March 5, 2015 • 29 mins
MedusPod Interviews - Episode #1 - CASEFILE: ARKHAM
KICKSTARTER LINK TO CASEFILE: ARKHAM
Guests:
Patrick McEvoy - megaflowgraphics.com | deviantart.com
Josh Finney - Amazon | deviantart.com
Other important links
01Publishing
Casefile: Arkham
Whispers from the Abyss
World War Kaiju
Music
Into the Unknown by Oddsprite
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
Hello and welcome to meters podinterviews episode one. I
recently had a chance to sitdown talk with Josh Finney and
Patrick McElroy. Together. Theyare wild stallions just getting
their team cards you, Josh andPatrick are working on a graphic
novel called a case file Arkham.Set in the mid 1940s. case file
(00:24):
Arkham follows Hank Flynn, adown on his luck private eyes
back from the war and nowworking the main streets the
most cursed city on Earth.Arkham, Massachusetts, and
Things only get worse for Flynnwhen a wealthy uptown socialite
hires him to track down anartist by the name of Pikmin.
What begins is a simple missingpersons case leads Flynn down a
(00:44):
dark path of flesh eating goals,vengeful witches and a notorious
Innsmouth. Mafia. Everythingabout this book looks amazing.
But enough of me talking aboutit. Let's hear from the creators
themselves.
Hey, how are you guys doingtonight?
Very well. How are you? Doing
(01:06):
great doing great. Why don't yougo ahead and introduce
yourselves one by one and tellus a little bit about case file
Arkham.
Josh Kerr to kick it off.
Okay. My name is Josh Finney.I'm the writer behind case file
Arkham. I've done World Warkaiju, titanium, rain and
utopia. It's in the past andI've also done some short
(01:29):
stories in the pros world aswell.
And I'm Patrick McAvoy. I'mdoing the art on case file
Arkham. And let's see I'veworked with Josh on World War
kaiju. And worked earlier withour Kea doing a book called
Starkweather immortal anothergraphic novel. Another graphic
(01:49):
novel I just did last yearcalled The Nain Rouge sort of a
young adult book. And other thanthat, though, I'm more of an
illustrator has been my livingfor the last 15 years or so. I
do illustration. And I also domultimedia work, animation, art
directing, that kind of thingfor for games and educational
(02:10):
products. And I've I could go onand on. I've worked on different
role playing games andcollectible card games, Call of
Cthulhu game and the game ofthrones card game and I was on
contract with Marvel for acouple of years doing work for
their marketing division.
(02:31):
I always like to say, I likethis, I always like to say the
Patrick is the one of yourfavorite artists, you just don't
know his name, right? Chancesare if you like comics Cthulhu
or just about any role playingproperty, you probably own
multiple pieces of his art. Youjust never knew it.
But when I was Google stalkingPatrick, I noticed I've seen a
(02:55):
lot of his work before knowsname, but now I got him on get
him on the phone. So with casefile Arkham Are you both working
on the art and story? Are youcompletely complete
collaborating? Or is it kind oflike, you know, one of us one
department ones the other andyou just get together? Or how's
(03:16):
the workload split up?
Well, with World War kaiju, Ihad an extremely specific vision
for that world that was kind ofmy baby that would, you know, we
had a lot of back and forth anda lot of collaboration. But I
was very hands on with this one,I would say it's a very much a
5050 creation, I may be writingit, but it is our creation.
(03:39):
Patrick has been very, veryhands on with the plot and just
dialogue and ideas. On the otherhand, I've decided to take a
step back and just let him kindof control the way it looks.
Which is kind of fun. Althoughon World War Casio is really
great. If anybody goes onlinelooks these up, you'll find
they're in a completelydifferent style. World War kg
(04:02):
was a painted book. It's morelike the illustration work I
usually do. And Josh did a lotof the art assisting on that.
And one could say he did thesefantastic 3d cities and things
for backgrounds and othertextures that I would map on to
(04:23):
3d primitives and verycollaborative and you know, when
you do a book of that scope, andyeah, in that extensive style,
you're really just one personhas a hard time doing it without
some help. And Josh is able tostep right in because he's a
graphics professional as well.
(04:43):
Yeah, I did a lot of the graphicdesign on that book. So like,
anytime there was a newspaper ora document or a map, I did it to
things like that. And in fact,there's as a challenge to people
have the book there's one fullpage that Josh did Oh yeah, I
didn't do and so people shouldguess which one that is
(05:04):
flipped through trying to figureit out right.
