let them tell their stories. Mine is the positive show. Bendis. How did “The Bendis Tapes” come about? I’m not going to trip you up on your words or SIUNTRES: It was totally not by accident, but I had demand to know why. I’m not sure if you’re aware of all been after Brian since that Wizard 2005 convention to the stuff that went on with Spider-Man and “One More come on the show. Finally, in January, he did. It was a Day.” It’s a choice. Choices are made in story. I don’t great conversation, really happy with it, and I happened like every story from a given writer. I don’t like everyto go to the first New York Comic Con in 2006, midthing that they do, but I’m not going to hammer them February, and happened to see him there and tell him, about it and hammer them to know why they made the “I just wanted you to know that we’ve had over 3,500 gravest mistake in storytelling if I think it is. The obvidownloads of our interview,” and he ous answer to all those questions is the same one: said, “You’ve got to be kidding.” He They thought they were telling an interesting story. was really surprised and he said, Why did they make these changes in Spider-Man? “Hey, on my website, I have a mesWell, they thought they would make for interesting stosage board and every few months I ries. That’s always the answer, but they’re not always open up a thread of questions and going to get it right. Not every movie is great. Not answers and let people ask whatever every TV show is great and, especially when you’re trythey want. It’s getting to be a pain ing to do a weekly piece of television or a monthly writing it, because sometimes it can comic book, you screw up. What are you going to do? be over 100 questions and it can get “Okay, it wasn’t that good, we’ll wow them with the really long and frustrating when I’m next story.” Even the greats have done that. I mean writing my scripts.” And he’s like, Stan Lee is on record as saying, “Hey, we know this “Would you be interested in doing a issue isn’t that great. We’re really sorry. The next podcast where we just go over fan Brian Michael Bendis. issue we’ll be better.” Those blurbs like that used to questions?” And I said, “That would Photo by Marco Repola. kill me. “We did the best we could come up with be great.” So we decided to do it. I called it “The Bendis Tapes,” kind of this month.” And there is more of artists being late. THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 23

like The Basement Tapes, Bob Dylan’s studio sessions he did of stuff he wasn’t going to necessarily release as recordings, a little more freeform. I didn’t know what to expect. I kind of took it as I’m just the guy reading the questions. The fans are the ones asking the questions and I’d interject every now and then and maybe build on something if he left something a little vague or it inspired a different question from me. We had no idea how long it would take. It was John distributed this free convention almost like being special, featuring a cover by Dan stuck in the elevator Brereton, to listeners during the 2006 convention season. Nocturnals © copyright with somebody and 2009 Daniel Brereton. after a couple of hours, the air starts to run out and you get a little slap happy, and that’s kind of what happened. It can be pretty funny, and people have good responses to it. We’ve doubled the audience. We went from 3,500 people to 7,000 people for the first three parts of “The Bendis Tapes,” so it was like, “This is great. We’ve got to do this.” So we started doing it every couple months, every two months or so, and realized that was too much. The questions were getting silly and it wasn’t interesting and we felt like, “What’s next?” So now we’re down to doing it either three times a year or quarterly, and he does so many books that it’s easy to do that. Luckily there’s always so many things going on in his books. It also has not only all the Marvel books, but also Powers, and he’s been dabbling in writing TV and movies as well, so there’s a bunch of things we can talk about. Also, Brian and a handful of other writers, I’m pleased to say, we all sort of share the same interests as far as movies and books and TV. It just makes for a looser conversation and it becomes fun. We just have a blast, and I think he appreciated that I keep the weirdos away from him as far as the questions, and for me it’s a time with a nice acquaintance that I slightly know. I won’t presume that I’m friends with any of my guests, but it does make for a more pleasant experience when I see them at conventions and they’re happy to see me and smile and have a few minutes on the con floor or in the after-hours parties or whatever. Everyone’s great, so I’m living the fan dream of getting to know these people a little and share their company and getting to know how they think, and I’m fascinated 24 | WORD BALLOON

by that. I enjoy speaking to creative people. It’s one of the reasons I’m in radio, and I think it only helps your own creativity when you’re around other creative people. I think we’re all like that, and I think it becomes a more interesting experience for us. The great thing is they’re curious about radio, too, and all the different changes that are going on in radio, and they’ll ask me questions, so it’s kind of, “Here’s what’s going on in my world; what’s going on in your world?” And “The Bendis Tapes” are the best example of that. He’s hilarious. I mean he’s very funny, and he’s been very good to his fans. I was very pleased that he happened to choose my podcast, and I think mostly the reason that he sticks with me is that I’m willing to do it at any time of the night. I’m single and live alone, so it’s easier for me. A lot of these other guys are married or have crazier nine-to-five jobs and are maybe not as conducive to match a lot of the other writers or artists that I talk to. My show’s looser like that. I don’t record on a specific day. I don’t release on a specific day. I try to get them out weekly, but I do them basically around my own schedule and try to fit it best as I can around the creators’ schedules, too. Mark Millar I talk to in the mornings because of the time difference, and he likes to talk during the weekdays, but if I get a chance to talk to Mark Millar, it’s worth it.

Michael Avon Oeming’s original art for the Bendis-penned Powers #27, page 30. Bendis and Oeming’s creator-owned series is a regular topic of conversation on “The Bendis Tapes.” Original art courtesy V. Malvin. © Copyright 2009 Jinxworld, Inc.

HOUSTON: You said you were getting about 7,000 people for the Bendis interviews. What’s your average audience? SIUNTRES: My average audience is around 4,000. I hit around 2,000 up until 2007, and then I was at about 2,500 for a portion of 2007, and then I would say, since the spring and summer, things really started to grow and currently it’s at about 4,000. Now, if it’s an independent writer or artist that people haven’t necessarily heard of, it might be a little less. If it’s a hot guy like Bendis or Geoff Johns or Greg Rucka or Jeph Loeb, it can be 7,000 or 8,000. My two big ones have been Ed Brubaker and Mark Millar. People still go back to those interviews and the numbers keep increasing. They both cracked 8,000, which really surprised me. I haven’t broken 10,000 yet, but that will come in time. I’m a patient man. I think podcasting is still finding itself and it’s still a young enough medium that people are still discovering it. The platforms that are coming out are really interesting, and I don’t just mean downloading to your iPod or using an MP3 device, but I was really pleased when TiVo suddenly had a way of getting podcasts to download through that as well. I’m not convinced that the current platforms are the end medium for this. They will eventually make their way into cars and things like that, and not just in terms of attaching your iPod and docking into a car platform, but having an Internet radio that will be able to dial in an RSS feed. The thing that’s blocking us from getting higher listener numbers is what a friend of mine on the Internet always calls “the grandma factor,” and I guess you do have to be a techie to want to get these things and understand how to look for them. It’s not as easy as looking up the website. It is to a degree, but we are still teaching people how to access these things. HOUSTON: Has your listenership gone up since you became associated with Newsarama? SIUNTRES: Absolutely. Absolutely. I started off at first doing occasional interviews that I thought they might be interested in, and then, finally, they very, very kindly approached me and asked if I wanted to post on a regular basis, and I said sure and I warned them, you know, sometimes I get busy. In January, I released nine shows, February, I was only able to release four, and they said, “No, whatever you need to do is great.” They totally trust me editorially and never come out and say we really rather you talk to this person or talk to less independents or more mainstream. I’ve never heard anything like that. They liked the product. They wanted what I was already doing. They’re the top news website. I, of course, was happy to kind of jump on and get the opportunity to get exposed to their fan base, and yeah, it’s increased my subscription level and even just the impulse people who will come on and see the item and say, “Oh cool I’d like to hear that interview. It’s great. It’s a huge

shot in the arm as far as getting guests. Mainstream people can get an extra 2,000 downloads. More esoteric and more independent people that they’re not aware of and stuff, it might only be 30 or 50 extra downloads, but I always get more downloads through Newsarama than if I was to do it on my own. HOUSTON: With your relatively new presence on Newsarama and your having had a couple of websites in the past, where’s the best place to find the full Word Balloon catalog? SIUNTRES: I stopped using my own website, because it just became a pain for me from an HTML standpoint. I’m not a web guy; I’m a radio guy that discovered and would like to be involved with podcasting, and I wanted to do it in a way that would be easiest and not take another hour just posting the item and changing everything on my website to reconfigure to the new item. I’d rather leave that to webmasters and other people to worry about and just worry about getting my show together and out there. I do still have my Blogger site and my Lybsin website, but, in terms of a full website, I’m done. Most people are getting my show through iTunes. That’s where they go. iTunes is a big, frustrating ball of wax, because the way they list their programs is so mysterious and they really kind of refuse to quantify who has the most listeners, and I don’t mean that in terms of crass competition where I need to know where I stand next to Comic Geek Speak. It just makes no sense. I know people listen to these other shows as well, and a new show will suddenly appear and appear at the top of their listings just because it’s a new show. Nobody knows for certain how they rate their shows, but it does appear that new subscribers and the volume of new subscribers definitely play a factor. I was involved with one of them: The 24 Hour Comic Podcast, which

Alongside interviews with the top writers and artists of yesterday and today, Word Balloon frequently features interviews with lesser known talent, like indie comic book artist Chris Burnham. Photo courtesy Pulp Secret.

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was hilarious. It was a bunch of us getting together and talking for 24 hours. And because there were so many new subscribers to it, it pushed aside all of the other shows in terms of ranking, and I was like, “There’s no way in hell,” and I know because I saw the numbers for it. There was no way in hell those shows should have been rated higher, but again nobody knows how iTunes works, and I’ve either fluctuated by being number 4 on iTunes to being 10. They still have my old feed up there as well. It’s maddening because I would like to know. I use Lybsin for my dominant distribution and for my subscribers and list my Lybsin feed through iTunes, “but I am pleased to say that I think, while it is the dominant way people get my show, they only represent at best two-thirds of my audience, so there is a “healthy third that isn’t being represented on the iTunes charts and it’s tough. iTunes, much as it was when the Internet first started, is an easy way for people to find podcasts and see where they are. I don’t know. Again, that’s kind of why I went with Newsarama, because at least I know that’s a top news site and people will at least see my items there instead of try-

On the convention floor with artists Bryan J.L. Glass (left) and Michael Avon Oeming (right). Photo courtesy Pulp Secret.

ing to find them on their own, because people who are going to the Internet for their comic book news, that’s a chunk of the audience right there. I am pleased to have associated myself with Newsarama. I think it helps awareness for the show in a way few others would. HOUSTON: I know it’s probably up to the individual podcaster, to some degree, but part of what frustrates me about iTunes is the lack of backlog. SIUNTRES: Yeah, and it isn’t everything. You know the good thing about iTunes is they link back to the website and I have them go back to my Lybsin site, which has most of my shows. I’m slowly going through my older shows and putting them on the Lybsin feed, because, at first, I went through Feedburner for my 26 | WORD BALLOON

RSS and I wasn’t happy with their statistics and, again, I want to know how many people are actually listening to my show and I want the most accurate count I can get and Lybsin has finally been able to do that for me outside of me setting up a website myself and, again, I don’t have the time or desire for that. But I still have my Feedburner site as well, and it’s very hard to find out who’s listening to your show and that’s why I went away from them. Unfortunately, though, it’s the best way to get things now. “Now” is the operative word. I do think things will change. They’ll find ways because they have to find a way to make downloads smaller anyway, for movie downloads and television downloads to really be the successful business model that they’re looking for, and I think, once that barrier is cracked, everyone will follow suit. The Flash player that YouTube allows is a good step in the right direction because people want to hear it right now. They don’t want to wait for a download; they want to start watching right now and start listening right now. So, as those kinds of technologies become easier for people to use, listenership will increase. I do just think that if you have a quality show, a quality podcast, it’s not going to happen any time today, tomorrow, or next year, but I think, in the future, this is a viable business and response to broadcasting and a different way of broadcasting. Just as cable television suddenly appeared on the scene and satellite radio has appeared, I think podcasting will eventually be such an option and will be a good business model and I don’t know if [podcasters] could live on it, but have a nice little supplemental income off of their podcasts. HOUSTON: I’ve noticed that you sometimes set up a table in Artists’ Alley at Wizard World Chicago. What’s it like to meet and interact with your fans? SIUNTRES: I’m happy to. I only do that, as far as having a table, usually because my friends are kind enough to offer space with them. I’m happy to meet the fans; I’m delighted to meet the fans. It always cracks me up when people recognize my voice and say, “Aren’t you John Siuntres from Word Balloon?” That’s the greatest compliment in the world, but I really think that, on the food chain of the comic book convention, I’m pretty low on the chain. What I’d rather do, and they’re starting to do this, are the panels that we have for podcasts. Those are a great way to say hi to the fans and stuff. I’m always happy to meet a fan. I’m happy to answer any questions, and that’s why I always end the show with my e-mail address. I don’t want a message board because, while I think message boards are very good and help build a community for a website or a podcast, I’ve just seen too many instances of snarkiness and nastiness on message boards to be interested in participating in them. And I get really angry sometimes, because I think there is a small percentage of petty people and the message board gives them a much louder voice than if they were in a comic store or on a bus. There’s also

the anonymity, and I always refer to it as, “I don’t want to get in an argument with Vader28.” I’m John Siuntres. If you have a problem, come to me. And, you know, I have my little, crazy avatars. Sunny Lerou was pretty much my message board name when I first started, but I go to so few message boards and everybody at those places knows who I am and I always have an ad for Word Balloon in there, so they know it’s me. I just get really angry at what I see as pettiness. I think the best thing about message boards is the worst thing about message boards: anyone can go on and say whatever they want. On the one hand, I think that’s great, but, on the other hand, I think you should be a little bit more responsible. It’s the same thing I’ve noticed on talk radio with caller participation. Some listeners will get very agitated and say, “I’m on the radio. I have a first amendment right.” No. It’s our radio show. You’re the listener. We have the power to hang up on you. The power of the fan that I think the Internet has been partially responsible for has made for a pleasant experience and made for a good exchange between creators and fans, but I also think that, in some cases of some snarky fans, it will fall into their favor because suddenly they’ve got a megaphone. I really got angry when I saw some writers run out of the business. Guys like Ron Zimmerman and Chuck Austen—I’ll name names—who I think were completely treated unfairly. It’s one thing to not like their stories and not buy the books; it’s another thing to have this kind of torchbearer, Frankenstein and the villagers storming the castle thing and demand the guy leave. I think it’s unfair. It really is unfair. I think guys like Chuck Austen, where I liked half his stuff and I didn’t like half his stuff, had a right to continue to write as much as he wanted to and let the publishers decide if he belonged in the business or not, but I think it was this chorus of boos in his name that was provided mostly by message boards that made him say, “I don’t need this; I’m getting out of here. I don’t need this kind of aggravation.” I’ve seen other creators fall for that hostility and I just think it’s unfair. I really think it’s unfair and they’re the vocal minority because they don’t represent all readers. The percentage of comic book fans that actually participate on the Internet—I don’t think it’s 50 percent. It’s probably less. HOUSTON: I think that’s to the credit of most podcasts. Very rarely do you hear them get petty like that. SIUNTRES: I agree. The one thing I don’t like, though, is some of the reviews that I hear on some of the podcasts because I do think they’re, “I don’t get it,” or, “I only like this kind of story.” I think that everyone can be a critic, but everyone doesn’t have the proper tools to convey criticism and, with podcasting, the same as with message boards, their greatest strength is their greatest weakness. I think there are a lot of very good

podcasts out there. I also think there are a lot of very bad podcasts out there, and I don’t think they necessarily resonate with a huge listenership and they kind of fall by the wayside if they’re not very good. There are some people that kind of come in with the criticism that the story didn’t go where they wanted it to go, and there is this huge component of comic book readers who like to see Superman fly in and beat Lex Luthor. We don’t mind that it’s happened a million times before and it’s the same with the Fantastic Four and Doctor Doom, but, every now and then, you’ll get a writer or an artist and they’ll say, “We want to take this in a different way,” and it may take longer than six issues to explain the story arc that they’re going on. The John interviews Savage Dragon creator Erik patience of some of these Larsen, himself no stranger to controversy. reviews that I hear on podcasts—I think they’re coming at it from an uninformed view. They don’t have the whole story, but they’re happy to start complaining right away, even when a book is just announced on the message boards. Ugh. “Brian Reed was doing Captain Marvel in a current book. Good luck.” Well, read the damn story. All you’ve read is that they’re coming out with the story. I get a little angry, and I think that’s because it speaks to a lack of patience and, again, I just think, when you’re criticizing a book, you need to have all the facts before you do it, and I think they’re too many stories in midstream and I don’t think that’s fair. Podcasting, there’s a responsibility there. It’s the same with the citizen journalism we’re also seeing with blogs and things like that. I think it’s cool that people are jumping in and doing this, but I do think you can have a bit of responsibility when you’re doing it. Watch Recording an episode of Around Comics alongside Crankcast hosts Mike Norton and what you say. It Chris Crank. Photo courtesy Around Comics. just boils down to watch what you say. HOUSTON: What are your favorite podcasts? SIUNTRES: I like Around Comics. I like iFanboy. I like THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 27

Fanboy Radio. Those are comic podcasts and there are even more non-comic podcasts. I listen to a ton of political ones. I listen to a ton of NPR programs, but a lot of the podcasts I listen to are just radio shows that are delivered as podcasts. But, as far as just podcasts, Quiet! Panelologists at Work is very good. I like Hello, Borders, another British show that I think is a very smart interview show. Mostly, I like interview shows. I do like a couple, like Around Comics and iFanboy. I do like the conversation that goes on. I think it’s responsible, but mostly I’m looking for other shows like mine. I’m looking to learn about the creators. Fan opinion and stuff, I get enough of that in my store and at luncheons among my other friends that read comics. I don’t look for an hour of that. I would much rather hear an interesting discussion about a subject like comics or a good interview with a guest and, again, giving the guest the opportunity to truly speak and, with some of these shows, I don’t think you get a lot of that. HOUSTON: You were a semi-regular on Around Comics for a while. SIUNTRES: Yeah. They’re good guys. They’re local guys and I just sort of fell into that because my schedule was open enough when they were recording to be able to do the show, so it was an easy opportunity for me to speak and just kind of hang out. Then my job changed. I got a radio job at night and wasn’t able to be around as much as I’d like. HOUSTON: I always enjoyed hearing you on that show since you got to let your hair down a little more. I particularly enjoyed your many impressions, like Harry Carry and Dan DiDio. SIUNTRES: I appreciate that. It’s a different show than

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my show. I mean, I hope I’m still entertaining on my show. I feel the focus should be my guest and I want to get out of the way of the guest. I’m trying to do a straight interview, but I still hope there’s some fun to it. But I know what you mean and I agree. I do like discussion shows. That’s one of the things I liked about talk radio and one of the reasons that I got into talk radio: there isn’t one answer and there isn’t one idea. There isn’t one right answer. It’s fun to share and discuss. By the way, anything I’ve said today, I’d be happy to be proven wrong and for someone to tell me why message boards are good. It is good for the fan to have as much to say in the comics world. I’m happy to discuss that and I think that makes for learning. You’re only going to learn through discussion and truly listening to what other people think, and I think the panel shows provide that and that was why I was happy to be on Around Comics as much as I was. It’s funny. I think specifically Brion Salazar doesn’t want to say anything too negative and, again, that goes along with my feeling as well that there is too much negativity, but I do like an honest discussion or disagreement, again, not to say that one is right or the other is wrong, but I do think there is more than one way to look at things and I do think that discussion is a good way to kind of getting in everything and answering questions, not in an accusatory way, demanding an answer, but, “Wait a minute. I know why you like it because of this, but what about his angle? What do you think of this?” And when I’ve been on Around Comics, I’ve always kind of come in with questions I want to know. “What about this? What about that?” I’m happy to discuss. HOUSTON: Do you have a favorite interview or episode of Word Balloon? SIUNTRES: I certainly have a group of guests where it’s no surprise that they’re repeat guests. I really enjoy talking to Greg Rucka, Brian Bendis, Geoff Favorite Word Balloon guest Ed Johns, Ed Brubaker, Jeph Brubaker. Photo by Tony Loeb, and I have to throw Guagliardo. Matt Fraction in there as well, because, again, I really appreciated the way they think. I think they’re funny guys. Rick Remender really makes me lose it when I talk to him. There isn’t one. I have to give a list. As far as some of the older guys I’ve gotten to talk to, it was such a privilege to talk to Marty Pasko, Denny O’Neil, and Gene Colan especially. Such gracious guys with their time and truly, you know, the first guys who, as a kid, I was really reading and enjoying their work. It was such fun. I felt like a kid. It’s the same with sports radio and meeting athletes that

you really admired when you were a kid. That’s like meeting Santa Claus and that’s what it felt like when I was talking to these guys, because that’s the kind of delight I would get from their entertainment and to be able to ask them, “What was it like to create Ra’s al Ghul?” Neal Adams is another one like that. So, yeah, I would say the Silver Age guys in particular. I should say the Bronze Age guys and also the writers that I just mentioned. You might notice that I don’t talk much about artists and I don’t talk to as many artists as I do writers and that’s just a personal concern on my part. I do write. I’ve written for magazines, I’ve written for newspapers, and I’ve written for radio. I have a journalism background. I just feel more comfortable and have more questions in terms of the writing process, and I really do feel in art that I am just a layman and can only articulate with, “I like what I see,” and I don’t know as much about page composition and the choice of perspective on a given panel. I try to learn from the artists, but I have just felt self-conscious that I don’t have the vocabulary to give as good of an interview with an artist as I do with a writer and that always concerns me and keeps me from talking to as many artists as I do. I just feel like we’re going to be done in about 20 minutes because all I can say is, “It’s good.” So I struggle with that. I’m happy when I speak to the artists who also write. It’s no fault of the artist. It’s all on me. I just feel more comfortable talking to guys who can talk story like a writer can. Mike Grell’s a perfect example. I just spoke to Mike Grell a week or so ago and we spoke about his craft and spoke about his art style, but I was most interested in how he made the leap to writing as well as drawing and most of them will tell you it’s all part of the storytelling process. And, you know, that’s fine. That’s great. I’ll get great answers and they’ll still talk about their art, but, yeah, I just feel like I’m not as up to the task of talking to an artist as I am talking to a writer. HOUSTON: Have you ever been intimidated by any of your guests? SIUNTRES: Not as such. I don’t think so. You know, luckily, by the time I started interviewing for my podcast, I had already spent 16 years getting interviews wrong on radio and I think intimidation was part of that early stage of learning how to interview someone. Part of that is just being self-conscious that you’re going to ask that wrong question and I think doing and learning in radio taught me to not be intimidated when the time finally came to do interviews with comic creators. Now, I’m comfortable with my own interview style and I feel prepared. And I think that’s when you feel intimidated is when you’re unprepared for something and the onus is on you to be ready for an interview and you don’t know what you’re going to ask, so no. Some guys’ answers are shorter than others. A couple guys were— not hostile, but kind of—well, “I’ve answered that question a million times.” But that’s the thing. I’ve

always had a list of questions and I feel okay. So, no, I don’t think I’ve been intimidated by any of the creators yet. HOUSTON: What is the future of Word Balloon? SIUNTRES: Well, I enjoy doing it and I don’t see myself stopping doing it anytime soon because it represents the sort of radio show I’d eventually like to do. Maybe broaden it a little more and do other pop culture subjects and involve more TV and movies than I’ve done. I talk to a guy like Jeph Loeb about Original art from Jon Sable: Freelance #41 by Word Heroes or Allan Heinberg, Balloon guest Mike Grell, when I talked to him, or Tom demonstrating exactly the Jane from The Punisher, sort of storytelling John talking about his movie career Siuntres gravitates towards. and stuff. I’d like to see Word Courtesy Nick Fatica. © Copyright 2009 NightSkySable LLC Balloon continue and grow. Like I say, I think we’re really at the beginnings and it’s still early enough that podcasts will increase, and I think broadcast opportunities will come of this kind of programming and I think it will be able to build a big enough audience that sponsors will be interested in continuing it. I don’t think the interest in pop culture is going to go away. I think it increases every year and I’d like to offer my program as a way of going beyond the 90 seconds of coverage you get on an entertainment magazine show like Entertainment Tonight. I think there’s value in longer interviews. Just as there is interest in reading comics magazines and books about the business, I think there’s interest in hearing these excellent creators in their own words, and it provides them with a platform and it provides me with an entertaining show, so I like doing it and I don’t think I’ll be stopping any time soon.

John Siuntres looks toward the future in this photograph by fellow podcaster Augie De Blieck, Jr.

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C R E A T O R

I N T E R V I E W

MATT FRACTION A frequent and highly entertaining guest in the podcasting world, rising star Matt Fraction is the writer of numerous Marvel Comics titles, including The Uncanny X-Men and The Invincible Iron Man, as well as the creator-owned Casanova from Image comics. Perhaps part of the reason that Fraction is such an excellent and willing podcast guest is that he is first and foremost a comics fan, having started his career as a blogger and message board regular. On March 29, 2008, Matt and I talked about his experiences with podcasts and his journey from Internet fan to comics professional. HOUSTON: What was the first time you were on a podcast? FRACTION: I want to say it was either John Siuntres with Word Balloon or the guys from Around Comics, who, I believe, are on a podcast sabbatical at the moment. HOUSTON: I’m pretty sure it was Around Comics, too. What was that experience like for you? FRACTION: It was great, far less formal than any kind of interview. You know what I mean? It’s much more casual, much more laid back. It kind of gives you the chance to talk and riff off the top of your head instead of crafting exact answers, which is another kind of trap for me doing written interviews. If I have a questionnaire I can rewrite, I will rewrite it and rewrite it and rewrite it, so I sort of immediately realized that I’d much rather appear on the phone with somebody for 15, 20 minutes, half an hour than noodle around with a 13-question essay form for three weeks, which I quite easily can do.

Frequent podcast guest Matt Fraction. Photo by Pat Loika. patsketch.blogspot.com

HOUSTON: Was that the first time you had heard of podcasting? FRACTION: No, no, I had heard of them sort of from the Internet, I suppose. I was listening to a couple of them for quite a while. I’d listened to Siuntres for a while and Around Comics I started listening to, I think, fairly early on. I have a friend who actually really has a podcast problem. He has an addiction where he has to find the time in the day to keep up with all of the podcasts that he listens to. But no, I was familiar with it and listened to several.

HOUSTON: You were on Around Comics a couple of times and, at one point, you made a bet regarding the destruction of St. Louis. FRACTION: Somebody put that on Wikipedia, actually. It was right around the [2006 Cubs versus Cardinals] World Series, and I’m from Chicago. I’m a Cubs fan, and my two favorite teams in baseball are the Cubs and whoever’s beating the Cardinals and they were clearly poised to win the World Series and I didn’t like that. The Around Comics guys were Cards fans, so, yeah, I threatened to turn St. Louis into basically the Kenny of Casanova, where St. Louis got destroyed again and again as punishment just for the Cardinals, but, apparently, just being the Cardinals was punishment enough for the Cardinals. They’d taken care of punishing themselves, but forever that’s on my Wikipedia entry. No mention of the Cubs stuff.

HOUSTON: With that first appearance, who contacted whom? Did you contact them? FRACTION: No, I was contacted. I’m really bad at that self-promotion stuff. I’m really bad with walking into a store and introducing myself to retailers. I’m really bad with that. It’s really tough for me to do. It was great to be asked, very much an honor in its way.

HOUSTON: Will we see that in an upcoming Casanova? FRACTION: Actually, I tried to work that into World War Hulk. I wanted my World War Hulk issue to take place in St. Louis. It was the same basic issue, but it would have taken place in St. Louis instead of New York. It ended up being this sort of thing where I went over

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and over with my editor about if I understood the premise of World War Hulk or if the premise shifted, but it ended up being a New York-based story. HOUSTON: What other podcasts have you been on since Around Comics? FRACTION: A lot. My memory fails me at the moment. Comic Geek Speak, I’ve done. I guess Fanboy Radio is a radio show and not a podcast. I’ve been on Word Balloon a couple of times now. I’ll basically do whatever podcast I can. In fact, I’m doing one tomorrow or Tuesday, I think. I love it. Podcasts are the best. HOUSTON: Who are you appearing with on Tuesday? FRACTION: I’d have to check my e-mail. I’ve had a really overwhelmingly busy month, so I can’t remember off the top of my head. It’s been something like seven-and-a-half issues this month and my eyes are bleeding. HOUSTON: So that’s Casanova, Punisher War Journal… FRACTION: This month I wrote the entirety of or

finished issues of Casanova, The Order, Immortal Iron Fist, Invincible Iron Man, Thor: Ages of Thunder, Punisher War Journal, and Uncanny X-Men and then, on top of that, there were interviews, PR for Iron Man and X-Men. I did Wizard World LA, and I have a sixmonth-old son. It’s been a really busy month. It’s a high-class problem to have. I’m not actually complaining, but, man, I could really use a nap. HOUSTON: Does the experience of doing a podcast change from podcast to podcast for you? FRACTION: It’s interesting. It does. It’s clearly talking to someone who knows your work and is clearly excited to talk to you about it as opposed to someone who has no idea of who I am or what I’ve done but has kind of read an interview about an interview. You know what I mean? I often do podcasts that I don’t understand why I’m on. They’ve never read a word I’ve written. Then there’s another sort of podcast where, not only have they never read a word I’ve written, they just know that I know other, more famous people. They really want me to see if Ed Brubaker can call in or if I can get Warren Ellis to call in. That’s always embarrassing, being used as a stepping-stone. With those people, I’m just as polite as possible, fulfill my obligation, and then ignore them for the rest of my life. HOUSTON: Speaking of that, talking to people who know your work, you were on a really excellent Comic Geek Speak where your friend Geoff Klock interviewed you. FRACTION: Yeah, that was tremendous. I sort of started off with Casanova as an independent book, a small press book, so my ego really allowed me to go out and peek at reviews. Geoff had written a really amazing piece about it, really giving the book a lot of thought. So I contacted him just to thank him, because he put in so much thought and effort writing these really well written, really funny, over the top, hyperbolic pieces about Casanova. So, when Casanova volume two was going to launch, I thought, “This will be great. I can sort of nerd out with Geoff for a while about the book,” and that was what we did with this very long, very crazy discussion about Casanova. HOUSTON: Now your career sort of started out on the Internet, right? FRACTION: Exactly.

HOUSTON: And that was writing articles for Comic Book Resources? Yeah, before that I started a sort of proto-blog called Savant that was really more a webzine than a blog, and that was sort of the reason I stopped doing it was the realization that we needed to update it daily instead of putting out seven articles, ten articles once a week instead of one a day. So, yeah, we sort of had

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Casanova villain Dokktor Klockhammer’s name was inspired by that of Geoff Klock, a friend of Fraction’s who appeared alongside him on an episode of Comic Geek Speak. Panel from Casanova #8. © Copyright 2009 Matt Fraction and Gabriel Ba.

like a proto-blog called Savant and that’s where I got started—being around a couple of web forums back in the day when you could be on a forum and garner attention for yourself—and that was parlayed into writing short stories, which parlayed into graphic novels, which parlayed into doing a column. I had this great idea for a column for Comic Book Resources that, once I started to write, I realized could never actually be written. It was the sort of mistake that only a novice would make, so I was stuck with this commitment. I wanted to write a column about my first year in comics, but every conversation I had with every editor and every publisher began with, “Okay, now don’t post this on the Internet.” So, suddenly, I had a column where I couldn’t talk about what I was actually working on, but there was this independent stuff I was kind of noodling around with and it became very solipsistic and all about me, me, me, me, me. I got awful sick of my own voice awful fast, and then I kept doing it, ironically enough.

even predated iPods for God’s sake. It was sort of this pie in the sky notion, and it would have been great. I mean, less work is less work, you know what I mean? The less coding you have to do, whether it’s HTML, to date myself, or CSS would have been less work. It would have been great. You know, I insisted on putting Savant out as a PDF, which, at the time was the most manageable, portable, digital file possible. It allowed people to print it or carry it with them on their laptops or whatever they wanted, and I got lambasted for that. “Oh, this will never last.” People mocked and ridiculed the notion that anybody would want to take any kind of digital file around with them like that. I still remember threads on forums with commentators and bloggers who now would blush if I were to remind them. You know, arguments with guys on the blogosphere arguing about the plausibility of the format, whether or not if it was a PDF, a CBR, or a CBZ file, that sort of notion of having a compact digital file that would allow you to print or manipulate it as you chose, and that was the big deal about Savant was that you could download this PDF and do with it what you saw fit; you could print it or post it or you could copy or paste it. You could do with it what you want. People thought I was stupid. Well, look who’s laughing now.

HOUSTON: You do a lot of blogging still. You have your own website that you update semi-regularly. FRACTION: You can always tell when I’m busy because it goes untouched. It’s the first thing off the to-do list. I am the worst blogger in the world. I can’t figure out what I’m doing with that thing. I’ve actually very recently, in the last week, had this kind of epiphany, this kind of “on the road to Damascus” realization about what the Internet has become in the last year or so. I have a lot of half-baked, uncooked thoughts flowing around my head, that I’m HOUSTON: So, in those days of really, really reconsidering my working as sort of a self-pronotion of that kind of broadcast claimed “loud mouth on the paradigm. I don’t know where Internet,” did you ever consider I’m going with it, but it’s changstarting a podcast of your Fraction with Warren Ellis, whose message board, ing. It’s changing right now and own? along with Savant, served as Matt Fraction’s original it’s changing in a way that I can’t FRACTION: Back then, it was Internet bully pulpit before becoming a professional quite articulate. This is going to nowhere near as simple. Savant comics writer. Photo by Laurenn McCubbin.

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sound stupid when articulated on the phone and just talking to people. quite so frankly, but the Internet You sound like what you sound like. I now is not the Internet that was always worry, “Do I sound arrogant? Do I two years ago. I’m still very much sound pretentious? Do I sound full of living in like a 2003, 2004 web myself? Do I sound like an egomaniac space, which is four years ago. You when I write all this stuff out?” But to know what I mean? I think it’s time get on the phone and just talk about it for me to re-evaluate that. I think is so much more casual, and it lasts a that the climate has changed wildly. half-hour. It’s done and it’s out of your The times have changed. It’s time mind. I talked to some people and to become something different maybe I misspoke and maybe not, but I online. got some laughs and we had a good Twitter, I think, is great because time. You can go and move on with your it’s guilt-free blogging. Twitter is day. about the scope of what a blog I worry about stuff too much. To me, if Fraction with his son Henry Leo in a needs to be to me: a little microthe Internet is work, you’re doing it picture originally published on blog. When I think it’s time to write Fraction’s blog wrong. My blog, my Internet life is work a blog, I think it’s time to write an and so I’m doing it wrong and that’s the (www.mattfraction.com). essay. It’s my problem. I’m the one realization. And I’m doing it wrong for a who can’t evolve my thinking. I still have to hardcode hostile, vicious audience and that’s what’s making me everything by HTML into a movable type window. The reevaluate what I’m doing. So, for me, it’s all about culture is different, the climate is different, and the podcasting. It’s all about podcasting and Twitter, world is different. If you want a taste of that, look at microblogging. I think it’s time to break that one-way the Marvel Boy fiasco and the Jerry Siegel ruling this communication. I think it’s time to sever the signal-toweekend. The Internet audience—it’s a wildly different noise ratio by simply not allowing them to complain. climate than it was and it’s making me reevaluate And I think that in a podcast, you know, it’s done. It’s what my presence online should be. Often times, out there. It can’t be rewritten. It can’t be drafted. dinosaurs are dead half an hour before their lives People could comment on it, but the conversation we end. In this analogy, I’m the dinosaur. had is done. Either we had a good time and made each other laugh and we had an exchange of ideas, HOUSTON: What sort of dinosaur are you? or we didn’t, and that’s it. In Twitter I have no probFRACTION: I’m a pterodactyl, but with the head of a lems with saying, “Whee! Thor is fun!” and, if I put triceratops. Rawr! And I can fly. that in a blog, I’d sound like an idiot. HOUSTON: But with three horns. FRACTION: Yes. I’m a gun that shoots swords, by God. HOUSTON: As you do have certainly more experience as a blogger than as a podcaster, do you see any particular advantages to blogging over podcasting or vice versa? FRACTION: The thing that’s great about podcasts is I can’t rewrite it. I’m extraordinarily lucky. I’ve had an amazingly ripid career arc and I find myself not only launching a new Iron Man series on the eve of the film, which is going to be one of the biggest movies of the summer, but coming onto X-Men and launching a new era as it crosses the 500 threshold. They’re amazingly high-class problems to have. There’s a lot of PR that’s required and you get these essay questions, you get these lists. “Who is Tony Stark in the great acrostics of the Marvel Universe and why and how does the maxim of Civil War change the environment of the social political climate do you think?” And these are not easy questions. They could be, but I need to think very hard to come up with a snarky answer. It becomes like homework and I need to write scripts. I don’t have time for this stuff. I love getting

HOUSTON: But with Twitter I can look and say, “Oh, Matt Fraction is baking cookies.” FRACTION: Exactly! And I can say, “Hey, the Electric Sinks record is out and it’s really good.” It’s fine. It’s great. It’s guilt-free and if I want to say more I can, but like I say, when it becomes a job—I already have a job. HOUSTON: Now, we’ve talked about Casanova briefly. That’s pretty much your first major work, right? FRACTION: Yeah, it was my first ongoing and, yeah, that’s fair to say. Yeah. HOUSTON: It’s one of my favorite books and one that is regularly discussed on any number of podcasts but is still a book that some readers may not know about. Would you like to describe the book for new readers? FRACTION: It’s a science-fiction spy book. It’s James Bond meets Doctor Who, if you like that blank-meetsblank comparison. It’s a science-fiction espionage book and there are two volumes, and what it’s about is a debonair, debauched man of leisure whose father runs the big international spy agency and he’s got an identical twin sister who is the star of this agency. THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 33

She is killed in the line of duty, and in the fallout of the murder we discover that the culprit was Casanova’s father’s archrival and it was all part of this plan to abduct Casanova from a space and time where he is kind of the bad twin and bring him to a parallel dimension where he’s the good twin. The bad guy’s basically wishing to replace the good twin with the bad twin and have a double-agent work against the spy agency. So it’s a story about secret identities and covers and lies and family commitments and all that kind of stuff shot through this crazy, science fiction, brain bending kind of comic book soup that only comic kind of stories can do. I had a chance to write it and I was worried that I would never ever be asked to write a comic again, so I thought, “Why write another Batman comic? Write the comic you wish you could read.” So it’s the comic book I want to read. If you love On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Our Man Flint and Enter the Dragon, this is the comic for you. If you, like me, found Jerry Cornelius stuffy and boring and wish for a little more high-octane debauchery, we’re your book, and it’s only two dollars per issue. HOUSTON: I always kind of think of it as Danger: Diabolik with a brain. FRACTION: Yeah and, actually, I think that was in the pitch. What if Jerry Cornelius and Alias had a kid and it was Diabolik? His costume is very much an homage to Diabolik.