And it's not gonna be as easy asyou might think. Because I kept
changing styles up through them.Oh, yeah, but Josh did one that
actually looks like I could havedone it. And he did it
really looked through the samplepages of World War guides you
and I really liked how it had avery throwback feel to the art
(05:29):
and made it look like the oldGodzilla movies.
Yeah, I was one of one of thevisions and one of the reasons
it was so critical that we getPatrick is we needed that that
really overblown, oversaturatedTechnicolor look of the era and
he just nailed it. Yeah, yeah.
And and of course, the look.Thank you. And of course, the
look of guys and giant rubber.Yes, yes, they
(05:51):
had to look like they wereactually guys in costumes.
Go into a case file Arkham. Inoticed on the Kickstarter page,
that it says that you want it tobe all one graphic novel. And if
you reach a stretch goals, it'llbe even even longer graphic
novel. Are you planning ontaking the story? And extending
it out into maybe a series or aseries of graphic novels? Or is
(06:13):
this going to be a one shot?
Oh, no ABS? Absolutely, we aregoing to want to turn this into
a series of graphic novels.It's, it's around a character
Hank Flynn who we really want tokeep going with for a while.
I think it's such a great name.
(06:35):
He's a private eye who workscases in the town of Arkham,
which, you know, anybody who'sread Lovecraft pretty much knows
this the the center of all evil.And we both really have an
affinity for the film noiraesthetic and that hardboiled
(06:56):
era. And then, and we bothreally loved Lovecraft. So it
seemed like a fantastic way oncewe zeroed in on you know, this
was going to be about this.Private I hardboiled private ins
world, which we started zeroingin on that we said, Yeah, we
could do, we could do dozens ofstories. Yeah.
(07:17):
Ideally, we'd like to do one oneof these books a year, and it
would each book could be anindividual case. And so this
first one is kind of revolvingaround Pikmin. He's hired to
find this missing artist. Butyou know, future plots include,
you know, he gets hired by a manwho's lost his memory for five
years and Flynn is now HankFlynn is now trying to piece
(07:41):
together and of course, it turnsout to be the shadow out of time
and
okay, you know,
there's one where he ends upgoing to end Smith and dealing
with the Innsmouth mob, weactually there's, that's the
overarching thing that ties themall together as he keeps having
these visions of daggone. But Idon't want to get into that
guy. You don't want to go toofar. You got to get people to
(08:02):
want to get the book. Don't giveit all away spoilers.
But it's amazing how easy oncewe once we got into the swing of
it, it the Lovecraft world fitsreally easily into the whole
film noir aesthetic. Yeah. And Iadded some flourishes that are a
little more like the, you know,German expressionist silent film
(08:26):
era, you know, and, of course,the, the film noir directors
were really influenced by thatas well. So it's not really a
great stretch, right? Sovisually, it all really fits in
nicely with Lovecraft.
Well, that opening sequence thatwe have on the website and on
the Kickstarter, with the Googlechasing the capital, there's a
(08:47):
bit of am and Nosferatu in someof those shots. I see it.
Absolutely. Oh, and it's atotally different style for both
of us. Really, Josh has never,you know, indulged in a more
hardboiled dialogue style. And Ihave only briefly worked in
(09:12):
black and white line work. Anddefinitely not in this sort of
horror, Stark blacks. And, youknow, crazy details on the
bricks and kind of things likethat style. So it's fun, in a
way because we're both a littleout of our comfort zone that
we've we've both come up with.So that's another kind of
(09:33):
exciting aspect of all this,
but it's also things we bothlove intently, so it's not like
it's that much out of thecomfort zone. I mean, we enjoy
every second of it.
Exact trying something new isalways exciting. I think
the closest I ever got to Noiris my first book and a lot of
the stories I've written are arehard cyberpunk, but that's not
(09:55):
quite new. RSF
would you want to live in theworld? that you're making for
case file Arkham Why or why not?
I you know what? I would acceptthe fact that it's it's
ultimately Lovecrafts universeand the level of Bleak that's
(10:18):
involved craft get to you, whenyou're realizing, you know,
dealing with Cenobites is moreuplifting, more hopeful.
So you're saying no, which isthe correct answer.
I'd live in World War kg. That'dbe fun. But this and No, no, I
(10:41):
wouldn't.
And I would want to live in aworld where they had made this
sort of genre into movies in the1940s. So that we had Humphrey
Bogart starring and Cat peopleor something. So I want to live
in that world and probably wantto live in it in 1947.
(11:07):
Imagine where cinema would betoday. If that's what it was
back then. Yeah.
Yeah, oh, I can imagine one ofthe great you know, more
directors in a in a, you know, abig studio picking up say, the,
the Lovecraft library and say,We're gonna make movies with
this guy stuff. And oh, man,
(11:29):
I'd love to have a zoo with allof his, especially the creatures
from the mountains of madness.The elegant things? Yes, the
elder things I hadn't I wasblinking. Just to see them.
Yeah, I've got an image in myhead because I never went and
looked up any images of whatother people have, have
interpreted the mass, but I'vegot you know, this solid image
(11:52):
in my head. I'd love to see thatas a real thing, but not be near
one, you know. Kind of a zoolike where they're pacified with
tranquilizers or something.
But believe it or not, I did doa book a few years back, gosh,
over five years back now forLovecraft Necronomicon primer by
(12:19):
who was a Llewellyn publishing.And it is available in
bookstores everywhere. I don'tknow if you can get anywhere
other than Amazon these days.That was fun because I got to
illustrate, gosh, like 20 ormore different Lovecraft
creatures each chapter was abouta different creature.
Have you all seen the movieBattle Royale?
(12:41):
You know what? I've read quite abit of the comics and I saw half
the movie on Netflix and then Ihad to I forgot why I didn't get
to finish it.
But you're familiar with theconcept essentially Yeah. Hunger
Games this is we're getting tothe to the real meat of the
interview here in a battleroyale situation between all the
(13:04):
fast food and cereal mascots whowould win and why
I knew somebody was gonna askthis eventually.
Cereal mascots. Yeah, okay.
Can't okay, right off the top. Imean, I gotta cut to the chase
(13:25):
here. You can't count out CountChocula is the only vampire in
the group. But on the otherhand, I would think isn't isn't
a carrot. Kind of like wood. Idon't know if you stuck a
vampire through the heart with acarrot. But in that case, you
(13:46):
know Jack from the jack in thebox. He's got the pointy carrot
nose. And I think he might beable to take out Count Chocula
Yeah, if he's just so I've givenus a lot of thought. Ya know
if he's a if it's a Japanesemade production, Japanese based
reality? Yeah, I think Jackwould have it in the bag
strictly because he knows heseems to be on top of
(14:08):
everything. And he's got theweird head. Now if it was a
United States modern dayproduction. If this was a US
type film, it has to be theWindies mascot chick because
it's a girl and right now youknow that's the that's that's
what's selling with the kids.Well, maybe the
kids that break up break up intoa team windy and team Chocula Oh
(14:33):
yeah,
well yeah, cuz the vampireexactly.
I don't even know.
They could have forgivenforbidden love steak.
Oh, yeah, you gotta have theforbidden loving or the love
triangle.
Tony the Tiger has has beendumped by Wendy and now he's
there. hooks up with a bad boyCount Chocula This is
(14:56):
practically writing
blueberry He's already dead Ilove the idea of a whole island
of mascots killing each other onthat that's worthy of just a one
shot book on its on its own.
(15:16):
Just change the mascots justenough so you don't have to deal
with any legal issues. So
you can write that as one ofthem as a bizarro story, right?
Yeah.
Now is this I have to interviewthe interviewer? Is this a
question? You've asked otherpeople before? Did you save it
up for us?
This is my first interview. Oh,I've never had that interview
(15:40):
before. You missed that part ofthe conversation?
throwing spitballs at you.
Yeah, this is this is my firstinterview. Ever.
You're doing great so far. Oh,great. Great. That's
good to hear. Good to hear.Okay, another serious one. And
(16:00):
I've asked this over many beerswith many friends. What
superpower would you have if youcould choose a superpower?
Hmm, that's a tough one.
And don't think aboutconsequences like you know, the
whole if you could time travelyou might call it you know,
causality and don't worry aboutthat stuff. We're just we're
(16:22):
making it easy.
This is an X Men style powerwhere you have one specialty
power it's not a Superman suiteof powers situation. Yeah,
right.
Right.
Yeah. Not sleeping sounds prettygood. Get a lot more done that
way or not aging would be nice.Yes.
(16:44):
Not aging I think is a good one.Yeah. It works out well for lots
of villains at least. Like,like, no DC, you've got Raj al
Ghul and savage Vandal Savage.Course he's got the sweet of
(17:07):
Paris. He's super stressed. On
the other hand, if we're talkingabout pure gratuitous worthless
powers that really don't have alot of value, but they're just
there. I think we're all at thatpoint where every once awhile
you just want to be able to makesomebody's head explode through
the internet.