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HOUSTON: That crazy, science-fiction, pop cultureinfused nature of Casanova seems to have made it almost de rigueur for podcasters to ask you about your current favorite cult movies and TV shows. FRACTION: I do get asked that a lot and I think it’s partly because of how Casanova is as a book. I was always envious of James Robinson, who created the character Starman, who has the same interests James has, and so James would write about a character who collects Bakelite radios and suddenly his readers would send him Bakelite radios. I started to write a cool spy comics and people started to send me old spy toys. Seriously. I’ve got these little radios that transform into a gun, you know what I mean? I get that a lot, but I made that bed and I can lie in it. HOUSTON: One of the things that makes Casanova so unique is the back matter you include in each issue. Could you tell me a little bit about what that is and why you decided to include it? FRACTION: It’s kind of production material, in theory. It was actually something that Warren Ellis came up with for Fell and, not really knowing the way of the world and the way Image worked, I kind of assumed that it was an editorially mandated format, so I followed suit. It also comes from an art school culture and a film school culture where I’m used to talking about my work in very art school and film school sort of ways, so I talk about what I was looking at or what I was thinking about when I was writing that issue. I’m a big process junky, so I really tried to make Casanova’s back matter about the process. I love reading other people’s scripts. I love seeing how other people work, especially comic people. I love checking out how established folks work and how people who wrote the books that I love wrote that book, so this was just a way to talk about my process. Not to say that the work was important, per se, but I think everyone’s process is important, whether it’s me or Warren Ellis or Denny O’Neil or anyone else in the world—Art Spiegelman, you name it. HOUSTON: Now you did something really similar with The Annotated Mantooth! FRACTION: Mantooth! was very tongue-in-cheek, you know what I mean? HOUSTON: It is tongue and cheek, but also really gratifying to a guy who’s writing a book about podcasting and who has a film degree that there can exist a book about a superspy gorilla that’s as heavily footnoted as something like Sherlock Holmes. FRACTION: That was entirely the conceit of it: to treat it like it was Gravity’s Rainbow. Do you remember the shock and horror that you felt when you

Country trade, for “Calliope,” the one about the muse in the attic. It was the first comic script I had ever read. Then, as I would go to conventions, sometimes I would see scripts when artists would bring them. Then I started to work retail and work at comic conventions and I started to get scripts, like I had a Shade: The Changing Man script that Richard Case gave me from an issue he and Peter Milligan did together. I have a Sandman Mystery Theater somewhere that Matt Wagner wrote. To really teach myself how to do it, I had to see how it was being done. If you want to write novels, you need to read a lot of novels. If you want to write screenplays, you should read a lot of screenplays, but if you wanted to write comics, there was really nowhere to go. It was really hard to find samples. There was How to Write Comics the Marvel Way and the Eisner book and that was it. Now, with so many streams of media, whether it’s the web itself or podcasts, there’s a hunger for this stuff. It’s never been easier to discover the process and that’s terrific. It’s great.

saw that there was an Armageddon Criterion Edition? That’s the joke. The joke is let’s treat this like it’s Citizen Kane. HOUSTON: I think it’s a great joke, but, at the same time, I do think there’s something very cool about it. Why not talk about something like that that much in-depth and why not give even the silliest comics the kind of academic respect that they deserve as much as Armageddon. FRACTION: No. I think you’re speaking to that Platonic ideal of discourse. I think you’re absolutely right. But, also, let’s call a spade a spade. Manthooth stories are like 13 pages long, so we needed to bulk up the collection. [laughter] HOUSTON: It seems to me that Casanova’s back matter and The Annotated Mantooth! are all part of a larger movement, along with podcasts, that have really gone a long way in creating a new transparency in comics that didn’t exist even twenty years ago. How do you think that transparency has affected comics? FRACTION: I think it’s never been easier to see the way the hot dogs get made. When I was a kid, the first comic script I remember seeing ever was Neil Gaiman’s Sandman script they reprinted in the Dream

HOUSTON: I know what you mean, too. I remember, when I was younger, wanting to learn how to write comics and essentially writing screenplays because I didn’t know how else it should look. FRACTION: I’m doing a Q and A for the Bendis board right now and there were a lot of extremely basic process questions, because there’s no textbook. People are trying to scavenge information together and then these threads get saved. People copy and paste the information, but there’s no central hub. There’s no rulebook. HOUSTON: You’re right, and I think the first comic script I ever saw was on the Internet. It was a Devin Grayson Gotham Knights script that was on DC’s website. FRACTION: Wow. Interesting. HOUSTON: Now, that first Around Comics appearance came out around the time Casanova was hitting around number two or three, do you think your podcast appearances have done much for your more independent work, like Casanova or The Five Fists of Science? FRACTION: It’s really hard to say. If it has, it’s been microscopic. It’s a small press book and it’s not published by Marvel and it’s not published by DC, so every bit helps. Honestly, it’s not for me to say what the bloggers should or shouldn’t be writing about, but it’s incredibly frustrating to have a kind of world where something like One More Day will get a million words written about it on two million blogs for six months, but other kind of smaller books, books that people love, are not being talked about because they’re saying, “Well, I’m just repeating myself with this book,” which I hear about Casanova a lot. Any attention we get is great, but it’s frustrating. THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 35

Casanova or Five Fists, so every bit of attention helps. Every single person who advocates work that they love that isn’t DC or Marvel is doing those books a tremendous favor and it’s worth its weight in gold. HOUSTON: Does Marvel have any attitude about their creators appearing on podcasts at all? I mean, outside of standard confidentiality things. FRACTION: I was actually supposed to do a Marvel The Five Fists of Science and Last of the Independents, two of podcast last week that got Fractions independent graphic novels. Five Fists of Science TM Matt Fraction rescheduled because of a and Steven Sanders. Last of the Independents © Copyright 2009 Matt Fraction and Kieron technical glitch, but they’re Dwyer. really starting to embrace The books that people hate, people won’t stop talking it. Marvel.com is really going to become something in about. One More Day doesn’t need to be talked the next year. Lots of exclusive content and stuff like about. It will sell a million copies. It will sell no matter that. They love the Internet, and you get to the point what you say about it, and the truth is really in the where you sort of know what you can and can’t talk pudding, whether it’s Casanova or Fear Agent or about. Scalped from Vertigo, which, don’t fool yourself, Vertigo is not DC. You know, these small books that HOUSTON: Have your podcasting appearances people seem to love they don’t talk about because, affected your career as far as getting you work at “Oh, gosh, it’s no fun. It’s no fun. It’s not exciting bigger publishers like Marvel? being nice and excited about books.” The blogosphere FRACTION: Hmm. I don’t know. I really don’t. exists, it seems, to rip on stuff. They taunt it and they Attention is attention and anything that pings somemake fun of it and that is a bummer. Why talk about one’s radar—but no one has said to me, “Hey, I heard these books that you hate? Spider-Man will always you on a podcast; do you have any ideas for a book?” come out. You could write a blog post a day every day That I can think of, I have not heard that, but having for the rest of your life about how much you hate your name thrown around the comics Internet for a Spider-Man and that will not stop Spider-Man from week and half because you’ve done a couple of podcoming out. One blog post about Casanova, Fear casts is going to ping people’s radars. Being out there Agent, Scalped, anything the brilliant Jonathan is being out there. I have made a lot of pro friends who listen to Word Balloon. It’s interesting. For a Hickman has written, any of these small books that while, the Ellis forum and the comics blogosphere aren’t Marvel and aren’t DC, that’s going to get somewas read by everyone in editorial and every profesone to look for it somewhere, and a shop not ordering sional in the world. That was part of the real reason I ten copies of Amazing Spider-Man does not affect was able to sneak into comics, because, in those how Amazing Spider-Man’s boat floats. One store early days, those proto-blog days, there might have ordering ten copies of Casanova is a tremendous difonly been 8,000 people reading Savant every week— ference in Casanova. It’s tremendous for Fear Agent. actually, a lot more than that—but a thousand of Every bit helps, so anytime a podcast talks about the those people worked in comics. I have heard from small press stuff, it’s colossal. other pros that listen to podcasts and I’ve made a lot There was conventional wisdom that was, “Well, I’ll of friends who’ll say, “Oh, hey, I love Diabolik, too.” kind of do mainstream books and they’ll cast attenYou know what I mean? “I love Lee Marvin movies. tion on the independent stuff,” and it doesn’t. It’s not Let’s talk about Lee Marvin over dinner.” So I’ve had true. Brian Bendis has met people who say, “I’m your that kind of experience. Who can say? I don’t know biggest fan,” and he’ll say, “Great. Well, have you for certain, but people do listen to them. I listen to picked up the new Powers trade?” and they’ll say, them. I mean, I listen to podcasts and suddenly I’ve “What’s Powers?” Warren Ellis has said for years that got stuff to talk to people about. he has two audiences, and I’ve discovered the brutal truth is he’s absolutely right. And it’s way easier to HOUSTON: Do you have any advice for any current sell X-Men or to sell Iron Man than it is to sell Internet fans who may want to move from podcast36 | MATT FRACTION

ing or blogging to professional comics writing? FRACTION: I only realized this last night. This is how self-aware I am. I had written and codirected a short, animated film before I got into comics, and that was kind of my writing sample and that, I Fraction gets a little metal with Invincible Super-Blog writer Chris think, is what got me Sims, one of the blogosphere’s Mantooth! It wasn’t just brightest stars. Photo courtesy that I was writing about Sims. comics. Yeah, someone who is writing about comics is clearly interested, but I had work out there that people could see. It was a film, it wasn’t a comic, but I had work out there. So write. That’s my advice. Get work out there. It’s different now. In my day, there weren’t web comics like there are now. You can put your work out there very easily. Start the work. Find people who are smart and clever and into the stuff you are and put it out there. Whether you’re putting out real pages or putting stuff on the web, start putting your work out there. You can produce comics incredibly inexpensively. Work is going to get you work. And start to consider that, if you’re interested in writing comics professionally, calling publishers names—if you wouldn’t say something to someone’s face in polite conversation, maybe it’s time to look at what your persona is on the Internet. You might be the world’s biggest Dan DiDio hater, and you may have a blog with a hundred posts bad-mouthing Dan DiDio personally and professionalyl, but just because it’s anti-DC doesn’t mean you will be in at Marvel. If you want to work in the comics mainstream, comport yourself like a professional. It doesn’t mean you have to censor your opinions, but you have to temper how you deliver them with some degree of civility. You can offer commentary and critiques without being a huge jerk. I’ve seen a lot of guys from the web who are total jerks, walking around conventions with pitches, and they’re nuts if they don’t think people know who they are. Editors may not pay you any mind, but they remember your name or you’re going to get googled. Look, I have a long history of talking smack on the web and some of it caused me some trouble, personally and professionally. I had some fences to mend because I didn’t handle myself too well in a lot of cases, so be mindful of that. Be a human being. Be a mensch. HOUSTON: Are there any Internet personalities today that you think could be the next Matt Fraction? FRACTION: Chris Sims of The Invincible Super-Blog, the-isb.com. He has a more classic voice than me, but he is terrific. He is one of the funniest bloggers

out there, him and Dave Campbell both. Even when they dislike something, it’s so obviously coming from a place of love. When Chris loves something he is so clearly enthusiastic about it that it makes you want to grab colored pencils and typing paper and just start drawing your own comics then and there. He and Dave are just full of love for the medium and that’s always nice to see, especially on the Internet, where it’s so easy to get bogged down by negativity. HOUSTON: Are there any podcasts you see as having those same qualities? FRACTION: I think John Siuntres’ Word Balloon provides a real service. He’s a terrific interviewer. The Around Comics guys are wonderful. I love those guys. They’re terrific, even though they’re all Cardinals and White Sox fans. Then the Comic Geek Speak guys are like the equivalent of deep cuts FM stations. They really get into it. There’s some incredibly rich discussion. It’s a podcast that’s not background noise; you really have to listen. There’s some great work that gets done on that show. With Comic Geek Speak’s

HOUSTON: What is your Peter Rios. Photo courtesy favorite podcast experiComic Geek Speak. © Copyright 2009 Comic Geek Speak. ence. FRACTION: I have a couple, like the Comic Geek Speak with Geoff Klock, where we did that very long talk about Casanova. Then there’s a Word Balloon that Ed Brubaker and I did with John that was completely ridiculous and silly and a lot of fun. It was right before the summer convention season had started and, in it, I had done an Orson Welles impression, doing that drunk Orson Welles recording those Paul Mason wine commercials. I had something I had to write and Ed was on, so, when Ed would get going on a tear, I would sort of go and write and crank out a couple of lines here and there and then come back in and, whenever I came back in, I would immediately snap into this Orson Welles impersonation to sort of cover myself. It happened right before summer con season and then, all summer long, people just kept coming up to me and asking me to do drunk Orson Welles, even in panels. [laughter] It was pretty hilarious to see how many people had listened to that podcast.

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COMIC BOOK QUEERS Stevie D. and Eric started the Comic Book Queers podcast to find more people like them: gay comic book fans. The results, over the past two-and-a-half years, have been spectacular, as two friends with a microphone grew into a close-knit community of fans, both gay and straight. On July 16, 2008, I talked to Stevie and Eric about their show and the unique community that sprang from it.

Comic Book Queers co-hosts Stevie D. (left) and Eric (right). All photos in this chapter courtesy Comic Book Queers, unless otherwise noted.

HOUSTON: Tell me a little bit about Comic Book Queers. STEVIE: The original purpose of our show, when we started a couple years ago now, was to build a community among queer comic book fans because I think all of us just felt really isolated. You know what I mean? From the outset, that’s been our intention, just to get out there and meet people who are queer comic book fans, so our podcast basically consists of us just kicking it. ERIC: Kicking it. Talking about comics, what we love about them, what we hate about them. STEVIE: Just getting our voice out there because I know before I started doing this with Eric, before I even met Eric, I thought it would be a good thing to do because I hadn’t heard the gay voice represented in the comic book podcasting community and I thought, well, you know, there are some queens out there that need to get out there. HOUSTON: It seems like there are a couple of British podcasts and female-hosted podcasts and a couple of interview-centric shows and all of that, but you seem to be the only queer comic book podcast. STEVIE: Actually, not any more. ERIC: We were until literally just a few weeks ago. Actually, a few people who listen to our podcast started talking on our message board about a show and are talking about putting together a circle of queer comic book shows. STEVIE: Since we’ve started, there have been at least two that have come up sort of directly through our show. We wouldn’t let them come on our show because they’re too mouthy and not attractive enough. 38 | COMIC BOOK QUEERS

HOUSTON: Besides trying to start a community did anything else inspire you to start a podcast? ERIC: Like I said, the bottom line, when it really comes down to it, was just loneliness and, honestly, I’ll walk up to any stranger on the street and tell them that I’m gay, but it’s really hard to come out as a comic book fan, you know? I would date people and that would be like a fourth date item. So it really did come from loneliness and the way that it started was I took out an ad on Craig’s List and I was like, “Look, I want to find other queer comic book fans and start a queer podcast,” and that’s how Stevie and I found each other. STEVIE: The ironic part is that I was actually talking to a friend of mine about doing a show like this and he and his friend were already doing a podcast, just two little gay boys talking about their lives and their adventures and he was also a gay comic book fan, so he and I met and said maybe we should be doing something like this. So, one day, he e-mailed me at work and said, “Look at what my friend found,” and it was Eric’s ad on Craig’s List. So, from there, I emailed Eric a couple of times and hung out for a month or so before we even started to Steve recording at the 2008 record. Windy City Comic Con.

ERIC: It was great when we first met because I actually had someone to go to conventions with. So one of the first things we did after we met was go to the convention together and talk about what we liked and it turned out we actually complemented each other really well because I’ve always been a Marvel guy and I was out of comics for a really long time, while Stevie just has an encyclopedic knowledge of all things DC and had actually been in comics the whole time. STEVIE: Since I was four. ERIC: So just our viewpoints complemented each other well and, aside from the two of us, we’ve had sort of a rotating cast of people who would come in. HOUSTON: And how did you find them? ERIC: They were listeners and they were local and, again it’s always been about building community and, I don’t know, you just meet people and kind of fall in love with them. Brett’s one of the smartest, funniest people I know. STEVIE: We knew Brett was a big X-Men fan and, when we decided to do a show about the X-Men, we invited him on to be our X-pert and he came in and we just kind of fell in love with him and kept asking him to come back. ERIC: And the same thing happened with Lindsay. It was our Justice Society show and you know how that’s a multi-generational team? Well, we’re both in our late thirties, pushing up against forty and I think, when she started with us, she was 24. And Lindsay’s just—oh my God, she’s so cute. STEVIE: We literally were like, “Have you ever read Justice Society before?” and she said, “No.” So we said, “Would you please read it and come sit and talk with us about it because we would like your perspective, being a younger person than we are.” From there we just kept asking her to come back, and she did. HOUSTON: What’s a typical recording session like? ERIC: Honestly, we usually meet at Steve’s place. We sit in his bedroom and drink beer while his roommate gets high and we get a contact buzz. STEVIE: We literally just turn the microphone on and get going. Sometimes we’ll come up with a topic beforehand, but, generally, we just sit down, somebody says, “Hey, I have this idea,” or, “Hey, I want to talk about this book,” and then we just turn on the microphone and we go. We kind of came up with a loose structure for a show, basically sitting down and taking the first five or ten minutes to say, “What’s going on in you life,” just so we can get the conversation flowing, and then we move on to the meat of the show, which is talking about whatever the topic is, or whatever the comic is, and we found out that that really works out well for us. ERIC: Another thing we decided from the outset was, unlike the other podcasts out there, we would never ever want to talk for more than an hour. We’re fascinating, charming, engaging people, but it’s really easy

to get a lot too much of us really quickly. STEVIE: From my perspective, I’d been listening to comic book podcasts for awhile and I really enjoy the ones that go for two, two-and-ahalf hours, but at the same time we wanted to be a little bit faster, a bit Eric meets the dark knight… sort of. punchier and, in a way, a little more commercial because, if we keep it short and sweet, I think people will come back for more. ERIC: I don’t know if commercial is the right word because we’re making no money from this, but it’s really about making us palatable and making us interesting for the people who are listening. STEVIE: We’re trying not to demand too much of people’s time. We just want to show up for a little while and entertain, really. ERIC: Yeah, and we’re sort of like hosts for the community out there, and we just really want to get a conversation started. Typically we’ll put an episode out there and then people will go to our boards and the conversation will take off in ways that we didn’t predict. Really, the stuff that happens on the boards and the people who come down to visit us in Chicago, which doesn’t happen infrequently and which I adore… STEVIE: That’s fantastic. HOUSTON: Do you feel like the show has changed much since you started?

Steve with artist Josh Middleton.

THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 39

ERIC: Oh, yes. STEVIE: Do you really? Expand on that. ERIC: When we first startEric meets Gail Simone. ed it was Meanwhile, in Adam Hughes’ this—our first cover to Wonder Woman five episodes #190, Diana really does get are no longer a haircut. © Copyright 2009 DC Comics. available anywhere because they’re just not listenable. It’s like screeching monkeys or something. We got better at sticking to the point. We got better as time went on about figuring out how in-depth to talk about something so we don’t belabor something as much as we could. STEVIE: Or as much as we do in our personal lives. ERIC: But, again, just enough to get the conversation started. STEVIE: It’s funny, again, because I don’t think that the show itself has changed much, but I think we have. The exposure that we’ve gotten and the people that we’ve met have really impacted us and, in a way, for a little while, I was completely overwhelmed by it because I’m putting myself in a position where I’m a representative and I never really wanted that. I just wanted to talk and entertain and be funny and pretty, because that’s just a given.

charming about that. I also really enjoy the Savage Love podcast, which has a lot more to do with sexuality then with comics. STEVIE: I like Word Balloon with John Siuntres, because John is totally a radio guy and he knows how to interview the creators and they all love him and want to talk to him. It’s just great. It’s the one time I can actually listen to Brian Michael Bendis and laugh and not hate him for what he does in comics. ERIC: The other podcast that we love, because they’ve actually become really good friends of ours at this point, are the guys at N3RDcast. They’re filthy and hilarious and it’s like they’re great and cuddly, all of them. STEVIE: That’s all you can really say about them. HOUSTON: Speaking of Around Comics and Word Balloon and your own show, it seems like Chicago is a real hotbed for comics podcasts. ERIC: I know. Isn’t that weird? HOUSTON: Do you have any thoughts on that? STEVIE: I really didn’t know any of them were here until we started. ERIC: As a matter of fact, not long after we got started, we got an e-mail from Christopher Neseman and it was like, “Oh you guys are in Chicago, too, why don’t you come talk to us.” As far as I can tell, that’s just coincidence. There’s a handful of really interesting great creators based in Chicago, some of whom we’ve had the pleasure of meeting. STEVIE: Maybe it’s just because Chicagoans are all loudmouths and we love to have our say. We’ll talk about anything and you’d better listen.

HOUSTON: What podcasts do you listen to? ERIC: Quiet! Panelologists at Work because the closest thing to being gay is being British. Those guys are hilarious. They crack me up. I have a tremendous HOUSTON: Now, you’ve appeared on Around Comics amount of affection for the guys a few times, right? at Around Comics. They’re great ERIC: Yeah, a few times. guys and they’re just good people. STEVIE: We were involved with STEVIE: Their heart is so into it, Crankcast’s 24 Hour Podcast. and it shocked me when they took That was just hilarious. that break that they took, but they ERIC: That was great. came back and you can tell they’re right back into it. I love HOUSTON: How is the experithat. I also like to listen to ence of doing one of those Geektress. It’s these three girls other shows different from that get together—they’re pretty doing your own show? new actually—and sit around talkERIC: Well, when you go in, you ing about TV and comics. They’re really respect their format and all three absolutely adorable. how things work. You’re a ERIC: It’s what I imagine backhouseguest. stage at a Donnas concert must STEVIE: And it feels like you’re Eric with Skottie Young, artist on Marvel’s be like. And they tend to go off on a houseguest and they make Wonderful Wizard of Oz and co-host of The tangents, which a lot of podcasts you feel really comfortable. It’s Devil and Me podcast will be so comic-centric that they’ll just a bunch of buddies hanging be a little full of themselves, but the girls on out, drinking beer, and talking about comics. It’s Geektress will be like, “You know that actor on great. Smallville? He’d be awesome in this other show.” You ERIC: It does not get better than that. HOUSTON: How is their show is different from yours? know what I mean? There’s something just really 40 | COMIC BOOK QUEERS

STEVIE: They’re a little more serious than us. I think that Around Comics really tries to be more of an informative show. They try to have fun with it, but you can tell they really do their research and want to be informative. ERIC: It’s a news show with interviews and stuff like that. We’ve gotten our fair share of interviews on with creators and that’s absolutely fantastic, but that’s not our reason for being. STEVIE: And we’d prefer not to interview people, actually, but sometimes it just falls in our laps and we do it and I think that we would rather leave that stuff to the people at Around Comics, Word Balloon, Comic Geek Speak—the people who have been doing this for awhile and feel more like that’s they’re thing. Let them have that and we’ll complain about everything behind their backs. HOUSTON: Is there anyone in the industry that you would like to interview? STEVIE AND ERIC: Brian K. Vaughn. [laughter] ERIC: I would love to talk to Phil Jimenez sometime because he’s kind of a gay icon in the comic book industry, too. I adore independent cartoonist Lynda

Barry, and she’s pretty local. I’ve actually sent her some actual snail mail letters about getting an interview with her. STEVIE: One interview that we would love to have is an interview with Gail Simone, which we’ve actually had, but tell the story, Eric. ERIC: It turns out you really need to make sure you have batteries in your digital voice recorder. It’s really necessary. One of the things we decided a long time ago was, if we were going to interview Gail Simone—I don’t know how many people out there know this, but she’s a hairdresser, and I would really like to interview her about that. STEVIE: What kind of hairstyle would you give Wonder Woman? Would she really have it long and flowing like that where someone could grab it in a fight, or would she have it in a bun? ERIC: Interview her about styling hair and then make inferences about her career in comics from it. You have somebody sitting in the chair, they demand you shave their head and then they’re really hostile with you once the head is shaved. “What do you do with that?” and let people make their own inferences. STEVIE: You know what? Forget them. We don’t want to do interviews. We don’t care if you come to us. [laughter] ERIC: There are some people we love talking to, but we’re not creative types. We’re not industry insiders, so we’re not good at interviewing. The guys at Around Comics are phenomenal at it, but that’s not our primary reason for being. To be honest with you, I’d much, much, much rather someone who’s just a casual listener of our show who’s really into comics call. STEVIE: Definitely. ERIC: Because that’s kind of what it’s about for us. STEVIE: Although I do love getting promos from pros, like Tony Daniel. If we could just get promos from guys like Geoff Johns when we e-mail them or accost them at cons, that would be great. Then, after we get the promo, he’d say, “Did you guys want an interview?” and we’d be all like, “No, thanks, sweetie. Just keep writing.”

Gay icon Dazzler in the splash page for the debut issue of her self-titled series, which was turned into an audio play by the Comic Book Queers. Pencils by John Romita, Jr., with inks by Alfredo Alcala and scripting by Tom DeFalco. Original art scan courtesy Eric Delos Santos. © Copyright 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.

HOUSTON: We’ve talked about your show being less formal already and I think that’s one of the things I really like about it is that it helps you avoid a format, which most podcasts have some sort of format. Was that a conscious effort? STEVIE: You know we could really just never agree on one. I mean, we tried. If you go back and listen to early episodes, THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 41

we try. We were like, “Let’s do segments,” and it just doesn’t work. We’re just conversationalists, but, you know, we do have a format. It’s very loose, but we do have a format: opening, discussion, closing. ERIC: All of our podcasts have a beginning, middle, and end. There you go. HOUSTON: I think that allows you to do something which I think a lot of podcasts have trouble with: create distinct and memorable individual episodes, so that it’s sort of like a Gilligan’s Island, where you can say, “Oh, this is the one with the submarine captain,” or “This is the one where they do the musical of Hamlet.” ERIC: I think that might come from the fact that some of us will just have an idea that we really want to do. There was a point where we all wanted to a dramatic reading. STEVIE: Yeah, a radio play. I thought that was one of the best shows we’ve ever done. “Pulp Book Nancy Boy Theater,” featuring Dazzler #1, the gayest comic in history. HOUSTON: Why is it so gay? STEVIE AND ERIC: Are you kidding me? STEVIE: She’s wearing a silver jumpsuit, for Christ’s sake! Mirror ball rollerskates! HOUSTON: How did the idea germinate? ERIC: We wanted to do it for a really long time because, if you sit down and read the dialogue in it, it’s so mindSteve’s favorite character, Power Girl (seen here in Adam Hughes’ original art for her blowingly campy and just hilarious. And two-page origin story from 52 #36), is set to be the second gay icon to receive the the fact that all of the characters CBQ audio play treatment. From the collection of Kelvin Mao, who added the lettering himself to reflect the final published piece. © Copyright 2009 DC Comics. appear with the same voice. Captain America appears in Dazzler #1 and if you read Ed Brubaker’s Captain HOUSTON: How did you decide who would play who? America, that’s a very different Captain America. I ERIC: Once a month at the end of the month we go to think it was written by Tom DeFalco, if I’m not mistakBrainstorm Comics here in Chicago, which is gayen, and the voice of it is just so campy and over the owned and operated, and, if something’s a little differtop and she’s like a cartoon of a diva starting out. It’s ent or a little more special, we try to save that for amazing. It’s absolutely amazing and we wanted to do Brainstorm, and we just knew people. We had people it for a really long time. just show up to the store and we’d hand them scripts STEVIE: I think we all agreed from the beginning that and assign them parts just based on what they Dazzler #1 would be the way to go because of the looked like. camp value of it and because of the fact that she STEVIE: Yeah. “You’re going to be Iron Man.” “You’re really does have this gay icon status in the comic going to be the Wasp.” There were actually a couple book community. A lot of gay comic book guys like her of people that we talked to beforehand that we set in and think that she’s kind of the comic book version of motion, but other than that it was basically you Kylie Minogue. walked in, you got a part. 42 | COMIC BOOK QUEERS

HOUSTON: It sounds like something you’d like to do again. ERIC: Absolutely. STEVIE: We do know what the next one is going to be. Wizard World Chicago is coming up and we’ve got some local listeners coming in Saturday night to Brainstorm. We’re going to record a couple of episodes and one of them is going to be a dramatic reading of All Star Comics #51, the first appearance of Power Girl, my favorite character ever. I was going through it and writing out the script and I sort of realized that there are a lot of characters and, just like Dazzler, it’s such a product of its time, that cheesy, Seventies, campy dialogue. It’s going to be great.

HOUSTON: If I’m not mistaken, you’ve done two of those now. What are some of the categories? ERIC: We have some set categories that we decided are going to go through from year-to-year. We wanted to honor queer creators who are doing a great job, out queer creators. We also want to honor straight creators who just get us, that’s the Best Near Queer Creator. It’s interesting because that’s the one that seems to get people the most mobilized. People really care about that one. There’s one more we carried over to a second year that we’ll probably do again. Then we have a couple of categories that are just fun where we want to hear what people say, like Best Smelling Creator, Most Misery Heaped Alpha Flight #106, featuring a story about super-hero Northstar coming out on a Queer Character, and Most of the closet. © Copyright 2009 Marvel Gratuitous Inclusion of a Lipstick Characters, Inc. Lesbian because the lesbians we HOUSTON: Do you think Power Girl has that same know don’t look like that. There are no Batwomen in gay icon status that Dazzler does? our world. STEVIE: In my world she always has. In fact, I’ve always liked her better, but I think she’s starting to HOUSTON: Do you notify the winners? get a lot more recognition now within the community. ERIC: Usually we’ll send out a MySpace message or She’s going to get her own series soon, so I think it’s something like that. We decided to do this awards actually a great time to do that book as a reading. ceremony just off the cuff, and it’s one of those things ERIC: I would like her more if she was just more that has picked up a weird sort of legitimacy. We’ve entertaining. had a couple of queer creators get in a little bit of a publicity blitz about the awards. I don’t know how HOUSTON: Talking a little bit more about individual familiar you are with prismcomics.org, but they’re the episodes, I think my favorite is your worst comics kind of clearinghouse for LGBT creators, and all of a ever episode. sudden Prism Comics started talking about the ERIC: You know, as fanboys we tend to read a lot awards ceremony as this legitimate sort of thing. of bad comics. There’s a lot of amazing stuff out there and there’s a lot that’s not good. I don’t know. HOUSTON: Have you ever heard from someone who I love a countdown show. Who doesn’t love a countwas disappointed they didn’t win? down show? We just wanted to talk about bad ERIC: Gail Simone didn’t talk about comics. being disappointed about not winning, but about how it was an honor HOUSTON: What were some of the books you talked to be nominated. Sam Christianson, about? who did Mark of Ages, actually ERIC: The worst comics ever. The one that really showed up in Chicago for one of stands out for me is Alpha Flight #106, Northstar our Brainstorm coming out. Just abysmal. That was on there and a recordings right Supergirl seatbelt safety issue and that anti-drug Teen around Queeries time Titans book. Giveaways with social messages don’t and he was a really work. nice guy. So far as we can tell, Mark HOUSTON: Tell me about your awards show, the Andrejko doesn’t Queeries. really care. The guy who did So Super ERIC: Last year, I don’t know how I got this in my Duper, Brian head, but I had never done drag before in my life and Anderson, was all I really wanted us to do an awards show in drag with over it. So, yeah, we really disgusting hosts. Eric and Steve in drag for will hear from the first annual Queeries. THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 43

creators. Brian K. Vaughn, on his board, announced the first year that he won “Best Near Queer Creator” and the fact that we characterize him as Kermit the Frog, which he is.

talk about, say, relationships, but you don’t seem at all afraid to talk about your relationships to your fans, or anything else. In fact, I think one of you even gave out their home phone number over the air. HOUSTON: How many STEVIE: Yeah, Eric gave listeners do you have? out his home phone ERIC: Like six or seven, number. I think it’s just I would say. because of that whole Realistically, and it idea of fostering a comvaries, we get at minimunity and feeling like, if Steve and Eric with listener Charles “Zan” mum 1,000 downloads we can’t talk about our Christensen of Prism Comics (www.prismcomics.org). a week. Every so often, personal lives on the Courtesy Charles Christensen. we’ll drift into the top show, how can we expect ten iTunes comic book podcasts, which is really amazour listeners to think of us as part of their circle of ing. Outside of the books section, that’s the thing that friends? makes me really hopeful about America. We have ERIC: Part of being queer is being out, you know what quite a few listeners and quite a few of them are I mean? We’ll talk about things when the mic is on straight guys. that are frank and personal and invite other people to participate in it, HOUSTON: That’s and it works for something I us. wanted to ask you about. Is it a HOUSTON: How pretty even did that work out straight/gay for you, giving out split? your phone numERIC: We have no ber? Did you get way of knowing any calls? because iTunes ERIC: None. Not doesn’t tell us. one. I think when I STEVIE: One of put my phone the reasons why number out there, we always joke it’s like, “No way.” about having a People didn’t majority of straight believe it. If listeners is that’s there’s going to Steve and frequent co-host Brett with listeners and contributors Jason Tucker and Jeff M. Ward at the 2008 Windy City Comic Con. the people we be some sort of were hearing from event around conwere the actual straight listeners. We were getting evention time, we’ll give out our phone number to all mails from people saying things like, “I’m married, but the people on the boards and start to organize things. you guys are really funny and I love comics and I It’s made convention time really great because we heard about you from Around Comics,” so we just sort know that, like this year, we got people from of ran with it. Plus, who is buying comics at our age? Minneapolis. I think next year the N3RDcast guys will Married straight men. come down. We’re out there to meet people and make friends, so you’ve got to do things like get your HOUSTON: It seems like you have a pretty close phone number out there. relationship with your fans. STEVIE: Well, not that close. There are some restrainHOUSTON: What can fans look forward to from ing orders. Comic Book Queers? STEVIE: Thy can look forward to a lot more episodes HOUSTON: You’re also really open with your fans. recorded in the nude. We’re not really making any While there are other podcasts like that, The claims for the future. We didn’t expect to be around this long. Crankcast, for instance, they will draw a line and not 44 | COMIC BOOK QUEERS

THE CRANKCAST Sometimes referred to as the Seinfeld of podcasts, The Crankcast is an amazingly funny show about nothing. Frequent topics include not only comics but TV, movies, pizza places, car troubles, and even the hunt for a cheap air conditioner, all discussed in a stream of consciousness style that makes fans feel as though they are listening not to a podcast, but to a conversation between two old friends, which, of course, is exactly what The Crankcast is. Perhaps more importantly to comic fans, these two friends are also both industry professionals. Mike Norton is the artist of such DC comics as Green Arrow/Black Canary and The All-New Atom, while co-host Chris Crank is a letterer and sometime cover artist for books like Tim Seeley’s Hack/Slash. On May 5, 2008, Mike, Crank, and I discussed their show’s origins, cult following, and its warts-and-all window into the day-to-day life of a comics professional.

HOUSTON: How did you two meet? CRANK: I first met Mike at Mid-Ohio Con in, like, 2001? NORTON: I don’t know dates. I’m bad with dates. Is that when we met? CRANK: It was 2002 or 2001. NORTON: Was it love at first sight? CRANK: It was. NORTON: No, it wasn’t. CRANK: No, I knew Mike Norton was a guy I wanted to know. NORTON: That sounds even gayer. [laughter]

A rare picture of Crankcast hosts Mike Norton and Chris Crank together. Photo courtesy David Glenn.

CRANK: No, it was like 2000 or 2001. It was Mid-Ohio Con and I had already been working for Devil’s Due at that point and Mike just knew [Devil’s Due President] Josh [Blalock] from cons and stuff. NORTON: Yeah, I’d seen him around at shows off and on. He’d been talking to me about him starting this company. Not even starting a company, but getting the G.I. Joe license and stuff. We sort of shared rooms a lot. You know how you find someone to split costs and stuff, and then when I met Crank was when he had started the company already. CRANK: Yeah, and I was there at Devil’s Due when G.I. Joe was starting. I guess when we met we went to a few bars and stuff and that’s how I first met Mike. It must have been 2001, because, when 2002 rolled around, he’d moved up to Chicago and started working at Devil’s Due. NORTON: I have no recollection of all of this. HOUSTON: How did the idea of doing The Crankcast come about? NORTON: It was kind of my idea. I listen to a lot of shows while I’m working, while I’m drawing all day. I can’t remember exactly anymore where I first got turned on to them. I think the first show I was listening to was Comic Geek Speak and Word Balloon was around then, too, but I was really excited about them. I wasn’t just listening to comic podcasts, either. I went up to Devil’s Due one day and I was just sort of going around saying how cool they were and telling Sam Wells he needed to do one. His wife was an improv actress and I told him that they should do one because it would be funny and I just seriously was looking for more content to listen to while I was drawTHE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 45

ing. Then I told Crank because Crank had his own little recording set up because he was into music and stuff. I thought maybe he’d just put his music on the Internet or something and he pretty much seriously said, “I’m not going to do it unless you’re on it.” I think we talked about it off and on and eventually just ended up doing it. It was my idea, but it was really something I wanted Crank to do by himself. Thrilling story, I know. CRANK: I fought with the idea of doing it myself, but made him do it. HOUSTON: How long was it before you started recording? NORTON: I don’t remember. It wasn’t immediately after. It was a while after because it was one of those things where someone says you should do that and you say, “Yeah, we will,” and then you don’t. CRANK: Well, I know you told me and then it took like a week or something to figure out what it should be named and Mike had a name already. NORTON: Yeah, I told you it should be named after you. I wanted it to be your show. [laughter] CRANK: I have this bad habit of registering domain names. NORTON: Yeah, you collect those like they’re Pokémon. Shortly after that, that was in like August,

Mike’s sketch of Crank hard at work on the latest episode of The Crankcast. All images in this chapter courtesy Chris Crank, unless otherwise noted. 46 | THE CRANKCAST

September, then, in October, we did our first thing, I think. It was around that timeframe. HOUSTON: Was there a lot of discussion beforehand about how the show would work and what it would be? NORTON: Not that I remember. CRANK: For the first three months, especially, we were sort of like really trying to be a comic podcast, like a comic-centric podcast. NORTON: It hasn’t changed a lot since then. I think a lot more then we were sort of coming in and saying we were two guys who actually work in comics and I don’t think anyone was doing that in podcasts at the time. CRANK: The Horcast was out. NORTON: Yeah, The Horcast. The guys, there was a studio called Horhaus in Canada, Toronto that was made up of Karl Kerschl and a couple of other guys and they had a podcast and I’d listened to that. I thought we’d kind of be the American equivalent of that, but that sort of went off track early in the first month. We discovered about ourselves that we aren’t very formatted and when we have to do content, like when we have to come up with entertainment content, it was easy to see it was going to be more difficult than we wanted it to be, so we just decided to make it a conversation between two guys. HOUSTON: How does the typical recording session work? CRANK: Well, very early on we just bought a couple of Madonna headset mics. NORTON: Before, we had microphones set up, which was already kind of cumbersome because you had to set up mic stands and stuff like that. CRANK: And you had to sit kind of close to them. NORTON: And it was your idea to get those, right? We got these little headset mics so we could just sit and be natural, you know? We could drink and do whatever and move around. CRANK: Sometimes we’ll sit on the couch and pretend we’re pilots. NORTON: We got the headset mics for that, but the rest of the stuff, Crank had. CRANK: I already had a motion track audio card for just recording music and stuff and I basically [record the show] just like how I record music: plug into a couple of channels and run into a program called Sony Vegas, and that’s good for multitracking stuff. So I was already used to using that. We’d show up and kind of talk for a few minutes about what we’re going to talk about. “Did anything happen last week?” NORTON: That was when we’d play music, too. We played more songs in the beginning. CRANK: We were kind of adapting what we do, I guess. We’d think about what music do we want to play and what we want to talk about and sit down and do that for a few minutes and sort of rotate and do

everything in one big session and try to hit an hour mark. I’ll edit to try and hit that or sometimes we’ll talk about things we shouldn’t and I’ll edit that out. NORTON: Crank’s been doing a lot of recording stuff for a while now. He records music at home and he was doing a lot of audio visual stuff for Devil’s Due, so he got to the point where editing on the fly is easy for him. I know a lot of shows put in a lot of production time, but I think when we record on Tuesday, he can have it up theoretically by the time I get home. Realistically it takes longer than that, but he’s real quick with that kind of stuff.

the other people who might be listening to it, even though you put it out there for people to listen to it. But I’m surprised when people read my comics, you know? So it surprises me when people listen to the show.

Mike gets ready to do a sketch for one of his listeners at Comic Geek Speak’s Episode 200. Photo courtesy Comic Geek Speak.

HOUSTON: It sounds like a lot of pros listen to the show. NORTON: It’s starting to sound like it more. I didn’t think that anybody did, but the people that we had on the show we figured would probably listen to it, and we knew that our immediate friends probably would listen, but then I started getting people at shows saying that they listened to it that I didn’t think even listened to podcasts. That surprised me and I started thinking, “Did I ever say anything about that guy on the show?” But, luckily, we’ve been kind of smart so far not do that sort of

HOUSTON: So there’s almost © Copyright 2009 Comic Geek Speak. no post-production and any pre-production takes place right before the show? thing on the show. NORTON: Well, yeah, all the pre-production does take CRANK: Except the Meatbee incident. place right before the show. I mean, we don’t really NORTON: Yeah, the Meatbee incident where Crank plan out the shows at all, but I would say the postinsulted an Australian band that actually listened to production is just because Crank’s really fast at it. the show. CRANK: Our pre-production is pretty much limited to if CRANK: Yeah, it’s weird because it’s kind of the we think we’re going to have somebody on and figurpoint. ing out who we’re going to call. We have a regular, Chris Taber; he’s on once a month. Post-production is HOUSTON: You mean putting the show out there to pretty much just limited to editing and adjusting levbe listened to? els, making sure we’re not too soft or too loud, but, NORTON: It is kind of the point. We work in this. We just from having worked in music, there’s a couple of do this, but, at the same time, I’m very awkward that things I do that are just EQ things to make it sound a way. It doesn’t make sense. It’s irrational. I totally little better. Taking the bass out of Mike’s voice and understand how weird it sounds if I say, “I don’t stuff like that. believe people are listening,” coming out of a podNORTON: I appreciate it. cast. I’ll get e-mails from Jamal Igle, who I don’t normally talk to except at comic shows, and he’s saying HOUSTON: In the past, Mike, you in particular seem he listens to the show. On message boards, someto have been pretty surprised by the show’s suctimes people will say, “I much prefer Mike Norton the cess. podcaster to Mike Norton the artist.” That really NORTON: Yeah, I am. I don’t know how else I can weirds me out to see that kind of stuff, and I go, elaborate on that. “Wow. Really?” This is seriously like a hobby, someCRANK: You know when you’re keeping a journal, thing I’m not doing as a job, obviously. when you’re blogging online, you’re aware that it’s published, but when people you know come up to you HOUSTON: Do any of your collaborators listen? Gail and say, “I heard this and this on your show...” Simone or Judd Winick? NORTON: Well, my surprise mainly came out of that I NORTON: I don’t think Judd does. I think Gail might kind of thought that maybe people might listen, mainhave listened to one or two. I don’t know for certain. I ly that listen to some of the other podcasts and, know she listens to podcasts, though. Sean because of the work I do, there might be people who McKeever listens regularly. I don’t know about any might be interested in that, but, because the Internet other people I’ve worked with. I don’t think Greg is so anonymous, once you’re done with something Rucka does. I’d have to ask him. I don’t advertise it. it’s out of sight, out of mind. You don’t really think of It’s not like I go up to them and say, “Hey, ever heard

THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 47

my show?” I don’t think Judd knew who I was before I started working on Green Arrow.

people don’t yell at us and we have enough people listening… NORTON: HOUSTON: I think Really, we’ve I even heard you said it on the mention that show before, Crank’s mom liswe’d be happy tens to the show. if nobody lisCRANK: I mentened to it. tioned that briefly, This is really yes, that mom listhe Internet tens to the show. equivalent of NORTON: I’m worwhen you’re ried that some of my ten years old relatives listen to the and you have a show. I joke about boom box and what rednecks and you’re recording Speaking of MySpace, here are Mike and Crank’s MySpace how from the backyourself, pretending profile images. woods they are, but I’m you’re on MTV or somesure they have computthing. ers. CRANK: You used to do that, too? CRANK: Who doesn’t these days? NORTON: We’ve talked about this! So, I mean, this is NORTON: They probably do. pretty much playing around. This is just something we CRANK: I haven’t said anything bad about my family. do so that we don’t go crazy, even though it might be NORTON: You said your grandmother was a witch! too late. CRANK: I didn’t mean she was a witch like a bad CRANK: I wish, someday, we could influence the lady. She’s a witch. That’s not saying something bad comic book industry. about the family. It’s like having your mom peek in NORTON: Really? your diary, though. CRANK: No. That would be a lot of responsibility, NORTON: Totally, but, at the same time, and I used to wouldn’t it? say this about people who had Live Journal accounts, everybody’s a closet egomaniac. You wouldn’t have it HOUSTON: Do you meet a lot of these listeners at up there if you didn’t secretly want somebody to read cons, Mike? it. “Oh, I’m so depressed,” so people will e-mail you NORTON: We both have, actually. Now, since the and say, “Why are you depressed?” That’s why show started, I get a lot of people that listen to the MySpace exists. show. I did Free Comic Book Day on Saturday and there was a listener who brought me a newspaper HOUSTON: Is Mrs. Crank proud? article about the Illinois tollway being sued because I CRANK: She was very vague on it. I was talking about talked about getting these unsubstantiated tickets something on the show once and I talked to her the from the tollway and this guy brought me an article. I next day and I had bought it up because of something thought that was pretty cool. The next day, I was at a we talked about the night before and she was like, small show in Wisconsin and had people come up “Oh, I listened to it,” and I was like, “Oh. Thanks.” that listened to the show. I keep talking about this, She didn’t really say anything. To her, it doesn’t mean but at Wizard World last year, I had just as many anything. I mean, we’re sitting here freaking out people coming up to my table looking for Crank as I because people in the industry listen to us, but, to did looking for me, so there are people who want to her, it’s, “Oh, it’s a neat thing my son puts on the meet Crank. Internet.” Well, that puts it in perspective. CRANK: That kind of freaks me out a little bit. HOUSTON: How many listeners do you have? CRANK: It sounds like I’m burying my head in the sand, but I don’t track it that hard. A round number, I’m guessing, weeding out multiple hits, that we’re somewhere between 800 and 1,000. We gain a few every month. I figure, like, we’re happy doing it and if 48 | THE CRANKCAST

HOUSTON: How do you guys feel about this sort of popularity? NORTON: I think it’s cool. I mean, if anything, it helps us breaks the ice and meet new people, which me and Crank are historically terrible at. We are not good at meeting people.