Yes. scalings
when you said yes. You saiduseless I was thinking about
(17:29):
like you were thinking mattereither lead or Arm Fall Off Boy.
Actually, a character showed upin one battle
seriously.
And then that always leads tothe next question, Hero or
villain?
Oh, I didn't answer really but Idid. I concurred with not aging
(17:54):
because I think it's not a verygood power for 100 years or so.
But after a while, it reallystarts paying to
make small investments andeverything and just see which
ones pay out.
Exactly. Also, I'll be upfrontwith you I you know, I I've
approached that I am 40 now andyou start thinking I'm like
gonna get all the all thestories I want done in time. I
(18:15):
mean, that actually weighs on menow. I used to you don't think
about it but it actually doesweigh on me now.
You know what that's a goodargument for matter eater lad
because as we get older we can'teat as much as we used to.
Okay, so the not a hero orvillain.
(18:40):
All of the great not agingcharacters seem to be villains.
But I would I would think I'd atleast be chaotic good
old d&d alignments
I would actually I would be theI would be the asshole you don't
(19:01):
want but the asshole you need.Right? So not quite a hero of
it. But the asshole you need
the complete asshole with theheart of gold. I'd like to build
an asshole. How can folks get ahold of you on the web? Or at
(19:26):
least follow you? I know you'vegot the Kickstarter. I'm going
to be linking to yourKickstarter and any other
websites that you want me tolink to in the show notes. But
anything else that Joel wantedto plug while you're here or any
websites you wanted to mentionTwitter, Twitter accounts,
anything?
Well, actually, at this point,after my Facebook experiences,
(19:48):
I've just come to the conclusionmaybe I shouldn't encourage
people to follow me.
Follow me I'm much morepolitically
Yeah, exactly. You're morecharismatic than man. I've just
stopped caring. But as far asfinding the I'd say the best
thing to do right now is go tothe 01 website 01 Publishing
(20:11):
website, which has has a lot ofhelp a lot of my books available
01 publishing.com I'd also liketo plug everything I've done,
please, please, please go byWorld War guide, you go by
utopia, it's which is thecyberpunk story. And if there
it's still in print, titaniumrain, Patrick,
(20:32):
those are good things. You knowwhat I first want to plug the
concept of stretch goals? Oh,
yes, thank you. For ego.
Because case file Arkham is, bythe time this comes out, I've
got my fingers crossed thatwe're going to be past 100%
funded on Kickstarter, which isabsolutely phenomenal. But we
(20:55):
have stretch goals. 8000 is ourminimum for which we will do the
most awesome graphic novel, Ithink, yes, I think anybody's
ever read. But it could be evenbetter. Because at $11,000. If
we get up to 11,000, we're goingto add 20 pages of content for
no extra charge. Yes. And if wemake it to 14,000, we're going
(21:18):
to double the content, forinstance, search. If somehow
some wonderful person came inand said 19,000 got us up to
$19,000, we would triple thesize of the book.
And the way that it works is8000 will get us half the book
(21:40):
three. Yeah, we got up to11,000, we get the whole thing
in one and done whole thing,which is what we really want.
And if we go into 19,000, we caninclude some cutscenes. A lot of
background material, extra artfrom Patrick,
probably an extra short story inthere. You know, lots of things,
(22:01):
all this stuff we could do as
well. We're toying withpublishing, the original Pitmans
model will include the originalPitmans model with some
illustrations from Patrickpossibly.
Yeah, so. So those are reallyimportant. 14,000 is ideally
where we'd like to get and thatwould be wonderful. It's, it's
(22:21):
6000 over our initial goal. Butwe've got a couple of weeks to
make it. And I'd like to askanyone who's thinking of backing
the project or already hasbacked it to think about how
groovy it would be at twice thelength and try to get all your
friends to come on board. Youknow, again, get an extra copy
(22:43):
for your friends. You never cantell when you're going to need
one. I'm sure most of the peopleout there have friends. I used
to have some.
Yeah, I started a podcast.
But yeah, that's the main thingI would want to plug. And we're
(23:03):
working with you that I workedon with Josh and cat, the
publisher of 01. Also, the namerich. The other graphic. I did
two graphic novels last year,how good is life? That one's
more for kids. It's not a swearword in it. And it's a really
fun one. And then I do a podcastcalled The Ninja mountain
(23:28):
podcast, where I'm one of agroup of hosts from all over the
world. And we are talking aboutillustration every week. No, we
don't. We used to do it everyweek. Now we do it whenever we
feel like it because we're alsobusy. And then of course my
website is make a flowgraphics.com
(23:51):
All right. Yeah, I call mypodcast sometimes weekly
podcast.