CRANK: We’re socially awkward. NORTON: Yeah, so, if anything, it just eliminates that wall so people can feel natural and have that ability to approach us because we’re sure as hell not going to do it. Other than that, there’s nothing to get a big head about. We’re not famous. We’re not like movers and shakers or anything like that. CRANK: My biggest thing is that, so far, it’s been hard for me socially. Anyone I talk to on a regular basis who listens to the show, it’s hard for to have an original conversation with them. NORTON: They know what you’re going to say. CRANK: I’ve pretty much done my spiel on the show. I actually dated a girl who listened to the show and that was the weirdest thing because I was repeating myself a lot, but I didn’t know it. I would say stuff and she would nod and say, “I heard.” HOUSTON: Was this the girl you went out with a couple of months ago? CRANK: Yeah. NORTON: See? Even you know what we’re talking about.

NORTON: We’ve gotten some from Australia, England… CRANK: If you look at our stats, we’ve got listeners in Australia, England, Denmark, Germany, and South America, and it’s weird because, really, the Internet is global. NORTON: I like getting e-mails, not just because we don’t have to think of stuff to talk about, but to interact with people more so than just record the show. HOUSTON: How much e-mail do you get in, say, a week? NORTON: I’d say we average about five or six. It can be as much as a dozen. It’s not like we’re getting bags full of mail. CRANK: I wish. NORTON: We do get about five or six on average, sometimes a lot more and, sometimes, we don’t get much at all.

HOUSTON: It sounds like they’re mostly really supportive and full of advice. NORTON: Well, like the whole tollway thing, if I complain about HOUSTON: I listen to the something, I’ll get a lot of eshow. mails about, “You should go NORTON: Well, that pretty here or talk to this lawyer,” much proves our point right which is very helpful to us. I there. don’t know about to our listenCRANK: Other than that, ers. Actually, somebody did though, it’s been neat. When I write in to say they solved one do meet people it’s nice, but of their parking things because we’re just talking and it’s being they listened to our show. sent out there and it’s weird to CRANK: Yeah, we’ve had people see what other people think tell us that they’ve ordered about it. pizza from Chicago’s. NORTON: Not that we’re asking Mike sans Crank at the 2008 Windy City Comic Con. NORTON: Yeah, that’s the other people to validate us, but the thing. We should start getting fact that they do doesn’t hurt. sponsors and stuff because, for a while there, during that one summer, we were selling all kinds of food. HOUSTON: It also sounds like you guys get a lot of We just decided we were going to talk about food for e-mails. a while. NORTON: Yeah, it wasn’t like that at that beginning. In CRANK: Somebody just wrote in and said they were fact, I think we asked people to send e-mails. enjoying their Chick-fil-a so much more. I think, really, CRANK: Yeah. Well, it helps us to not have to think of we’ve only gotten one really confrontational e-mail. something to say. That guy who went off on Gail that one time. NORTON: I know we were surprised when we got the NORTON: Oh, yeah. It wasn’t even about us, though. first one or two and then we read them and we realHe didn’t like Gail Simone, so he wrote in asking why ized how it actually created content for the show and I wanted to work with Gail Simone and stuff like that. we didn’t have to think of stuff to talk about. That’s That was the only bad e-mail we’ve ever gotten. the reason we have people on the show. If we have CRANK: I think of that as a sign of our lack of popuTim Seeley or Skottie Young, we don’t have to talk for larity, because, if we were really popular, we’d be getlike thirty minutes. Those guys will talk for us. So we ting bad e-mails a lot. started asking for e-mails. The majority of the e-mails NORTON: Most of the stuff we get is just, like, playing we get are from the same five or six people. along. CRANK: I’m surprised at the people from other counCRANK: We wrote this bio description about us a long time ago: we’re sort of sitting around a bar, chatting, tries. THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 49

NORTON: Like I said, it’s just people playing along. They want to be silly, too. I mean, I think it’s fairly obvious if you listen to the show that we just don’t really care. So, I mean, they like to play, you know? They know that if they say something stupid, chances are I’ll probably read it. I read some stuff from our Korean listener David Kim and he was being all antiKorean and I think it surprised Crank. He was like, “Oh, man, am I going to have to edit it out?” but it was a Korean writing it. He was just being silly, though.

Crank at an Around Comics recording. Photo courtesy Around Comics.

and it works with the people who write in, too, because they’re just offering their two cents, saying hey or whatever. It’s neat. HOUSTON: Do you read the e-mails in advance? NORTON: I do every once in a while, but sometimes they’re surprising to me. I’ll go through them during the week and pick out which ones to read sometimes. CRANK: I’ll check the e-mail now and then and sometimes I’ll check MySpace, but Mike’s sort of the project manager of this duo. NORTON: As much as I can be. I like everything to be somewhat of a surprise. I don’t try to read too much. I’ll read through and make sure it’s not an ad for prostate medication or something like that and I’ll star it real quick. Even when I come over here, Crank will be all cabin fever and want talk about his day and I’ll say, “Shut up.” CRANK: Save it for the show. NORTON: And I know that he thinks I hate him, but it’s just going to be more interesting if we talk about it on the air because then it’s not going to sound like we’re faking it. HOUSTON: How do you decide which to read and which to skip? NORTON: That’s a good question. I actually did that today. Sometimes I won’t really apply logic to it. If it’s really long and rambling, sometimes I’ll skip it. Sometimes, if it’s a question for somebody who’s not on the show that week, I’ll save it because Taber, our movie guy, actually gets a lot of e-mail through us. There’s one guy who sends us lots of links to movie previews, but I can’t read those. It’s all pretty simple. HOUSTON: You seem to get a lot of wacky, “Who would win in a fight…” type e-mails. NORTON: Crank loves those. CRANK: They’re fun. They’re just hard to answer. 50 | THE CRANKCAST

HOUSTON: What is your most common e-mail request? NORTON: We do get lots of requests for other guests. Taber gets a lot of feedback, either they love him or they hate him or they think he’s insane. CRANK: Especially since The 24 Hour Podcast. NORTON: A lot of people want Tim to be on the show. HOUSTON: Let’s go ahead and talk about your recurring guests, starting with Chris Taber. CRANK: Taber actually started out as a recurring guest and became more family. He’s cast. NORTON: The guest thing started because we didn’t want to talk by ourselves all the time and the guests provided interesting content. Me and Crank have talked about this a lot, but we’re not good interviewers. I don’t know if you listened to The 24 Hour Podcast, but I hung up on nearly everyone I interviewed. CRANK: Even a conversation with other podcasters. God forbid they actually call us up and let us know. NORTON: That’s been a problem, because we’ve had people e-mail to see if they can be on the show and we haven’t had them on because, if one of us doesn’t know them, it’s weird and we just want people on the show that we can talk to like they’re friends, and that’s the only way you’re going to get on the show is if we actually know you. Otherwise, it becomes like an interview and we’re both really bad at that. We had Taber on because he’s funny. He’s done comedy before and he has an expertise, which is movies. CRANK: We knew him very well. We worked with him. NORTON: Yeah. We knew him really well, and I was always enthralled with his knowledge of movies. I thought that would definitely be interesting on the show, so we had him on and he liked it so much he wanted to be on more, and it was kind of like when I suggested to Crank that he do the show in the first place because it made sense for him to have something to do. With Taber, it was the same thing because he needed some sort of entertainment outlet. He should be working in entertainment, but he isn’t. I mean, he’s moving out to Hollywood to try to get into that, but this has kind of provided that outlet and I think he gets a lot of feedback. People either think he’s crazy or a lot of people go and watch the

movies he suggests, but he’s pretty funny. CRANK: I guess some other regulars would be Skottie’s been on a bunch. NORTON: Skottie will get on any podcast he can get on, and I’m not one to talk because I’ve been on a lot of podcasts. CRANK: And Tim [Seeley], we try to get Tim on when we can. NORTON: Tim’s pretty busy, but he’s always funny. CRANK: Sean McKeever’s been on multiple times. Who else has been on more than once? HOUSTON: I also wanted to ask you about Jenny, the announcer girl. CRANK: It made sense because we were on the shows and it sounded weird for me to introduce the show and then start talking. Jenny was there and Jenny is really dry. And it’s so funny, kind of weird funny. We tried to keep having her do it. NORTON: Yeah, it kind of misses something without her. It’s kind of that deadpan delivery. CRANK: I’ve tried. NORTON: You have energy when you do it. I’ve listened to those intros. I’m like, “Wow. He’s like acting.” CRANK: Taber yelled at me one time, so I actually started putting some inflection in my voice. HOUSTON: There’s also a pair of episodes hosted by Sam Wells and Sean Dove… NORTON: I love those episodes. Those are my favorite episodes, and it’s so perfect because it’s so Sean and Sam. They have this kind of Tim and Eric Awesome Show sense of humor about them. It’s like, “Is it too over my head or is it just stupid?” and I just love it. I love those guys. They’re extremely funny. CRANK: And I think, the first time at least, it started out as a joke. Sam was joking with me at work, saying, “We’re going to host an episode, right?” and I was like, “Yeah, fine,” and I think our 52nd episode was coming up. “We’ll do this one and you do the next one and we’ll make it like it’s a whole new show.” NORTON: We were trying to trick people into thinking that we’d quit. CRANK: Then the second time we did it because it was so funny the first time. NORTON: Don’t pretend; we also did it because we got so much hate mail about it the first time. People didn’t like it. We were trying to tick people off a bit. “Well, if you didn’t like that episode, take this.” CRANK: They are fun. I was rolling on the floor. I was still doing the show. I was the guy in the control room. HOUSTON: Why did your listeners hate that episode so much? NORTON: It’s not like they said it was not funny or anything. They were just mad that it wasn’t us.

Frequent Crankcast guests Tim Seeley (top) and Skottie Young (bottom), sketching at the 2008 Windy City Comic Con.

CRANK: Part of what confused me, especially in that first year, was who cares if it’s not us? This is our show. It’s dumb. It doesn’t matter if somebody else is being dumb on the show that’s not us. A lot of people wrote in and a lot of like… NORTON: “Don’t ever do that again.” CRANK: “I almost dropped your show until I realized it was a joke,” and it’s like, “Really?” Actually, that didn’t really happen this year. NORTON: We kind of expected it, but we didn’t really get much e-mail this year. CRANK: The show was fun, though. We got to watch a weird movie, Modesty Blaise. I got to sit here and watch it with them and they had this other guy that worked at Devil’s Due. NORTON: He should be on the radio. HOUSTON: A lot of the guests you’ve had on are industry professionals. CRANK: Yeah.

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HOUSTON: And you’re both professionals, too. I mean, Crank, you’ve done a number of Devil’s Due covers and have started lettering recently, right? CRANK: Yeah. HOUSTON: The thing that your show offers that others don’t, and I’ve sort of been driving at this, is a window into the day-to-day life of a comics artist. CRANK: I think it turned into that. NORTON: We wanted that to be the angle, but I think, in the beginning, neither of us knew how we wanted to do that, because it wasn’t like we were going to do seminars on how to run your dayto-day. CRANK: We thought about content like that. “Should we do a series on what you should know about getting into the business?” NORTON: But I think it was partially laziness, and I’m not going to talk for Crank, but I know, on my part, I was like, “Who am I to tell people?” Let’s let people in on what we do just by talking about the day-to-day rather than us telling them, “Well, this the way that things are.” I don’t exaggerate when I say I don’t think I’m in the place to be that guy. CRANK: And, honestly, at a certain point, I think the fact that we both work in comics is our only tie to actually being a comic book podcast. NORTON: Pretty much. CRANK: I mean there are certain episodes where we actually get into comics, but a lot of it is the only reason we’re a comic book podcast A few of Crank’s covers for Tim Seeley’s Hack/Slash from Devil’s Due Productions. © Copyright 2009 Tim Seeley and Stefano Caselli.

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is that we’re comic book people. NORTON: That’s kind of why we were surprised you wanted to interview us. HOUSTON: I was thinking about that and when you listen to the show, obviously it’s not the topic on a conversational end, but, just by listening to the show, more so with Mike than with you Crank, you get a sense of what the day to day grind of drawing a comic book is like as opposed to what I remember reading in Wizard back in the day, where it seems like it’s all partying and playing video games and somehow the art gets done. CRANK: It is all partying and video games, baby. NORTON: Well, we know people that are like that, actually. We know people that do that, but, yeah. It’s definitely more realistic. It’s the difference between like T.J. Hooker and, let’s say, Law and Order. Which one has the day-to-day stuff in it and which has people jumping over the hood of a police car? We’re much more, “Hey, it really sucks that I can’t go out tonight because I have to finish this comic book.” CRANK: Going back to the e-mails we get, we have gotten e-mails that ask like about contracts, and I remember we got an e-mail about contracts and one about page rates. Weird stuff. Stuff you don’t really talk about when you’re talking about the glamour of comics. We occasionally talk about it on our show because it’s come up or something. NORTON: If it comes up or if somebody asks, I’m going to answer questions. I’ve never told anybody my page rate before, but we will give them instruction. Sometimes I think I’m a little more open than I ought to be with those kinds of questions. There could have been a much more instructional way of doing this, but we’re not good teachers. CRANK: When we first started we’d talk about things. I actually remember reading the whole Scout run by Tim Truman and actually dug out old issues and talked about a favorite X-Men storyline of Mike’s. We realized at a certain point that that wasn’t our strong point. There are other people out there, local people like John [Siuntres] who do comics-related content better than us, so why compete? So we just fell into, “Let’s talk about what we do and us and our day.” HOUSTON: It seems like it helps people. NORTON: I hope so. I mean, I hope we’re not hurting. CRANK: If somebody writes someday and says, “I listened to your show and it screwed up my life,” that will make me feel really bad. HOUSTON: Has the show helped either of your careers at all? CRANK: It’s improved the amount of people I talk to at shows. NORTON: It hasn’t given me a clear boost. Nobody’s said, “I want to work with you because of this.” Plus, we could say that it’s somewhat of a marketing tool,

but I honestly don’t even know how much something like a podcast actually affects sales of a comic in my case. Even a bigger podcast, like Comic Geek Speak, I don’t know how much that effects the bottom line of a mainstream DC comic. Maybe a small press comic, it could actually affect sales, but I don’t know if it actually registers, because I think, at one point, I went on Comic Geek Speak and I really asked them to make a push, or was it Around Comics that did this, making a push [for The All-New Atom]. I wanted to see how many people were actually out there listening to these shows that liked the stuff and boost the sales, but they only went down. CRANK: I guess it’s a matter of scale, too. Mike’s already pretty well known at this point. I’m up to a guy that’s on the masthead of Devil’s Due books and, more recently, lettering and stuff, but, up until recently, for me, I think it’s probably boosted my profile. Does that sound weird? More people know who Crank is now because of this that, I don’t know, it hasn’t gotten me a job or anything, but more people say hey at shows and stuff. HOUSTON: Changing course a little bit, guests and e-mails aren’t the only things that recur on The Crankcast; there are definitely some bits that have become sort of synonymous with the show, like Mike’s Thor impersonation.

NORTON: I’ve tried to retire that. That was more one of those things where you’re sitting around laughing and somebody starts laughing because you’re laughing and somebody says do it later and it’s not as funny, at least for me it’s not. “Do Thor.” I can’t do it. It’s not funny to me anymore. It has to be a certain inclination. CRANK: There’s so much stuff like that or like Goldwaken. The Alley Bear’s a good example, and that came out of Around Comics. NORTON: And it got on to our show. CRANK: It’s one of those things where somebody makes a silly, offhand remark and suddenly people click to it and it’s funny for whatever reason. I don’t think we’ve ever successfully instigated a bit. I don’t think we’ve even tried, actually. NORTON: I’m incapable of doing that. I was surprised when the Thor thing happened because I was making fun of Crank when I did that. CRANK: That came up because of the intro. NORTON: I just did it. CRANK: You know how it is in a conversation when you’re sitting there, especially if you’re drinking a little bit, and repetition becomes funny? NORTON: Family Guy built a show around that. CRANK: And you just can’t stop laughing. Whether it’s funny or not, you’re in the throws of this gut busting laughter. THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 53

HOUSTON: A lot of those moments were supposed to be on the oft mentioned, but never realized Crankcast t-shirts. Are we ever going to see those? NORTON: I think it’s cooler that we never make them. It’s kind of like a no prize. CRANK: It’s like a A bit of Crankcast holiday silliness for the listeners. jackalope. NORTON: We made a Taber t-shirt one time, but the only people who bought them were Taber and a friend of his, so I don’t know. I think that’s another thing. Just like everything else on our show, we kind of revel in our lack of preparedness and laziness. We have great ideas; we just don’t follow through. CRANK: We’re not big marketers, I think. The most I ever promoted our show is I used to moderate a message board and I think I had a link to our show in the signature. NORTON: I didn’t know you did that. That’s funny. CRANK: That brings us back to the family reading your diary. It’s almost like I’d rather let people find it on their own.

going to have a shoebox with a string tied to a stick with a pug under it in front of a Target and they’re going to capture me. CRANK: It’d have to be a big shoebox. NORTON: It’d have to be a big shoebox, like a Shaquille O’Neal shoebox. CRANK: It’s not that I think we’re making an attempt to be open, but this all goes back to our philosophy of just having a conversation. This is what we talk about. NORTON: You’ve been a lot more open about your personal life on the show than I’ve been actually. CRANK: Washing my toes and hurting my back. NORTON: You talk about a lot more embarrassing stuff like that. CRANK: What do I care? NORTON: The whole witch thing. That surprised everybody. CRANK: What? It was in the Seventies. She was a witch. NORTON: Yeah, everybody’s grandma is a witch. Everybody experimented in the black arts.

HOUSTON: Is that openness something that you’ve ever regretted? NORTON: Not really, except for what we mentioned before. Meatbee we felt bad about. I may not be remembering something. CRANK: I kind of regret my rant on Moon Knight when it first came out. NORTON: I remember that. I separated myself from that on the off chance that Charlie Huston would listen. CRANK: I’d apologize profusely if he ever did write in. It’s HOUSTON: It seems like you not how I felt about it, but guys are much more open how I went about saying about your personal lives than it. Other than that, no. a lot of podcasts are, talking For the most part, the about things like Mike’s stolen stuff we talk about is car or his pug. stuff I’d talk about CRANK: Those are plot points, my to strangers. We do friend. self-censor. In any NORTON: I don’t know how open that An angry Mike Norton plays King Kong in normal conversais. There are a lot of things I won’t talk this self-portrait. Provided by the artist. tion, you selfabout. censor. You don’t talk about how CRANK: Mike gets squeamish if I talk about finances something is growing between your toes because or love life. that’s not appropriate content. Not that I have fungus NORTON: Yeah, I don’t talk about girls or money for growing between my toes. some reason. I don’t do that in front of real people NORTON: Yeah! That’s going to be in a book! though, either. I don’t know. Whatever comes to mind. CRANK: You know what I’m saying. You don’t talk If I really want a dog, I talk about that. If I’m driving about things you don’t want to talk about. and I see somebody walking down the street in pajama pants, that’s stupid and I’m going to talk about it. HOUSTON: Well, those were all the questions I had CRANK: Don’t forget your love of Target. for you. NORTON: And I love Target. I’m not afraid to say it. NORTON: Good. Someday somebody’s going to stalk me and they’re CRANK: There’s Mike’s interview personality coming out. going to know exactly how to get to me. They’re just

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C R E A T O R

I N T E R V I E W

TIM SEELY Tim Seeley is a writer and penciler on such titles as Marvel’s Exiles and Devil’s Due Productions’ G.I. Joe. He is also the writer and creator of the comic book Hack/Slash, which follows the exploits of slasher hunter Cassie Hack and which has also been optioned to be a major motion picture from Rogue Pictures. On April 3, 2008, Tim was kind enough to take some time away from his busy schedule to share his opinions of and experiences with both comic book and horror movie podcasts.

HOUSTON: You’ve actually appeared on a few different comic podcasts, right? SEELEY: I have. Actually, I think it’s just because Chicago is kind of a comic book hometown and there’re a lot of guys doing it here. Most of them are within walking distance of my house. HOUSTON: Why do you think Chicago is such a magnet for podcasts? SEELEY: I don’t know. A lot of it is just that there’re a lot of stores here. Within five blocks of my house, there are probably at least four stores. That’s a high concentration. It’s weird. I wish I knew what did it. Looking out my window, I can see Jeffrey Brown’s house from here and a whole bunch of comic book creators live right around here. I guess Chicago just kind of draws a lot of people from the Midwest, so a lot of the creators from Wisconsin or Michigan or Indiana just sort of end up here because it’s sort of the best big city for the Midwestern creators who want to keep the Midwestern thing going. HOUSTON: What show have you appeared on most often? SEELEY: Crankcast is the most and I’ve done some episodes of Around Comics and then just various other stuff where I’ve been interviewed and stuff, a couple of horrors ones out of some other town that called me to be on. But thus far The Crankcast is kind of the one that I’ve done the most. HOUSTON: I’m pretty sure you were their first guest, too. SEELEY: I think so, yes, which is sad for them. I think they’ve moved on to bigger and better things now. HOUSTON: And you’re friends with Mike and Crank, right? SEELEY: Yeah. Actually I worked with both of them at Devil’s Due for a while and they’ve gone on to other stuff, but, yeah, I still see those guys for beers on a pretty regular schedule, so they’re still around.

Tim Seeley sketching at the 2008 Windy City Comic Con.

HOUSTON: Mike has said that he sort of went around the Devil’s Due office asking people like Sam Wells to do a podcast before he got to Crank. Were you one of those people? SEELEY: I don’t remember that. Crank was always the technology enthusiast of the guys that I’ve worked with, so I can’t imagine him asking anyone but Crank. I can’t remember if that’s true or not or if Mike’s full of it. I think it was always Crank because they always shared their little tech geek love in their desks, which were right next to each other. They’ll probably tell you that, technologically speaking, I’m a little bit “special” in that area. I’m terrible at it. I touch computers and they fall apart. I buy any kind of technology thing and I don’t know how to work it. They keep putting me on because I talk dirty and tell horrible jokes about myself. I’m not the tech guy that shares the love of it.

Tim’s cover art for Death by Sequel, the second trade paperback for his creatorowned Hack/Slash series. Inks by Jeremy Freeman. Courtesy Kevin Southwell. Hack/Slash TM and © copyright 2009 Tim Seeley and Stefano Caselli.

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HOUSTON: Is that magic touch what’s kept you from doing your own podcast? SEELEY: [laughing] I think so. And I think I’m just one of those guys that’s better in small doses. I’m better as a guest star. You need your Mike Norton as your guy for that soothing, baritone voice once a week, but I’m that guy who comes on and says something crazy and stupid, talks about myself, and leaves after doing it for a couple of weeks so you still think he’s mildly entertaining.

The hosts of The Crankcast give their interpretations of Seeley’s Cassie Hack character in a convention sketch by Mike Norton (Top) and a Chris Crank Hack/Slash cover (Bottom), which also contains a nod to Seeley’s affection for Chaos Comics. Cover art courtesy Chris Crank. Sketch courtesy its owner, Kevin Southwell. Hack/Slash TM and © copyright 2009 Tim Seeley and Stefano Caselli.

HOUSTON: What podcasts do you listen to? SEELEY: I listen to The Crankcast. I’m terrible about this stuff lately. I try to check out Around Comics when I get the chance, but it seems like, at least the last six months, I’ve been pretty bad about it. And I always skip the ones I’m on because I hate listening to the ones I’m on, but I try to catch the ones with Chris Taber because he’s a really old friend of mine, but, lately, I haven’t caught many. I do apologize to the podcasting people. I’ve gotten busy and the thing I forget to do is download more podcasts.

HOUSTON: Taber worked at Devil’s Due with you guys, too, right? SEELEY: Yeah. He was a guy I knew in high school, so it’s all connected in a weird connection. He and I had moved to Chicago after he graduated college and he needed a job, so he worked for us for a while. He’s a guy I’ve known since I was, like, 17. He’s very funny.

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HOUSTON: I assume you met the Around Comics guys and the other Chicago podcasters through The Crankcast. SEELEY: Yeah, yeah. Around Comics actually does their podcast at the comic book store that’s at the edge of my street, a store called Dark Tower and, where I live, if I walk of the edge of my street, I walk right into Dark Tower Comics. I used to stop there after work and see them setting up, and I found out that it was for a podcast. Then Norton was on there a couple times and so I just sort of ended up doing a couple episodes where I would just kind of be there because I was shopping or something. Then I did a couple of interviews because I was well versed in whatever topic or oeuvre because, you know, I’m a big horror comic dork. They did one with Brian Pulido and they called me in for that because they knew I was a big fan of the Chaos stuff. HOUSTON: How was appearing on The Crankcast different from Around Comics or Word Balloon? SEELEY: All three of those are pretty loose for me. I don’t have to change anything for doing any of those because I think I’m just there to be the guy who talks too much. Honestly, I don’t do anything different with any of those. They’re all guys I feel comfortable with, John Siuntres or Chris [Neseman] or any of those guys. I feel pretty comfortable with all of them, so I just do the same thing. Granted, I do get wasted while I do it. At Around Comics, a fair amount of times, we’ve had beer and stuff there. I think that’s the thing about podcasts. They are informal. It’s not about being professional; it’s supposed to be about people having conversations about subjects they’re passionate about or interested in, and I think you would lose that if they didn’t talk how they talk normally, as opposed to radio, which is trying to sell ads. So, yeah, I think that they should be treated all the same. HOUSTON: What is Devil’s Due’s attitude toward having creators appear on podcasts? SEELEY: At least in the minds of the guys that I work with, and [Josh] Blalock, the boss, it’s only good. I think, when you’re doing indie stuff, small press stuff and you don’t have the history of the characters to boost your appearances, what you can sell is sort of yourself, your willingness to talk to people. Indie people really need to take advantage of that, so they’re definitely for it. No one’s ever told me to curb the swear words or get less drunk or don’t tell that story. You know, comics at this level, it’s all about being able to relate to the creators you’re enjoying, the work of being able to interact, and I think you have to maintain that. HOUSTON: Do your podcast appearances help sales of, say, Hack/Slash, or is it hard to say? SEELEY: I don’t know. I don’t think anything where you find any new audience hurts sales. If any of the people who listen to The Crankcast go out and buy an issue of Loaded Bible or Hack/Slash—I know they’re

not doing it in huge numbers, but if they’re doing it in any numbers it’s worth me going over and having a few beers and hanging out. I probably would have done that anyway. Maybe they’ll find out about a new book they wouldn’t have heard about because the news is dominated by Secret Invasion or some other big crossover junk, to see what’s going on within a niche within a niche. Comics are already kind of a small media and indie comics are a smaller part of that. Podcasts give fans a chance to hear about new things, and maybe they liked what I talked about, maybe they think I sound like an okay guy. Hopefully, I haven’t turned anyone away from my line of books. It can only help. Not a lot, but a little.

Horror shows, I’ve done both of those multiple times, but there’s a lot of crossover. I mean the people who attend conventions and the kind of people that listen to podcasts are the kind of people that are interested in the stuff beyond just what comes out from the store.

HOUSTON: Do fans bring up your podcast appearances to you at conventions? SEELEY: Yeah, it’s happened for sure a couple of times, and sometimes it’s been so long since I recorded the show and since I don’t listen to my own podcasts that people will reference some joke and I’ll have to think what was I talking about, but yes, it has happened a couple of times. Any of the ones where Taber and I are both on, we’ll start ripping on stuff and weird stuff will come out.

HOUSTON: Do you see much of a difference between gaming fans and horror fans and comic fans or is it all kind of the same thing? SEELEY: No, it’s totally different. Totally difTim shows off his crossover appeal ferent. I could write a with this original art from Devil’s Due book on that if anyone Productions’ G.I. Joe #30, courtesy would find it interestAmi Morrison, and Forgotten Realms: Halfling’s Gem #1, courtesy ing. I’ll always notice it in the way they treat Cadence Comic Art (www.cadencecomicart.com). artists because, when GI Joe © Copyright 2009 Hasbro. Forgotten you write stuff, there’s Realms © Copyright 2009 Wizards of the Coast LLC, a division of Hasbro. always sort of a similar interest, but an artist, in comic book circles, is very interesting and people want sketches from you. They care about your original art. Then, in fantasy circles, at least in roleplaying, everyone considers themselves an artist and they’re not very interested in you at all actually. They’re reading novels. They see everything in their brain. The only ones they’re really interested in are painters who do covers they really like. Then the horror guys are sort of just all around excited by every aspect of that stuff from the special effects to the novelist. There’s just an overall excitement about it. I had to learn all of those in an afternoon and every time I go to a show, I kind of have to readjust.

HOUSTON: Speaking of which, it seems like it’s become sort of a prerequisite for you to talk about horror movies when you’re on podcasts, and that reputation as a horror aficionado seems to really come out in those episodes with Taber. In any case, I thought I’d ask if there are there any horror movies that you’ve seen lately that we should check out? SEELEY: I’m looking forward to seeing The Ruins. I did see a pretty good, very low budget movie called Werewolves in a Woman’s Prison. It was just so full of heart that it sort of won me over. It’s not great acting and there are some kind of cheesy special effects, but you’ve never seen so much love put into a werewolf pulling apart women in a prison in your life. That one was really fun. HOUSTON: A lot of your work has crossover appeal. Hack/Slash has a following among horror people and G.I. Joe and Forgotten Realms definitely have their own followings. Because of that, are you ever invited to appear on non-comic podcasts? SEELEY: I do a lot of the horror ones. There’re a fair amount of horror podcasts. That’s another group of fans of a genre where they are into it beyond just the trip. They’re interested in the creators. They’re interested in the ideas. They want to talk about it. So I have been on a few horror podcasts. Those are really in-depth and a lot like the comic podcasts, but I’ve yet to appear on a Dark Elf podcast. I think that’s probably coming. Sooner or later there will probably be a fantasy one I’ll be on. So far, it’s mostly comic stuff and horror ones. HOUSTON: I assume you’ve appeared at a number of gaming and horror cons, too. SEELEY: Sure. Gen Con and the Fangoria Weekend of

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R E M E M B E R I N G

T H E

24 HOUR COMIC BOOK

PODCAST

Crank gets ready to record. All photos in this chapter by Chris Neseman and provided by Chris Crank, unless otherwise noted.

Easily one of the most memorable events in the short history of comic book podcasting was 2007’s 24 Hour Comic Book Podcast. Spearheaded by Mike Norton and Chris Crank of The Crankcast, this special show would eventually unite the hosts of fellow Chicago podcasts Around Comics, Comic Book Queers, and Word Balloon in an attempt to record for 24 straight hours. Ultimately a huge success, The 24 Hour Comic Book Podcast is still remembered by its hosts and listeners alike as one of the funniest, most unique, and most ambitious podcasts ever recorded. Believe it or not, it all started as a joke. For months, Chris Crank had been needling his Crankcast co-host Mike Norton about a special anniversary podcast, one that would last 24 hours. Mike seemed to think the whole thing was trouble and Crank, well, he only seemed to be half-serious. Still, as the weeks went on, Crank’s idea seemed to hold more and more sway with their listeners. “It seemed like everyone else was more excited than Norton and Crank,” recalls fellow podcaster Chris Neseman. Crank agrees, “I brought it up just as an idea. I don’t remember why. We started talking about it and I put it forward to other local podcasters. For some reason they said, ‘Yeah, that makes sense.’” Spurred on by the enthusiasm of their fellow podcasters, Mike and Crank began planning The 24 Hour Comic Book Podcast in honor of The Crankcast’s second anniversary. October 6th, 2007 was chosen as the date, Dark Tower Comics in Chicago as Chris Neseman’s organizational skills the venue. Dark were invaluable to The 24 Hour Comic Book Podcast. Photo by Chris Tower, of course, was Crank. no stranger to pod58 | 24 COMIC BOOK PODCAST

casting, having already served as the home of fellow Chicago podcast Around Comics for more than a year. In fact, Around Comics host Chris Neseman found himself contributing his own experience and propensity for organization to the 24-hour endeavor. “Luckily, Crank and Mike knew an obsessive organizer,” he recalls. “I sort of think that’s in his DNA, that he has to manage stuff,” says Norton of Neseman. “He was kind of like the second team, if not first sometimes.” The plan for the day was a simple one. Everyone who could, including Norton, Crank, Neseman, and Around Comics co-host Tom Katers, would arrive at Dark Tower and begin recording at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday, wrapping up the same time on Sunday. Meanwhile, Crank would use his talent for quick editing to post a new segment of the show on the Internet every hour. Despite all the planning, the podcast ultimately got off to a rather rocky start. Neseman was characteristically the first to arrive, allowing him to witness the first sign of trouble for the ambitious endeavor. “I knew it was going to be ugly when I got here at 9 o’clock on Saturday morning and Mike Norton pulled up and looked awful,” says Neseman. “I asked what was wrong and he told me, ‘I couldn’t go to sleep last night. I was up until 3 o’clock in the morning because I knew I had to sleep and I couldn’t sleep and now I have to do this thing for 24 hours.’” Unfortunately, Mike’s fatigue was not the marathon podcast’s only problem. From the very beginning, the show was plagued by a series of audio problems that rendered the first few installments practically unintelligible. “You could make out what people were saying, but it was bad,” says Crank, “so, finally, I went home and brought a different computer to the place and I changed our set up a little bit and we were fine.” Well, almost fine. To make matters worse, a shaky Internet connection at Dark Tower forced Mike to make hourly treks to the coffee shop across the street to upload each episode via Wi-Fi. Still, by hour five, the audio and Internet problems had cleared up and The 24 Hour Comic Book Podcast finally found its legs. The first problem-free episodes featured the sort of long, low-key comic book, television, and pop culture discussions that have become a hallmark of The Crankcast. For an hour-and-a-half, Crank

discussed everything from the then-new television series Pushing Daisies to classic espionage comics to Jerry’s Lewis’ annual Labor Day telethon with Word Balloon’s John Siuntres and Around Comics co-host Tom Katers, whose voice would ultimately appear on nearly every hour of the show. “Tom Katers was definitely the MVP,” recalls Tim Seeley, creator of Hack/Slash and a close friend of Mike and Crank’s. “Tom Katers was on air all 24 hours and did an epic job.” “[Tom] didn’t especially seem like he wanted to be there,” laughs Crank, “but he was there for the whole time.” Hour six brought the first of the show’s many interviews, this one with Chris Moreno, a comic book artist and friend of Mike and Crank’s as well as the co-host of the Gymkommentary movie commentary podcast. As the day wore on, many other guests graced the 24-hour podcast, including Teen Titans scribe Sean McKeever and Marvel Comics super-star Brian Michael Bendis. “A big punch of the show was when John Siuntres showed up and called up Brian Bendis,” recalls Crank. “That was an informative interview, too,” remembers Norton. “They talked about a lot of stuff that hadn’t been talked about.” Still, as much as Norton may have liked that particular interview, he took a lot of guff over his particular interview style. While the interviews themselves would largely go off without a hitch, Norton would regularly end them by simply saying that he was done talking to his subject and abruptly hanging up, which his fellow podcasters found hilarious. As the night wore on, many more podcasters came and left. Around Comics co-host Brion Salazar and New X-Men artist Skottie Young hung around for a few hours as did Skottie’s girlfriend, singer Casey McCauley, who graced the show with a handful of fantastic songs at the beginning of hour seven. Steve and Eric of Comic Book Queers showed up for the next hour and the entire crew was joined throughout by Chris Burnham, artist of the recent Image graphic novel Nixon’s Pals. Burnham had decided to pool his efforts with Mike and Crank’s and attempt a 24-hour comic book, based on a challenge originally created by comic book luminary Scott McCloud. “I believe he proposed it to Steve Bissette, who was the great artist of Swamp Thing and who was notoriously slow, but who would whip out convention sketches very quickly,” says Burnham. “Scott McCloud said, ‘I bet you could do a comic in a day if you wanted to.’” He continues, “It’s sort of a Mount

Everest thing. There’s no reason to do it except why the hell not?” Despite circumstances that forced him to occasionally draw in an alley behind the store, Burnham not only kept pace with the podcast, but actually pulled ahead, beginning work on page 18 of his 24-page book during hour 17 of the actual podcast. According to the rules of the challenge, Burnham was not even able to begin plotting his book until the beginning of the day’s drawing. The result, a story about a man who is poisoned and who only has 24 hours to live, is a funny, rambling, improvised story that serves as the perfect counterpoint to The 24 Hour Comic Book Podcast itself. Hours 14 and 15 brought one of the show’s more novel ideas. Mike, Crank, and Chris Taber, The Crankcast’s resident movie expert, had long talked about recording a movie commentary and posting it as an episode of The Crankcast and this the 24-hour show seemed to give them the perfect excuse to do just that. “It was a long show,” says Norton, “so we wanted something that would take up time so we wouldn’t have to do as much.” Chris Taber personally chose the film in question, picking the then-recently released, straight-to-DVD BloodRayne II: Deliverance. THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 59

Loosely based on a say. Amidst the laughter, Mike commented on what he video game of the same saw as the irony of the situation, saying, “I thought I name, BloodRayne II is a was going to be the one breaking down. I thought I’d be Uwe Boll film that places the one making no sense and babbling incoherently.” the titular vampire turned Still, Taber continued to make bizarre statement after vampire hunter in the Old statement, some fairly coherent, if completely unprintWest. To the podcasters, it able, and some downright strange. “Taber got drunk sounded like the perfect and crazy,” remembers Norton. piece of B movie cheese to Brion Salazar recalls with a laugh, “I almost killed use as the basis for their Taber.” A drunk, crazy Chris Taber cracks up Mike Norton. first commentary, but Tom Katers agrees, “You did almost kill Taber. We all things didn’t quite work out turned on him really fast, even Seeley. Everyone wanted as planned. “The joke was on us,” says Norton. “It was to kill him.” a really hard movie to watch. We thought it would be “The one thing that doesn’t come across is that kind of entertaining to watch in its badness, but it was everybody was laughing,” defends Taber. “Even when a hard movie to watch.” Norton disliked the movie so people seemed to be annoyed by me, I remember much, in fact, that he temporarily abandoned the podeveryone just laughing and having a good time. When I cast to take a nap in his car. listened it to it later, even I was like, ‘I sound like a real Still, the resulting commentary is pretty funny and, as jerk,’ but I remember everybody just laughing at me and the podcasters would find out a few months later, took everybody knew we were just joking.” on a life of its own. “The weirdest thing about that,” While Taber’s breakdown may have served as the drasays Crank, “is that there’s a version of the movie float- matic climax for the podcast, four hours of recording ing around on the torrents that actually included the still remained. These final hours of the show went off commentary from our show.” without a hitch as the remaining podcasters fought Norton agrees, saying, “That’s one of the weirdest fatigue and indulged in the same sort of relaxed TV, things we’ve had happen.” movie, and, of course, comic talk that marked the Perhaps the most memorable and talked about porshow’s opening hours. At hour 22, young listener Hank tion of the 24-hour podcast came late into the recordNasserbakht arrived with doughnuts, picking up everying. By this time, some of the podcasters, Norton, one’s spirits and, by hour 24, the six remaining, Crank, and Tom Katers included, had been at Dark exhausted podcasters thanked the listening audience Tower for 20 hours. They’d had no sleep and many of and ended the show. them had gone from being sober to drunk, back to While the experience of The 24 Hour Comic Book sober, and back to drunk again. Chris Taber had only Podcast was, at times, a bit of a rollercoaster ride for been there for about ten hours, but the rigors of sitting all involved, everyone looks back at it fondly, laughing through BloodRayne II and of drinking multiple cans of off what problems occurred. The listeners, meanwhile, Sparks, a caffeinated alcohol drink, pushed him over immensely enjoyed the entire affair and have been the edge. A heated film discussion with Skottie Young after Mike and Crank to make it an annual event, but and a Taber-dominated round will they? of trivia had already created “They’ll totally do it again,” some tension, but the man’s says Tim Seeley. “Publicly they alcohol and caffeine-fueled act like they won’t, but I’m sure tirade in hour 20 can only be Crank has the next one all described as a breakdown, planned out.” bearing the subtitle “Taber Neseman agrees, Has Gone Absolutely Insane.” “Absolutely. They’ll absolutely The description of the do it again. episode on the RSS feed, Even Mike and Crank believe meanwhile, invites listeners they’ll be involved in another to, “listen to the meltdown of 24-hour podcast, albeit with a a human being.” caveat. “I’d like to be able to Over the course of that show up and talk, instead of Listener Hank Nasserbakht with Mike and Crank. hour, Taber grew less and trying to micromanage parts of less coherent, while discussing a dizzying variety of topit,” says Crank. Still, he definitely feels like the idea, if ics, including the television shows Chuck, Cavemen, a bit eccentric, was a success and that it did everyJourneyman, and Battlestar Galactica. An awkward conthing he hoped. “It wasn’t about The Crankcast. The versation about his and Skottie Young’s respective girlshow was the show. It was about showcasing everyfriends devolved into a crazed, rambling story about a body’s stuff, and doing this weird marathon event that barbeque that had the rest of the room in stitches as was kind of absurd.” they tried to figure out exactly what Taber was trying to 60 | 24 COMIC BOOK PODCAST

iFANBOY In the year 2000, college buddies Ron Richards, Josh Flanagan, and Conor Kilpatrick launched the iFanboy website, but no one seemed to notice. It wasn’t until they launched their popular Pick of the Week comics review podcast that iFanboy finally exploded across the Internet, growing to include a thriving fan community and weekly video podcast. On August 3, 2008, Ron, Josh, and Conor spoke to me about their adventures in podcasting and the evolution of iFanboy.

HOUSTON: What is iFanboy? JOSH: iFanboy is sort of a catch-all for the entire thing we do on the web. There is a iFanboys Conor Kilpatrick, Josh Flanagan, and Ron Richards. All photos in this chapter courtesy iFanboy. © Copyright 2009 iFanboy website. That’s where it all started off. Basically, it’s a review and commentary website. We don’t try to break news. We launched the audio podcast, and then we added the talk about the books as they come out every week video in January of 2007. and then we just talk about things going on in comics JOSH: And the audio podcast was such a lark. We or whatever we feel like. We have several columnists had been playing World of Warcraft and talking on and writers doing mostly opinion pieces, but there’s a Skype and Ron said, “Let’s do a podcast,” and I think bunch of other stuff. It’s fun. It’s a place where peoConor and I had maybe heard the word, but never lisple can go and talk about their comics. tened to one, never looked to see if Then, branching off from that, there’s our podcast. there were any others about comic There’s a weekly audio podcast where we talk about books and we were just sort of like, all the current books of the week and our Pick of the “Let’s do it now.” So we turned the Week, which is sort of the centerpiece of the whole thing on and we talked for eighteen thing. Then there are the video shows. There are the minutes and it was awful. [laughter] daily video shows, which are little, short, pretty It’s still there. You can go listen to freeform. We can talk about whatever we want to talk it. about, whether it’s grabbing an old issue and talking CONOR: Don’t! about a random comic book from 1985 or talking JOSH: And we just sort of kept about the books that are coming up, a preview for doing it. That’s basically the iFanboy that week. And then there’s the weekly video show, ethos: to start something without which is more topic-based, I would say, just on whathaving any idea of what you’re doing ever comic subject we want to talk about that week or and to keep doing it endlessly. we’ll talk to somebody or go to a convention. It’s basi[laughter] cally a place you can go and talk about comics and have friends to talk about comics with. HOUSTON: What sort of podcasts RON: iFanboy.com started in the year 2000 and sort did you listen to for inspiration? of our origin story is that Josh, Conor, and I went to RON: So it’s like 2005 and podcollege together and part of our friendship was based casts are just starting to get some on the fact that we all enjoyed comics and talked attention and I’m listening to This The iFanboys about comics. We graduated college and tried to keep Week in Tech and Diggnation which in college. in touch with each other via e-mail, and every week © Copyright 2009 iFanboy are two podcasts that are kind of we would e-mail each other and tell each other what tech-based and which grew out of TechTV, a cable books we were buying. TV channel that Conor and I were fans of. So it’s I’m 22, fresh out of college, working, doing Internet summer of ’05 and I’m listening to these podcasts stuff, so I said, “Enough with this e-mail, let’s do a and really getting into it. Every week, I’m getting a website.” We launched iFanboy.com in 2000; it purely new podcast. I’m going to the gym and listening to was a written website up until 2005 when we podcasts. I’m listening to less and less of radio and THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 61

the thought that occurred to me wasn’t so much, “Oh, wow. I wish there was a comic book podcast I could listen to, so let’s do one,” instead it was very much like how the website started, “Hey, I want to do a podcast,” like, “Hey, I want to do a website.” I was like, “What can I do a podcast about? Well I’ve got this website where Josh and Conor and I Josh Flanagan on the San Diego Comic-Con International talk about comics, so Podcasting Panel. © Copyright 2009 what if we record ouriFanboy selves?” That’s how it started. There was no business plan or goal to provide the best comic book podcast there was. I just wanted to figure out how to do a podcast. CONOR: And have fun, too. JOSH: And it quickly became very fun. RON: The story is nice and everything, but it took a good couple of weeks of twisting you guys’ arms to do it. I had to convince you guys because you were like, “Why would anyone want to listen to us?” JOSH: I don’t remember it like that at all and I would like that on the record. RON: It just came out of curiosity more than anything. HOUSTON: How do you remember it, Josh? JOSH: I just remember it not being a big deal. I just remember him saying it and us saying, “Okay,” and,

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literally, a few days later, he’s like, “We’re going to do it now,” and I don’t know what this means, but I put on my headset and we talked about the comics of the week and we were done and we put it out there. I don’t even remember making the conscious decision of, “Let’s do this every week at the same time.” It just sort of started happening and, before we knew it, there were several hundred people listening to us and it’s like, “Really?” And all of sudden people started coming to the website, and it’s embarrassing, but nobody came to our website before this. It was a dead, dead website and, all of sudden, people are showing up and reading the stuff we’d written and commenting on it. It was amazing and, literally, it’s been building since then. CONOR: I think there was some reticence, but I don’t remember it being as bad as Ron said. I remember him saying that we should do this and I thought, “Well, why?” But then, very quickly, it was just like, “If you want to do it, we’ll do it.” It wasn’t much of a convincing job that he had to do, but at the same time there was a question of why would you want to do this at all at first, but there wasn’t a lot of arm-twisting. “I don’t have anything to do on Thursday night. Let’s do it.” HOUSTON: I think it’s interesting, too, that the website came first, since with most podcasts, it seems to be the other way around, with the website basically supporting the podcast. CONOR: That’s the thing with iFanboy: it’s a multipronged entity in that we have these other outlets, whereas the other shows tend to exist always as the shows. The website is the anchor. It isn’t an afterthought. In fact, it’s what we spend the most time on out of everything we do. It’s where we want everyone to be. It’s kind of like the clubhouse and we like to have that. It’s something that’s unique. I don’t know all the shows, but I don’t think they have that sort of website presence that we do. RON: They might have it in the form of forums, but the websites and the forums came out of the podcast. We had an established brand or an established home base to grow off of and, honestly, Josh was right. Nobody came to the website, not even our friends. CONOR: Except for Gabriel. RON: Yeah, except for this one guy from Florida. Every week he’d come by and just comment on one thing and he literally kept us going for five years. Then, totally inadvertently, it was a great lesson in terms of working in new media, the power of the podcast not as a marketing tool but as a community building tool because people would listen to the podcast and we would say, “You can visit us at iFanboy.com,” and they started coming in tens, then in hundreds, then in thousands, and now iFanboy.com is bigger than it’s ever been and it’s consistently growing every day.

HOUSTON: Would you agree that the Pick of the Week is really the core of the podcast? RON: Yeah, that’s the starting point. JOSH: It’s about ten minutes, actually. CONOR: It’s the first ten minutes out of sixty, but that’s the draw. That’s essential. It’s the iFanboy Pick of the Week Podcast. RON: And it’s funny to see how it’s evolved, because it used to be twenty minutes or fifteen minutes and we’ve toned down the time we talked about the specific Pick of the Week because we’re trying to pack more into the show. JOSH: Without making it a lot longer. HOUSTON: I certainly feel as a listener, and maybe you feel differently, that the podcast is primarily a review show. JOSH: Absolutely. What happens is, every Wednesday we rotate, and every third Wednesday one of us gets the Pick of the Week. Pick of the Week is, by the way, basically the best book that any of us read by our own subjective standards. That’s what the Pick of the Week is: it’s the issue that made me happiest in the given week that it came out. After that, I will send an e-mail to these guys and say, “Here’s the Pick of the Week and here are the other books that I’d like to talk about,” and they add to that and by the Thursday or Friday that we record the show, they’ve picked out which books they want to talk about, so we go through all those and try to talk about all the books that made an impact or mattered in a given week. That’s usually thirty to forty minutes in a given episode and then we’ll do a couple of letters and a couple of voicemails and that’s about it. HOUSTON: Why did you decide to do a review show? CONOR: We’d been doing the Pick of the Week as a written thing for five years at that point, so it was the logical content extension. “Let’s just do a podcast about that Pick of the Week.” As the show grew, we’d talk about other books. We added the user stuff: the e-mails and the voice mails. It grew organically. We already had a hook on the website in The Pick of the Week. It was a hook among three to four people maybe, but it was still a hook to go from. RON: I think that was kind of all we had. The only thing we were really qualified to talk about was what we thought about comic books. We’re not insiders. We don’t try to talk about news and stuff, but, having read comics for ten years and written a Pick of the Week every week for five years, we got pretty good at being able to describe what it was we liked about a book or didn’t like about a book in a way that I think people liked. HOUSTON: Was it hard for you to put your own fan reaction to a book into a formal interview? CONOR: Not at all. JOSH: That’s never been a problem.

RON: If anything, our enjoyment of comics has been based around our opinion of comics. Going back to college and arguing over comics and what was good and what was bad or e-mailing each other, it was all about, “I bought Wolverine #40 and it sucked and here’s why.” For whatever reason, we’re very good at being opinionated. JOSH: For me, that’s the challenge of the whole thing, because one of the things that has been very pervasive over the web is that people will make proclamations. “This is awesome,” or “this sucks,” and I think that all three of us really like the challenge and the sort of—this is going to sound terrible—the intellectual stimulation of really looking into something and really finding out, “Why did I like that?” and that’s the challenge of the week: figuring out something to say that I haven’t said before. “Why did I like this book?” and articulating that, and I think people really like that. That’s the thing that our audience has responded to: we don’t just make proclamations; we talk about why. CONOR: We also have a modicum of training in that we all went to school for film and television and radio. We’ve all taken film writing and TV writing, so we all kind of have an idea of story and character and what works and doesn’t work and why those things don’t work, because we all went to school for that and got degrees in that. There is a little bit of a basis in that and in the opinionated nature of who we are. Plus, for five years, we worked on writing these reviews almost in a vacuum, so we worked on them and got better. If you could go back and read the first ones, they’d be pretty terrible compared to what we do now, but five years of writing them every week has honed the ability look at a comic and say what about it is good and what’s not good, not just, “I like Batman.” We were able to work on that and get pretty good at that, I think. HOUSTON: Which is easier for you, talking about a book on the air or writing a formal review? CONOR: It’s so much easier to talk about it than write THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 63

The X-Men, seen here in John Byrne and Terry Austin’s two page splash from the classic X-Men #137, are so frequently the focus of Ron’s reviews at ifanboy.com that he is running out of things to say about the merry mutants. Original art courtesy Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). © Copyright 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.

it. Writing it, it has to be coherent and have structure. You can turn a mic on and we could all talk forever about anything and we can bounce off each other instead of monologue for ten minutes, whereas the written reviews—some weeks are hard because some weeks the words just aren’t coming or the Pick of the Week isn’t that compelling. It certainly takes more time to write the Pick than it does to talk about it.

RON: I agree. When I talk about the comic, I don’t have to worry about grammar or punctuation or flow or being coherent, but writing about the book for me is the challenge because, especially after doing it for eight years, I’m constantly trying to find new ways to talk about the same comics I’ve been talking about for eight years. [laughter] Let’s call a spade a spade; I read a lot of Marvel books. I read a lot of super-hero books. Conor loves to analyze our Picks and pick out how many times we pick what book. If you look at my stats, it’s ridiculous. It’s mainly Marvel stuff and mainly XMen stuff. How many times can I write a unique review about what’s going on in the pages of X-Men? I use the writing as an exercise to find that unique kind of point of view that we haven’t discussed before to use as a launch pad for the discussion on the podcast. JOSH: And the difference in the writing and the discussion Spidey: A Universe X Special and Planetary #13, the first two Picks of the Week, and Powers is the person who picked it Vol. 1 #14, the first audio Pick of the Week. Spidey: © Copyright 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. Planetary: © comes in with a point of view Copyright 2009 Wildstorm Productions, a division of DC Comics. Powers: © Copyright 2009 Jinxworld, Inc. that can be wildly varied from 64 | iFANBOY

the other guys’ and that, for We’re really at the mercy of me, is when the show the publishers and what they becomes interesting. put out. Sometimes there will Usually, how it works is the be a book that is just so person whose Pick it is will unbelievably amazing and say, “I picked this book,” rock my world and it rocked and then talk for an interJosh and Conor’s world that minable one to two minutes it’s just a no-brainer. Other before the other two chime times, you’re just sitting there in. The worst thing that staring at four books thinking, ever happens is if we all “These were alright.” I look agree on something and for the book that excites me say it’s just really good. We and, honestly, you don’t get Conor films Josh and Ron for the video show. can’t talk about Ed excited every week, so you © Copyright 2009 iFanboy Brubaker’s Captain America have to find that nugget of anymore because that’s the conversation now. “It’s excitement somewhere. really good again. It has been for forty issues. I don’t CONOR: I lay my books out on the floor of my living know what else to say.” [laughter] room and eliminate them. I get down to four or five that were good and then I look at those four in a row HOUSTON: What was the first Pick of the Week? and think, “These two were better than these two,” CONOR: In the show or the very first ever? The first until I get down to the last one. Sometimes you read for the show was Powers #18 or 19. I feel like the one and you just know it’s so much better than the first written Pick of the Week was Planetary. That was rest and you don’t have to worry about it. one of the first ones I wrote. RON: We’re on the third version of iFanboy.com and, HOUSTON: Have you ever been tempted to move unfortunately, the first one got lost to the ether, so we away from the Pick of the Week format? don’t have that data. Our record really only goes back JOSH: No. to about 2002. The first audio podcast Pick of the CONOR: Well, we have sometimes, with our movie Week was Powers #14. review shows or our special shows, but the Pick of CONOR: That was Josh’s. the Week is our bread and butter and we like doing JOSH: September 13, 2000, Ron’s first Pick of the that the most, but if we ever have an idea or want to Week that we have a record of is Spidey: A Universe X do something new, we always just put up a special Special by Jim Krueger with art by Jackson Guice, edition show. John Romita, Sr., and Al Milgrom. It is the shortest, RON: And we have more outlets now because we most expository review ever. have the video show and the minis, so most of those CONOR: That’s not it. ideas fit in, but comic book fans are very regular and JOSH: It just says, “The book is surprisingly awewe’re probably no different. They like the structure some,” then it describes it. Then it says, “You should and the regularity of the monthly books coming out read this if you like Spider-Man.” [laughter] That was and every week it’s probably part of their regular the whole review, “You should have read this book.” reading, just as it is ours now. You read the comic CONOR: I’m 99 percent sure the first one was a books, you read the review on the site, then, on Planetary. It’s not this one. RON: I think this is a test one. JOSH: Planetary #13 was the next week. CONOR: Yeah. I think Spidey was the fake one, the test one. JOSH: Look at that. A Sentry book was the fourth week. And we all had screen names back then, but we don’t anymore, thank God. We just use our real names. Back then, Ron was “Old Chum” and Conor was “The Dark Knight” and I was “Lockjosh.” See the ‘sh’ at the end? CONOR: That was awful. Why did we do that? [laughter] HOUSTON: How hard is it to decide on the Pick of the Week? RON: Sometimes it’s ridiculously easy. Sometimes it’s a no-brainer and, sometimes, it’s agonizing.

THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 65

Sunday, you listen to what we thought of the books and then interact. It’s just that Wednesday regularity carried out longer, I think. JOSH: We would never not do The Pick of the Week. CONOR: But if we want to branch out, we have the ability to do so.

thing where you can see the con. RON: Here’s what we look like. Here’s what all these people look like. So we put that out, and then I was in the process of befriending some folks out in San Francisco who were running an Internet television network and they saw the video and said, “Do you want to put this on our network?” and we said, “Maybe.” HOUSTON: What is the current Pick of the Week? So there were a couple of months of us figuring out if RON: It was Wolverine #67, which we just recorded we were going to do an ongoing video show, what it and which will come out as would look like, and how soon as we finish this interwould we do it. That took a view. couple of months and then, JOSH: It was mine, actually. in November, we started It was what we would call a shooting. surprise pick because I CONOR: The important thing didn’t like the last issue of was, at the time, Josh and Wolverine and, for the most his wife lived in California, part, I do not like Mark so it was like, “Can we even Millar’s work all that much, do this?” Then they moved but it excited me. It surto New York, where Ron and prised me, but that may have I were at the time, so we been because I really like could do it because we were Hawkeye. all in the same place. Then CONOR: Let’s take the “may” it became a show. out and put that as yes, RON: We launched in that’s why. January of ’07 and we’ve JOSH: Maybe it’s because I been doing it weekly ever didn’t expect anything out of since, and then daily starting it, so when I enjoyed it I was in March of ’08. Again, like really pleasantly surprised. the audio podcast, it came That’s all. out of our curiosity and no intentions of actually putting HOUSTON: How did the out an ongoing thing, but we video podcast come about? found out for whatever reaThe video show makes it easy to actually show the art RON: I think it was, again, son, it’s not that hard and being talked about (Top), as well as to add little visual out of curiosity. I think this maybe we’re actually okay at flourishes like editor’s boxes (Bottom). © Copyright 2009 iFanboy. Y: The Last Man © copyright 2009 Brian K. Vaughan and Pia Guerra. time it was Josh’s. We’d doing this and it’s fun and been going to the San Diego that’s the whole point of it. Comic-Con for eight years, longer than we’d been doing iFanboy.com. I think there was one year we didHOUSTON: What advantages or disadvantages does n’t all go. In ’06, we went and Josh had just purthe video show have over the audio podcast? chased a video camera with his wife. He brought it CONOR: The biggest advantage is that you can see along and we said, “Let’s take some video at the con the art. I mean you’re talking about a visual medium and see what we come up with.” Not only did we all and you’re talking about it in an audio way. You can go to school for TV and film, we’re all very interested describe the art and talk about how great it is, but, at in technology and we knew that video production was the end of the day, they can’t see it. So the biggest becoming easier with better hardware, better softadvantage is they can now see the things you’re talkware, and YouTube emerging. At which point did we ing about. In a visual medium, that’s important. consciously decide to do a show? There had to be JOSH: It’s important because, at first, when we were some forethought because we had enough time to talking about why anyone would listen to us, I rememorder the mic cube. ber arguing, “What would it bring if they’re actually JOSH: I think we were just full of ourselves from the able to see us?” And it was only as I was editing and podcast. It would be no problem. actually putting graphics in that I said, “Oh, of course, RON: So we went to Comic-Con and shot some now you can see the art.” That didn’t actually strike footage and, right after, holed up in my house for me at first for whatever reason. about a weekend and we did a marathon editing sesCONOR: The disadvantage is that it’s not as freeform. sion, and then released it with no intentions to do an You have to be a little more structured with video, ongoing show. simply because of the medium. There’s more work involved and it is a little more difficult. With the audio CONOR: It was a bonus for our fans. Here’s a special 66 | iFANBOY

show, we can sit down for an hour, bang it out, and it’s done, but, with video there’s a lot more pre- and post-production involved.

that says, “That was good, but…” RON: I don’t know if it’s because we’re friends and we’ve known each other for 15 years, but we are each other’s HOUSTON: How did the minis toughest critics and biggest start? supporters. We’ll give each RON: That came from other a hard time when we Revision3. The network that screw up or do something puts us out was trying different wrong, but then Josh or Conor formats and different things or I will come in and say, “Good and they kind of floated the job on that.” It keeps you on idea of would we be interested Conor hard at work editing the video show. edge, but also is very fulfilling. © Copyright 2009 iFanboy in doing kind of a short miniWe’ve also been frustrated by version and, again, our first the fact that we’re shooting in response was, “No.” 16:9 aspect ratio, which is the rectangular movie-like JOSH: It was totally, “No.” view, and comic books are the opposite. You look at a RON: Then we stepped back and looked at it and comic book and it’s a rectangle, but it’s a vertical recwhat it would take and it was actually Josh who said tangle. We wrestle a lot with how much of the page we could do it, so we started doing it. Again, that condo we show and how do we move it. It took a lot of versation was in February of ’08, and we launched in years to figure it out. March. HOUSTON: Why do you think there aren’t more video HOUSTON: I think your production values are very comic book podcasts? high, especially for video on the Internet and I think CONOR: Because it’s hard. the graphics, particularly when you do editor’s RON: Because the gods are kind to us. boxes, really add to the show. Was it hard to get to CONOR: It’s time-consuming and you have to buy a that level of quality? computer to do the work and buy a camera and microRON: I would say, looking at our graphics, that I’m phones and lights. There’s a lot of money invested if constantly embarrassed by them, but we do the best you’re going to do it well. It’s not as easy as just that we can. They’re not flashy. They’re extremely utilirecording an audio show and cutting it up in Garage tarian, but good in that way. I think any more than Band and throwing it up on the Internet. You could do what we do would look really odd when contrasted that in a couple of hours, but you really have to be with our, let’s say, spartan sets. I think it’s well committed to do the video. matched. I had done a couple of short films and JOSH: And I think the one thing that people don’t realthings, so I was a little more familiar with the stuff ize until it’s almost too late is, when you’re doing going in, but I remember having to figure out how to video, you not only need the equipment and the softdo motion control graphics over pages and things like ware, but for Internet video, you need to be able to that. That is, to this day, the most tedious part of doing the show. You put the whole thing together and then it’s time to add the art. We’ve gotten better and faster at some of it, but I think that we’re all really concerned with not doing a crappy job, so we sort of nitpick on those little things and make sure that they look good. RON: And I think also, by our nature, I don’t want to say we’re perfectionists, but, if we don’t do the best job that we can, we’re not going to be successful. I know for me, I’m in a constant state of disappointment with everything I work on. CONOR: I hate every show we do. We have high, high standards for ourselves. JOSH: I, on the other hand, will come out of shows and call these guys and go, “This was a great show.” I’m constantly doing that. I think there are bad things about them that we can spot, but the thing that iFanboy has forever cemented Conor, Ron, and Josh as friends. keeps us honest is the other two. I don’t want to © Copyright 2009 iFanboy blow it because I don’t want to get an e-mail from him THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 67

distribute it somewhere and so, yes, there’s YouTube and things like that, but if you look at those kind of video sites, the quality sucks. It doesn’t support downloadWith the Around Comics crew, Tom Katers, Chris Neseman, and Brion Salazar (back row) and Image ing; it’s Comics’ Joe Keating (bottom right) at a Mariners streaming game. © Copyright 2009 iFanboy from the website. In order to really do it right, you need to have a fairly robust infrastructure behind you to support the encoding and support the RSS needs you may have so that your show appears on iTunes, because iTunes is the number one place people are looking for these things. One of the things we said when we started doing this was, “We’re going to do this right,” and one of the things that working with Revision3 has brought us is the ability to do that and also to learn from it so that if, one day down the road, we’re not working with Revision3, we have everything we need to continue doing it. HOUSTON: With all these shows and the website, it seems like you’re putting out content every day. CONOR: We are.

the comic media. We don’t see ourselves as journalists or competing with The Comics Journal or anything like that, but we are in another avenue of media that publishers can use to get the word out about their comics and creators can use to get out about their work and that people who like comics can watch and enjoy and celebrate liking comics with. CONOR: The other thing is that, for a while now, Josh and I have been fulltime employees of iFanboy. The work has paid off in that, for a little bit, we can pay our rent and our food through iFanboy and that’s the only reason that we can spend as much time on it is that Josh and I are on it 18 hours a day, seven days a week. JOSH: Yeah. I miss my wife. HOUSTON: How else has iFanboy affected your lives? RON: Well, it’s taken what started out as a wonderful friendship between three friends to a dark place of animosity and resentment. [laughter] No, it’s funny because, before we started doing iFanboy, Josh was in LA, Conor was in New York, and I was living in Connecticut. We were friends and we’d stay in touch over e-mails and we played a lot of World of Warcraft, talking to each other on Skype. JOSH: We lost a year. RON: That was really kind of like, in this remote world of what we had, that’s what kind of kept us together as friends, but once we started doing iFanboy and started doing the podcast—much to Josh’s disdain, he’s not getting rid of me and Conor. And what’s cool is we’ll get together and shoot the video show and we’ll get food and then we’ll play some Rock Band and then we’ll go out. It’s very much built out of the friendship and the social aspect of our lives. It’s cemented us as friends. Sometimes, with really good friends, you’ll get frustrated or annoyed with each other, but, more often than not, it’s so positive and awesome. JOSH: We really only fight when we’re not around each other. When we are together, we have a lot of fun.

HOUSTON: Where do you find the time? RON: I have some on the shelf behind me. CONOR: Josh is in oil. RON: We’re thinking about iFanboy 24/7, and the difference between us and some of the other podcasts that are out there is that some of them think of it as a hobby or just a thing that they do whereas we’re not looking to make millions off this, but we’re looking at this as a business. We’re creating content that should be on par if not better than what Wizard or some of the other comics media is putting out. We see Conor, Ron, and Josh prepare to record a live show before the iFanbase. © Copyright 2009 iFanboy ourselves as part of 68 | iFANBOY

When we actually get together, shoot days or whatever, it’s completely tedious and tiresome. You have to get up early and do a lot of work, but, once we start, those are the best days. Everything around it is a lot of hard work, but all the enthusiasm and all the laughs on the show are completely real because all we are are friends hanging out with each other and talking about this stuff we love. It’s actually really amplified that for me in some way. The other thing that comes out of doing it that’s really good is that it’s certainly not bad for one’s self-esteem to stay something publicly and have a bunch of random people you don’t know on the Internet say, “That’s great. Thanks a lot.” Conversely, meeting people whose work you really respect, who do comics, who know what you do and like what you do also or have somebody tell you, “Listen, I like your show; that’s my favorite one,” that makes you feel good. CONOR: Josh had a burst appendix last year and he randomly got an e-mail from Geoff Johns saying, “Get better.” JOSH: Then, when I met him in New York a few months later, he was like, “Do you feel better?” and I was like, “You’re the nicest man ever.” RON: Not only that, but there was an outpouring of support. I hate to call the people who enjoy our show fans; we’re no different than them. You should be a fan of somebody like Geoff Johns, not us, but our “fans”—when we said Josh was in the hospital, he got a ton of e-mails. My birthday was ridiculous. We’re on Twitter, and the whole entire day on Twitter, I had people wishing me happy birthday. That night, we went to a baseball game, and what two years ago would have been me and Josh dragging Conor to go see the Mariners play, turned into us and the guys from Around Comics, who we’ve become friends with, and Joe Keating, who works for Image Comics and is a buddy of mine now. We had this whole big comics crew, which, if we hadn’t done this, we wouldn’t have these friends. It’s really the community that we have built up around iFanboy and the community that we are now a part of in the general comics world that, to me, is the really cool thing that I didn’t anticipate. CONOR: Yeah, we have really good friends now

through the show—people who listen to the show or people we met who also do podcasts, people we met in the comics community. There are people now that we count as friends who we met through the show. All of our writers that we have now working on the site are all people we met and befriended through the show. So that’s unusual. Plus all the groupies. HOUSTON: That’s one of the things about podcasting is how easily communities build up in and around them. JOSH: Yes, and it surprised me so much. As soon as we started, we got really nice e-mails and really positive feedback, and it was surprising. The atmosphere on our website and on our forums is really atypical of the web. It’s never turned into that Internet hate-fest that I’ve seen. CONOR: It’s poisonous. It poisons the whole thing and reinforces every negative thing about comic fans. RON: Which we’ve found not to be true. CONOR: Part of that is the anonymity of the Internet, but people who listen to podcasts tend to think that they know us because they listen to us every week and get to see into our lives. Not to say that they don’t know us, but that the feeling is more of a friendship thing. Someone reading an article on a news site is completely detached from the experience of the writer or the person being written about, so I think it’s harder to come on and say, “Josh is stupid.” RON: The day that we launched the video show, I opened a folder in e-mail that said “hate mail” and I got one e-mail ever. Even the e-mails that are mean are coming from a place where they’re trying to help in some backward way, like, “You’re lighting is wrong. You should do this.” It’s not just, “You’re stupid.” We get thousands and thousands of e-mails and less than one percent are negative, really. We get e-mails very regularly that just say, “We really like what you’re doing.” CONOR: It doesn’t make any sense. It just doesn’t and no one knows why. THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 69

JOSH: We kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and it hasn’t. HOUSTON: How many listeners do you have? JOSH: Is this Bryan Deemer? RON: We’re in the thousands, less than 100,000, more than 1,000. JOSH: It’s gone steadily up and it’s never stopped climbing. RON: We’ve never plateaued, and it’s interesting in that the audio and the video podcast—you’d think that they’d have identical numbers and they don’t. Sometimes they’ve varied from episode to episode. Sometimes we have an audio podcast that goes through the roof and sometimes we have a video show that goes through the roof. Video, by its nature, tends to get a few more viewers because of Revision3, whereas with the audio podcast, we’re just posting that on iFanboy.com and putting it through iTunes. But with the video show, that’s shown through a myriad of other places and the video show is firmly into the tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands as well, but we have a core audience that we know is surprisingly large. Surprisingly in that we never expected anybody to listen to us. JOSH: I remember that first week when it was, “There are 500 people,” and then, “There’s a thousand people.” HOUSTON: What podcasts are you fans of? RON: Around Comics; Buzz out Loud from CNet; Geekscape, a video podcast; Mac Break Weekly; The Pipeline Comic Book Podcast from Comic Book Resources; Word Balloon; Tom Versus the JLA; and the standard tech ones like This Week in Tech. I listen to Kevin Smith’s podcast, Smodcast, and I listen to one called You Look Nice Today, which is a comedy podcast. That’s my iTunes in a nutshell. CONOR: I don’t listen to as many as I used to. The amount of time it takes to produces one takes away from the time I’d be listening, but I listen to Fuzzy Typewriter, which is one of our writer’s podcasts, the Wormwood audio drama podcast, Tom Versus the JLA, Around Comics, Ask a Ninja—not as many as I used to. JOSH: I listen to a lot more comics podcasts, but I cut down a little because you can only listen to so many people talk about comics. I still listen to Around Comics because I like those 70 | iFANBOY

guys and they’re my friends, and it’s interesting to me because it’s a different show than ours, which is odd because, on the surface, it’s the exact same thing. It’s just guys talking about comics, but there’s a different feel and we both have entirely different listeners at times. Honestly, I focus on non-comics podcasts for the most part. The first thing I listen to each week is This American Life and Car Talk and Fresh Air, those kinds of NPR-type shows. I watch some of the Revision3 content. I’ll watch The Totally Rad Show and Diggnation. HOUSTON: Tell me about the creators you’ve met and interviewed through the show. RON: With the video show, one of the things that we realized was we would need to talk to creators. We’d need to be able to get interviews, we’d need to high-

light the creators, and interviewing people has been a huge part of what we do and it was probably the hardest getting started because a lot these guys are not very camera friendly. JOSH: Nothing against them, but sometimes you stick a camera in somebody’s face and they freeze-up and coming off good on camera has nothing to do with what you’re like in real life. CONOR: Now that we’ve been doing it for a while, 80 episodes and nine or ten cons that we’ve done, there are very few people that make us very nervous. Stan Lee was probably the last time we got nervous.

we still had stuff to do without having to rely on people coming on. There are other shows where people will only listen depending on who’s on, but it’s still a bonus. It’s fun to have them on and talk to them.

HOUSTON: That’s another place where a video podcast is an advantage. I’ll watch a video podcast sometimes just because I want to see what a specific creator looks like because, for whatever reason, it seems like that was, for a long time, hard to find out. I still remember meeting Mike Grell and being surprised that he didn’t look like Green Arrow or Warlord. HOUSTON: What was that [laughter] interview like? CONOR: That’s the thing. It’s Interviewing Stan “The Man” Lee. ’Nuff said. JOSH: It was amazing. We sat hard. The advantage we have © Copyright 2009 iFanboy outside his office… with the video is that a lot of CONOR: That wasn’t even the first time, though. these guys have never been seen. That is something JOSH: The first time they shuffled us into a room and we have over other big shows is that you can see he was like the Godfather and had bodyguards and them talk instead of just listening to them. we went in and sort of, like, kissed the ring and it was very quick and surreal. The next time, we’d flown to HOUSTON: More than with most shows, it seems LA to go to his office, and I remember sitting outside like you guys have been sort of pigeonholed by your his office and saying, “This is pretty weird, huh? That fans into one of you being the X-Men guy and one we’re about to do this.” Then, about a minute in, it being the DC guy. was like, “This is going to be really fun and he’s going CONOR: The labels are somewhat annoying in that it’s to be really cool,” and he was playing with us and become easy for people to dismiss us as one thing or going back and forth and doing callbacks on stuff. It the other. Ron is the X-Men guy and is the biggest was amazing. Marvel Zombie of the three of us. While my favorite RON: The Stan Lee thing was definitely the highlight character is Batman and I’m a DC fan, 40 percent of of it, but there are some creators that are up-andmy collection is Marvel. It’s not like you can write me coming and it’s neat to meet them, and we truly are off as a DC guy and Ron as a Marvel guy and Josh as fans at heart. It has been kind of mind-blowing to the weirdo indie guy, even though he is. It’s an easy be able to talk to Grant Morrison, to Geoff Johns, label that fans have placed on us, but it isn’t really to Joe Quesada, these big names, and do a good true. enough job that they want to be interviewed by us JOSH: No one can figure me out. again. CONOR: We have our preferences; it’s just not as simWhen we go to the conventions it’s like this whole ple as that. But we also play those up on the show. If brotherhood of cons that you only see these people you took all my long boxes and stacked them up, I four or five times a year and they won’t run away, wouldn’t have that many more DC books than Marvel they’ll be like, “Sure, I’ll be on,” or they’ll just want to books. They’re just my favorite ones. hang out, somebody like Rick Remender or whomever JOSH: When it comes to those kinds of books, I’m that we started off interviewing and now I’ll e-mail more of a Marvel guy. It’s funny because I’m labeled with them and have established a friendship outside as the indie guy and I’m so not. Image books and Vertigo books are not as indie. They’re into like miniof what we’re doing. comics that dudes are stapling together. I don’t know JOSH: One of the things that was important to us anything about that world. I love Vertigo books. Those when we started the show was that it not be dependare some of my favorite comics, but there’s definitely ent on interviews, so we really made pains to do a a lot of Marvel Zombie in this boy. show where, if there was nobody to talk to one week, THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 71

turn it into—Josh aspires to be a HOUSTON: Do listeners writer and I’m not sure what gravitate to one of you over Conor’s aspirations are, but I have the others because of that? no desire or ability to create CONOR: Yes, and everybody comics. has their favorite guy who CONOR: Me neither. they identify with more RON: I have the utmost respect because their tastes match for comics and writers, but I know up or whatever it is. People I can’t do it. But to be able to like Josh, but no one likes be involved in the industry in Ron really. whatever little way we are is really RON: Hey. I have fans. gratifying. It feels like giving back. CONOR: You find someone You know, instead of being just you like. I listen to Sports a consumer, we’re actually giving Talk Radio New York and back something to the conversathere are guys I identify with tion. because they like the same JOSH: My favorite thing to hear is teams I do or have the when we get letters or talk to peosame opinions I do and ple who say, “I kind of stopped that’s just the natural way of reading comics, but I listen to watching these shows. your show and now I’m reading That’s just the way it is. again. I feel like I have somebody You’re not doing your job if to talk about comics with.” Listen, that’s not the case. You Josh, Conor, and Ron. © Copyright 2009 iFanboy I love comic books, and if by want people to identify with doing this I can make the reading base stronger and you, to feel like they know you. bigger so comics survive longer for me and everyone else, that’s awesome. That’s really, really, really cool. HOUSTON: What’s the weirdest thing to happen to Besides that, there’ve been a lot of conversations I’ve you because of the show? really loved having. Stan Lee was fun, but I really liked CONOR: We actually have something very cool haptalking to Alex Robinson for, like, an hour and doing a pening in a couple of months from when we’re talking show for that. I love that guy’s work and he’s just the now. We’ve been drawn into the background of a nicest guy and it was just fun to hang out. book. That is very cool. RON: It’s very cool to finally get an artist to draw us HOUSTON: What book have you been drawn into? into a book. It’s the coolest kind of giddy kind of fanCONOR: Green Arrow/Black Canary #13. boy thing. For me, the coolest thing has been to be able to take this thing that was a lark and actually HOUSTON: So Mike Norton? JOSH: He’s the nicest guy working in comics. There are a lot of nice guys, but he’s in that echelon. RON: Norton’s great. CONOR: He made us all thinner than we actually are. That’s fantastic. RON: Next week, we’re in the Franklin Richards special by a Chris Eliopoulos. JOSH: Except Conor’s a black man. RON: Yeah, the colorist took some liberties coloring us. CONOR: It’ll happen with Green Arrow again. I can tell. Conor, Josh, and Ron (at left) make a cameo in Green Arrow/Black Canary #13. Art by fellow podcaster Mike Norton with inks by Wayne Faucher and colors by David Baron, who made Conor the right color. © Copyright 2009 DC Comics.

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QUIET! PANELOLOGISTS AT WORK To paraphrase the show’s tagline, Quiet! Panelologists at Work really is the true antidote to the average comic book podcast. Forgoing interviews, news, and reviews, Q!PAW, as it is affectionately known to its fans, delights in taking the Mickey out of the books and topics most comic fans hold dear with its hilarious and very British take on everything from backer boards to Civil War. On March 16, 2008, I placed a transatlantic call to Q!PAW hosts Matt Watts and Jon Sibley to find out what goes into making one of the funniest podcasts on the Internet.

HOUSTON: What is a panelologist? JON: Quite simply, a panelologist is a comic book collector. I have no idea where we heard that term, but, crikey, it was back when we were at school, I think. I know I used to have a sign up on my bedroom door that said, “Quiet! Panelologists at work.” HOUSTON: How did you decide to use that as the name of your show? JON: We just kind of wanted a name that didn’t involve the words “comic” and “geek.” MATT: Or “cast.” HOUSTON: When did you start listening to podcasts? JON: Go on, Matt, you introduced me to podcasts. MATT: Well, yeah, I think I first started listening to podcasts after the Brighton Comics Festival. What year would that have been, Jon? A couple of years, maybe? JON: Three years ago. MATT: I think three years ago. JON: It can’t be. Well, it probably is. MATT: It probably is. And I don’t think I started listening to podcasts at all before I started listening to Fanboy Radio. JON: Yeah, that would be right. That was one of the first. MATT: And then, from there, Richard Johnston from Lying in the Gutters mentioned it in one of his panels and at that point I thought, “Podcasts, what are they?” And then, of course, comic podcasts got me into loads of podcasting. I mean, I listen to tech podcasts daily. Almost four or five podcasts a day I listen to. JON: You should get out more. MATT: It’s worrying, isn’t it? Yeah. HOUSTON: When did you decide to do your own podcasts?

Jon as the Hulk and Matt as Wolverine in an illustration by listener Jake Bilbao. All images in this chapter courtesy Quiet! Panelologists at Work, unless otherwise noted.

MATT: About ten minutes into the first episode of Fanboy Radio, when I realized how bad it was. No, I’m only kidding. JON: We’ve been going for near about two years, haven’t we? MATT: So it must have been about a year later. When we first started doing it, we didn’t even talk much about how we should do it. We just said we should do it on a Friday and I think we started recording on a Saturday. JON: We used to speak on Skype every Saturday anyway. MATT: Well, that’s true. JON: Usually about what comics we’d read, and we kind of thought, “Why don’t we record this and we can subject other people to the torture that is us talking about comics,” and then quickly found out that our conversations are quite insubstantial and nonsense. MATT: Yeah. JON: And ran with it. HOUSTON: Did those early conversations sound pretty much like the show sounds now? JON: Yeah. Well, I think generally our conversations are like that. MATT: Yeah. Except for that, generally, I’ll ask Jon about his rabbit and about his home life, but, yeah, we do tend to cut those bits out of the show. HOUSTON: How is your rabbit? JON: He’s alright. Mr. Rabbit is very good. MATT: Can you believe he called his rabbit Mr. Rabbit because he couldn’t be bothered to think of a name? JON: It’s a good name. It’s a good name. It says everything you need to know about the pet. THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 73

MATT: Stupid name.

35, 40 minutes long and we normally record for about two hours? JON: We’ve got that down to an hour recently. MATT: Well, that’s true, maybe an hour-and-a-half today. When we recorded the show today, it was maybe an hour-and-a-half. Then there’s maybe four to eight hours editing the whole thing, and that goes through about three drafts of it. I know some people like to record it, leave all the “ums” and “uhs” in and release it completely raw, but I know that if we did that, not only would we sound like a couple of morons, we’d sound like a couple of proper morons. JON: I think the worrying thing now is that, when people read this, they’re going to think, “Well, if they put that much work into their podcast, it really doesn’t show.” MATT: Right, but if we didn’t put any effort into it at all, it really would be terrible, so the fact that we have more than ten listeners is a tribute to it really.