It's a great name. Yeah, I likethat
sometimes weekly podcast but um,16 days, 16 days to go as of
this recording, I'd love to seeextra artwork in the back of the
book. So folks, get out there.Click that back this project
(24:13):
button. Tell all your friendslike like they were saying get a
get a copy for your friends. Younever know. You forget a
birthday comes up. You can haveit sitting there. Ready to go
for him? I think if you'relistening to this podcast
anyway, you're into this type offiction and your friends
probably are two I'm looking atare we it's just fantastic.
We've got an incentive that Ithink every Lovecraft fan needs.
(24:38):
And that is a shot glass from anauthentic Innsmouth pub. The
dive.
Yes, Josh. Josh created afantastic for the dive. And it's
got to be seen to be believed.
Yes. I love it.
(24:58):
You're still gonna ask us whatCthulhu Therefore,
oh yes. Why did I skip them?Yes. What do you think? Cthulhu
tastes like?
Well I actually put some thoughtinto this since I had some
warning beforehand and I'm goingto say that either he tastes
like the deep dark pit ofdespair where it's filled with
dark matter or or waffle houseor worry tastes like yellow cake
(25:25):
washed down with a glass ofheavy water
well, I don't know I guess Iguess if you mix him with peanut
butter at dark creature whowants to sell it swallow your
(25:46):
soul but sticks to the roof ofyour mouth?
I was just thinking calamari
Yeah, I'm gonna be getting oneof these the dive window
stickers. This is fantastic.
We have an ongoing joke cat andI that every once in a while
(26:09):
this will come up that we keepimagining what a love prep
themed sushi restaurant wouldhave on its menu.
Well, what have you come upwith?
Oh, well, you know, they're therules themselves wouldn't sound
right, you know, just Cthulhuroll Star Spawn Roll Deep one
roll. But what would we actuallymake the rolls out of so of
(26:32):
course there would be the KungFu one would be the calamari.
Right, the tendrils coming outand then I don't know for a deep
one probably would be theequivalent to What's the capital
roll.
I imagined deep ones tastes alot like hamachi. And that's why
(26:52):
you see so few baby deep onesbecause people are always
harvesting the row.
We've seen a few reaction to theword hide you themed roles. So
why not low prep themed rolls anatural fit, it
fits perfectly.
I now want to have a deep onerow roll with a daggone egg on
(27:16):
top. All right, we've made theaudience angry. Leave them
wanting more.
Well, all right. Well,
that's that's all I have for youguys. Thanks for coming on me.
despod being the inauguralinterviews episode for me.
despod. I appreciate you bothtaking the time to come on the
(27:38):
show.
It was good meeting you, David.Yes. Yeah. All right. Well,
thank you very much support casefile Arkham. And I don't know
rock on.
To have a sign off. I normallyjust say we'll see you next time
folks,
(27:59):
and be excellent to each other.Right
in the dark one, take your soul.
I really had a great timetalking with these guys, as well
as a little bit of time with catfrom 01 Publishing. I also feel
better backing a project when Iknow that the creators are
passionate about it. And as youcan tell from the interview they
are please go check out theirKickstarter, which is linked in
(28:22):
the show notes for this episodeand consider back in case file
Arkham Patrick, Josh, thanks forcoming on the show and I wish
you guys the best of luck. Ourtheme music comes to us courtesy
of odd sprite check out more oftheir work at odd sprite.com
Muniz pod is released underCreative Commons Attribution non
commercial no derivativeslicense, which means you can't
change it or sell it but shareit all you like. We'll see you
(28:44):
next time folks
Hello and welcome to meters podinterviews episode one. I
recently had a chance to sitdown talk with Josh Finney and
Patrick McElroy. Together. Theyare wild stallions just getting
their team cards you, Josh andPatrick are working on a graphic
novel called a case file Arkham.Set in the mid 1940s. case file
(00:24):
Arkham follows Hank Flynn, adown on his luck private eyes
back from the war and nowworking the main streets the
most cursed city on Earth.Arkham, Massachusetts, and
Things only get worse for Flynnwhen a wealthy uptown socialite
hires him to track down anartist by the name of Pikmin.
What begins is a simple missingpersons case leads Flynn down a
(00:44):
dark path of flesh eating goals,vengeful witches and a notorious
Innsmouth. Mafia. Everythingabout this book looks amazing.
But enough of me talking aboutit. Let's hear from the creators
themselves.