HOUSTON: Do you do any prep work? JON: [laughs] I think one quick listen to our show will tell you that we don’t do any prep work. MATT: Yeah. I read some comics, so I can talk about what I’ve read, or I’ll go to Newsarama and flag up a couple of stories or come up with just a quick idea for a gag we could pull out into, like, a four-minute section. JON: Usually we come up with a gag during the episode. Then the gag really comes together in the edit. MATT: Yeah. That’s true. When we do clips like the Blankety Blank clips or the thing where we did the pirate radio clip, anything like that where it’s a quick idea, it really comes together in the editing studio. So most of that, like the news segment we did a couple of weeks ago, that was scripted, but then only two minutes of the show is scripted. I say “scripted,” but I just knocked HOUSTON: You call your show it together, sent you an e-mail, “the antidote to the average and then we record that. comic podcast.” Is that someThe thing is that, what I said thing you set out to do or did it with the podcast, is you’ve got just grow from the style of your there the power to make a radio conversations? show. You’ve got everything you JON: Yeah, I think we did it conQ!PAW co-host Jon Sibley. need to do anything with audio, sciously from the beginning, pretty and it seems a shame sometimes to have a podcast much. Well, maybe not with our test episode, but then and just have talking in it when you have the ability to we realized we really can’t review comics at all, can’t have editing and sound effects and music and all of do a very good, serious conversation. When our show that, and it seems a shame to just sit and talk for came out, there weren’t nearly as many comic book two hours. That’s why I think we try and keep our segpodcasts as there are now, but, yeah, we wanted to ments as small as possible because I think anything do a show that was different from anything else that beyond five minutes of me and Matt talking is boring, was out there, which was one or two hosts talking so I’ll shut up now, instead of going on. seriously about comic books. We just wanted to have JON: I think you were doing quite well, Matt. a bit of fun with it really. MATT: Well, thank you very much. MATT: I was listening to maybe fifteen comic book podcasts and there were more and more coming HOUSTON: Is it tough keeping the show funny? out all the time. Raging Bullets is a good example MATT: Well, we haven’t managed it yet. of an excellent podcast where they can literally sit JON: Yeah. Brilliant. Well, not really. Is it tough? I there and talk about one page for about half an don’t know. hour. I don’t know how they do it, but that’s someMATT: Is it tough? I don’t know. I don’t think it’s thing that we can’t do. I think it would be nice for funny. I mean, there are quite serious reviews and us if we maybe wanted to do that, but I can’t talk views. about one page of comic art for more than twenty JON: That’s right, yeah. Why? Do you think it’s funny? seconds. JON: If it takes you longer to talk about the comic HOUSTON: I think it’s pretty funny. book than it does to read it, you’re reading it wrong. MATT: Is it tough keeping it funny, Jon? That’s a good MATT: That’s it, yeah. But what I can talk about is, question. like, my girlfriend’s reaction to my spending one hunJON: No. dred pounds on comic books in one week. I think that MATT: No. in itself is more my topic of choice. JON: It’s tough getting it out on time. JON: I think our show has become more about the joys of collecting comics rather than necessarily what MATT: It’s tough doing it actually. What, the show’s 74 | QUIET! PANELOLOGISTS AT WORK

we’ve read that week. We tend to have a few tirades about what sort of bags and boards we need and where we’re going to put all of our comic book boxes. MATT: Yeah. I think more insight into the mind of the comic book creator. That’s kind of the pretentious… JON: Creator? MATT: Creator? No. No. Collector. Things like our Blankety Blank sections, I think, well, most people might get the gag, but I think that it’s quite elitist in the fact that, if you’re not really a comic collector, most of the gags you’re not going to get. I mean, there are only so many times you can take the Mickey out of Crisis before you lose the average guy on the street. HOUSTON: That’s something I wanted to talk to you about, too. I think that’s what makes your show so much more identifiable is that it’s about the collector and the minutia of collecting that only another collector would find funny, like Matt trying to find perfectly fitting bags and boards. MATT: Yeah, yeah. JON: Which you still haven’t found. MATT: Jon? JON: Yeah? MATT: What’s “minutia” mean? JON: I don’t know. It’s like a really small thing. MATT: Oh, okay. Cool. Yeah. I think that that was quite conscious as well. I mean, there’re other podcasts out there and I’m sure they’ve got, I don’t know, thousands more listeners than we have, that will talk about the comics field or they’ve gone to the cinema and they’ll talk about that and I’m sure we’d have a larger audience if we did that, but it seems quite nice to have this little niche. JON: Yeah. I think we’re really a comic book podcast and nothing else. MATT: Yeah. I mean, when I talked about getting my hamster, I think that initial bit was about fifteen minutes long, but I feel guilty putting that stuff in because, if we’re not talking about comic books for more than two minutes, then we’ve got a problem. HOUSTON: Unless you’re dressing your hamster up in a super-hero costume. MATT: Exactly. It all kind of comes back in the end. To this very day, I’m still looking for the perfect Batman costume for him, but it’s not going to happen. JON: We’ll have to try and make you one. HOUSTON: Could you walk me through a typical recording session? JON: Well, we spend about twenty minutes trying to get the levels right. MATT: [laughs] That’s true. We spend about half an hour trying to get Skype working. JON: Then we generally just get straight into it, don’t we? We say, “Hi. How are you?” and then we just go. You notice there are never any introductions. We

never introduce ourselves. Unless you can tell our voices apart, you probably don’t know which one of us is which. MATT: Well, yeah, but, again, that’s a conscious decision. I mean, the problem I have is that as soon as I’m talking to anyone else but John on the show, I start to lose it. Even just something scripted. We had to record a promo. Well, we didn’t have to, but we recorded a couple of minute-long promos to send to other podcasts. JON: Which was awful. MATT: Recording that was awful because you’re aware that you’re actually recording, whereas the reason we don’t introduce ourselves is that then we’re just talking to each other and we can pretend that we’re not doing a show. The show comes together in the edit, really. JON: Plus, we don’t want to have a show format. HOUSTON: Who’s the announcer you use at the start of the show? JON: It’s one of our school friends that we’ve known since we were all in school together, from eleven. He’s a doctor in London and he’s got a very posh voice, so we decided to get him to do the announcements.

Matt may not be able to find a Batman costume for his hamster, but he did get one for himself as a 30th birthday gift from Jon.

HOUSTON: Since I know you record most of your episodes over Skype, I was wondering, how far away from each other do you live? MATT: I’m down on the south coast down in Brighton and Jon’s over on the east coast, over in Kent, so we’re about an hour-and-a-half away from each other? JON: About an hour-and-a-half away. MATT: So that makes fifty miles, sixty miles, something like that, which, of course, is half the UK, really. JON: It’s just much simpler to sit at the computer than get in a car and drive somewhere, but, one day, we’ll actually record an episode in the same room. MATT: Will we? We have a lot of feedback that does say that they can’t believe that we’re not in the same room because we go back and forth so quickly, and, you know, some podcasts, you can tell that they’re waiting for each other to speak, but, again, you see, the joy of the editing studio. Even the timing of the laugh can easily be edited out. It’s quite easy to cut out blank bits between so it goes even faster than a conversation would in real life, but it’s kind of a conTHE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 75

From left to right, Lass, the Q!PAW announcer, Richard Emms, former editor-in-chief of Ardden Entertainment, Jon, and Matt.

scious way of cutting the dead air out of the show and getting as much content as we can into 35 minutes. JON: Like you ever stop talking. MATT: Oh, yeah, thanks.

HOUSTON: How many listeners do you have? MATT: Um, ten thousand. JON: Close to a billion. MATT: Yeah, close to a billion. That’d be wicked. JON: Now, when all the other podcasters read this, they’ll wonder what they’re doing wrong. MATT: Are you interviewing many podcast hosts? HOUSTON: Yeah. I’ve already talked to John Siuntres from Word Balloon. MATT: Oh, excellent. JON: How many does he get? HOUSTON: I think he said between 4,000 and 7,000. JON: Damn him. MATT: We have between 4,001 and 7,001. JON: We’re just over a thousand, which, if Word Balloon’s getting that amount, I think we’re stealing far more listeners than we should. MATT: I don’t think this is the greatest subscribed to show in the world, but, for example, Newsarama put us down in their “Things to Be Thankful For in 2007.” JON: Yeah, we were number seven in the list. MATT: I think it was number six. Number six, John, what’s wrong with you? JON: I do apologize. MATT: I mean, things like that are just nice and it means someone out there is listening, so that’s enough for us. When we first started doing the show, I think we said we’d do it for more than 50 listeners. Of course, we had no idea when we’d stop doing it or if we’d stop doing it, but we thought we’d put it out there and see what happens and positive feedback’s just kept us going. We’re making no money out of it. We’ve got Matt with Green Lantern scribe Geoff Johns. no sponsorship. The show 76 | QUIET! PANELOLOGISTS AT WORK

rarely ever pays for itself. JON: Which is another conscious decision. We’ve had offers of sponsorship. We just never wanted to take them, really. The show is just a bit of fun. MATT: Yeah. We had an offer to go and sit at a panel at a couple of comic conventions here in England where they sort of said, “Come up and do a panel about podcasting,” but what makes me laugh is the picture of going to one of these podcast panels and having like Geoff Johns and Dave Gibbons sitting in the audience and me and John just sitting up there, trying to pretend that we’re someone special. What can you do? If Dave Gibbons asks me a question and says, “Why do you think you’re so important that you’ve got to sit up at a table?” I’m just going to say, “I don’t know.” I’d rather just keep my head down. JON: When we go to the conventions, we don’t even get a press pass or anything for free entry. We buy our tickets. We’re there purely as fans, which our show is as well. We’re just comic fans. We’re not anything important in the industry. MATT: Sometimes I think the odd comic book podcast here and there might think that they have some sort of influence. I mean, if they have seven or eight thousand listeners… JON: I think some podcasts are definitely important in the industry. MATT: Yeah, Comic Geek Speak. JON: And Word Balloon and Fanboy Radio, perhaps. MATT: Around Comics is pretty important, but that’s only because we’re on it. HOUSTON: Matt, speaking of Dave Gibbons, did he really call you a jerk? MATT: Yeah, well, pretty much. JON: In a roundabout way. MATT: Yeah. JON: I think we’d been pestering or annoying Matt and Jon with Izobel Walsh, one him for the majority of of their 4,001—7,001 listeners. the day anyway. Photo courtesy Izobel Walsh. MATT: Well, you bet me a quid that I wouldn’t ask Dave Gibbons to bring back Ch’p, from Green Lantern, so I asked him. I asked him a couple of times and then I asked him in a panel, “When’s Ch’p coming back?” I think he and Geoff Johns were in that panel. Then we got in the lift and, lo and behold, Dave Gibbons gets in the lift behind us and it was then that I started talking to him. JON: You had your Green Lantern t-shirt on. MATT: Yeah. He looked me up and down and I asked him something about Guy Gardner, and he said, “Oh, well, Guy Gardner’s the eternal jerk in all of us.” Then he just kind of looked up and down at me. JON: And left the lift!

MATT: So, as he got it out, it was like, “Did Dave Gibbons just call me a jerk?” and Jon said, “Yeah, he did.” So, pretty much, what I think he meant was, “Leave me alone, you fanboy jerk.” HOUSTON: You tried to run a petition online to bring back Ch’p, too, right? JON: Yeah, that went well. We got, what, I think 60 people signed it. MATT: That’s pretty good, though. Even Geoff Johns found out about it. I think one of the girls from Birds of Geek sent him a petition link and apparently he just sent back a message that said, “Ha ha ha ha ha ha.” So that went well. JON: One day. MATT: Yeah, one day, they’ll bring him back. There’s a crisis coming. You never know. He could be back. He’s my favorite squirrel. HOUSTON: He could be one of the new Alpha Lanterns. MATT: There you go. Imagine that: robot squirrel. That would be awesome. HOUSTON: Getting back to your listeners, do you know if many of them are British or are they mostly American? JON: I think the majority of them are American, actually. MATT: We get a lot of e-mails and I think the majority of them are American. JON: I don’t think podcasts are generally a big thing with British fans. HOUSTON: Have you ever met any of your fans? JON: I don’t think so. MATT: We met some at the Birmingham Comic Convention, but a lot of those were the guys who know each other off of the Comic Geek Speak forums, which, you know, we got our forum with them and, of course, there were guys there that had heard the podcast, but what was that time? We were at Birmingham and some guy came up to us and said, “Are you Matt and Jon?” and, of course, at that point, we thought we’d made it. We looked at each other and said, “Yeah, we’re Matt and Jon. How did you realize?” and, of course, I was wearing a Quiet! Panelologists at Work t-shirt, wasn’t I? So it was plainly bloody obvious. That was probably the only time that we’ve shook hands with someone and said hello. I’ve yet to be stopped in the street, but that’s probably a good thing. HOUSTON: Is it strange for you to have fans at all? JON: Yeah. It is for me. Maybe you feel otherwise, Matthew. Maybe it’s something you feel like you’ve deserved after all these years.

MATT: Yeah, it’s about time. I’ve always thought I was special. JON: Your mom always thought you were special, didn’t she? MATT: That’s why she sent me to a special school. What are we talking about my mom for? No, for example, that guy from the States, Big Jim, sent us some Stan Lee figures from the San Diego comic convention and John Malam put us both in an issue of New Warriors and stuff like that, so there’s obviously people out there who love the show that much that want to send us something or put us in a comic book. That’s pretty cool and that’s the thing really that keeps the show going. If it wasn’t for positive feedback and guys saying, “Love the show,” or, “Here’s something we picked up from the States,” or putting

Q!PAW cameos in New Warriors #7 by Jon Malin (Left) and The Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st Century by Robert Atkins (Right) New Warriors: © Copyright 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. LOSH: © Copyright 2009 DC Comics.

THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 77

our logo in a comic book or something—that’s what really keeps the show going. HOUSTON: It sounds like you guys get a fair amount of e-mails and forum posts. MATT: Yeah, a fair bit. HOUSTON: But it sounds like you always have trouble getting people to enter your contests. JON: Yeah, we do, don’t we? It’s quite bizarre. I mean, we get a few entries, but never many. It’s surprising, given how many e-mails we get and how many people are on our forums, how few enter our contests, which are usually really easy and have quite good prizes. JON: Yeah, well, that’s why they’re easy. They’re easy because, when we started, we had no idea how many listeners we had, so our first quiz was, “What team are Superman and Batman in?” and it was called our Justice League Competition. We were assuming the idea there was that everyone who was listening would enter because it was so easy and we would know how many listeners we had, and I think we had two entries. MATT: I suppose it’s just as well, because we’re also awful at shipping prizes out. I think the winner of our first competition is still waiting.

HOUSTON: You mentioned Blankety Blank. That’s based off a British game show, right? JON: Yeah. There is an American version, Match Game. HOUSTON: Now, Match Game hasn’t been on here in twenty or thirty years. JON: Nor has Blankety Blank. MATT: Basically any clip we can use where we can fill up thirty seconds of airtime with a tune from somewhere else is thirty seconds where we don’t have to talk. So anything we can do, like a game show like that, kind of splits up the boring humdrum of two guys having a chat. HOUSTON: I want to talk about a few of your other favorite topics. The first is Tony Lee. JON: He’s my hero.

HOUSTON: How did that start? MATT: We got very drunk. That’s how it started. JON: We know Richard Emms, who, at the time, was editor-in-chief of Markosia. When we were kids, we worked at a comic shop together in Saint Aubin, so we’ve always followed his career. It was about four or five years ago at the Bristol comic book convention and we noticed that Tony Lee was writing most of Markosia’s books and he was a British guy who was HOUSTON: What’s been your favorite episode? making waves, or at least had a career ahead of him, JON: Blimey. I always enjoy Blankety Blank. That so we decided, “Right. He’s our hero and we will folalways seems to go down quite well. low him.” MATT: I think the one that made me laugh most MATT: He’d done a couple of American books and we recently was our pirate radio rip-off. That was episode thought that if we jump on the band wagon now, when 35, I think. he’s rich and famous, maybe he can lend us some JON: Yeah. Which is really kind of UK-based. I don’t money. think anyone from outside the UK will not really know JON: We could say we’ve been fans since the beginwhat we’re talking about. ning. Then, one day, we got really, really drunk in the MATT: I think our “Best evening of the convenOf” show, our first or tion and spent the second “Best Of” show majority of the conventhat we bummed out. I tion singing a song think we’d only done about Tony Lee to Tony about twelve episodes Lee. and we wanted a month MATT: Which he loved. off, so we did a couple The song went “Tony of “Best Of” episodes Lee, Tony Lee/He had a and we did a holiday clip back-up in Amazing show as well and those Fantasy,” and we just are good shows just basically repeated that because we sat and for about four hours took what we thought while we were drunk, were the best clips here until he told us to go and there and bummed away. Writer Tony Lee, Jon and Matt’s hero, in a photo by Michael C. M. Liu, them into a 45-minute JON: Well, it appears used with his permission. section. that when we left the JON: I think you’re always best, if you’re going to dip majority of the bar started singing it because we manin and have a listen, to start with the most recent. I aged to get into Lying in the Gutters. think we’re getting better. I think our most recent MATT: In fact, we got into Comics International, which is the comic book magazine over here, the British episodes are probably the best ones. 78 | QUIET! PANELOLOGISTS AT WORK

equivalent to Wizard, but a lot cheaper and a lot more rubbish. They called us a bunch of football chanting drunkards, which was probably about right. HOUSTON: Has Tony Lee listened to your show? MATT: Yeah. I don’t know if he was listening right from the beginning, but someone mentioned it to him. JON: Yeah. He’s sent us a few e-mails and made a donation. In fact, our most recent contest was to promote the release of the first issue of [Lee’s] Hope Falls. He contacted us and said, “If you’re going to do this, you may as well give away a piece of original art.” HOUSTON: After Tony Lee, the creator you probably talk to the most is Rob Liefeld. MATT: Yay! The Robinator. I love Rob Liefeld. JON: Yeah. I think it harkens back from that soon after we started collecting comics was the Nineties boom with X-Force and I don’t think comics have ever been as exciting as they were in those days. I’m not saying they were good in those days, but they aren’t as exciting as they were. So there’s a fondness for Rob Liefeld in our hearts. MATT: I love Rob. It’s that simple. I actually do love him. You know how people say, “If you could have five people around for dinner who would they be?” and people say Marilyn Monroe or Winston Churchill? I’d just have Rob, but five variants of him, all polybagged with cards. He’d come ’round to my house. It’d be wicked. HOUSTON: Don’t you have New Mutants #87 up on your wall? MATT: I just recently moved, so I haven’t at the moment, but, yeah, to this day, when people who don’t know about comics come around to my house, the first thing they say is, “Oh, do you have any that are worth a lot of money?” and I always say, “Oh, yeah. I’ve got loads.” I haven’t really, but, of course, I get out my New Mutants #87 and say, “This one’s worth hundreds of pounds,” and they all say, “Really? That’s really cool,” and inside I’m just laughing. It’s brilliant; it’s an in-joke just for me. JON: I recently sold my copy, unknown to myself, but I recently bought one on eBay and their fee was one pound fifty. MATT: That’d be about right. My parents bought me that for my twentieth birthday for 30 quid, I think it was. I can’t help but look at it and laugh. It’s brilliant. I love Rob Liefeld. HOUSTON: I started listening when you started doing Monday episodes of Around Comics. MATT: Oh, right. JON: So you’ve listened to a bulk lot of your shows. You’re a glutton for punishment. MATT: Yeah. The Around Comics guys have been quite supportive. You know, their show can be quite seri-

ous, but we got an e-mail from Chris [Neseman] that said, you know, it’s nice that we’ve done something that made them smile, sort of another take on it, not taking it all quite seriously. So we were over the moon when they asked us to do a little section for them. They asked us a good three or four months before we got around to doing anything, because we couldn’t think of something that we could do regularly for four or Tony Lee’s Hope Falls was the subject five minutes. of one of Q!PAW’s contests. © Copyright JON: And which 2009 Markosia Enterprises. would keep the feeling of the show. We didn’t want to do anything that was actually important or informative. MATT: So the “A-Z of British Comics” was a good way of doing 26 little segments, but, after that, I think that will have to be it because we can’t think of anything else. Still, that’s brought us a fair amount of listeners, actually, and I imagine the Around Comics guys get a fair amount of listenership. Great numbers. JON: Because of us? MATT: Yes. I think they were thinking about canceling, but, since we’ve been on, their numbers have improved dramatically. HOUSTON: Now, I believe you were on Comic Geek Speak as well.

MATT: Yes. They need to keep up had us on to with those. I listen interview us and to four or five World Birds of Geek of Warcraft podand Geek casts, but don’t put Syndicate to do a that in the book! feature on the People will think I’m UK Comics sad. Not only have Podcast Network, I got a comic book so that was good podcast, but I play fun. World of Warcraft as JON: I don’t know how that well. I’m not a sad-o. I suppose came about really. with the comic books, Around MATT: I suppose they just got Comics and Comic Geek Speak wind of the fact that we were have got to be up there pretty doing the Comic Podcast high. Matt and Jon with fellow British podcasters Network UK, but they put out JON: Yeah. And Crankcast is one Dave and Barry of Geek Syndicate and Amy three shows a week, so, surely, of my favorite podcasts and Word and Denise of Birds of Geek in an illustration by listener Rob “Seraphyn” Jackson. they’re desperate for material. Balloon I really like, but generally I Again, we’ve had nothing but postend to listen to more comedy itive feedback from Peter Rios. He’s listened since podcasts or BBC radio podcasts. day one and has given us nothing but positive feedMATT: What I found myself doing was listening to a back. And I think they featured us as one of their fealot of comic book podcasts and a lot of comedy podtured podcasts, so we’re on their feed as well. It’s casts and kind of wanted something that I thought been nothing but supportive from the whole comics could slightly bridge the gap. podcast community, really. A great bunch of guys and JON: You just thought of that now. girls out there. MATT: And that’s where we come in, bridging the gap. Well, maybe not actually, but it was a good way of HOUSTON: What podcasts do you listen to? thinking. MATT: Comic Geek Speak is still on my iPod. JON: Yeah. If I hadn’t interrupted you, you probably JON: I don’t tend to listen to a lot of comic book podcould have sold that. casts anymore to be honest. MATT: Traitor. Adam and Joe, Around Comics, Comic HOUSTON: You’ve obviously known each other for a Geek Speak, Fanboy Radio, Marvel ones, DC ones, long time. How did you meet? Word Balloon, Birds of Geek. JON: We’ve known each other for 22 years, haven’t JON: I listen to The Crankcast. I wouldn’t say that we? that’s a comic book podcast, but I guess that the fact MATT: We were in the same class in secondary that the guys work in comics bumps them in with school, so, from 11 onwards, we were best mates. comic book podcasts. We used to go swimming together. Our parents used to take us on holiday together. HOUSTON: Well, they’re in JON: I think at one point our parents were worried the book, so I hope we’d be together. they’re a comic book MATT: I think, at one point, my parents podcast. thought you were their child and I lived at JON: Well, they do both your house, but, no, work in comics. we’ve always been MATT: I think it is a good friends from 11 comic book podcast. onwards, really. A big JON: Well, so do I. bunch of us, really, the MATT: I’ll pick and guy who’s our choose. The serious announcer was part of ones, like Comic Geek the same group. Speak or Around We’ve known him Comics or Word since we’ve been in Balloon, I’ll pick and choose which episodes I school, not that I only listen to because it all depends on the creator have friends that I’ve they’ve got on that week. I listen to tech podknown since I was 11. Matt (in glasses in both pictures) and casts, so I’m listening to This Week in Tech I have made other Jon have been friends for 22 years. friends, but when you and Windows Weekly because I work in IT and I 80 | QUIET! PANELOLOGISTS AT WORK

know each other that well, it’s quite easy to say something that I know could possibly have a gag thrown on at the end, and I think we know each other well enough to basically mind read what the other is going to say, which can be quite handy sometimes. HOUSTON: How did you get into American comics? JON: Your brother. MATT: That’s right. My brother used to buy American comics at about the time Frank Miller’s Daredevil and “Born Again” in the late ’80s, early ’90s. Maybe even before then, he was getting the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He was into Zenith, 2000 A.D. a lot of early Grant Morrison and Alan Moore stuff, so I used to sneak into his room and read that, but what really got me into American comics, and what got a lot of people our age who still read comics in their thirties, were the Secret Wars reprints. Marvel UK used to reprint all the Secret Wars stuff and what they did with Secret Wars II was they didn’t just reprint the Secret Wars II stuff, they reprinted every single crossover, so I think we had maybe 80 or 90 issues of Secret Wars II. JON: It was a weekly reprint, wasn’t it? MATT: Yeah. So, every week, I’d get a fix of the X-Men and then, the next week, Daredevil, or I’d get Power Pack and, through like three years of reading them religiously, I pretty much discovered the entire Marvel Universe and didn’t read DC until maybe the late ’90s. Even when I was a kid, my dad’s next-door neighbor would bring by old issues of Ghost Rider for me and, at that point, I just liked the pretty pictures, but I can’t really remember a time I wasn’t reading comics. It’s crazy really. I’ll never read a book. I can’t read properly. If they haven’t got boxes or circles around words, I can’t read them. That’s the problem. HOUSTON: For a British podcast, you don’t seem particularly interested in British comics. JON: With the exception maybe of reading 2000 AD, purely because it was there, I don’t think we’ve every really got into British comics. I mean, the British comics I used to buy were reprints of the Alan Grant/Norm Breyfogle Batman run and The Punisher reprints. With the exception of maybe The Beano, I don’t think I’ve really been in to British comics at all. MATT: I think with the average kid on the street reading comics, he’s going to be reading more the Whizzer and Chips, really the cartoon strip kind, The Beano and that. Over here, when you say that someone reads comics, they’ll just assume that you have a collection of The Beano, which are pretty much Dennis the Menace comics. JON: My in-laws still think I get regular shipments of The Beano, which is aimed at under-tens. I don’t think they understand quite why I do that. I think they’re a little bit worried.

HOUSTON: Is the British Dennis the Menace different from our Dennis? JON: Ours is better. Our Dennis has got black, spiky hair, a black and red t-shirt, and a dog called Masher. MATT: They both have a dog, don’t they? JON: We’ve got the American Dennis the Menace over here, but it’s just called “Dennis.” HOUSTON: Is there a Mr. Wilson? JON: What? HOUSTON: Our Dennis the Menace spends a lot of his time terrorizing this sort of elderly neighbor named Mr. Wilson. JON: I have a feeling that the British Dennis came first. I could be totally wrong on that, but it’s pretty much the same story. Our Dennis the Menace terrorizes his neighbor, Walter, the softy. HOUSTON: Do you feel that being British sets you apart from other podcasts or gives you a special insight into the US comics scene? JON: I don’t think our views differ all that much from US readers. I think the fact that we read American comics has helped our podcast attract American listeners and Americans just love the British accent, so that’s why we get away with talking absolute nonsense for half an hour. MATT: I don’t think so. I don’t think that there’s anything we could say that gives us any sort of insight or gives us any more right to talk anymore than anyone else. HOUSTON: How long do you think Quiet! Panelologists at Work will be around? MATT: Until people tell us we’re rubbish. It’s an ego trip, basically, for me. That’s what it is. What’s the official answer, Jon? JON: The official answer is we enjoy it very much and can’t see an end. MATT: Oh, yeah. That’s right. JON: I can definitely see an end, but I don’t know when it will be. MATT: When we get bored.

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TWOMORROWS’ TUNE-IN PODCAST/COLLECTED COMICS LIBRARY We here at TwoMorrows know a good thing when we see it, so it should come as no surprise that we started our own podcast. With Chris Marshall, already the host of The Collected Comics Library podcast, as host, the TwoMorrows’ Tune-In Podcast brings interviews and news about TwoMorrows books and magazines to your iPod every month. On August 4, 2008, I talked to Chris about his own show and how he became the podcasting voice of TwoMorrows. HOUSTON: What is the TwoMorrows’ Tune-In Podcast? MARSHALL: The TwoMorrows’ Tune-In Podcast really is just an extension of the blog and website at twomorrows.com. We just like to feature special products that we want to feature each month, whether that’s The Jack Kirby Collector or a special issue of Alter Ego or Rough Stuff, just something that we want to showcase that month. And also to tell our listeners what else is coming out that month if they don’t happen to come along the blog or website. HOUSTON: The show usually features interviews, too. MARSHALL: Yeah. I try to do an interview at least once a month. It can be anywhere from 15 minutes to a half-hour. I usually try to keep it to around that timetable. It gives more insight to the magazine. You can tell who is behind it, who is creating it, and, a lot of times, it’s editors and creators that have been in the comic book field for years, like a Roy Thomas or a Bob McLeod.

TwoMorrows’ Tune-In and Collected Comics Library host Chris Marshall in his recording studio. Photo courtesy Chris Marshall. 82 | TWOMORROWS TUNE-IN

HOUSTON: You’ve talked to some pretty big names on the show. I know you talked to Nick Cardy recently. MARSHALL: Yeah, Nick’s a character, that’s for sure. Thanks to John Morrow, who sets everything up for me. Without him, I really couldn’t do this, but he’s been a great help in giving me this. HOUSTON: Am I right in thinking that the show hasn’t been around for long? MARSHALL: Well, I am doing like a version 2.0. There was a previous Tune-In Podcast, but it kind of podfaded, as we like to call it. I wrote the podcast host at the time and then I found out he no longer did the podcast, so I wrote John Morrow, saying, “Hey, would you like to revive the podcast?” He had no idea who I was, so I sent in my credentials and the links to a few of my shows. This all happened in November of 2007. He took about three months to get to everything over the holiday season and he liked what he heard and we started [the new show] in February. We just do once a month. That’s all I think TwoMorrows really needs to do. It covers all the bases.

Nicky Cardy appeared on Tune-In to help promote TwoMorrows’ Nick Cardy: Behind the Art, a retrospective of his career.

HOUSTON: Do you know why TwoMorrows decided to get into podcasting in the first place? MARSHALL: I think it’s just an extension of their brand that they want to go out and embrace new media and the social aspect of marketing and getting their people really talking to their fan base about their products. TwoMorrows is all about the history of comics. Whether it’s about the Golden Age or the Silver Age or the Modern, it’s how they make comics. Bob [McLeod] and I just got off talking about Rough Stuff and how digital comics are

Favorite covers for Back Issue and Rough Stuff, two of the TwoMorrows magazines covered regularly on Tune-In. Back Issue and Rough Stuff: TM 2009 TwoMorrows Publishing.

coming into being and how that influences how people ink comics these days, and you’re not going to get that from any other publisher. You’re not going to get that from Marvel or DC. They’re more interested in just publishing books, but TwoMorrows is really about the creative. HOUSTON: I remember picking up my first Back Issue, which featured an article about Marvel’s Godzilla, and thinking where would I ever see an article on that? MARSHALL: That’s a great series, too. I love that series and at TwoMorrows, you get a full-blown, 260page book all about it and all for seven bucks. You can’t beat the price and the gems that they publish in their magazines, like Write Now, with unpublished work or unfinished stories, and Rough Stuff and Draw! with all these sketches and pencils of your favorite characters. How cool is that? You’re not going to find it. You might find it in the back of an omnibus or a masterwork, but you can just pick up one of these magazines and see all of these great old sketches. Unpublished work is just cool. HOUSTON: Do many other publishers try to do what TwoMorrows is doing podcast-wise? MARSHALL: Well, Marvel and DC, all they have are their [convention] panels. The only other one that I know of is the Dynamite Entertainment podcast that

Chris Partan does and Joe Rybon does. Joe is their marketing director, and that’s really the only one. Fantagraphics says they’re going to have one. They’ve had on their blog that they’re going to have one for six months. I think Top Shelf has run with the idea, but a lot of it is they don’t have the manpower to pay and that’s part of it. I mean, I get paid not a whole lot, but I do it more for the fun because I love to podcast. I know Chris Partan has his own podcast and when Joe kind of tailed off with his podcast, he said, “Hey, I’ll help you with this,” and Joe was all for it. I spoke about this at Wizard World Chicago; if you want to get into podcasting, the best way to do it is, first of all, practice, practice, practice, but hook up with a publisher when you have your name established. It’s getting into the publishing area and that’s what I wanted. I wanted to be in comics in some extent and now I can say I am, on a freelance basis, but I can now say that, which is pretty cool. HOUSTON: You have another show that’s been around much longer, The Collected Comics Library. MARSHALL: Yeah, The Collected Comics Library is my sort of Internet radio show, focusing on trade paperbacks and hardcovers and all collected editions from all companies, including graphic novels and hard-tofind reprint editions. HOUSTON: Does that show share a format with the THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 83

TwoMorrows’ Tune-In Podcast? MARSHALL: Well, it does. In the beginning, when I first did it, it was a free for all for like the first year and I just spoke about whatever I wanted to. It’s funny; I’ve been doing it for three-and-a-half years and I didn’t expect to be doing it for more than a year, but it’s just kind of grown. I grew my audience, and with that you grow a responsibility and I know the other podcasts that we talked about before we started recording, they’ve got a responsibility too. I felt, with that responsibility, that I had to change with the times and the audience and not just talk about anything off the top of my head, but make a format and that format for me is like a six o’clock news style. I do the news. I do the upcoming schedule for that week. I do e-mail periodically and voicemail periodically, promos from other podcasts, and then I do a feature and then I do a wrap-up, and that’s my format. It runs about a half-hour a week and I try to get that out on Wednesday, which is new comic book day. HOUSTON: Isn’t The Collected Comics Library also one of the oldest comics podcasts? MARSHALL: Yeah. I was fortunate to get on the comic book podcast bandwagon early. The only podcasts that I knew besides me were Neil Gorman’s Comicology and Augie De Blieck’s Pipeline Podcast, which he does with Comic Book Resources, and then there was me and then a week later than me was Comic Geek Speak. HOUSTON: How did you get the idea, then? Were you listening to those other shows? MARSHALL: It’s funny because I’ve always wanted to do my own radio show and talked about it for a couple of years prior to 2005. I even went so far as to send in cassettes and business plans to local radio stations here that do a talk radio format that I could produce and record in my basement on my computer or on a cassette, just to get the word out. “You guys can run it at three o’clock in the morning on whatever station and I don’t even care,” and nobody bit. It’s funny because, not much longer after that, I read an article in the paper on Adam Curry and he is, of course, the founder of podcasting. In the article, there was another podcast that was local that had just started and it’s funny because that podcast got the notoriety, but it only lasted for three episodes. The article really spelled out what podcasting is and it was a pretty elaborate article for how technical it can be to set up, but I went to Radio Shack and I

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went to the local Guitar Center and I bought my stuff and that week I had my first podcast up and running. It kind of helped that I had programming experience, because I wrote my own RSS feed and XML feed and had no problems coding, so that made it a lot easier. HOUSTON: Why a comic book podcast? MARSHALL: It was just something I was interested in and my hobby. It hasn’t always been my hobby. I guess I’m more of a sports guy in some respects, but comics have always just been part of the geeky culture in the back of my brain that I’ve always liked. As far as collected editions go, early on I talked about all the comics that were coming out, like Neil and Augie and Comic Geek Speak did, and I didn’t want to do that. My website was about DC Archives and Marvel Masterworks and more information on those books, and I had been doing that since 1998. It was just like an all-inclusive place where you didn’t have to go to DC or Marvel. There were no places like the in the late Nineties where you could find all your collected edition news, and that’s kind of what I focused on and it became, like, a normal extension of the website to do the podcast. HOUSTON: Almost every other podcast I’ve talked to for this book has been a multihost show, but, with both The Collected Comics Library and The TwoMorrows’ Tune-In Podcast, you are the sole host. Is that ever difficult for you? Do you have trouble filling the half-hour in that way? MARSHALL: I think in the beginning I did, but the more and more research I did, it’s gotten a lot easier, especially when you look at the comics industry today. There are dozens of reprints that come out each and every week and there are dozens of comics that come out each week, so the reprint industry has really, really taken off in the past decade and, with that, it’s easy to talk about. I’m kind of a control freak when it comes to my show. That’s why I’m a single host podcast. That’s what you’ll find. Augie’s the same way. He has sole control over what he has to say, and if you listen to roundtable podcasts—and this is what you have to do if you’re a round table podcast is really diversify yourself. You can’t talk about the movie of the week or whatever Batman book is out that month. You really have to think of another angle and you can see that; you know who the good round table podcasts are. You know who needs more help. It’s not just getting together and having a mic and talking amongst

yourselves. You’re talking to your audience and you can’t forget that. You have to visualize yourself speaking to one person and one person only. That’s all you need. You may have a couple thousand listeners, like I do, but you only need that one person to communicate with, and the same goes when you interview somebody the way Siuntres does or the way I do for TwoMorrows. You have to extract some interesting information from the person you’re interviewing for your one listener so they think, “That’s kind of cool. That’s going to make me go out and buy your work.” HOUSTON: How does a typical recording session go for you? MARSHALL: I do have show notes and I write them out through the week and, like I said, I’ve got my format, so I’ve got a basic Word template and I fill it in throughout the week with whatever news comes down. I try to record my show on Tuesday night and get it out no later than Thursday. I try to get it out for new comic book day and my show is kind of on a schedule where I try to get the new releases for the week from Diamond. They come out at five o’clock in the morning on Monday, so, sometime Monday night or Tuesday, I’m checking it. I’m like, “Hey, what trades are coming out this week?” and double-checking the prices and double checking the contents that are included so I can mention those on my podcast, but, if I didn’t do the new releases of the week, I could upload my show anytime and it wouldn’t really matter, but that’s what it’s centered around is new comic book day and what’s coming out that week. HOUSTON: You had another show for a while, too, right? MARSHALL: That was my Trade Secrets Podcast and I started that as an offshoot of The Collected Comics Library, doing an interview show, but the more I thought about it, it kind of became a hassle, so I incorporated it back into The Collected Comics Library. It didn’t last very long, but all the

episodes are still there. If I do an interview now, I just make it part of The Collected Comics Library. HOUSTON: Of the interviews you’ve done over the years, which one is your favorite? MARSHALL: It’s funny because I don’t do interviews that much on my own show. I’ve only done just a handful. I think I’ve done more with TwoMorrows. Everybody is fun to talk to. Everybody adds their own interesting tidbit about the world of comics. I try to interview owners of companies or editors of companies or marketing directors because that’s what I’m interested in and it shows because I’m at TwoMorrows. I’m interested in the creative process. I’m not interested in who penciled what and what were they thinking at the time. I’m interested in editorial and I want to know how is a book put together, what are the timetables for something? How does a collected edition come together when you’re including special features? A collected edition from the ground up, not just the single issues that are included in a collected edition. HOUSTON: Are you involved in any other podcasts? MARSHALL: I also do [The Mayo Report] with John Mayo over at his page. John and I talk about the trade paperbacks every month from the Diamond sales charts. John talks once with Bob Bretall, where they talk the monthly side, then John and I talk the trade side, so that’s kind of a cool podcast. Then there’s the Comics Podcast Network. We started that in the early days, when there were only like 20 of us around, as a way to really help each other and really get Chris originally created CCL to focus on Marvel Masterworks and DC Archive Editions but soon expanded to collected editions of all kinds. Flash and Green Lantern Archive Editions © Copyright 2009 DC Comics. Spider-Man and Fantastic Four Marvel Masterworks © Copyright 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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the word out about comics podcasting. We’ve done crossovers and segments on a particular theme and that was a lot of fun, but now the comics podcasting field has just gotten too big, really, for the network. There’s more than a hundred now and do you invite all of them? People podChris Marshall and his collected comics library. Photo courtesy Chris fade. So it’s still Marshall. around, but it hasn’t really gone anywhere since the early days. Another thing I did here in Detroit, kind of like the Comics Podcast Network, is the Detroit Podcast Network and that’s a conjunction of about forty podcasts based here in Detroit. I was one of the founding members of that back in 2005 and we’ve all become very good friends. We’re all very different in our genres. A lot of them are music. A lot of them are business. I just found out that my neighbor down the street does a naval air force podcast, which is pretty cool. One of my good friends is a punk rocker who has a podcast. We meet up once a month at a bar and swap stories and share CDs and information and now there might be a Podcamp Michigan coming up in October. It’s a good support group for what we have here in Detroit and we can get together and share common interests. Even though we all talk about different things, we can talk about “What mic do you use?” and “What do you think of this software?” HOUSTON: How many listeners do you have? MARSHALL: I have about 1,500 every episode. HOUSTON: How does it make you feel to have so many fans? MARSHALL: I don’t consider myself somebody who’s fan-worthy. I don’t want that to go to my head. Nobody’s asked me for an autograph. “Here, sign my iPod.” I think there are people out there who are fans of the medium and collected editions and that’s what inspires me to keep going each and every week because, like I said, the segment is growing and growing and publishers realize it. There’s only a few of us who are doing trade paperback-centric podcasts, only two or three that are solely dedicated to it and that’s special. When everybody else is talking about the monthly side or talking about a writer or creator, I’m talking about a niche within a niche. I’ve always joked at conventions with other podcasts, “Why aren’t there more podcasts out 86 | TWOMORROWS TUNE-IN

there talking about trades,” and I actually mentioned it on one of my shows and Adam Besenyodi from the Marvel Noise podcast e-mailed me, like, that day and was like, “Chris, I just started doing a segment on Marvel trades with David Price,” and then Dave Williams wrote me from the UK and said, “It’s funny you mentioned this. I’m on my second podcast talking about trades,” and I’m like, “Good. I don’t want to be alone, and it’s good for the industry to be out there talking about trades.” I was talking to both Adam and Dave, so there’re three of us out there, but Adam does a segment on a podcast and talks about one book. Dave and his wife Ange are a married couple podcast in the United Kingdom and I’m a single podcast, so you really get these three really neat perspectives. Adam’s segment is only ten minutes long, if that. And then you’ve got a really unique dynamic with Dave and Ange being married and they spend hundreds of dollars on comics, which my wife would kill me, but it’s great to find that dynamic. All we’re really missing now is a four-person roundtable talking about trades. HOUSTON: What are your interactions with your listeners like? MARSHALL: It’s gotten a lot more social nowadays than it was when I first started out. When I first started out, it was just for me. I had a few e-mails here and there, but you start with one listener and then it morphs and grows through the years. Now I have my blog where you can comment. It’s not so much that I want to keep the conversation going, because I can do that as a moderator on Twitter or on my blog. I could tell people what to comment about, but I think it’s really exciting when my listeners on my forum start conversations amongst themselves and that’s kind of how I approach my forum: hands off. I don’t like to police it or tell people what they can or can’t talk about. I have sponsors on my show, but I don’t care if my listeners talk about other websites where they have a deal going on, because my sponJohn Mayo, host of The sors are for my podcast, Mayo Report and The not my forum. So, if Comic Book Page family of somebody finds a great podcasts, on which Chris Marshall regularly appears. deal at Amazon and I’m Photo courtesy John Mayo. not affiliated with Amazon, go talk about it. Go get the best deal. It’s also starting other conversations: what to read,

what not to read. I could sit there and drum off topic after topic for people to talk about, but then it becomes like a dictatorship. I’m there every day. I drop by to see what conversations are going on and sometimes I have a slow day, but sometimes I’ve got a busy day. I think it’s great to have that interaction with people who come to my podcast as a central hub, but I like people to start their own conversations. I remember when I had one listener and I remember when I had forty and I thought, “I have forty listeners. That’s cool.” And 40 became 400 and it stagnated at 400 for a while and then, overnight, it skyrocketed to over 1,000 listeners in one six-day period and it’s been there ever since for a number of years now. I feel fortunate because there’s luck involved, too, because John and Chris and Brion and I all started at the beginning and that’s what it really took. I could not start this podcast now. There’s no way.