Hey, how are you guys doingtonight?
Very well. How are you? Doing
(01:06):
great doing great. Why don't yougo ahead and introduce
yourselves one by one and tellus a little bit about case file
Arkham.
Josh Kerr to kick it off.
Okay. My name is Josh Finney.I'm the writer behind case file
Arkham. I've done World Warkaiju, titanium, rain and
utopia. It's in the past andI've also done some short
(01:29):
stories in the pros world aswell.
And I'm Patrick McAvoy. I'mdoing the art on case file
Arkham. And let's see I'veworked with Josh on World War
kaiju. And worked earlier withour Kea doing a book called
Starkweather immortal anothergraphic novel. Another graphic
(01:49):
novel I just did last yearcalled The Nain Rouge sort of a
young adult book. And other thanthat, though, I'm more of an
illustrator has been my livingfor the last 15 years or so. I
do illustration. And I also domultimedia work, animation, art
directing, that kind of thingfor for games and educational
(02:10):
products. And I've I could go onand on. I've worked on different
role playing games andcollectible card games, Call of
Cthulhu game and the game ofthrones card game and I was on
contract with Marvel for acouple of years doing work for
their marketing division.
(02:31):
I always like to say, I likethis, I always like to say the
Patrick is the one of yourfavorite artists, you just don't
know his name, right? Chancesare if you like comics Cthulhu
or just about any role playingproperty, you probably own
multiple pieces of his art. Youjust never knew it.
But when I was Google stalkingPatrick, I noticed I've seen a
(02:55):
lot of his work before knowsname, but now I got him on get
him on the phone. So with casefile Arkham Are you both working
on the art and story? Are youcompletely complete
collaborating? Or is it kind oflike, you know, one of us one
department ones the other andyou just get together? Or how's
(03:16):
the workload split up?
Well, with World War kaiju, Ihad an extremely specific vision
for that world that was kind ofmy baby that would, you know, we
had a lot of back and forth anda lot of collaboration. But I
was very hands on with this one,I would say it's a very much a
5050 creation, I may be writingit, but it is our creation.
(03:39):
Patrick has been very, veryhands on with the plot and just
dialogue and ideas. On the otherhand, I've decided to take a
step back and just let him kindof control the way it looks.
Which is kind of fun. Althoughon World War Casio is really
great. If anybody goes onlinelooks these up, you'll find
they're in a completelydifferent style. World War kg
(04:02):
was a painted book. It's morelike the illustration work I
usually do. And Josh did a lotof the art assisting on that.
And one could say he did thesefantastic 3d cities and things
for backgrounds and othertextures that I would map on to
(04:23):
3d primitives and verycollaborative and you know, when
you do a book of that scope, andyeah, in that extensive style,
you're really just one personhas a hard time doing it without
some help. And Josh is able tostep right in because he's a
graphics professional as well.
(04:43):
Yeah, I did a lot of the graphicdesign on that book. So like,
anytime there was a newspaper ora document or a map, I did it to
things like that. And in fact,there's as a challenge to people
have the book there's one fullpage that Josh did Oh yeah, I
didn't do and so people shouldguess which one that is
(05:04):
flipped through trying to figureit out right.
And it's not gonna be as easy asyou might think. Because I kept
changing styles up through them.Oh, yeah, but Josh did one that
actually looks like I could havedone it. And he did it
really looked through the samplepages of World War guides you
and I really liked how it had avery throwback feel to the art
(05:29):
and made it look like the oldGodzilla movies.
Yeah, I was one of one of thevisions and one of the reasons
it was so critical that we getPatrick is we needed that that
really overblown, oversaturatedTechnicolor look of the era and
he just nailed it. Yeah, yeah.
And and of course, the look.Thank you. And of course, the
look of guys and giant rubber.Yes, yes, they
(05:51):
had to look like they wereactually guys in costumes.
Go into a case file Arkham. Inoticed on the Kickstarter page,
that it says that you want it tobe all one graphic novel. And if
you reach a stretch goals, it'llbe even even longer graphic
novel. Are you planning ontaking the story? And extending
it out into maybe a series or aseries of graphic novels? Or is
(06:13):
this going to be a one shot?
Oh, no ABS? Absolutely, we aregoing to want to turn this into
a series of graphic novels.It's, it's around a character
Hank Flynn who we really want tokeep going with for a while.
I think it's such a great name.
(06:35):
He's a private eye who workscases in the town of Arkham,
which, you know, anybody who'sread Lovecraft pretty much knows
this the the center of all evil.And we both really have an
affinity for the film noiraesthetic and that hardboiled
(06:56):
era. And then, and we bothreally loved Lovecraft. So it
seemed like a fantastic way oncewe zeroed in on you know, this
was going to be about this.Private I hardboiled private ins
world, which we started zeroingin on that we said, Yeah, we
could do, we could do dozens ofstories. Yeah.
(07:17):
Ideally, we'd like to do one oneof these books a year, and it
would each book could be anindividual case. And so this
first one is kind of revolvingaround Pikmin. He's hired to
find this missing artist. Butyou know, future plots include,
you know, he gets hired by a manwho's lost his memory for five
years and Flynn is now HankFlynn is now trying to piece
(07:41):
together and of course, it turnsout to be the shadow out of time
and
okay, you know,
there's one where he ends upgoing to end Smith and dealing
with the Innsmouth mob, weactually there's, that's the
overarching thing that ties themall together as he keeps having
these visions of daggone. But Idon't want to get into that
guy. You don't want to go toofar. You got to get people to
(08:02):
want to get the book. Don't giveit all away spoilers.
But it's amazing how easy oncewe once we got into the swing of
it, it the Lovecraft world fitsreally easily into the whole
film noir aesthetic. Yeah. And Iadded some flourishes that are a
little more like the, you know,German expressionist silent film
(08:26):
era, you know, and, of course,the, the film noir directors
were really influenced by thatas well. So it's not really a
great stretch, right? Sovisually, it all really fits in
nicely with Lovecraft.
Well, that opening sequence thatwe have on the website and on
the Kickstarter, with the Googlechasing the capital, there's a
(08:47):
bit of am and Nosferatu in someof those shots. I see it.
Absolutely. Oh, and it's atotally different style for both
of us. Really, Josh has never,you know, indulged in a more
hardboiled dialogue style. And Ihave only briefly worked in
(09:12):
black and white line work. Anddefinitely not in this sort of
horror, Stark blacks. And, youknow, crazy details on the
bricks and kind of things likethat style. So it's fun, in a
way because we're both a littleout of our comfort zone that
we've we've both come up with.So that's another kind of
(09:33):
exciting aspect of all this,
but it's also things we bothlove intently, so it's not like
it's that much out of thecomfort zone. I mean, we enjoy
every second of it.
Exact trying something new isalways exciting. I think
the closest I ever got to Noiris my first book and a lot of
the stories I've written are arehard cyberpunk, but that's not
(09:55):
quite new. RSF
would you want to live in theworld? that you're making for
case file Arkham Why or why not?
I you know what? I would acceptthe fact that it's it's
ultimately Lovecrafts universeand the level of Bleak that's
(10:18):
involved craft get to you, whenyou're realizing, you know,
dealing with Cenobites is moreuplifting, more hopeful.
So you're saying no, which isthe correct answer.
I'd live in World War kg. That'dbe fun. But this and No, no, I
(10:41):
wouldn't.
And I would want to live in aworld where they had made this
sort of genre into movies in the1940s. So that we had Humphrey
Bogart starring and Cat peopleor something. So I want to live
in that world and probably wantto live in it in 1947.
(11:07):
Imagine where cinema would betoday. If that's what it was
back then. Yeah.
Yeah, oh, I can imagine one ofthe great you know, more
directors in a in a, you know, abig studio picking up say, the,
the Lovecraft library and say,We're gonna make movies with
this guy stuff. And oh, man,
(11:29):
I'd love to have a zoo with allof his, especially the creatures
from the mountains of madness.The elegant things? Yes, the
elder things I hadn't I wasblinking. Just to see them.
Yeah, I've got an image in myhead because I never went and
looked up any images of whatother people have, have
interpreted the mass, but I'vegot you know, this solid image
(11:52):
in my head. I'd love to see thatas a real thing, but not be near
one, you know. Kind of a zoolike where they're pacified with
tranquilizers or something.
But believe it or not, I did doa book a few years back, gosh,
over five years back now forLovecraft Necronomicon primer by
(12:19):
who was a Llewellyn publishing.And it is available in
bookstores everywhere. I don'tknow if you can get anywhere
other than Amazon these days.That was fun because I got to
illustrate, gosh, like 20 ormore different Lovecraft
creatures each chapter was abouta different creature.
Have you all seen the movieBattle Royale?
(12:41):
You know what? I've read quite abit of the comics and I saw half
the movie on Netflix and then Ihad to I forgot why I didn't get
to finish it.