This is it. We’re here.” One year in and we’re at San Diego. The comic book genre has just taken off in podcasting and that’s because it’s just such a niche audience and creators know that, so what better way to get their product out than directly reaching to the masses who buy their stuff, especially the indie comics guys? You can get lost in the shuffle in Previews magazine, but when it comes to getting your word out, man, what a great forum to get your unknown product out. It’s a pay it forward thing. One podcast will pick it up and a listener will post to this forum and someone else will post to this forum and the next thing you know, Dave Petersen of Mouse Guard is top of the charts. It’s just incredible with what he’s done with being on podcasts.

HOUSTON: You’ve been a guest on a number of podcasts yourself. MARSHALL: Yeah, I’ve been fortunate to make a lot of friends, whether it’s with [Comic Geek Speak’s] Bryan and Peter, who host HOUSTON: Did you ever think my forum, or I’m in Detroit and have The Collected Comics Library family in Chicago, so I go to would last this long? Chicago pretty often and I met up Chris with fellow Detroit Podcasting MARSHALL: I thought it would with Chris Neseman and the Around Network member Mike Pfeiffer (a.k.a. last about a year, especially since Mikel O.D.) of the Most People Are DJs Comics guys down there and [John] podcast (www.mostpeoplearedjs.com). I read all these reports that podSiuntres. We’ve had many nights on Photo courtesy Les Zalewski, yet another casting is a novelty, but I knew it the town, and it’s just really cool, Detroit podcaster, of the Zaldor’s World was going well when I hit my oneand then being invited down to Podcast (www.zaldor.com). year anniversary and people startWizard World Chicago this past ed talking about getting a panel at [San Diego’s] June. They didn’t have to invite me at all, being from Comic-Con International, and that was February or Detroit. They have a number of comics podcasts in March 2006. I’ve never really got disjointed about it. Chicago, but I think they know the value in having a There are times when I’ve had brain freeze or writer’s podcast name such as myself. Not to toot my own block and I’m like, “What am I going to talk about horn, but I am one of the top ones and I do have an tonight?” or life just gets too busy with family and audience and that’s kind of what Wizard wanted: the I’m like, “Oh my God, I haven’t done anything this best and most notable comics podcasts, so we can week. What am I going to do?” but never, at any go and fill the room, and Chris and John mentioned point, have I said I wanted to quit. There were times I me. I feel honored to be a part of that segment. wanted to delay the podcast a week or two, but I’ve HOUSTON: How is it different to be a guest on a never wanted to quit. When San Diego came knockshow rather than being the host? ing with the guys from iFanboy, who really spearheadMARSHALL: Every time I’ve guested, it’s been real ed it, and Joe and Jimmy from Comics News Insider, easy because I’m talking with other podcasters, so they helped out quite a bit too, it was like, “Wow. THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 87

networking and new media. That’s what it’s all becoming. We’ve just got to get it to the average fan out there to let them know that these other avenues exist where you can get more information and connect with people they may not realize even existed before.

More podcasters! Clockwise from left, Matt of Comic Geek Speak, Chris Marshall, Josh Finney and Kat Rocha, creators of The Utopiates comic book, CGS’ Peter Rios, Mr. Phil and Charlito of Indie Spinner Rack, Jamie D, and Adam Murdough from CGS. Photo courtesy Comic Geek Speak. © Copyright 2009 Comic Geek Speak.

that makes it a lot easier. When I go on Chris’ show, we’re just sitting back in a comic book store recording and it’s just real easy to talk. That’s all. It’s kind of a no-brainer because we speak the same language. We speak comic book language and we speak podcasting language. It’s just very comfortable. HOUSTON: Since you’ve been with podcasting almost since the beginning, what opinions have you developed about the medium? MARSHALL: The medium is definitely more social and definitely more reaching out to the masses, and, as I said earlier, we, as podcasters, have an obligation to that and to reach out to other people. When you’re sitting around a table on a round table forum and it’s just four or five guys drinking beer with a microphone talking about comics, that doesn’t help comics and it doesn’t help podcasting. You’ve really got to go out there and talk to people who don’t know Chris takes it easy after a long day anything about this of podcasting. Photo courtesy technology and really Comic Geek Speak. © Copyright 2009 Comic Geek Speak. let them know about everything. Let them know about Facebook, let them know about Twitter, and let them know about RSS feeds and podcasting. Let them know about social 88 | TWOMORROWS TUNE-IN

HOUSTON: Do you think podcasting has a future and, if so, what is it? MARSHALL: I think it does have a future. I think a lot of it is going more video these days and vidcasting and, if you go to iTunes and you go to the podcasting page, it’s all corporate. It’s all PBS, NBC, and ESPN. It’s good, but it’s bad. Podcasting, especially for me, was a homegrown thing that was grown in your basement. It’s not just taking a TV show and rebroadcasting it or even a segment of a radio show like This American Life. It’s a radio show and Pardon the Interruption is a TV show on ESPN. It’s not podcasting. It’s going to take some time, but I think there is stuff out there, especially for really niche audiences like comic books or music, really the arts like that, and I think it can exist, but, like I said, it’s going to take a large amount of people to really, really push it, and it’s good when you see more companies like Ford and IBM embracing these technologies. That’s only going to reach out to other people and say, “Hey, I’m listening to this podcast from Ford. What other podcasts are out there?” and it’s going to make them dive really deep into iTunes and websites and their aggregators and find out that there’s a whole other world of other interests that are out there that people will seek out and find. HOUSTON: Podcasts seem fairly easy to start, too. It’s not terribly time-consuming or expensive. I think it’s a much easier fan medium to start than, say, a fanzine. MARSHALL: The costs involved are minimal, but, besides the cost of getting a mic and a mixer and good software, it’s the time investment. That’s where it really comes in. Can you do it every week on a regular basis, staying on topic and getting a good quality show out there? Don’t expect to have an audience in the first year. Don’t expect to get money, and what money you may get in the next few years is going to be very minimal sponsor-wise. You’re doing it for the love of comics. I didn’t get into it because I had sponsors or wanted to get free comics. I wanted to have an outlet for my interests in collected editions and I know people share my same interests. If you build it, they will come, and they have.

PIPELINE POD CAST On January 5th, 2005, Augie De Blieck Jr. launched The Pipeline Podcast, the first true comic book podcast. It’s four years and more than 200 episodes later and Augie is still going strong, offering news and opinions on each week’s new comic releases. Along with his written Pipeline column at Comic Book Resources, the podcast gives Augie the chance to express his comic reviews and opinions, just as he did during his days as a noted letter-hack in the 1990s. Augie took a couple of hours away from his new baby daughter to talk about his show, the podcasting medium, and how things have changed since his early days in comics fandom.

HOUSTON: We’ll get to our podcast in a couple of minutes, Augie, but this seems like a good opportunity to talk about comics fandom prior to the Internet, especially since your first real exposure to the world of comics fandom was through letter-hacking. DE BLIECK: Yeah. I started letter-hacking in 1991, I think. 1991 or 1992, somewhere in there. HOUSTON: What is a letter-hack? DE BLIECK: letterhacks are those people who were the most frequent letter writers back when comics would have that page in the back where fans would write in and editors would answer questions or just print positive letters from fans. Pipeline Podcast host Augie De There was a subset of Blieck, Jr. All images in this chapthose fans, the letterter courtesy Augie De Blieck, Jr., hacks, who basically unless otherwise noted. hacked out letters week after week and month after month. I was one of them for pretty much all of the ’90s and had about 400 printed over the course of those ten years and a little bit into the 2000s, but, as the letters columns really aren’t around anymore, there really aren’t any letter-hacks left. HOUSTON: How did you become a letter-hack? DE BLIECK: That’s a good question. I decided I wanted to be part of the comics, I guess, in some small way. I had writing aspirations back then and I knew I could string together sentences in a coherent manner, so I started writing letters. That was back in the day when I would print the letters out on my Commodore 64 printer and had to actually mail those in. A dot

matrix printer, by the way. I had to use a stamp and everything. There was no e-mail back then. So it was a matter of sitting myself down after reading a comic book and writing, in retrospect, like a couple of hundred words in a letter and sending that in and hoping that, maybe, three months later, you might see your name in there and, more often than not, you didn’t. The hit rate on letters printed versus letters written was not always a great ratio. If you’re writing five letters and you got one printed, you were in pretty good shape back then. HOUSTON: What books did you write to? DE BLIECK: At first, the Star Trek comic books over at DC. Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation had both started out the previous year and I was sort of a regular in those letter columns and I had a few letters printed in Marvel Comics Presents. The big spot I got my letters printed was in The Savage Dragon, over at Image, where I pretty much had a letter printed every issue for about the first hundred issues or so, starting in issue six, I think it was. I had some printed in some of the duck books, too, which, I believe at that point Disney Comics was publishing themselves, before they went back to Gemstone, but the first comic that was my main home was definitely the Star Trek comics and then Savage Dragon was my home for the ’90s. HOUSTON: Why those books specifically? DE BLIECK: I don’t know. There was also a definite sense of community involved there more than anything else. I think, to a certain degree, they were accessible. DC Comics, back in the early ’90s, had two-page letters columns, so they printed more letters and, if they printed more letters, your chances of having a letter printed were higher. I had some early hits [at DC]. I don’t think I ever wrote more than three or four letters before the first one there was printed, so that kind of encouraged me along. Savage Dragon had even bigger returns THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 89

because [Dragon creator] Erik Larsen, at the time, was printing letters the next month after the issue was printed. It used to be you had to wait two or three months after a comic came out before the letter about it would be printed, but Erik Larsen, however he did it, managed to get those letters in the next month, so I kind of just became a mainstay over there. It was a combination of books I liked, which always helps with letter-hacking, and the ones I felt sort of a connection to because they were big parts of fandom. HOUSTON: Thanks to the Internet and fan forums, it’s so easy for fans to talk to each other these days, but did you keep in touch with any of the other big letter-hacks? DE BLIECK: At the time, not so much. There was a fanzine called Comics Critics Cavalcade that I was part of for a brief time in the early ’90s. It was basically a fanzine of contributions written by other letter-hacks. Marc Lucas was involved and Jamie S. Rich was a letter-hack then. A whole bunch of letter-hacks at the time were involved in that. I didn’t really have any personal contact with them, but that was as close to a letter-hack fan club as we had. Otherwise, I didn’t have too many friends in school who were comic book fans and I didn’t keep up any kind of pen pal correspondence with any other letterhacks, either.

HOUSTON: Is letter-hacking a lost art? Has it been replaced by podcasts and blogging and forums? DE BLIECK: Absolutely. There are still letters columns around, but I don’t think you’re going to have the same reaction to letter-hacks today as you would have ten years ago or especially thirty years ago or so. When you think about people who were letterhacks in the late ’60s, early ’70s, many of them became the writers and editors of the ’70s and ’80s. Look at some of the fans who became sort of the second generation, especially at Marvel Comics, the Roy Thomases of the world. They came up through fanzines and letters hacks, those kind of things, and I don’t think you see that in print so much these days, but it’s definitely all migrated over to the web, like you say, with the blogs and the podcasts.

The front and back cover to the final issue of Comic Critics Cavalcade, a showcase for many letter-hacks, including Augie. Front cover Magnus, Robot Fighter art by Jim Calafiore. All characters copyright their respective companies.

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HOUSTON: Do you think we will see the same thing in ten years, with current podcasters becoming tomorrow’s big name writers and editors? DE BLIECK: That’s a good question. I’m not entirely sure it’s going to work entirely the same way. Obviously, there are some people who use their blogs and podcasts as kind of a diary or journal of their attempts to break into the market or market themselves even, and, obviously, those will kick in, but there’s something I think that was unique to the time, back in the ’60s and ’70s, that doesn’t necessarily work today. I think when people are trying to break into the industry, they all have the same knowledgebase on the web, so it’s not so much a unique way. Plus, conventions are now so regular. There’re just so many ways of breaking through the front door at the comics industry. In general, broad, overall terms, it will work the same way. The people who are part of fandom will, eventually, in many cases, rise to the ranks of the writers and editors. You can see it today, I’m sure. Most of the writers and most of the editors are longtime fanboys and fangirls, with the exception of the Hollywood people. I just don’t think you can pick out specific bloggers or specific podcasters. It’s the forum some people will use, but I’m not sure it’s the best way to figure out who the next generation is going to be just yet.

sional. Plus, for the most part, there’s no money in it. I’m better off keeping my day job. HOUSTON: I like that term, active fan. I never quite feel right saying I’m a comic book journalist, but I like that. DE BLIECK: Thanks. There’s a difference. There’s definitely a difference between people who read comics and enjoy them and those who blog about them and podcast about them and go to the conventions and are very active. There’s probably a barrier there not to be created, but a difference in different kinds of fans. HOUSTON: A distinction. DE BLIECK: Yeah, that’s the word. Thank you. You should write a book.

HOUSTON: Is it an ambition you hold at all? DE BLIECK: No. Not really anymore. I had the ambition to write a comic back in my letter-hacking days. I always wanted to be a writer and had some fan fic posted online, God save me. In fact, Erik [Larsen] read some of my Freak Force and Savage Dragon fan fiction and said it didn’t suck, which is sort of the highest of all possible compliments. I’ve got to the point now where it is a goal in life somewhere down the line to write a story that gets published in a comic, but I’m not using my podcast as a vehicle for that and I’m not using the column as a vehicle for that. It’s something where, somewhere down the line, if the opportunity comes up, I’ll put myself to it and try to get it done, but I’m just happy being sort of a fan and, I don’t know, a journalist, I guess you’d call it. I like being an active fan in comics fandom more than being a profesAugie wasn’t just a fan of “Freak Force,” he actually appeared in a “Freak Force” story. Augie explains, “The art is from page eight of the backup “Freak Force” story from Savage Dragon #115. Art by Mark Englert and written by Robert Kirkman. I really blew this. Kirkman emailed me months earlier asking for photo ref so he could make me a zombie in The Walking Dead. I was too slow in responding to that— stupid me. When the issue came out, I realized why he really wanted that photo ref. It was for this project. They kept the whole thing secret from me until the day it hit the stands. So Mark had to use a couple images of me he found in Pipeline. So, um, it’s an “interpretation” of me. But it’s all me, baby. This is what happens when you’re too big a Freak Force fan. It’s one of the coolest comic things to ever happen to me.” © Copyright 2009 Erik Larsen. THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 91

HOUSTON: You know, a lot of people tell me that. about 10 years now. [laughter] Currently, your podcast and column live over at Comic Book Resources. How did you get HOUSTON: Could you describe your column? started there? DE BLIECK: The column is basically my weekly spot DE BLIECK: I wrote the column myself for a couple of where I can vent about the comics I’ve read or the years. Back at the time you would post it on Usenet. news of the week. It’s fairly freeform. There’s no set Not that too many people use Usenet anymore, but pattern to it. There’s no format I rigidly stick to. It that was the major hangout for comics fans, the began as my way of talking about the things I wanted rec.arts.comics grouping, so I posted there. I had my to talk about from ten different threads on Usenet own website and I was in college at the time, so I into one big column. It was a mix of both reviewing probably used my college website as my home page the comics I’d read that week as well as whatever for that and then, about 90 weeks in or so, I got an enews happened to break that week and whatever mail from Jonah Weiland over at Comic Book high-minded stuff I wanted to talk about. So, basically, Resources, who was looking to expand his coverage Pipeline Commentary and Review is just me talking on his website. At that point, the website was basicalfor, nowadays, about 2000 or 3000 words a week ly Jonah’s list of links to other comic book websites about what it is in comics that interests me or excites and there was some news being done by Beau me that week. It varies from nostalgic looks back to Yarborough at that time. what happened ten years ago to the comic I’m excitJonah was looking for someone to come on board ed about this week to what comic is coming out in a to be a columnist or an opinion kind of guy and Beau couple of months to what boneheaded move one of knew my name from, I the publishers made this guess, reading my column week. It’s pretty freeform. on Usenet. Beau suggested my name to Jonah and HOUSTON: That nostalgic we got to talking. About a aspect is one of my week later, we decided we favorite things about your would do it. I wanted to column, particularly your complete, just as my own willingness to review mental thing, 100 older, obscure titles. Your columns on my own, so I recent review of Marvel’s did that. We timed it out Slapstick is a good examand, starting with my ple. 101st column, I moved DE BLIECK: That was fun. everything over to Comic I’d been meaning to go Book Resources and back and read that Augie with J. Michael Straczynski in the summer of 2004, when that’s where I’ve been for because that was a book, Augie first discovered podcasting. 92 | PIPELINE PODCAST

believe it or not, I never had the one I don’t think I’ve talked third issue of for the longest about anywhere, is I did college time. I don’t know what hapradio for four years for a friend pened. I think, when it came of mine and always kept in out, it was issue three I missed touch with him after that. After and I found it in a back issue college, he started doing a bin at a convention somewhere Sunday morning show at local years later and then I lost track radio station that was sort of of the other three issues. Then, their hour-long PSA fulfillment, just cleaning up my comics sponsored by a local ministeriwhen I moved to a new house al association. It was basically this summer, I found all four an hour of contemporary issues together and said, Christian music, religious “That’s it. I have to read this, news, a message from a local especially since he’s in minister, and community Avengers: The Initiative now.” events, that sort of thing. His Augie in his recording studio. I’ve been doing a lot more nosco-host had to leave about six talgic stuff recently just months into it and he asked because, with the new house and the kid, my time is me if I wouldn’t mind filling in for a week or two and I kind of limited. I haven’t had a chance to get to the said, “Sure.” I missed doing radio and I missed seecomic shop every week like I used to and I’ve got a ing my friend every week, so I did that for seven or bookshelf full of books sitting here that I have yet to eight years. Every Sunday morning, I was doing this read, so this seems like as good a time as any to hour-long radio show at a local radio station with my catch up on things. friend and I was able to learn a lot from him because he’s always been a big radio guy. In fact, he still does HOUSTON: Has your column evolved over the years? radio stuff professionally as a sort of moonlighting DE BLIECK: It’s definitely better written. [laughter] I’ve thing; his day job is he’s a teacher. I learned a lot of looked at some of those early columns and I just stuff about how to talk into a microphone and how to smacked my head, the same way you do when you organize radio shows and that kind of stuff from him. look at your early letter-hack letters and you think, When podcasting first started up in the summer of “What were you thinking? Could you please form a 2004, and I had heard about it in November or coherent sentence and paragraph?” I think definitely December of 2004, I decided that would be a great writing this thing for ten years, every week has made thing to do for comic books and had actually had an me a better writer. idea a year or two earlier to do sort of a one-minute As far as what it covers goes, I think that’s always audio file thing as part of Pipeline, “The Pipeline evolving. That’s never been the same for more than Minute,” where I would have sort of a scripted thing three or four weeks at a time because, in many ways, where I would talk about an opinion I had or somePipeline is my personal diary of comics fandom. It’s thing. Back then, you didn’t want to stuff all that down what I’m thinking about or what I’m liking or what I’m the bandwidth because bandwidth wasn’t cheap and reading at that given moment, so we may go three or not everyone had broadband, but I was thinking an four months where all I do is review the book of the MP3 file of a minute or two would not be that big of a week and then I’ll go three or four months where I download for people. Things have changed, obviously. can’t do another review because they all start soundI think I may have recorded one at the time, but I diding alike to me and I start talking more about the polin’t go through with it at the time. I didn’t have the tics of comics, industry stuff, a given creator, or time to commit to it and Jonah had enough issues maybe theme weeks. It’s kept the same loose format with bandwidth to add that on top of everything, but, in that I can talk about whatever I like to and whatevby the end of 2004, things were getting a little bit beter I happen to like at the moment, that’s what it is. In ter. Broadband was getting more common with cable a way, it’s always the same and it’s always different. I modems and all the rest. I had heard about podcastshould be a politician. ing from a few different sources online. I can’t honestly remember where exactly, but it was a word that was HOUSTON: How did the Pipeline podcast come popping up more and more. The job I had at the time about? I’m very curious about this because, and corgave us a week off for Christmas, so I thought I’d give rect me if I’m wrong, yours was the first true comic it a shot. I had a microphone. I had a computer. I book podcast. could record this stuff. I had some knowledge of how DE BLIECK: I believe it is by a matter of, maybe, three to use a computer. I’m a computer programmer, for days. Chris Marshall may have been the second one goodness sake. So I spent the week and I actually and Comic Geek Speak started within a couple of created two different podcasts, one for my blog, The Various and Sundry Podcast, which was basically a weeks of that, I believe. The long story, and this is THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 93

look at the new releases in the world of DVDs (at the time I was a big DVD buyer), and, after I recorded and published one of those, I tried The Pipeline Comic Book Podcast, which was the same format, but with comic books, so it was about what was coming out that week. I thought it would be a good hook to have and, this way, I had a rigid schedule for it and I knew where my material was coming from. The first podcast ran about six minutes. I published it on January 5, 2005 and it hasn’t ended yet. HOUSTON: Did you publish it through Comic Book Resources? DE BLIECK: Yes. This was all Comic Book Resources’ server. I cleared it through Jonah. I asked him in December if he thought it was a good idea and if the bandwidth would cause any problems. He said he thought it was a great idea and the bandwidth wouldn’t be a problem. I recorded one to make sure he thought it was of high enough quality to belong on Comic Book Resources and he listened to it and said, “It’s good. Let’s run with it.” We put a mention in that edition of Pipeline, “Hey, this new podcast is here.” We didn’t even have the RSS feed up and running just yet when we published the first one. We had the RSS feed running within the week and were an official podcast by the time the second podcast came out on January 12. HOUSTON: Was being the first something you were conscious of? DE BLIECK: To a certain degree, yes, honestly. There were a couple of podcast directories at the time and I searched to see if there was a comic book one around yet, just because it would be something I’d want to listen to as much as it was to see if I was going to be the only one in the market, so to speak. I knew from what I had seen in the directories that there wasn’t one. In fact, one of the big ones at the time was called, I think, iPodder, which may have been the one which was run by Adam Curry or Adam Curry’s group and, when I added my podcast to that directory, they actually had to create a new subcategory—they called it “books” at the time—for The Pipeline Podcast, more or less. I knew I was the first one, but I knew it wouldn’t last for long, either. Any time there’s any new technology on the web, somebody is going to adapt it for 94 | PIPELINE PODCAST

every possible thing. Somebody is going to be the first comic book blogger and 5,000 people are going to follow. Even video podcasts and video blogs, those will pop up as well. I knew I wasn’t going to be alone for long. I just didn’t want to look like the guy who was copying someone else and I don’t think that the people who followed me were copying me. I’m not saying that, either. I think we all had the same idea, but we all went in different ways, which I think is interesting. HOUSTON: It definitely seems like something that was in the zeitgeist, with your show debuting and very quickly thereafter Collected Comics Library and Comicology and Comic Geek Speak coming onto the scene. It almost feels like a Man-Thing/Swamp Thing or X-Men/Doom Patrol sort of thing. DE BLIECK: Yeah, exactly. Plus, I think there was an article in Wired magazine at the time. As comic book people, we’re all geeky about one thing or another, and I know, in Bryan’s case over at Comic Geek Speak, he had read that article and that was part of his inspiration, but it was definitely something that was around and waiting to be found. HOUSTON: Is it something that you have ever talked about with your fellow early podcasters, your shows coming out so close together? DE BLIECK: Not really. We were on one podcast panel in San Diego three or four years ago where it kind of came up and we sort of did a quick timeline to see how it all fit together, but we’ve never really talked about it. I mean, we’ve all talked to each other separately and in groups or over e-mail and whatnot over the years. We’re not all foreign to each other. The comics podcast community is large, but it’s small in some ways. I don’t think we’ve ever tried to go back and talk about the early days because we all sound different now than we did at the start. HOUSTON: Since there weren’t other comic book podcasts, what other podcasts did you look to for inspiration? DE BLIECK: I don’t think any of them really inspired my podcast directly. Adam Curry’s pod-

Just Augie.

cast at the time, The Daily Source Code, was daily and freeform and about whatever interested him at the time, which was kind of what my column was about and which, at that time, had been running for seven or eight years, but the other podcasts I listened to were things like Coverville, which is a music podcast. There were one or two others, but there weren’t too many out at that time to which I was a regular listener. HOUSTON: What was listener reaction like for those first couple of shows? DE BLIECK: The funny thing about the podcast is it’s never had that big a response on the message board or through e-mails. I’ve seen the hits. I know people download it and listen to it and I do get e-mails from people occasionally, but I don’t remember getting all that much reaction to the podcast at first. I knew it was something I wanted to do and I was going to do it and the hits were sort of high enough that I knew I wasn’t talking to myself completely. Especially with my show, the way it’s formatted, it’s not necessarily interactive. Other shows involve the communities more than I do and, for me, it’s a limitation of time to do a bigger show, so I’ve never had that much reaction. Usually, when people e-mail me to talk about the podcast, it’s a side thought to something they’re already e-mailing me about, the column or something else, so I honestly don’t remember any listener reaction things. HOUSTON: I know you have a forum. Does that then tend to be more discussion about the column than the podcast? DE BLIECK: Yeah. It really does. At this point, it’s grown into its own little group of regulars who just discuss comics in general. We start a thread there every week about the column, if people care to discuss it. There’re threads there about which new comics are you reading this week, which ones are you buying this week, which have you read recently, that sort of thing. It’s more of a comics general interest board at this point, which just happens to be composed of Pipeline fans and I’m very grateful to them because they’re very nice to each other and very flame-free. I’ve never had to moderate a thing on that forum, which is really nice. It’s probably due to the fact that it’s a relatively small group, but it’s part of a larger community with the Comic Book Resources message boards, I know. I tend to not visit the more popular ones, again, out of time constraint issues. HOUSTON: It certainly seems like that’s the case for podcast forums in general, whether that’s the Comic Geek Speak forums or the Around Comics forums. It seems like the posters there are much more civil than in other places on the Internet. DE BLIECK: Yeah, and I don’t have a grand unifying

theory for why that is. I think that, to a certain degree, the kind of podcast that you run is the kind of fandom that you will get. It’s the same thing with general interest message boards. If the guy who runs the message board is foul-mouthed and calls people out and is overly satirical, everyone who follows him will be swearing and will try to poke fun at each other and all that stuff. So, if you have a podcast that’s nice to people and generally positive, those will be the kind of people you will attract. Like begets like, birds of a feather, and all that kind of stuff. I think that’s definitely true with podcasts as much as with anything else on the Internet. HOUSTON: Tell me a little bit about the format of your show. DE BLIECK: The format is what kills the show as much as it saves it and I’ll explain that in a second, but the podcast’s format, basically, is I take a look at the list of new comics that are coming out that week and I make a top ten list of the comics that, to me, are the most interesting or the most exciting or the ones that are most worth talking about. It’s a top ten list, but it doesn’t really mean all that much, honestly. It’s not like I have this harsh grading scale to determine who’s number one and who’s number two. It’s kind of flying by the seat of my pants. I go over the top ten list of comics and then I cover the other interesting comics that are coming out that week a little more quickly. It runs anywhere from, on a quick week, maybe ten minutes to I think the longest I ran once was almost 35 minutes, just talking about the week’s comics, but I talk about what’s coming out and what’s in each book and, along the way, it gives me the chance to just generally share my opinions on those comics or the industry as a whole as we go along.

A young Augie De Blieck with future interview subjects Chris Eliopoulos and Erik Larsen.

THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 95

Whatever happens to blend in with the comics, I’ll talk about it. I don’t mind going off on tangents. The problem with this is that the podcast is very, very timely. I don’t have a big backlog of podcasts that people can listen to forever and ever because, once the new comics have come out, who’s ever going to want to listen to that podcast again? Who’s ever going to want to go back? If I get a new listener today, no one’s going to go back to the first podcast and listen to them straight through. With an interview style show, you could easily have someone do that. That’s a lot more interesting. My show comes out, generally speaking, on Tuesday nights and new comics are Wednesday, so I want people to be listening to it in their car on the way to the comic shop. It’s kind of like a public service that way, and the most common reaction I get for my podcast is someone saying, “Thankfully, I listened to your podcast before I went to the comic store, otherwise I would have missed such and such a release.” Maybe they had forgotten about it or maybe they hadn’t heard about it before. So it works when it’s timely and, when it’s late, I either have to adjust what’s in the podcast a little bit so it becomes less timely or I just have to put it out there and hope that not everyone goes to the comic shop on Wednesday, but, let’s face it, the kind of comics geeks who listen to podcasts are probably the same kind who go to the comic store on Wednesday more often than not. HOUSTON: Have you ever considered changing the format of your show and tying it more closely to the column? DE BLIECK: Yes and no. I would like to add more stuff in. I did do a series of interviews a couple of falls ago. I had Todd Dezago and Peter David and Erik Larsen and Chris Eliopoulos who I had just recorded interviews with. I would like to do an interview show, but, as I’ve 96 | PIPELINE PODCAST

said a million times already, it’s a matter of timing. In life, even before my wife and I had this baby, I’ve never had a great amount of time to do both the column and the podcast in addition to all the other stuff, like my blog. It’s just a matter of how I find the way to get more stuff in there and I haven’t done that. The podcast and the format that it’s in right now is the one that I can manage on a regular basis. You don’t want to change formats every week. For a podcaster, that’s death. The second you change your podcast’s format, you might as well just start a new podcast. You’re going to lose a lot of listeners. You might gain a few, but you’re going to lose more than you gain

Mark Bagley’s original cover art for the 36th issue of Ultimate Spider-Man, a book that appeared so often in Augie’s top 10 lists that he had to temporarily ban it. © Copyright 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.

when you change formats like that. I’ve thrown in those interviews as bonuses. I did those a couple of years ago and I’d be up for doing it again, as time allows. I’d like to do more with the podcast, but, at this point, all the stuff I’d do with it, I just write into the column each week. HOUSTON: One complaint I hear from a lot of podcasters who do reviews and previews as part of their show is that they find it difficult to talk about the same books month after month. How do you feel about that? DE BLIECK: It can be and that’s why, even when I do the podcast and the top ten list, I keep that in mind. At one point, I think I banned Ultimate SpiderMan from being in my top ten list every Augie with iFanboy’s Josh, Conor, and Ron: fellow podcasters and listeners. month. I love the comic. I think it’s © Copyright 2009 iFanboy. possibly the best one Marvel publishes are plenty of podcasts that don’t get any listeners or right now. It’s the one that I enjoy the most, but there only get their core constituency of a couple hundred are times where you have to realize you’ve talked at best. about this and you can’t say the same darn thing you said about it this month that you said about it last HOUSTON: Is it strange for you, a long-time comics month. You don’t want to repeat yourself constantly, fan, to have fans of your own? but, to a certain degree, it’s comics. It’s all about repDE BLIECK: Yes. [laughter] It is. I don’t mind so much etition. What’s Superman up to? 700 issues? So it’s that they agree with me. In many cases, people who something to keep in mind, but it’s not something are roughly my age or grew up reading the same that in any sense has really bothered me too much. I comics as I did or got into comics at the same time I can’t honestly say that it’s ever become a problem did, agree with me on a lot of things, but when people with the podcast. I just keep it in mind and I work refer to themselves as a Pipeline fan—I don’t want to around it and I try to find something new to talk say it freaks me out, but it’s weird to me. I’m just a about, but, again, I’ve done the column now for 11 loudmouth with a bully pulpit. That’s all I am. I use my years and I know how to come up with new stuff each voice and I use the written word on my word procesweek and that’s a trait I’ve pushed onto the podcast sor and I’m very grateful for the people who are fans from the column. and I’m glad to have them around. I like talking to them, but it is definitely weird. HOUSTON: How many listeners do you have? DE BLIECK: Honestly, I haven’t seen the numbers HOUSTON: Have you had much interaction with your recently. I try not to pay attention too much. I know fans or listeners in person? the last time I checked, it was 1,000 downloads a DE BLIECK: Yeah. In fact, when I go to conventions, I week. Obviously, the first couple of days are when tend to wear my the most downloads happen and then it trails off a Comic Book lot over the course of the next month. You’ll see Resources polo there will still be people downloading the podcast shirt and my piceven a month later, which I always think is interesting, ture’s appeared but definitely the bulk of people download during the in Pipeline and first week. During the first week, a podcast of mine other places will get anywhere between 1,000 and 1,300. I’ve often enough and had a couple of them that have spiked up to 1,500 I’ve gone on a or 2,000. I did a few interview shows a couple of couple of video years ago and a couple of other shows have maybe podcasts that I got linked by other blogs for some specific reason think a lot of and those will get more hits, but it’s never been the hardcore Internet huge kind of podcast that you can easily sell Augie and Ron Richards of iFanboy. Photo fans wound up advertising on. They say if you hit over 1,000 listencourtesy iFanboy. © Copyright 2009 iFanboy. seeing my ers, you’re in the top 10% of podcasts because there THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 97

picture, but I’m always amazed, especially in San Diego, when I’m Supporters of the tongue-in-cheek walking down an campaign to see Augie named editoraisle and people in-chief of Wizard magazine added stop me and introthis banner, a parody of then popular Civil War banners, to their forum duce themselves posts. and say, “I listen to the podcast,” or they read the column and they thank me for it. It’s just the coolest thing. You’re sort of a big fish in a small pond, I suppose, when it comes to comics fandom when you have this many listeners or this many readers. When I go to any comics convention, San Diego or any of them, where you have such a high concentration of people who are interested in the same exact things that you’re interested in, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that as many people come up to me as they do, but it’s cool. It really is.

fan site that there is on the Internet right now. So when I started my podcast, I had a head start, honestly, but these other guys, iFanboy, Comic Geek Speak, Chris Marshall, all of them, they started out with basically nothing. They started a website, posted an audio file, and had to beat the street. They had to pound the pavement. They had to talk to people. They had to get their word out. They started from nothing and grew to these large organizations. The Around Comics guys and Comic Geek Speak both started their own conventions in the past year. That’s crazy to me. I just sit behind a microphone and talk once a week and that makes me happy and for them it makes them happier to do even more, to do these conventions and magazines even. It’s great that we’ve all managed to find our own way and to branch out as we want. HOUSTON: I know that Ron at iFanboy even started an admittedly tongue in cheek campaign to get you named as Wizard’s editor-in-chief a couple of years back. DE BLIECK: Yeah. [laughter] That was a conversation that we had that went completely awry. It was a lot of fun. Wizard magazine is one of those things I always thought should have been more than it was. I actually applied for a job there once, years ago, and thank God they didn’t accept my resume. That was a lot of fun. If nothing else, it was kind of great for publicity. I got a lot of e-mails about that for a couple of weeks and seeing my face show up on banners and message board postings was just bizarre, but a lot of fun.

HOUSTON: I know that a lot of your listeners are other podcasters, too. In fact, your name has come up in several of the other interviews I’ve done for this book and I feel like they talk about you not only as a friend but also kind of as a mentor. How does that make you feel? DE BLIECK: That’s the nicest compliment I’ve been paid about the podcast so far. That’s really nice. I am friendly with all those guys, especially the iFanboy guys. Ron and I talk on a daily basis. We e-mail back and forth at work all the time. But the nice thing about the podcast community, and I think this goes generally speaking with all podcasters and definitely hits home with the comics podcasters, we’re generally open about what we do and how we do it with each HOUSTON: What were those letters like? other and if anybody has a question about how to do DE BLIECK: All of them were supportive. All of them something or how to handle a certain situation or a said, “You should do it.” They’d read Pipeline. They technical question, we’re all more than open to talk know what I believe when it comes to comics and I’ve about it with each other and even in public. done columns before about what I think there should But, yeah, considbe in a comics magaering me a mentor, zine and I’ve never been that’s really nice. I shy about that. I’ve mean, I’m glad I always thought there could help them. It’s should be a middle great to talk to all of ground between The them. I’ve learned as Comics Journal and much from them, I Wizard for what a bet, as they learned comics magazine from me. A lot of should be. It should be them started out able to talk to the mainfrom nothing, but I stream comics creators, had a big jumpstart. the Marvel, DC, Image I was on Comic Book comics creators, in a Resources. I’m on, long form interview style given how you want that’s not dumbed down to crunch the numfor the sake of marketWord Balloon host John Siuntres (seen here, second from left, with Augie bers, the number ing. We should be able and the iFanboys) has created a podcast that, according to Augie, has everyone or number two to get into those topics thing he wants to see in a traditional comic book magazine. Photo courtesy iFanboy. © Copyright 2009 iFanboy. of higher comics biggest comic book 98 | PIPELINE PODCAST

knowledge or comics theory, if you will, and, for the most part, that’s not happening in magazines at all. And the funny thing is magazines, to a certain degree, are a dying art from. They’re in print. There’s too much lead time; they can’t be timely, but these discussions of things that aren’t marketing-based, that aren’t set up by the marketing departments, are the kind of things that could go into a magazine because they’re less timely. You could look back over someone’s career in a magazine interview and someone would want to buy it as opposed to discussing with a given creator what book he’s working on next month in a magazine that is ancient by the time its come out because all of the websites and all of the podcasts have interviewed them by now. To a certain degree, you almost have what I’m looking for in my perfect magazine happening in podcasts. Take a look at what John Siuntres does in Word Balloon. Those interviews, which often span a creator’s entire career, are what I want to see in a magazine format. Maybe we don’t need the magazine anymore. Maybe I’m just happy to have that in podcasts and, in that case, who needs Wizard anymore? HOUSTON: Did you ever hear any comment from Wizard? DE BLIECK: Not officially. I know there was a thread on the Wizard message board about it and the Wizard faithful, as you’d expect, didn’t think it was such a great idea. I don’t have those links anymore, unfortunately. Those would be fun to read back to you now, but, as far as hearing from the Wizard people themselves, I got nothing. HOUSTON: I think that’s a really interesting point you made, though, about podcasts being the magazine that you’re looking for and kind of gets at something we talked about earlier with podcasts replacing letter-hacking. Do you think then that the podcast is the new fanzine? DE BLIECK: It very easily could be. It depends on the format you take for your podcast. There are different types of podcasts, obviously. You have your round table discussion show, which happens every week, and we could go back to the Around Comics guys for an example, where you discuss certain comics, certain creators, or certain topics of the week. That wouldn’t necessarily work out in a magazine kind of format, but then you have other shows like Word Balloon, which are these long-form interview shows that aren’t limited by page count or other physical limitations and can be as long as they need to be to discuss these long interviews and creator career stuff. That would easily replace the magazine and there are some people who use their podcasts as sort of their editorial space, which would replace the editorials that you see in a magazine. I think there is this overall movement in the media

as a whole away from print. The Christian Science Monitor announced this week that they’re going out of the print business. They’re getting rid of their daily newspaper and replacing it with a weekly one. They’re going more online. More and more newspapers are coming online. More magazines are folding just completely. I don’t think magazines so much move online to any degree and I don’t think print is going to die just yet. I think comics need to move digitally, but that’s a whole other story. I think that the future is the Internet and podcasts are a big part of that, especially in giving people immediate gratification. HOUSTON: That of course excludes the TwoMorrows magazines, which, I think I can say without bias, are amazing. DE BLIECK: They are and I think they’re one of the great cases for magazines. I love taking them along to read at work. I can’t bring a laptop with me out to lunch when I’m at work, so having a magazine just sitting in the backseat of the car for me is great. Sometimes, you need to get away from the screen, so there is definitely a role for print. The Modern Masters books relate back to my theory of what a magazine should be. It’s that big, 128-page book I’m looking for. Not that you’re looking for a plug or need one, but I love TwoMorrows. HOUSTON: I probably should apologize to the readers for putting a plug in the middle of the interview. [laughter] DE BLIECK: That’s okay. HOUSTON: I’m glad you approve. DE BLIECK: I approve of this message. [laughter] HOUSTON: Getting back to your interactions with other podcasts, how much of a hand have you had, not necessarily in the creation of other podcasts, but in helping other, newer podcasts get their footing. DE BLIECK: Honestly, probably not that much. I think the last major thing I did, and this was completely THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 99

Augie (back center) with a legion of fellow podcasters at San Diego in 2006.

unsolicited, was when Ron Richards at iFanboy mentioned that they were going to be doing a daily video show. My mind started racing with how cool that could be and what a great idea and, I kid you not, in the course of an hour, I just sat in front of a piece of paper and jotted down 50 ideas for what you could do with a daily podcast. “Here are some ideas you guys may want to use,” and a couple of them showed up on their podcasts, but, honestly, they’re such obvious ideas that they probably had them themselves. They’re doing fine, I’m sure. As far as direct impact to other shows, maybe I’ve inspired someone along the way. I know a couple of people—I can’t even tell you who at this point because there are so many comics podcasts that I can’t keep up—that asked, as they started their podcast, a quick technical question or a general question about how you get started, but I couldn’t give you any off the top of my head that I had a direct hand in. HOUSTON: You’ve also appeared on a number of podcasts. What’s that experience like? DE BLIECK: That’s a lot of fun. When you do your own podcast, especially for me, doing a one-guy podcast, I don’t have other people come on to talk, generally speaking. There are a couple of exceptions, but I don’t get the chance to talk comics with other people. So I get that experience and then to not worry about 100 | PIPELINE PODCAST

the technical things, to just do the talking and not have to worry about how the levels are set and all that. Especially because the podcasts I’ve appeared on are all podcasts that I’ve listened to before then, it’s kind of fun to go from being a listener to being a participant and dipping your toe into someone else’s format as it were. It’s not anything I could probably do on a regular basis. Again, time limitations, and I couldn’t imagine trying to coordinate with two or three other people to do a round table every week. The Comic Geek Speak guys get my highest regards for being able to do what they do every week and get that many people involved, but it is a lot of fun and, to a certain degree, obviously, it’s cross-marketing. Whenever I appear on another podcast, I get more email about my podcast than I’ve ever gotten before. I appeared on Comic Geek Speak a couple of months ago and I got a lot of e-mails from people that week sharing their letter-hack memories or complimenting me on my appearance on the show. I even got a few new listeners out of the deal. It’s a lot of fun to do every once in a while and, again, just looking at this from the marketing perspective, it’s good marketing for a podcaster to appear on another show HOUSTON: What podcasts do you listen to? DE BLIECK: Comics-related or in general?

HOUSTON: Both! DE BLIECK: Comics-related it’s Around Comics and I listen to Collected Comics Library. I listen to Comic Geek Speak every once in a while. I can’t keep up with all of them and some of them aren’t necessarily to my interest. iFanboy I listen to and watch. My Apple TV is loaded up with iFanboy. Let me pop open my iTunes to get you a better idea. I listen to a lot of tech podcasts and a lot of photography podcasts. Those are my other interests, so This Week in Tech, which is fairly popular, especially among podcasters, and their related shows. Mac Break Weekly, if you’re a Mac fan. For photography podcasts, Digital Photography Podcast would be an obvious one. That’s about it. I listen to them a lot at work because I’m a computer programmer, so, if I’m working on stuff and I don’t necessarily have to engage my mind, I have my iPod on. I listen to them in the car back and forth from work all the time. I do get a fair number of them in. Of course, Word Balloon. Duh. Webcomics Weekly, if you’re a fan of webcomics at all. Scott Kurtz and his gang of friends do a great podcast. If you’re a webcomics fan or thinking of doing a webcomic, that one I can’t recommend enough. Light Source, that’s a photography podcast. Those are the major ones I listen to each week. HOUSTON: You’ve touched on this a little already, but I’d like to go back to it. Yours is a single-host show. Do you find that difficult ever? Is it difficult to fill 15 minutes by yourself? DE BLIECK: Actually, for the most part, no, I don’t. That probably comes from a couple of things. I was a talk radio junkie in a former life. [laughs] For most of the ’90s, I listened to a lot of talk radio, which, for the most part, are single-host format shows, so I had a little bit of inspiration from that and hearing those sort of techniques and, again, as someone who’s done radio and been around radio people in my life, I’ve picked up some details from them on how to work it, but, for me, it’s actually easier just to spout off from the mouth. I have a list of comics, but I don’t have anything else written down ahead of time. Whatever comes out of my mouth, nine times out of ten, it’s something I thought of after I hit the record button. It’s comics. I know them backwards and forwards. I probably should do a little more research, honestly, before I hit the record button because I’m not always 100 percent sure what’s in a comic coming out that week. Sometimes I would like to have another host, but I do the Pipeline Previews Podcast with my friend Jamie Tarquini, which is fun to do with him, but the problem with that is we could talk all day and then it becomes a matter of how do we try to keep this to an hour or less? And we have these marathon recording sessions, which can become a little unwieldy in the editing process. I don’t do that much editing, to tell you the truth, but I kind of prefer the simplicity.

Everything about the podcast is streamlined for simplicity. It’s just me. It’s just a list of comics. It’s just a microphone. There’s no musical bed. There are no high-end production values. It’s just hit record and publish. That’s it. I sort of enjoy the single-man format that way. HOUSTON: Which is easier for you or which do you enjoy more, the column or the podcast? DE BLIECK: That’s a good question. I think I enjoy recording the podcast more just because, to a certain degree, you get in, you do it, and you’re done and it exercises a muscle I don’t use the rest of the week. Theoretically, when you’re talking during a podcast, you’re talking a little differently than you do when you talk to someone in real life, when you’re having a conversation with a friend, and I think, to a certain degree, I’ve slipped into my podcaster voice for this interview and I should probably apologize. But I enjoy doing radio. I enjoy doing this audio recording thing, so, again, it’s quick, it’s simple, and it’s more or less easy to make. The column is the one, honestly, of the two, I don’t want to say I’m more proud of, but it’s something that I’ve worked on all week. It’s something that I edit religiously. Writing, to me, is often something that’s done in the rewriting stage and that takes sometimes more time than the actual writing and that’s just a lot more work. It’s something that starts from zero. With the podcast, I know what I’m going to be talking about each week. I know there’s going to be a new list of comics coming out and I know I’ll list out ten of them and I know I’ll be talking, whereas, with the column, it can be anything I want it to be each week, which is good in that it gives me the freedom, but it’s also bad in that I start from zero at the beginning of each week and it’s kind of like running on ice. It’s a high wire act, whichever metaphor you want to use. So I’m always

My how things have already changed. When this picture was taken in the summer of 2000, no one had ever even heard of podcasting and Joe Quesada was still just the editor of the Marvel Knights line. THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 101

proud of myself whenever I get that thing polished and published, that I managed to successfully complete another week of that.

you couldn’t do anything else, and I also think it’s another community issue. I think comics podcasts create their own communities and I think people are HOUSTON: Did you ever always interested in those. expect your podcast to last Look at the rise of all the as long as it has? social media websites out DE BLIECK: You know, yeah, there, the Facebooks and I did. I mean, I didn’t go MySpaces and all the rest. I into it thinking it was a think podcasting is another short-term thing. Some podform of message boards and casts are meant to be limitfandom in general, so I think ed run things, but, to me, I both of those things have had done the column at worked out well for podthat point for seven or eight casts. years and I didn’t go into I think another thing about doing the podcast thinking podcasting in general is that I’d only do it for a year or people don’t want to listen two. I went into it thinking to the overproduced, overthis is something I’m going compressed, typical, over the to do regularly for as long top radio DJ voices when as I physically can or as they listen to podcasts. They long as the listenership is like podcasts that sound like there or as long as Jonah a group of people sitting puts up with me putting this around a table at their local on his server and adding all comic book shops, talking that bandwidth to his bill about comics. I think that’s each month, so I try not to a big draw with podcasting is do things, especially when it that ability to be normal and Augie with the future of comic book podcasting, comes to Pipeline, that are, commonplace and not nechis beautiful new baby daughter. if you’ll pardon the phrase, essarily overproduced and half-a**ed. I try to make turned into a product and a sure that, when I do them, I’m committed to them in commodity by some evil marketers. Wow. I just comadvance and, if I don’t think I can or if I think I’d run pletely went off the rails and turned to this anti-corpoout of ways to do it each week, I just wouldn’t do it at rate bandwagon, but you get the idea. all. HOUSTON: What do you suppose draws people to HOUSTON: How do you think the medium has podcasts? Why do you think they became so popular changed since you started? so quickly? DE BLIECK: First, there’s more advertising now for DE BLIECK: It’s a couple of things. One is a format podcasts than there once was. I think the podcasters issue. I would bet most people listen to podcasts on who’ve risen to the top in comics podcasts and podthe road, in their cars, or maybe in the gym. I think casts in general are the ones who were able to get podcasts give you a chance to access the comics more serious and dedicate more time to it. I think world at times you otherwise wouldn’t be able to. You that’s probably true in any part of the world or any can sit in front of the computer and go to the webeffort that people do, but I think that we definitely see sites and the blogs and all the rest. You can sit down today, as opposed to a couple of years ago, a rise in and read a comic book. You can go to your comic professionalism when it comes to doing podcasts. I shop and talk to people there, but there are all these think people take these things more seriously, even other times during the day where you don’t necessariwhen they’re doing a podcast that seems light and ly have that. You have this dead time. Let’s just say fun and jovial a lot of times. I’m not saying they’re the commute into work. God only knows, these days, faking that at all, but I think they keep in mind what most people’s commute into work is probably more they’re doing as they’re doing it, that this is the forthan half an hour and this is a great way to fill that mat they have. This is what people expect and this is with something other than the morning zoo crew on what they enjoy doing, thankfully. If they didn’t enjoy the radio or the same loop of songs every FM station it, they’d probably quit doing it. I also think that, along plays these days. I think the format definitely helped those same lines, even my podcast has gotten more technical in the past three years so that it sounds it a lot in that the audio is there to listen to at times 102 | PIPELINE PODCAST

have to strain to hear it and that it isn’t confusing at all.

Chris Eliopoulos drew this picture of Augie in commemoration of Pipeline’s 10th anniversary.

just a little bit better. There are more tools out there, too. There’s free software that will help. The Levelator’s a big one that will help level the audio volume levels of two different sides of a conversation, for example. HOUSTON: What advice do you have for people starting their own comic podcasts today? DE BLIECK: First, pick a format. Know what you’re going to talk about and have an idea for what you want your show to be. The second is actually sit down and do it. It’s very easy to plan something out way too far in advance and then to have a paralysis by analysis sort of thing and not do something, so the question is, “Are you going to do it and, if so, why aren’t you doing it already?” And I think it’s important to record those things. This is a tip I’ve heard from other people that kind of pains me to say it, but I think it’s a good one: record your first show, listen back to it, and then delete it. It’s probably going to suck. You probably don’t want people listening to it a year from now. You have to work out the kinks in any show and it’s going to take more than one week and one show. I’m just going to assume it’s a weekly podcast that this theoretical person is going to do because you can’t have a podcast that is going to happen every once in a while. You have to pick a schedule and stick to it. If you’re not going to be able to stick to it, let people know in advance. A lot of times, people will understand. They’ll be fine with that. I think the most important thing is to actually use the free tools that are available to make sure it doesn’t sound awful. I’ve heard my share of other podcasts, comic podcasts included, that sound like they were recorded in a closet with the door closed and a complete echo chamber going on and it sounds horrible. I said people like to have podcasts that aren’t overly commercialized or overly produced, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you want to strain their ears to hear what you’re saying, so make sure your audio is coming out clearly enough that people don’t

HOUSTON: What do you think is the future of comic podcasting? DE BLIECK: To a certain degree, it hasn’t changed all that much. There have been some new formats and new voices since it began, obviously, but comics podcasting is still comics podcasting. It’s still, for the most part, a weekly endeavor done by people mirroring the way comics are released weekly. That’s the mentality of the fan base: things need to come out in a weekly manner, although I think that works in general with TV shows, too, and all the rest. People just don’t have the attention span longer than a week, but, as far as the future goes, I think you’ll see more of podcasting reaching out to other realms. We’re starting to see it already. I mentioned before you have iFanboy doing video podcasts. You have Comic Geek Speak doing a magazine. You have Comic Geek Speak and Around Comic doing conventions, smaller conventions, thankfully, not these big, Wizard World-sized things. I think podcasting is part of the whole way the media is working towards more niche material. Each podcaster will have to create their own niche out of the general comics fandom and, when they do that, they’ll be able to find ways to, not necessarily grow that niche or grow that audience, but become more in tune with that audience and create different ways of interacting with their audience, whether that be a convention or a publication or just creator interaction with the fans, meeting them in public, that kind of thing. I think podcasting will continue for a good, long time and I don’t think anything is going to kill it any time soon. Thank you, iTunes. But I think the creative difference in podcasting that we’ll see in a couple of years is that more of the major podcasters, if you will, will be more involved in other ways besides just doing a podcast, and for those people who have the time to devote to that, it’s a great thing. I’m glad to see people becoming successful, sort of entrepreneurs of their own. Podcasting, in a certain way, can become an entrepreneurial thing and I don’t know if anyone is going to be making a full-time living out of comics podcasting just yet, but we’re moving in that direction. I think, and this isn’t just for comics, that as the advertising industry moves more online, they’re going to move more towards niche marketing and I think podcasters will eventually become part of that. We just have to keep working at it and we have to keep trying to bang our heads against those walls and knock down those doors to bring those advertisers and their money in so we can have more people doing podcasting maybe even professionally.

THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 103

C R E A T O R

I N T E R V I E W

GENE COLAN Gene Colan is one of comics’ true gentlemen, a grand old man who, over the years, has brought his moody and distinctive pencils to such diverse titles as Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Howard the Duck, and The Tomb of Dracula. On the evening of April 16, 2008, Gene and I discussed his podcast appearances, where he has been a favorite guest of both Around Comics and Comic Geek Speak, as well as how the rise of fandom on the Internet has affected his retirement. Shortly after this interview was conducted came the announcement that Gene’s health had turned for the worse. While he has improved in the past few months, our thoughts and prayers remain with Gene and his family.

HOUSTON: I recently interviewed Comic Geek Speak and they said their interview with you was one of their favorites. COLAN: I had a lot of fun with it. They were great interviewers. HOUSTON: Was that your first interview for a podcast? COLAN: I’ve done a few, but I’m not sure. My wife would know better because she takes care of all of the business stuff for me. She’s very good with business. I’ve been interviewed several times lately. The new film that’s coming out, Iron Man, they came to the house and filmed me just prior to watching it. They put together an interview for the feature, in this case, Iron Man, and I did one on Daredevil and it was a lot of fun and good. Maybe I can do the same for you. HOUSTON: Was that the first time you’d heard of a podcast? COLAN: I’m not really that familiar with them, no. I was just overwhelmed by the opportunity to do it. That’s all I can remember. Three years ago was a long time ago for me. You’re talking to an 81-year-old geezer! You never know where it’s all 104 | GENE COLON

going to take you. But they’ve treated me very nicely, all these interviewers, and I enjoyed myself. I really had a ball. I grew up in the days of radio, so I’m not actually a novice at it. HOUSTON: I know that you have a website of your own. How have podcasts, your website and, really, the Internet as a whole changed your career now that you’re retired from monthly comics?

COLAN: It was very fortunate for everyone, a website where you can get work without relying on the various companies to give you work, so it’s been a real blessing. It helps me get on interviews and sell you work through email, things like that. I enjoy it very much. HOUSTON: Have the podcasts and the website helped you meet your fans and make new ones? COLAN: Oh, yes. Support comes in from different areas of the country and from Europe. You know, stuff you never expected to happen, but there it is. It’s happened and I’ve picked up work without ever having to step outside my home and pound the pavement, because that goes way, way back, going to my formative years, trying to keep the roof over my head and family, but today it’s altogether different. I just love it. HOUSTON: Podcasting and the Internet have only been around for a few years, so I wonder how you think the comics industry would have been different if the Internet had existed in the ’60s and ’70s. COLAN: That’s hard to say. It certainly would have given the publishing companies a run for their money. At that time, the only way you could earn a living would be through the various publishers, like Marvel or DC. I worked for just about every comic publisher there is that existed back then. Right now, I think the artists and writers are doing work through the Internet and being recognized on the Internet for all the wonderful stuff they’ve done. It’s been wonderful for all of us. It really has kept the roof over our heads and helped us meet new people and, in my case, be commissioned to do some of the super-hero drawings. I have one coming up with Dracula. I’ve done many of

them and I’m still doing it. HOUSTON: I’ve seen some of the commissions on your site and you still do an amazing job. COLAN: Well, I enjoy it, you know? I put the time in and I’m not harassed by the editor to have to have it in in a couple of days. First of all, if they did, I wouldn’t be able to deliver it in a couple of days. Those days are over. When I was younger, I could do it quicker and better. Maybe not better. I’ve grown. At least, I’d like to think I have, but best of all it’s provided a good living for myself and my family. HOUSTON: How long do you spend on these commissions? COLAN: A few days, maybe three or four days, sometimes longer. There are no deadlines on them, which THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 105

means I can take my time, and when I can take my time, I do better work. If I have to knock it out real quick, then it shows, and I try to be as honest and fair to the purchaser as I would be to my own family and try to get them a good one for their money. HOUSTON: That’s great to hear and I’ve certainly enjoyed hearing you interviewed on Comic Geek Speak and Around Comics. COLAN: Yeah. HOUSTON: Would you like to appear on more shows? COLAN: Oh, sure. I’m always open to interviews. It’s always a pleasure to tell stories about the business to young people coming up who want to know—who you got along with and who you didn’t and how did the editors treat you. There’s good and bad in all businesses and where the editors are difficult to deal with, but sometimes you get lucky and get a couple of editors who aren’t difficult to deal with, but, like everything else, there’s always someone to answer to. Hopefully, you’ll get somebody that’s really nice. You know, it’s a difficult business. You’re literally tied to the board. I mean, your whole life just goes by. I just want to tell you it’s very hard to have a family and watch them grow up and, actually, you’re more married to your work than you are to your family and that’s a big mistake. So much of us are caught up in the work we have to put out that we’re not too much aware of the time or the day or the hour or even the year. HOUSTON: It’s been great to hear your perspective on this. 106 | GENE COLON

He may be 81 years old, but Gene Colan’s pencils are more dynamic than ever, as seen in this amazing Iron Man commission. Courtesy Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). © Copyright 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.

COLAN: [The Internet] has been wonderful to me. An awful lot of hard work, though. Well, no, it’s not so hard if you enjoy it. You have to enjoy it, no matter what it may be.

COMIC GEEK SPEAK Over the past four years, Philadelphia’s Comic Geek Speak has quickly grown into one of the most popular, and certainly the most prolific, comic book podcasts. Each and every week, Peter Rios, Bryan Deemer, Shane Kelly Mulholland, Matt, Adam Murdough, Jamie D, and Brian “Pants” Christman put out more shows than most other podcasters do in a month, each one filled with terrific insights about the world of comics, as well as a terrific sense of humor and the sort of chemistry that only exists among close friends. On April 6, 2008, these so-called speakers of geek were kind enough to take time away from uniting the world’s greatest heroes, one listener at a time, to talk about their show. HOUSTON: As we record this interview, Comic Geek Speak just celebrated another anniversary. BRYAN: Correct, our three years’.

Comic Geek Speak clockwise from left, Matt, Bryan Deemer, Brian Christman, Peter Rios, Jamie D, former member Kevin, Shane Kelly Mulholland, and Adam Murdough. All photos in this chapter courtesy Comic Geek Speak, unless otherwise noted. © Copyright 2009 Comic Geek Speak.

HOUSTON: How many episodes is that? BRYAN: Well, 400 numbered episodes, but we actually have over 500 episodes when you include all the various specials and such that we did. HOUSTON: I counted them up and came up with 534. PANTS: Oh, my God. BRYAN: That sounds about right. HOUSTON: That’s a hell of a lot of episodes. How have you done it? When so many other podcasts have come and gone, how have you not only stayed together, but also produced so many episodes? BRYAN: I’m sure Peter will have something to say on this too, but I’ll start off saying that I think the reason that we’re still producing episodes is simply because we’re friends. It’s fun to get together with or without the microphones, so having the microphones is an excuse to get together on a regular basis. I think if the podcast ended tomorrow, we wouldn’t see each other two or three times a week like we do now, and then seeing each other once a week would turn into once every two weeks and that would turn into once every three weeks and then life would start getting in the way more and more. As long as we have the podcast as a constant, it forces us to get together on a regular basis, which is a good thing. Peter, do you want to handle how we got to do so many episodes? PETER: A lot of it is just that there’s so much to talk about and so many people to talk to. There’s never a shortage of creators and never a shortage of good books to talk about and recommend and every week

something new excites us and every week we discover something else or somebody else and it just got to the point where we had the content to do five episodes a week, so let’s just do five episodes a week, like a real radio show. We’re on every day, for those listeners that listen to us at work especially. It’s funny, we’ve been doing this now for a few weeks and nobody has said anything. It’s like they assumed it’s been coming. HOUSTON: It seems like, if not five, it’s always been at least two or three episodes a week. BRYAN: Well, the first day that we ever recorded, Peter and I sat down and recorded two episodes back to back because it just seemed like, well, again, there was so much to talk about and if we were getting together… That’s the thing, we have to make an effort to get together, so, when we’re together, rather than just record one episode, which would be kind of a waste of time, we might as well record two or three, so if we’re going to get together one day a week, we may as well record two episodes and, at the beginning, that’s what we did. We’d just record two episodes and we said, “Okay. I’ll see you next week.” Then two became three and one day a week became two days a week and two episodes just becomes five and that’s how it just naturally progressed. HOUSTON: You talked about all being friends and having been friends and I think that comes across in each episode, but it begs the question: how did you all meet? JAMIE: It kind of goes back to when I was working with Bryan, back when he was 15, at a frozen yogurt THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 107

BRYAN: And I met Shane and Peter when we started doing Crusaders because Kevin and Mike knew you guys and we all got pulled together, and Matt just showed up at one Halloween party and that’s how I met him. MATT: Alex I’d met, who worked at Golden Eagle, and he took me to Shane’s to watch Star Wars, and then five years later I got back into the group. PETER: I remember Matt from Golden Eagle, actually. BRYAN: I met Murd in 1995 at a musical. ADAM: Exactly ten years after that, I ended up getting recruited into Comic Geek Speak. It’s almost like a cosmic event. SHANE: I’ve known various guys here for the better part of twelve years now and we started by hanging out and watching movies and playing games and it’s continued. What we talk about here is what we talk about there. HOUSTON: When you decided to do the podcast, was that Bryan’s idea? BRYAN: I read that fateful article in Wired magazine, February 2005. That started it all.

store in 1989. We got to be friends and we started talking about comics. I knew he was into comics. I even sold him some comics, X-Factors. BRYAN: Yeah, I bough your full run of X-Factor. JAMIE: We stayed friends even after I left there and got a job at the comic store. Bryan had left [the frozen yogurt store] and was looking for another parttime job, so I went to my boss and said I knew somebody who was good. Boom. He got hired there and we’ve been friends ever since. And the rest of the guys have been customers. Most all of us got together either through relatives or the shop. It seems like Golden Eagle is the one constant in our lives that kind of brought us together and we basically became friends out of that. There were other side projects that people had done, Crusaders and things like that. We kind of got together as a group of friends and it went from there. BRYAN: Jamie and I were friends first. Well, Matt and Murd’s friendship may have extended before ’89. ADAM: We’ve known each other for twenty years. BRYAN: We knew Kevin from working at the store, so then we knew Kevin. PETER: I knew Kevin from Golden Eagle, but also from doing the shows that we did together. SHANE: I knew Peter from Golden Eagle, hanging out on Wednesdays and met Kevin and Jamie and Matt. BRYAN: Then Pants I knew from shopping at Golden Eagle way back when. SHANE: And I knew Pants from working at Toys ’R’ Us. 108 | COMIC GEEK SPEAK

HOUSTON: Who hosted the first few episodes? BRYAN: Peter and I were solo for the first two and Shane was on the third? SHANE: Kevin was on the fourth. Jamie was on the fifth. PETER: Matt’s first show was the seventh. SHANE: Brian’s was 154? PANTS: About a year-and-a-half later. SHANE: Murd’s was Batman Begins. PETER: It was Bryan and I, and these guys would come in randomly here and there. It was weird because these guys would be in the room and we’d record two episodes and only bring one person on at a time. It was really kind of strange. JAMIE: I don’t think we had enough microphones. That was the problem. MATT: It was like we were being drafted. PETER: And we did do some regular duo episodes, and it wasn’t until episode 25 where we decided, from here on in, we’ll treat it as a group. Then in episode 36 we changed the opening from Bryan and I with special guests to whoever was on the episode. Everybody would just say their own names. BRYAN: That seems like such a monumental decision to decide to do it that way. JAMIE: The funny thing is, when you think about it, now, episode 25, to put out 25 episodes is, what, two weeks worth of work? Back then it was only two episodes at a time. HOUSTON: Hearing you talk, you get this picture of the show taking some time to come together, but I listened to some old episodes, like episode 20, which is the cartoon theme song episode, and, really, you guys already sounded like a well-oiled machine. BRYAN: That’s a great episode.

SHANE: One of my favorites. BRYAN: We kind of got lucky with the whole podcasting thing. We started early, which was a benefit because we got out there when there wasn’t as much competition, but also we just kind of walked into it in that when we get together it’s very gregarious, it’s very natural, and we’re all at ease with each other. That comes off in the episodes and it’s a chemistry that you can’t sit down and create on paper. It just kind of happens and we didn’t expect it to happen. We can’t change it. It’s just us. It is who we are and that’s just the way the episodes end up. JAMIE: You can’t explain it. We just all play well off each other. It’s weird to say we have comedy timing, but we do. It’s just something natural and it constantly goes back to the fact that we are friends and it’s just us talking to one another. We do this stuff all the time when we talk to one another. We even get dirtier when the mic isn’t in front of us. PANTS: We work blue. SHANE: I think Pants would still be called Pants if we’d never done the show. That would have come out. HOUSTON: Do you feel like you each bring a specific, unique quality to the show or is it more a question of the group dynamic? ADAM: We are a rainbow of geekiness. Each of us contributes something different to the spectrum, but we all come together to create a unified whole. JAMIE: I like the idea that we’re some kind of podcast Voltron. [laughter] PETER: Actually, the best judge of that question is actually the listeners. They’re the ones that have probably the most specific idea of the roles that we play or the roles that they see us as. They all have differences in their opinions or who they gravitate towards, but they’re pretty spot-on in saying what roles we bring to the cast as a whole. JAMIE: It all has to do with our age differences and our voices. If it’s happened once, it’s happened twenty times, where someone will come up to me and say they listen to me because I’m the older voice and it’s usually somebody who’s in my age group, late thirties, early forties, that they like to listen to me because I bring wisdom—I don’t want to say wisdom because I don’t want to toot my own horn. People come up to Shane and Pants and people say they love them because of their toys. Murd and Peter usually get the trivia geeks. Bryan gets the people who like his point of view as far as straightforward storytelling. Matt gets all the smartasses who just want to say what he says and just can’t. But Peter’s right. It is the listeners who really hit us head on. PETER: A lot of times we’ll get feedback from the listeners at the beginning of a new year and a lot of things I always see are things like they like Shane’s approach to the show because he’s not one to be controversial, but they enjoy it because they’re sort of

like him. They enjoy comics for what they are and he just says what he likes or says what he doesn’t like and that’s his point of view. They’ll say about Matt what Jamie said about Matt, but they like that about Matt not only because he’s funny but also because he sticks to his guns and there’s some truth behind what he’s saying. The listeners really do have a deeper knowledge of who we are. There are times when Brian “Pants” Christman wearing some of us have been the sweatshirt that gained him called stubborn. They his nickname. © Copyright 2009 Comic know that we’re not Geek Speak going to get out of the opinions that we have and they like that or they don’t like that. So that’s a question definitely for the listeners. SHANE: Or take something like the DMZ discussion. Bryan and Jamie like so many things almost across the board and then there’s one thing where they are total opposites of the entire world on and it’s a laugh riot to listen to them argue about it back and forth. PETER: And that’s the sort of episode that throws listeners off because they just assume we’re going to blanket like something because that’s the way the river flows, you know? Then we throw in an episode like that, and we don’t do it on purpose, but it makes everybody go, “Oh, yeah, they do have their own opinions.” ADAM: Listeners seem to almost enjoy the episodes where we disagree the most.

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HOUSTON: How many idea if anybody would care listeners do you have? or listen. So we put it out BRYAN: Well, that’s the there and, bam, the first emillion-dollar question, mail we get is from a guy isn’t it? With podcasting, in El Salvador. I’m a big you only know how many global geography guy and I times an episode is thought it was really cool downloaded. You don’t that somebody from El know how many people Salvador was listening to who downloaded it lisour show, and he was a tened to it. Sometimes really cool guy, so I there are two people lisbecame friendly with him in tening to it at the same e-mail and it turned out he time, but it was only did another podcast, Los downloaded once. And Comic Geekos. They Adam Murdough: CGS ambassador to foreign lands and listeners. then we put out a lot of became part of our show, © Copyright 2009 Comic Geek Speak episodes and not everywe became part of their one can listen to every episode, so you get the peoshow, and it was really cool. Other listeners started ple who listen to every other episode or one out of sending us e-mails and, in the beginning, it was really every three episodes or one a week, so you kind of easy to be personal because you didn’t get that many have to extrapolate and, based on what we can guess e-mails and it was really exciting. Then we started to and what our advertisers tell us what response has learn the breadth of our audience and all the different been, we think we have in the neighborhood of things they could bring to the table and all the cool 10,000 listeners. people we started to meet, as we actually started to meet them at conventions, and it was so easy to have HOUSTON: That’s a lot of listeners. this great attraction with the audience because they BRYAN: It is. It’s amazing when we think about how were cool people and I definitely feel like a better perwe started with, “What the hell. Let’s just see if anyson for having known these people. Now I have these body listens.” friends all over the world. My wife and I spent a week MATT: We’d be happy with ten. in El Salvador at this guy’s house because he became BRYAN: Yeah, and now it’s 10,000. my friend, and I can say that about so many people MATT: And that’s global, too. all over the world. I like to have friends and it’s cool BRYAN: Right. It’s an international community. to me when these people can become my friends and PETER: Have we hit every continent now, except, obviit’s definitely enriched my life, so it was never a diffiously, for Antarctica? cult decision to say I want to involve the listeners BRYAN: Yeah. Absolutely. more because the listeners are the only reason you JAMIE: Damn penguins. We’ve got to get them some do it. Otherwise, you’re talking to the wall and what’s iPods. [laughter] the point of that? SHANE: We also started a forum for everybody to HOUSTON: I think that fan interaction and that kind interact on a more personal, real time type set-up. of sense of commuWe’ve all visited comic forums and most of them are nity is a big part of kind of rude and obnoxious. Bitter, back and forth, nitpodcasting in genpicky things happen, but we still want to interact with eral, but I think everyone, so it kind of rolled on its own and this comthat you guys really munity came up where it was fun and it was happy exemplify that and and that kind of bitterness never happened. As more really go above and people listened, the forum got better. More people beyond in creating interacted and we had more friends and it just took that bond with your on a life of its own. fans. Was that something you set HOUSTON: It’s amazing to me, too, because one of out to do initially or the most common complaints about fandom on the did it just happen? Internet is about some forums and that bitterness, BRYAN: For me, I and it seems to me that, with any podcast that has have always felt that a forum, that’s just not the case. it started very, very PETER: It’s because I rule with an iron thumb. early on. Peter and I [laughter] Bryan Deemer with Los Comic did this thing in a JAMIE: I honestly believe it’s because, a lot of times Geekos Ticoman, Omarman, and on these podcasts, we always try to keep it positive. vacuum. We had no Britoman in El Salvador. © Copyright 2009 Comic Geek Speak

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Even in our criticisms, we don’t go overboard in bashing or we don’t just blanket bash. If we have an opposing view, we can back it up. We don’t just do shows to show how we hate comics. One of the more interesting shows we’ve done was on the lateness of comics, especially Civil War. People point to that as one of our best episodes ever, where we had all opposing views. We had a retailer and somebody in the industry; we came at it from so many different views when we could have just sat there and bashed and bashed and bashed. But we’re not doing this for money. We’re doing it for the love and that’s one of the things we’ve always said, “Spread the love.” We’ve said that from the beginning and we’ve meant it. I’ve never met a more positive group of people who are more willing to do stuff for you for no reason. There’s no reason that half the stuff we’ve been given should even be given to us by these people. We never did anything special, but they feel that what we and other podcasts do for the community and for them it’s just an amazing, amazing feeling. I’ve said this before; walking through San Diego the second year we were there, somebody literally recognized me out of all those hundreds of thousands of people. I heard my name and I turned around and it was, “Hey, I just wanted to say hi. I love the show. Keep up the good work,” and he walked away. He didn’t want anything. He just wanted to say hi. That’s an experience everyone in this room has had and it’s just positive and I think that’s why the podcast forums are the way they are: because we keep it positive. BRYAN: The other thing is, when we first launched the forum, we said very specifically that we’re going to give this a try and we’re only going to keep it around as long as people are positive. We don’t want another negative place on the Internet, and I think there are a lot of people who are tired of all the negative places on the Internet, so they kind of embraced it and now everyone gets very defensive about our nice, positive place on the Internet. Every so often,

somebody new will come on and say something negative and, immediately, there will be four or five posts that will say, “Hey, welcome to the forum. Just so you know, we play nice around here, so we Bryan, Jamie, and Adam “spread the love.” would appreci- © Copyright 2009 Comic Geek Speak ate it if you would tone it down in your future posts.” Now, it’s their safe haven they can go to and they don’t want that to ever change. We’ve been very dead set on that since the very beginning. It will be a fun place or it won’t be at all. HOUSTON: As fans yourselves, is it strange for you to have fans? SHANE: Yes. ADAM: Yes. JAMIE: Without a doubt. SHANE: If they do something for us, that’s even stranger. Like Jamie said, we don’t do this for anything. We don’t look for anything. If we weren’t doing the podcast, we’d be sitting around talking like this no matter what. So it’s extremely strange. Wonderful, but strange. JAMIE: Very humbling. You feel very humbled when somebody comes up and tells you what you said, what it meant to them. PETER: It’s funny; really early on in the podcast, even before episode 100, Lene Tyler from the I Read Comics podcast said to me, “You guys are rock stars,” and I said, “What does that mean?” And she was sort of kidding, but she was kind of serious, and although we say we’re at the same level that the listeners are, because we are, they sort of see us as a go-between for them and the industry that we’re talking about because we’ve done interviews and we have connections and we can say hello to people that are in the business and, as amazing as it is, it is also something I never want to abuse. Because we have that line, it just means that the show is better and we can give them more information and make it a better experience for them, but there is also this fine line where this has become something that we do have to be very respectful of. When we go to conventions and things, when we talk to people, we represent the show and, in representing the show, we represent the listeners, and creators understand that. They know that, through us, they can reach the listeners and the listeners, through us, can reach the creators. THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 111

BRYAN: I think that fine line you talk of was really exemplified at Episode 300, where, before that, one of our listeners said, “I’m really excited to come, but I’m a little worried that now that you’re going to have so many big name guests that you’re going to be walking around talking to them and you’re not going to have any time to talk to the us regular listeners, that you’re going to elevate yourself to this mode where you’re only talking to Mike Norton or Freddie Williams or whoever,” but then the event time came and the listeners had more face time with the professionals than I did because I was busy talking care of business and everybody had a great time and the feedback came back and said, “Well, forget that worry. I got to spend more time with big name guests at Episode 300 than any convention I’ve ever been to in my life and they were so accessible and wonderful and the Geeks were walking around; we talked to the Geeks and we talked to the other listeners and we talked to professionals and everybody was an equal at the event.” And I think that’s exactly where we kept that balance and didn’t go too far in that direction and stayed humble. I’m very uncomfortable with the whole notion of celebrity and, even though I’m experiencing it a little bit now because of the show, every time it creeps in, it’s just not easy for me. I could never be a Tom Cruise and let it go to my head. There’s no way I would ever be able to do that. It’s totally uncomfortable. JAMIE: If we got paid Mike Norton’s cover art for the Episode 300 $30,000,000 for program. © Copyright 2009 Comic Geek Speak 112 | COMIC GEEK SPEAK

this show, I think I could experience celebrity a little better. [laughter] SHANE: We record this in Bryan’s house and hang out and we’re friends and we go to conventions, but it’s not a daily thing. We’re not being hounded every day by reporters. So it’s a little weird to get celebrity status from some people, but I never think of it that way. It’s just me and my friends hanging out and talking about comics. PETER: And the reason we do the convention tours is so we can meet more listeners. That’s why we do it. We want to meet them because we’ve seen them on the forum so much or they send e-mails. We schedule ten conventions a year, if not more, and it’s because we want to meet the people who have made this fun. We don’t go to meet the creators. We went to MegaCon for the first time this year and it was a whole new market, you could say, and we met so many new people and met people that were so thankful that we went down to Florida and that just made it all worth it. HOUSTON: I love that about you guys, that you’re not at all shy about giving back to the fans and bringing the fans into the forefront like that. Even all of your anniversary shows seem to be based on that idea of giving back. MATT: If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t be around. JAMIE: Absolutely. That’s why I’ve loved the anniversary shows, because we’ve gotten to watch it grow from twenty people the first time to a hundred to two hundred. Watching the community build is more than enough for me and, like Bryan said at the very beginning, the fact that I have people now that I can call my friends that live in California or England or the Midwest, is just amazing to think about and humbling. MATT: Actually, I thought the least entertaining part of Episode 300 was the recording, when it was just the eight of us sitting in front of everybody else and interacting. Friday night, when we went out with everyone to eat, that was the best time because it was just a bunch of friends, no matter where you were in the industry: fan, in the industry itself, podcasting, just in the one location drinking, eating, having fun, talking. PETER: The listeners do love seeing the live recording. They love that. They can see us banter and interact. That, to them, is a treat. I’ll say this because this is a book about podcasting. I think some of the wrong

way to go about trying to develop an audience— and I’ve seen this—they think by getting the big Alist interviews and being cool and snazzy with all their technical stuff and all these bells and whistles—that will get some people to listen, but that doesn’t build or sustain your audience. We just celebrated episode 400 and some people might say, “Oh, Bryan and Peter at Comic-Con International. Jamie recording live at Episode 100. you’re going to get a big © Copyright 2009 Comic Geek Speak © Copyright 2009 Comic Geek Speak guest,” and what did we stay in my apartment with my fiancée and I and we’ll do? We had a live call-in show with our listeners. That go to Wonder Con and we’ll just have fun in San was more important and more of an anniversary show Francisco. So I spent a whole weekend in San than anything. Really, if you’re going to build your audi- Francisco and didn’t spend a dime because this guy ence, you need to be aware of who they are and give used his miles to fly me to California and let me stay them everything. Yes, that means giving them interat his house and drove me around the city. It was views if they’re interested in that, but that’s not the completely insane. It’s like a dream that that would only way to build your audience. I think that’s the happen. That’s going above and beyond the call of downfall of some podcasts: that they try too hard to duty, not to mention all of the listeners who do artget creators that have probably been on ten other work for us and help us with the magazine and get on podcasts by that time. the episodes to talk about the area they’re experts in, HOUSTON: Who are some of your fans that have and there are so many examples of people sending really gone above and beyond the call of duty? us boxes full of comics because they’re cleaning out PANTS: That’s a long list. and they want us to use them as prizes. The list goes BRYAN: The most recent example, and maybe one of on and on. the most astounding, is Left Coast Love on the PETER: There have been many listeners who, just forum. Sean is his first name. He’s out in San from the generosity of their own hearts, have donated Francisco and he’s a big money, sometimes large amounts of money, especialfan of the show and he ly early on. Anybody who has donated a dime is just came to really incredible because they helped us sustain the Episode 200 show, and the other group of listeners that really supand to port the show are the ones that go out to conventions Episode 300 and if they see somebody who has been on the show, all the way whether it’s a creator or a sponsor, and say, “Hey, I from California heard you on Comic Geek Speak.” That is so amazing and he wanted because that just helps build the show and it shows us to go to all those people that the show does reach people California. He that are interested in their book, their product, or just wanted us to go to themselves and that is just great because they’re Wonder Con and supporting by listening to the show, but they’re also he had extra fresupporting by word of mouth and getting excited quent flier about meeting people who have been on the show. miles, so he That’s really cool. actually conJAMIE: I can safely say that we would not have had at tacted me 300 or Super Show the number of people that we had and said, if it wasn’t for that. I think in my mind back to the “Hey, I want people we had there and, to a one, they will tell you to fly you out that every convention they go to, someone comes up on my dime to and says they heard them on the show. Sal Abbinanti San Francisco can’t go anywhere without being called “Uncle Sal” to hang out and it is all because of that community. for the weekSHANE: I also get e-mails from people that I haven’t Cover art for the Episode 200 program end. You can met. I mentioned on a show that I’m afraid of flying; by Chris Eliopoulos. © Copyright 2009 Comic Geek Speak

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Adam Murdough with listener Tony Guagliardo, who provided the photo.

everybody in this room knows how terrified I am of flying. I’ll get e-mails from people saying, “Hey, I was afraid of flying, too. Here’s how I got over it,” or, “Hey, I understand. Sorry you can’t make it, but I understand,” or, “Hey, I heard you were looking for something on the show. I found it. If you need it, let me know.” It’s just a constant community of people trying to help in any way possible. JAMIE: You say, “above and beyond,” but it’s just way too many to say. To me, anybody who says hello to us at a convention has gone above and beyond, because they don’t have to. Nobody has to say anything to us. BRYAN: Or the guy a couple of weeks ago who sent a whole bunch of ribs and pulled pork because he wanted us to enjoy it one evening. That’s awesome.

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HOUSTON: What podcasts are you fans of? PETER: I probably listen to the most. I am the one who listens to the most podcasts. My absolute favorite one, and it’s all because of basically the same things we’re saying here: great chemistry, a great community has built up around it, and these guys make it easy for me to be accessible to the people they interview and they make me spend money just like people say we make them spend money and they introduce me to books I haven’t heard of, and that’s the Indie Spinner Rack podcast with Charlito and Mister Phil. They’re funny, they’re entertaining, and they know their stuff. They do it for no other reason than the love of the comics that they’re talking about and all of that comes through. Most of the other ones that I listen to, it’s because of the chemistry of the people or just

even the single person and it’s also because of their commitment and passion. I really like The Uncanny X-Cast, Comic Book Noise, and Comic Book Queers, and Poptopia, Quiet! Panelologists at Work are so funny, and Geek Syndicate. There are just so many podcasts. You can tell the ones that are doing it because they love what they’re doing and you can also tell the ones that are doing it just because they love what they’re doing, too, but they think they can do it better than other people and the minute you start feeling that, it’s not as fun. The people that I mentioned, and so many more, are quality, quality podcasts. BRYAN: I don’t listen to many on a totally regular basis because I can’t listen to people talk and work at the same time, but I do dip into the Indie Spinner Rack pool and I just heard their Jeff Smith interview, which was absolutely phenomenal, and even though I only understand half of what they’re saying, I listen to Los Comic Geekos because I got to meet all those guys and am friends with those guys. They’re the Spanish version of us: five lifelong fans who love comics and just get together in the one guy’s house and talk comics. It’s so much fun to listen to them even when I don’t understand what they’re saying because they’re laughing and it’s contagious and a lot of fun. Of course, I listen to Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code podcast, which is what kind of got me into podcasting in the beginning. SHANE: I’m a big fan of the one Mike Norton’s on, Crankcast. I’ve also listened to Lene Taylor’s I Read Comics and her other show, Look at His Butt, which is about William Shatner. There’s one called Star Wars Action News, which is really entertaining, about Star Wars toy collecting. I try to listen to as many as I can, but there’s just too many. PETER: We’re now hosting over sixty podcasts on thecomicforums.com, other comics podcasts and a few that aren’t comics but are more like pop culture or geek-centric. I’m trying to listen to at least one episode of every single one of those podcasts, just so I can get an idea of who they are and what kind of podcast they have. After three years, this is sort of more than a hobby for me. It is sort of a little bit of a business and I like to keep up with everything that’s going on out there. I could care less about audio quality. I could care less about snappy editing and all those bells and whistles. I just want to know, “Do you have an interesting show, do you have content that will grab me, and do you have opinions that I can either agree or disagree with?” And I need to know who you are before I can even know if I’m going to agree or disagree with your opinions. I like podcasts that are more personal, podcasts where you really get to know the host, not just their opinions. Frankly, at the end of the day, you could care less about opinions. That’s one thing about our show: we lay it out there. There’s a lot of stuff we put out on the air. I think that’s why

people are attracted to certain podcasts, because they want to know the people behind the mic, and there are some out there that are really successful because they have great, great chemistry or great content and great content does not always mean great audio or good intro or outro music.

don’t know why because we’re not competing with anybody,” and some people have said, “That’s easy to say because you have big listenership,” but, no, it’s not that easy to say. Why bother? Why be competitive in a medium that is only four years old and which is barely even now getting attention from other kinds of media, HOUSTON: You talked like TV or radio. This is a about hosting a lot of those new way of putting out inforpodcasts on your forum, mation and the last thing it but haven’t you also showneeds is competition. If there Bryan Deemer with Indie Spinner Rack’s Charlito. cased a bunch of them on were millions of dollars being © Copyright 2009 Comic Geek Speak your show? fed into the podcasting PETER: Yes. Every couple weeks, we rebroadcast an world, then, of course, we would compete for their episode. It happened because Indie Spinner Rack did money. Nobody is getting that much money except an awesome episode with Dave Sim of Cerebus. It whoever invented the damn thing. It’s frustrating was an awesome interview and it was like, “Wow. This whenever we come up against it and there are man is a legend. This interview needs to be heard by podcasts that don’t want to be part of the whole more people who aren’t even familiar with Dave Sim, comics podcast community and more power to them. so let’s rebroadcast it on our show.” Then we did it I understand that, but I think they’re missing out again when they interviewed Steve Bissette for The because that’s the reason why a lot of us are going in Center for Cartoon Studies and it was such a great the direction we’re going and it’s why Indie Spinner interview. Again, we were like, “We need people to Rack put out an anthology and it’s why Comics News hear this,” so then it became a recurring thing. What Insider gets a lot of TV interviews and Hollywood interbetter way to spotlight the podcasts on the forums views. It’s why we’ve created a magazine and it’s why that are helping to make this community as strong as we put on the convention: to be accessible. And nothit is than to say, “You know what, every once and a ing frustrates me more than when people say, “It’s while let’s rebroadcast one of their episodes and only friendly competition.” Well, if that’s how you share the wealth a little bit.” Maybe they’ll pick up want to think about it, fine, but that’s not what we’re new listeners, which they have. Maybe people don’t all about. realize there’s a podcast devoted solely to the X-Men, BRYAN: The nature of podcasting is time-shifted so we rebroadcast The Uncanny X-Cast and, if you’re a entertainment. It’s not on at 8:00 and you have to fan of the X-Men, there’s a podcast for you. We’ve watch it at eight or you miss it, so we don’t have to done that for quite a number of them and we’re going compete with anyone. Sure, at the end of the day, to continue to do it. And it is promotional, too, there is only so much time one person has and, if because it promotes the Comic Forums itself, but it there are a hundred podcasts, then they don’t have goes back to there being time to listen to them all, so really great podcasts out you’re sort of competing, but there and, if you like them, they can always go back and you should be listening to listen to your episodes if they them. really want to. But, like Peter said, you do get these vibes HOUSTON: I feel that lack sometimes from people. of competition is unique Secretly, behind closed to podcasts, especially in doors, they’re wishing that an industry that is so you go away or that you’ll fail often Marvel versus DC or miserably and that’s not—we store against store, that just do our show and if peoit’s not podcast versus ple want to listen, they want podcast. to listen, and if they don’t, PETER: That’s not entirely well, then the day comes that true. It’s funny; we’ve heard nobody wants to listen and that word, competition, a lot we’ll stop recording, I guess, Pants, Shane, Jamie, and Bryan in Bryan’s computer room because none of us are actually and it’s like, “Well, I turned recording studio. Photo courtesy Tony Guagliardo. THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 115

doing this full-time or profiteering off SHANE: I loved when we had people this. It is what it is. We try to do the over for Episode 100; they were all best show we can because we want amazed that we all cram into this one people to enjoy it and we put a lot room. They all wanted to see the studio of work into making it a good, enjoyand sit in the chairs. able show, but I’m not measuring HOUSTON: Could you walk me through my success against that of any a typical record? other shows. PETER: I do the scheduling for the JAMIE: We just practice what we show and I send out numerous e-mails preach. We practice “spread the on any kind of scheduling changes or love” and that’s how it’s been since links on what we’re going to be doing, the beginning. I’m not really in on and sometimes I send that information this because it’s really Peter and out a week ahead of time, or someBryan who kind of get caught kneetimes a couple of days, but we don’t deep in the hoopla, but it’s just talk about the episode before we acturidiculous to think of this as a comally record. We don’t say, “You’re going petition when, as we’re saying, we’re to say this and we’ll say that and we doing this out of somebody’s comshould try and bring this up.” We save puter room and other people are it for the mics. We get here, we sit Shane gets animated while recording down, and Murd usually gets here doing this in their bedrooms or a the latest episode of Comic Geek comics store and they’re doing it for about 6:05. [laughter] Speak. Photo courtesy Tony fun. It’s just a way of getting your ADAM: I’ve been better about that Guagliardo. opinions across to other people. Life lately. is too short to worry about who is doing what. I think BRYAN: Not tonight, Murd. that’s why those sorts of podcasts aren’t around any PETER: Then we fire up the computers and Bryan and more and podcasts that do spread the love go along I probably have the most communication because I nicely. tell him who the sponsor is for that episode or what BRYAN: Safety in numbers is an old adage for a reaorder we’re going to be calling people or I’ll throw out son. If we spent all our energy fighting each other, we to the guys, “Let’s talk about this first and this secwouldn’t be able to grow the medium in the way that ond.” Then, literally, we hit record and we go. We don’t it needs to grow so everyone can get the respect they edit our episodes. We just play it live as we’re recorddeserve. That’s what we’re trying to do as a communiing it. Any kind of homework that we do is done away ty, build it up so we can get some attention and build from the studio. We come in with the stuff that we’re it up some more. going to talk about. SHANE: Even before we did the show, when we Every once and a while, somebody may need to would be reading comics, we would constantly be read something before we record, but we all just get telling each other, “You’ll like this. You should read in that room and it’s funny; if we talk about anything this. I know this isn’t your regular bag, but you should before hand, it’s usually something about comics or read this.” Why wouldn’t we do that for other podTV or something. One of our friends, Bruce casts? We just want to spread it so that people know Rosenberger, was the first guest to sit in live in our exactly what they may like. You may not have known studio and he said, “Man, you guys talk comics it’s out there. We do it for comics and we do it for before you record, during the recording and after the podcasts. recording.” Well, that’s sort of why we do the show, JAMIE: They all seem to be the same sort of people because we’re always talking about comics. There we are. When we meet other podcasts that we’ve had really is no other plan than just get in, sit down, and the pleasure and the honor of meeting at like New push record. York, we can call them our friends. We’re all likemindJAMIE: A great example is the one we recorded right ed people and, when you meet some who aren’t, you before this. We recorded a Secret Invasion episode can kind of see that. I just think that’s one of the reajust talking about Secret Invasion #1. We had no sons: we’re all likeminded people putting out this script. Bryan started it up and did the intro and then product for consumers to enjoy. it’s just, “Okay. What did you think?” It’s just one of those things that we’ve developed HOUSTON: Where exactly do you record? over the three BRYAN: We record in my house, in my computer room years that we can that has now become the studio. It’s been overrun by just start talking Comic Geek Speak and all it’s paraphernalia. Now it’s and people can officially the studio, but it’s just a computer room in play off one my house. another. Matt, with his investigaPETER: It’s not in the basement. 116 | COMIC GEEK SPEAK

tive skills, is a great question person. He’ll figure questions and throw them out when Peter’s not in the studio, because Peter’s usually our ringleader who will throw out topics, but with an episode like that, we just bounce it off each other and an hour later we ended the episode. At times, I still am amazed that we can get through an hour, two-hour episode just sitting around BSing and that basically is how the show is. We’ll have certain talking points if we talk to a creator, if he wants to talk about this or that, but, usually, even with creators, we get them into a conversation. We don’t really interview them and that’s what I think some creators like about our show is that we will converse with them. It’s not plug book A, now book B, it’s how did you get into comics? It’s really an amazing, organic being, Comic Geek Speak, which constantly amazes me.

even know wh,y and he was like, “Yeah, sure, I’ll give it a try,” and he did. Even before we had him on the show, I had like an hour conversation with him on the phone and I was like, “Wow, he’s really something.” This wasn’t even the Sal we would know. We brought him on the show to talk about Atomika and we slowly realized he doesn’t want to talk about Atomika. He just wanted to talk. He’s a guy who knows his comics and loves his comics and he was just somebody that really sort of caught on to what CGS was about and that’s how it started and it just went from there.

HOUSTON: Uncle Sal is certainly somebody that you talk to frequently. When did you decide to start doing interviews on the show? PETER: Our first interview was with Shane Felix, the director of a Star Wars fan film called Revelations, and HOUSTON: Who came up with the it came from a listener. One of our lisname Comic Geek Speak? teners said, “Hey, do you want to talk to BRYAN: That was me. Again, when this guy about this Star Wars fan film?” the whole thing started, I had no idea And, at that time, we were like, “Oh my that anybody would ever listen or that God! We’re going to do an interview? it would go on for three years. I did Yes! Let’s do it!” He was our first official no market research. I didn’t do any interview, and then who was our first focus groups or anything. I just said, creator interview? I don’t remember. It “I’m gong to talk about comics and wasn’t even something that we purposeI’m a geek. Geek rhymes with speak,” ly went out and said: Okay we’re going to so I just said, “Peter, how about start doing interviews. We just made Comic Geek Speak?” He said, “Yeah, some early connections through listenokay,” and that was it. It took ten secers and other ways. onds to come up with the name and, One of our earliest interviews as with at some point early on, I thought, Brian Miller of Hi-Fi Color Design and “Maybe that’s a lame name,” then it one of the only reasons we did that “Uncle Sal” Abinanti at the became CGS and then it became this interview was he e-mailed us. He said, 2008 Windy City Comic Con. whole thing and it was too late to “Hey, I listen to your show and, you change anything and now it just feels know, I think you’re doing a great job.” totally natural. Him and Morry Hollowell was another one who ePANTS: Well, it’s a great name for what we do around mailed us out of the blue and we thought, “Oh my here. We’re geeks and we talk about comics. It’s a God. Some creators are listening. That’s awesome.” great way for people who came late to know what we Eventually, it just got to the point where we realized do around here and it describes what they’re going to some listeners like interviews, and we didn’t want to get. become a regular interview show every episode, but, BRYAN: That’s true. if we want to make this into something eventually, then we do need to do interviews, so after awhile, we HOUSTON: I’d like to talk to you a little just included it in our segments. bit about some of your regular segments. Such as the visits with Uncle HOUSTON: What are some of your favorite interSal. Who is Uncle Sal for those who views? might not know? JAMIE: It pops to my mind right away. We said it BRYAN: Uncle Sal is Sal Abbinanti, before, it’s the Gene Colan interview for me. The reawho we got in contact with—he son being, just to hear the utter surprise in his voice actually got in contact with us. He’s that people still felt he was relevant and that he the creator of Atomika from, now, didn’t seem to realize that there are people out there Mercury Comics and he was one of our who still love his work and revel and amaze at the first sponsors. work that he is doing and that raw emotion in his PETER: We were just looking for sponvoice. For me that will always stand out no matter if sors and I contacted him randomly we get the Jack Kirby from heaven interview it will still take a second seat to that Gene Colan interview. through his site and I think I don’t THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 117

BRYAN: I concur. It was a very honest and he was genuinely excited to have us interview him and we were genuinely excited to do it and that just felt so good, talking to a guy with so many years in the business and one of the nicest guys we ever talked to. That has to be my favorite as well. HOUSTON: You guys have interviewed some huge names, but I love that you also interview unknown talent, the recent Katie Cook interview being a great example of that. BRYAN: Again, the bottom line is we love comics, and there are people who are doing great comics who aren’t Jim Lee and all those big names, so if we find somebody whose work we appreciate and is doing good comics, we want to talk to them, because they’re just as important as the Jim Lees and the Roy Thomases. They might not have put their name and shaped the industry the way some of these people have, but they might next year or the year after or five years from now, so we want to talk Favorite CGS guest Gene Colan’s original art for the splash page to The Tomb of Dracula #33. to them too. And they’re excitInks by Tom Palmer. Courtesy Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). © Copyright 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. ed to talk to us, so it’s easier and then it was the Gareb Shamus interview quickly to facilitate the interviews and Peter doesn’t have to go through publicist people to get phone numbers and after that. That’s the one that got spread all over the Internet and that’s the one that spread our name times so why shouldn’t we interview them? around. Then Brian Miller was shortly after that and We’re so about exposing the audience to great then it was Mike Norton. These were all people who comics and, if a person like Katie Cook is doing great were listening to our show. After Mike Norton was comic work, then they should know about it and we Michael Lark, from Daredevil. It was kind of cool. want to help her succeed and become the next Jim Lee. If we can help the tiniest bit and if that means HOUSTON: There are a couple of segments that I she sells an extra five copies of something at a conreally liked that don’t seem to come up anymore, vention, then it was all worth while. The same for any like the footnote episodes or movie commentaries. of those people. PETER: If Matt had his way, we’d be doing those One of our listeners who we’ve supported is Dave movie commentaries every week. Right, Matt? Wachter—what a great comic artist—who’s going to MATT: I’m always pushing those because those are have his day sooner or later and all those kind of peojust fun. It’s like Mystery Science Theater 3000. We ple, I just feel like, if I see their artwork and I love it, can just rip into it. It helps, I find, if everyone’s then I want to help them in any way that I can and watched it before. one of those ways is talking to them on the show. PETER: They’ll definitely make reappearances. I know PETER: After Shane Felix, we interviewed Tom we want to do one on the Phantom movie, if I ever Martinek, who was a listener, because he worked for watch it. Same thing with the footnotes. A lot of it is ILM, so, there again, we interviewed a listener as our just the preparation time in some of those episodes, second interview. We did Peter David at San Diego 118 | COMIC GEEK SPEAK

but they are fan favorites and we do get requests frequently. The problem with those episodes is in terms of scheduling. I schedule at least a month or two ahead of time, at least on paper, and they’re always the ones that, unfortunately, get bumped if something else comes up, but we’ll definitely get back to them. HOUSTON: You also do a bunch of different review or update type episodes where you do a Book of the Month or a continuing series like 52 or World War Hulk. How do you decide which books you want to follow like that? BRYAN: We usually just have a little discussion. Every time it’s Book of the Month time, generally whoever happens to be in the room whenever we have to make a decision. We throw out a couple of titles and see what’s available. Whatever the general consensus is, that’s what we pick. With the events, we just say, “Should we follow this series or this series?” and sometimes the listeners kind of urge us in one direction, because there will be a lot of posts on the forum, “Hey, are you going to talk about this?” Well, I guess you care, so we’ll talk about that. PANTS: A couple of times we’ll throw it open to the listeners to vote on a Book of the Month. JAMIE: We did that for one whole rotation. PETER: It’s their fault we covered Countdown. Other times, like when the V for Vendetta movie came out, it just gave us the perfect opportunity to do the book. The Iron Man movie is the perfect time to do Iron Man: Demon in a Bottle, so sometimes we’re a little more calculated with those kinds of decisions. JAMIE: As far as the encores go, it’s just been fun to get some of the creators to come on. We usually don’t get creators to come on for the first Book of the Month. A lot of the encores have been because we’ve been able to get some of the creators back on and it’s really cool to be able to get into the book and talk to the creator while you’re doing it, especially the

Cerebus ones we’ve been doing and Strangers in Paradise. It’s just so neat to be able to do that. It’s fun for us. I think it’s fun for the listeners. HOUSTON: Probably your best-known segment is “Stump the Rios.” How did that start? BRYAN: That’s a play straight out of the Howard Stern school of broadcasting. I have been a big Howard Stern fan since about 1989 or so, and when we started the show, they were regularly doing the “Stump the Booey” segment on their show, where somebody would try to get Bababooey and see if he could guess three songs based on a couple of seconds of audio. So, from the very first episode I said, “You know what? Peter knows comic trivia, so I’ll try to stump Peter and call it ‘Stump the Rios,’” and I came prepared. It was the only preparation I did for the first episode. I had three trivia questions for Peter and I don’t think he even knew about it. I don’t think I told him on or off the air. I don’t know if he knew about it in advance or not and then we’ve done it almost every episode since. HOUSTON: How many “Stump the Rios” e-mails do you get? BRYAN: A couple a week. It’s not an overabundance. In fact, we’re almost starting to run low right now. PETER: I think the thing about that is that it’s something that, although we took the idea from Howard THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 119

Stern, it is just one of the things that makes our show unique. It gives us that hook. That and a couple other things I could probably name, you can’t do “Stump the Rios” on some other podcast, Peter brushes up on his trivia before another unless you round of “Stump the Rios.” have a guy © Copyright 2009 Comic Geek Speak named Rios on the show. [laughter] Everybody’s going to know where it came from. We make no secret of our being fans of Stern. We based a lot of shows on what he did. That’s the thing as far as other comics podcasts go, if you have a hook like that, it can really be one of the best ways to draw listeners to you. It has made for some interesting times here and there and we actually get e-mails if we haven’t done a “Stump the Rios” in four or five episodes. They really pay attention. HOUSTON: What are your stats, Peter? PANTS: We have a listener over in England who keeps careful track of all these details and keeps our wiki page going. PETER: The Roll of Honor list is actually not that long. I don’t think it’s broken a hundred people yet. HOUSTON: Would you mind if I tried to “Stump the Rios”? BRYAN: That’s fantastic. PETER: I’m in trouble.

120 | COMIC GEEK SPEAK

HOUSTON: Marvel: What party ran Howard the Duck for president in the Marvel Universe? PETER: I don’t know. I don’t even know if it was a made up one. I’ll say Republican. HOUSTON: It’s the All Night Party. [laughter] DC: What was the name of the first Doctor Midnight’s pet owl? PETER: Hooty! HOUSTON: Shoot. Well, I’ve failed, but, just for laughs, the next one’s independent. What was the subtitle of Mike Grell’s 007 Eclipse Comics miniseries? BRYAN: I don’t know. HOUSTON: “Permission to Die.” BRYAN: Good questions. PETER: It looks like I’ve been stumped 61 times. I’ve had sweeps where I’ve answered all three questions 21 times. HOUSTON: What does the future hold for Comic Geek Speak? JAMIE: World domination. PETER: The death of one of us, probably. [laughter] BRYAN: That’s a great question and one that I get excited about on some days and I try not to think about on other days. We learned the key to our success very early on when we talked to Gareb Shamus and asked him, “How did Wizard go from being a magazine you produced in your garage, literally, to this enormous mega-enterprise?” and he said, “Baby steps. Let it happen when it happens. Never push it. Never try for the next thing. Baby steps.” From that day forward, Peter and I said, that’s good advice. Let’s not try too hard to do something that’s not yet ready to be done and now, three years later, the podcast is growing slowly but surely. We have a magazine and our own convention and none of it seems like we’re trying too hard, but, if the public keeps listening and more and more people start listening, our audience will keep growing and the show will respond to that growth in its own time. At this time, we’ve got three years under our belt. I want to see at least another three years. I don’t think there’s any reason for us to stop getting together and talking about comics. I think there’s always going to be some audience, even if the audience shrinks in size, there will still be somebody listening and we’ll still be happy to get together in a room and talk about comics. Whatever happens happens. I just want CGS to be exactly the same as it is now as far as friends sitting in a room talking about comics. That core should never change. If the shows gets really, really big or fades into obscurity, none of that matters as long as we’re friends in a room talking about comics.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN

PODCAST

While conducting the interviews that make up the bulk of this book, it occurred to me that I was collecting quite a few invaluable tips for anyone who wanted to start their own podcast. In keeping with that, I offer this appendix, which lists the exact equipment each of our featured podcasts uses to make their own show. Hopefully, it will give you future podcasters out there an even better idea of how to get started.

The Around Comics crew prepares to record an episode with Mike Oliveri. Photo courtesy Mike Oliveri (www.mikeoliveri.com).

Around Comics

Comic Book Queers

Mixer: Alesis Multimix 8 Firewire Board Headphones: Bose Audio Editor: Garage Band Computer: MacBook Pro

Microphone: Logitech Conference Microphone or Shure PG48 Mixer: Alesis Multimix 8 USB Headphones: AKG K-44 Audio Editor: Garage Band Computer: iMac Other: Mic Stands from On-Stage Stands

Collected Comics Library Microphone: AKG D890 Dynamic Microphone Mixer: Behringer UB1202FX Stereo Mixer with Effects Audio Editor: Adobe Audition Computer: basic PC Other: iRiver IFP-899 MP3 Player

Comic Geek Speak Microphone: 6 Shure SM57 & 2 MXL 990 Mixer: Soundcraft Spirit Folio 12 Headphones: AKG K66 Audio Editor: Garage Band THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION | 121

Computer: 2 Apple iMacs Other: Sound Byte from Black Cat Systems (used to play sound bytes and effects by keystroke), Alesis 3630 Compressor, Zoom H2 Portable Recorder, Telos One Digital Hybrid (for recording phone calls)

The Crankcast Microphone: Audio-Technica headset mic Audio Editor: Sony Vegas Mixer: Sony Vegas for multitracking Other: M-Audio Delta 1010 card, Dreamhost for uploading

iFanboy Microphone: Mix of Blue Snowball USB Condenser Mics and simple Logitech USB headsets for when we record via Skype, when we do it live in person we use EV RE50B mics Mixer: Alesis 8 channel USB mixer Headphones: Sennheiser Audio Editor: Audacity Computer: Macbook Pro and Windows-based PCs Software: we use Skype and PowerGramo (PC) Audio Hijack (MAC) to record the show remotely.

Pipeline Podcast Microphone: The MXL 990 Condenser Mic. Mixer: Behringer Eurorack UB802 Headphone: Jensen JF25. From Augie—Since I do a solo podcast, I don’t even use them while I’m recording. The latency the computer introduces during

recordings makes listening to yourself painful. Helpful on a Skype chat, though. Audio Editor: Garage Band Computer: Mac Pro G5 Tower, Dual Pentium Processors. Software: Levelator Sound Leveling Program Other: RNC 1773 by FMR Audio Compressor

Quiet! Panelologists at Work Microphone: Logitech Headset Mixer: Windows Sound Mixer Headphones: Logitech Headset Audio Editor: Roxio Sound Editor Computer: Dell P4, plus an old laptop for Skype Software: Lybsin for uploads, Windows Sound Mixer, and Skype Other: The Levelator—an awesome bit of software

Word Balloon Microphone: Radio Shack Uni-directional Dynamic Microphone 500 Mixer: Mixing program included in Cool Edit 2.0 Headphones: Ear buds, but John breaks them a lot Audio Editor: Cool Edit 2.0 Computer: HP a1040n 2006 model Other: John uses a land phone line to computer hybrid from JK Audio, called Broadcast Host.

Jamie D. records another episode of Comic Geek Speak. Photo courtesy Tony Guagliardo. 122 | HOW TO

PODCAST INDEX 11 O’Clock Comics Website: www.bullpenbulletinspodcast.com RSS Feed: http://bullpenbulletins.libsyn.com/rss Hosts: Vince Bonavoglia, Chris Neseman, David Price, and Jason Wood Four friends getting together once a week to talk about anything and everything in the world of sequential art. No topic too obscure, or publisher too mainstream, indie, or small press. The 24 Hour Comic Book Podcast Website: 24hourcomicpodcast.com RSS Feed: http://24hourcomicpodcast.com/feed/ Hosts: Chris Crank, Mike Norton, Tom Katers, John Siuntres, Chris Neseman, Chris Taber, Mark Beatty, Chris Burnham, Brion Salazar, and others From 24hourcomicpodcast.com: The 24 Hour Comics Podcast is a social experiment to see how well a bunch of guys who love comics can co-exist in the same surroundings for a one entire day and night. Think The Real World without as much sexual harassment. The show was born from the troubled, beerfueled brain of Chris Crank (of The Crankcast) and features an all-star cast from the comics podcasting community (Around Comics, Word Balloon, Comic Book Queers, etc.). Around Comics Website: www.aroundcomics.com RSS Feed: http://aroundcomics.libsyn.com/rss Hosts: Chris Neseman, Brion Salazar, and Tom Katers From aroundcomics.com: Around Comics, the comic books culture podcast, features the very best comic book news, reviews and opinions. The AC heroes, Chris, Sal and Tom offer a deep knowledge of comic books, as well as a fantastic sense of humor and a true passion for the medium. Once a week our terrific trio brings you a roundtable discussion featuring special guest panelists, comic book reviews, pop culture talk and plenty of laughs.

Collected Comics Library Website: www.collectedcomicslibrary.com RSS Feed: http://www.collectedcomicslibrary.com/feed/ Host: Chris Marshall Collected Comics Library, hosted by Chris Marshall, from Detroit, Michigan, USA is the comic book and trade paperback podcast. The podcast solely dedicated to news, information and reviews on all sorts of comic books and collected editions including DC Comics Archives, Marvel Masterworks, Absolutes, Omnibuses, Graphic Novels and all other hardcover and softcover favorites—the CCL covers it all!

Comic Book Page Podcast Website: www.ComicBookPage.com RSS Feed: http://comicbookpage.com/Podcast/?feed=rss2 Hosts: John Mayo and Bob Bretall The Comic Book Page family of podcasts are hosted by John Mayo and Bob Bretall, two fans with over 30 years each of comics reading and collecting, and who buy and read over 100 titles each and every month. Our main show is the Weekly Comics Spotlight, where we review current comics: one DC, one Marvel, and one Indie each week. We also occasionally delve into classic comics storylines on Back Issue Spotlight, cover what is coming out in Diamond Previews once a month on Previews Spotlight, discuss Diamond’s sales numbers (top 300 comics and top 100 trades) once a month on The Mayo Report, and talk to other fans and pros about comics on Super Fan Spotlight.

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Comic Book Queers Website: comicbookqueers.com RSS Feed: http://www.comicbookqueers.com/podcasts/cbqfeed.xml Hosts: Steve, Eric, Brett Mannes, Lindsay, and others From comicbookqueers.com: Queers talking about comics, the comic book industry, and the culture of fandom. Flame on!

Comic Geek Speak Website: comicgeekspeak.com RSS Feed: http://www.comicgeekspeak.com/cgsmain-rss.xml Hosts: Peter Rios, Bryan Deemer, Jamie D, Adam Murdough, Brian “Pants” Christman, Matt, and Shane Kelly From iTunes: Comic Geek Speak is the best podcast about comic books for fans and new readers alike. Put together by a group of life-long comic geeks, it’s 45 hours a week of comic book history, current comic news, and a general look at the industry. In addition to all the latest in comics talk, the show also features creator interviews, listener responses, contests, and trivia, lots of trivia. So listen in and experience all the joys of a Wednesday afternoon at the comic shop, from the comfort of your own headphones.

Comic News Insider Website: www.comicnewsinsider.com Feed: http://cni.libsyn.com/rss Hosted by: Joe Gonzalez & Jimmy Aquino The podcast for everything comic book, animation, scifi, and pop culture. Hosted by former roommates and old friends Joe Gonzalez and Jimmy Aquino, CNI is your weekly dose of industry news, reviews and interviews. CNI, the Entertainment Weekly of comic podcasts, continues to bring the fun and the funny (Hey, it’s better than being the US Weekly of comic podcasts)! Join Joe and Jimmy every Wednesday to laugh, learn and maybe even love!

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The Crankcast Website: www.crankcast.net RSS Feed: http://crankcast.net/feed/ Hosts: Chris Crank and Mike Norton From crankcast.net: Mike talked me into it one night while I was drunk and, when I sobered up, I still thought it’d be fun. We’re simply going to talk about whatever interests us, be it comics, movies, TV, music or our moms. Hopefully, in the comics part at least, our unique insight, quick wit and ability to make fun of each other will win your hearts. DC Comics Podcast Website: dccomics.com/dcu/downloads RSS Feed: http://www.dccomics.com/feeds/podcast/itunes/ Hosts: None The DC Comics Podcast primarily features audio recordings of many of DC’s entertaining and informative comic convention panels. Geekscape Website: www.geekscape.net RSS Feed: http://pod.geekscape.net/Geekscape-Audio.xml Hosts: Jonathan London and rotating, weekly co-hosts Geekscape is a weekly movie, videogame, and comic book news and reviews show. It features rotating guest co-hosts from those industries in addition to everyday, passionate geeks. A community-minded experience, Geekscape often showcases original characters, skits, and audience interactive events like live shows and parties. Geek Syndicate Website: www.geeksyndicate.co.uk RSS Feed: http://geeksyndicate.libsyn.com/rss Hosts: David Monteith and Barry Nugent Geek Syndicate is a UK-based group fronted by David Monteith and Barry Nugent, producing a weekly podcast celebrating and commenting on all aspects of geek life, including comics, books, movies, TV, games, tech… and booze. It’s critically acclaimed, irreverent, touching, intellectual, nonsensical, fairly drunken, incredibly sexy, hilarious… er… and stuff.

Geektress Website: www.Geektress.com RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/GeektressPodcast Hosts: Brenda Kirk, Rania Larsen, Laura Miello Geektress is a podcast aimed at science-fiction/fantasy/comic book loving nerds everywhere. It’s a news and reviews podcast and blog written exclusively by women who love geeky stuff and aren’t afraid to share.

iFanboy Website: ifanboy.com RSS Feed: http://ifanboy.com/rss.xml Hosts: Josh Flanagan, Conor Kilpatrick, Ron Richards iFanboy is the home for the Pick of the Week audio podcast, which reviews the comic books released each week, and iFanboy, the comic book discussion Internet TV show, featuring video coverage of comic book conventions, interviews with creators, discussions of comic book stories, and spotlights on creators and publishers. iFanboy has been producing podcasts since 2005 and has been selected to the Best of iTunes by Apple. Indie Spinner Rack Website: www.indiespinnerrack.com RSS Feed: http://podcast.inmotionhosting.comISR1.xml Hosts: Charlito and Mister Phil At last, a podcast geared towards the indie comic book publishing world, not only for veterans of indie publishing but new readers as well. Charlito and Mr. Phil bring you the smackdown of indies from the past to the present, with extra tidbits of info and current happenings throughout the industry. In addition, the show also features interviews, contests, and plenty of silliness to go ’round.

I Read Comics Website: ireadcomics.blogspot.com RSS Feed: http://troubledscience.com/podcasts/ircpodcast.xml Host: Lene Taylor Comic books, graphics novels, animation—all things comics and cartoony, with your host, Lene Taylor—a girl. Think of it as the New York Review of Comics. Lene is also the co-host of the Trek-themed podcast Look at His Butt!

Los Comic Geekos Website: www.comicgeekos.com RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/comicgeekospodcast Hosts: Omarman (aka Omar Egan), Ticoman (aka Francisco Castellanos), Britoman (aka José Brito), Iulius (aka Julio Salazar), and The Sensei (aka Roberto Velasquez) A weekly conversation among friends to discuss the latest geek culture-related news (movies, video games, comic books, anime, and manga). We also review the latest stories to hit our radar screen and even interview Latin American comic book artists, writers, etc. Legion of Substitute Podcasters Website: www.legionofsubstitutepodcasters.com/ RSS Feed: http://www.paulfrench.ca/losp/?feed=podcast Hosts: Paul French, Darren Nowell, Ric Croxton, and Matt Kramer The Legion of Substitute Podcasters is a podcast focusing on DC Comics’ Legion of Superheroes. Each week, we review stories from the Silver Age, through to the latest appearances of the Legion, and try to help new fans find their bearings, while longtime fans can celebrate the Legion’s rich history.

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Marvel Noise Website: www.marvelnoise.com RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MarvelNoise Host: David Price A weekly Marvel Comics-centric podcast focusing on new and old work by the publisher. Comics, collections, and graphic novels to movies, toys, and video games—nothing is overlooked. Marvel Podcast Website: marvel.com/news/comicstories.1622.Marvel_Podcast _Central RSS Feed: http://marvel.com/newsxml/comicstories.1622.Marvel_Podcast_Central Host: Jeff Suter From Marvel.com: Marvel’s Senior Art Director Jeff Suter sits down with some of Marvel’s premiere talents to discuss what went into making your favorite comics! The Mighty Marvel Podcast gives fans like you a chance to get an exclusive inside look at the inner workings of the House of Ideas!

N3RDCast Website: NeenerNeener.Net RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/N3 Hosts: Jamie “Dr. Sexy” Fickes, Jason “HappyJack” Meadows, and Shawn “Kwip” Williams The N3RDCast is three obnoxious, arrogant, and vulgar comic fans who gather on a weekly basis to dissect the comics they propose to love.

Pipeline Podcast Website: comicbookresources.com/?page=column&id=22 RSS Feed: http://comicbookresources.com/feed.php?feed=col& col_id=22 Hosts: Augie De Blieck Jr. Featuring a top ten list of each week’s new releases as well as looks at other noteworthy books, Augie De Blieck’s Pipeline Podcast, hosted by Comic Book Resources, is an indispensable part of the Wednesday trip to the comic store.

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Poptopia Website: www.poptopiapodcast.com/ RSS Feed: http://www.paulfrench.ca/poptopia/wp/?feed=podcast Host: Paul French Poptopia is a podcast about all things pop culture. Movies, books, television and comics are all discussed in short, easy to digest segments.

Quiet! Panelologists at Work Website: panelologists.com RSS Feed: http://panelologists.libsyn.com/rss Hosts: Jon Sibley and Matt Watts 30 minutes of comic book ramblings, the Quiet! Panelologists At Work podcast offers a unique view in to the minds of two UK-based comic book collectors. The “Panelologists” attempt to give us a brief lowdown of the best comic books available over the last two weeks, but usually move off the topic and discuss anything that may pop in to their heads instead. It’s funny, witty, (mostly) bizarre, and (always) unprepared. The true antidote to the comic book podcast that may contain any useful information, reviews, news and show format. Raging Bullets Website: www.ragingbullets.com RSS Feed: http://www.ragingbullets.libsyn.com/rss Hosts: Sean Whelan and Jim Segulin. Raging Bullets is a weekly, DC Comics-focused podcast celebrating what’s great about comics. The show features in-depth commentary, interviews and listener participation. Read Comics Website: www.readcomics.org RSS Feed: http://readcomics.org/category/podcasts/feed/ Hosts: Jason, Marty, Florence, Suzie, and Mike A discussion about all kinds of comics and comicrelated subjects from an extremely diverse group of hosts, consisting of various genders, sexualities, and marital statuses. Episodes include reviews, culture discussions, and book club episodes. Tom Versus the Flash Website: tomvsjla.libsyn.com RSS Feed: http://tomvsjla.libsyn.com/rss Host: Tom Katers Formerly Tom Versus the JLA, Tom Versus the Flash is hosted by Around Comics’ Tom Katers as he guides you through each and every issue of The Flash, beginning in the Silver Age. Tom’s commentaries are insightful, entertaining, and always funny.

TwoMorrows’ Tune-In Podcast Website: twomorrows.com/blog/category/tune-in/ RSS Feed: http://twomorrows.com/blog/category/tune-in/feed Host: Chris Marshall TwoMorrows’ very own podcast, featuring news and interviews about new and featured TwoMorrows products, hosted by the Collected Comics Library’s Chris Marshall. The Uncanny X-Cast Website: uncannyxcast.com RSS: http://uncannyxcast.libsyn.com/rss Hosts: Brian Perillo and Rob Briscoe Focusing mainly on Marvel’s merry mutants, The Uncanny X-Cast is a (mostly) bi-weekly show that reviews comics from the X-Men Universe. The hosts are two childhood friends who bring different points of view, one being a longtime fan, the other returning to comics after a decade-long hiatus. Not your typical comics podcast (they’ve had both a musical episode and an “alternate reality” episode), the XCast earns its explicit tag as they tell it like it is. Wednesday’s Haul Website: www.wednesdayshaul.com RSS Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Wednesdayshaul Host: Scott Cederlund Wednesday’s Haul features the often incoherent ramblings of a long-time comic fan as Scott struggles to figure out what makes a comic book good. The discussion in Wednesday’s Haul can often range from Eisner to Moebius to Tezuka and even Jim Lee, but, in the end, no matter where it’s produced or what it’s trying to do, it’s all comics. Word Balloon Website: wordballoon.blogspot.com RSS Feed: http://www.wordballoon. libsyn.com/rss Host: John Siuntres The comic book conversation show from long time radio professional John Siuntres features amazing indepth interviews with comic book legends, like Denny O’Neil and Marty Pasko, and modern masters, like Brian Michael Bendis and Geoff Johns, alike.

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OTHER BOOKS FROM TWOMORROWS PUBLISHING

MEGO 8" SUPER-HEROES: WORLD’S GREATEST TOYS!

THE ROAD TO INDEPENDENCE

IMAGE COMICS

G-FORCE: ANIMATED

MARVEL COMICS

Exhaustive examination of MEGO and their line of super-hero action figures!

An unprecedented look at the company that sold comics in the millions, and their celebrity artists!

The official BATTLE OF THE PLANETS guidebook to the Japanese animated TV program that revolutionized anime across the globe!

An issue-by-issue field guide to the pop culture phenomenon of Lee, Kirby, Ditko, and others!

(256-page FULL-COLOR hardcover) $49.95

(280-page trade paperback) $34.95

(100-page COLOR trade paperback) $15.95

(224-page trade paperback) $27.95

BATCAVE COMPANION

FLASH COMPANION

ALL- STAR COMPANION

GRAILPAGES

Unlocks the secrets of Batman’s Silver and Bronze Ages, following the Dark Knight’s progression from 1960s camp to 1970s creature of the night!

Details the publication histories of the four heroes who have individually earned the right to be declared DC Comics' "Fastest Man Alive"!

Roy Thomas has four volumes documenting the history of ALL-STAR COMICS, the JUSTICE SOCIETY, INFINITY, INC., and more!

Explores the world of original comic book art, and the people who collect it. Includes numerous examples of many key “grail” pages, interviews, and more!

(240-page trade paperback) $26.95

(224-page trade paperback) $26.95

(224-page trade paperbacks) $24.95

(144-page trade paperback) $15.95

MODERN MASTERS

AGE OF TV HEROES

EXTRAORDINARY WORKS OF ALAN MOORE: INDISPENSABLE EDITION

HOW TO CREATE COMICS

20+ volumes with in-depth interviews, plus extensive galleries of rare and unseen art from the artist’s files!

Examining the history of the live-action television adventures of everyone’s favorite comic book heroes, featuring the in-depth stories of the shows’ actors and behind-the-scenes players!

Definitive biography of the Watchmen writer, in a new, expanded edition!

(128-page trade paperbacks) $14.95 each

(192-page full-color hardcover) $39.95

Shows step-by-step how to develop a new comic, from script and art, to printing and distribution!

(240-page trade paperback) $29.95

(108-page trade paperback) $13.95

A BOOK SERIES DEVOTED TO THE BEST OF TODAY’S ARTISTS

IN THE 1960s

FROM SCRIPT TO PRINT

FOR A FREE COLOR CATALOG, CALL, WRITE, E-MAIL, OR LOG ONTO www.twomorrows.com

TwoMorrows. Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics. TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • Visit us on the Web at www.twomorrows.com

The Comic Book Podcast Companion By Eric Houston

Comic book podcasts have taken the Internet by storm, and THE COMIC BOOK PODCAST COMPANION offers you the chance to go behind the scenes of ten of today’s top comic book podcasts via all-new interviews with the casts of AROUND COMICS, WORD BALLOON, QUIET! PANELOLOGISTS AT WORK, COMIC BOOK QUEERS, iFANBOY, THE CRANKCAST, THE COLLECTED COMICS LIBRARY, THE PIPELINE PODCAST, COMIC GEEK SPEAK, and TwoMorrows’ own TUNE-IN PODCAST! Also featured are new interviews about podcasting and comics on the Internet with creators MATT FRACTION, TIM SEELEY, and GENE COLAN. You’ll also find a handy guide of what you’ll need to start your own podcast, an index of more than thirty great comic book podcasts, numerous photos of your favorite podcasters, and original art from COLAN, SEELEY, DC’s MIKE NORTON, and many more! TwoMorrows Publishing Raleigh, North Carolina

15.95

ISBN-13: 978-1-60549-018-2 ISBN-10: 1-60549-018-0

51595

In The US

ISBN 978-1-60549-018-2

9 781605 490182