But you're familiar with theconcept essentially Yeah. Hunger
Games this is we're getting tothe to the real meat of the
interview here in a battleroyale situation between all the
(13:04):
fast food and cereal mascots whowould win and why
I knew somebody was gonna askthis eventually.
Cereal mascots. Yeah, okay.
Can't okay, right off the top. Imean, I gotta cut to the chase
(13:25):
here. You can't count out CountChocula is the only vampire in
the group. But on the otherhand, I would think isn't isn't
a carrot. Kind of like wood. Idon't know if you stuck a
vampire through the heart with acarrot. But in that case, you
(13:46):
know Jack from the jack in thebox. He's got the pointy carrot
nose. And I think he might beable to take out Count Chocula
Yeah, if he's just so I've givenus a lot of thought. Ya know
if he's a if it's a Japanesemade production, Japanese based
reality? Yeah, I think Jackwould have it in the bag
strictly because he knows heseems to be on top of
(14:08):
everything. And he's got theweird head. Now if it was a
United States modern dayproduction. If this was a US
type film, it has to be theWindies mascot chick because
it's a girl and right now youknow that's the that's that's
what's selling with the kids.Well, maybe the
kids that break up break up intoa team windy and team Chocula Oh
(14:33):
yeah,
well yeah, cuz the vampireexactly.
I don't even know.
They could have forgivenforbidden love steak.
Oh, yeah, you gotta have theforbidden loving or the love
triangle.
Tony the Tiger has has beendumped by Wendy and now he's
there. hooks up with a bad boyCount Chocula This is
(14:56):
practically writing
blueberry He's already dead Ilove the idea of a whole island
of mascots killing each other onthat that's worthy of just a one
shot book on its on its own.
(15:16):
Just change the mascots justenough so you don't have to deal
with any legal issues. So
you can write that as one ofthem as a bizarro story, right?
Yeah.
Now is this I have to interviewthe interviewer? Is this a
question? You've asked otherpeople before? Did you save it
up for us?
This is my first interview. Oh,I've never had that interview
(15:40):
before. You missed that part ofthe conversation?
throwing spitballs at you.
Yeah, this is this is my firstinterview. Ever.
You're doing great so far. Oh,great. Great. That's
good to hear. Good to hear.Okay, another serious one. And
(16:00):
I've asked this over many beerswith many friends. What
superpower would you have if youcould choose a superpower?
Hmm, that's a tough one.
And don't think aboutconsequences like you know, the
whole if you could time travelyou might call it you know,
causality and don't worry aboutthat stuff. We're just we're
(16:22):
making it easy.
This is an X Men style powerwhere you have one specialty
power it's not a Superman suiteof powers situation. Yeah,
right.
Right.
Yeah. Not sleeping sounds prettygood. Get a lot more done that
way or not aging would be nice.Yes.
(16:44):
Not aging I think is a good one.Yeah. It works out well for lots
of villains at least. Like,like, no DC, you've got Raj al
Ghul and savage Vandal Savage.Course he's got the sweet of
(17:07):
Paris. He's super stressed. On
the other hand, if we're talkingabout pure gratuitous worthless
powers that really don't have alot of value, but they're just
there. I think we're all at thatpoint where every once awhile
you just want to be able to makesomebody's head explode through
the internet.
Yes. scalings
when you said yes. You saiduseless I was thinking about
(17:29):
like you were thinking mattereither lead or Arm Fall Off Boy.
Actually, a character showed upin one battle
seriously.
And then that always leads tothe next question, Hero or
villain?
Oh, I didn't answer really but Idid. I concurred with not aging
(17:54):
because I think it's not a verygood power for 100 years or so.
But after a while, it reallystarts paying to
make small investments andeverything and just see which
ones pay out.
Exactly. Also, I'll be upfrontwith you I you know, I I've
approached that I am 40 now andyou start thinking I'm like
gonna get all the all thestories I want done in time. I
(18:15):
mean, that actually weighs on menow. I used to you don't think
about it but it actually doesweigh on me now.
You know what that's a goodargument for matter eater lad
because as we get older we can'teat as much as we used to.
Okay, so the not a hero orvillain.
(18:40):
All of the great not agingcharacters seem to be villains.
But I would I would think I'd atleast be chaotic good
old d&d alignments
I would actually I would be theI would be the asshole you don't
(19:01):
want but the asshole you need.Right? So not quite a hero of
it. But the asshole you need
the complete asshole with theheart of gold. I'd like to build
an asshole. How can folks get ahold of you on the web? Or at
(19:26):
least follow you? I know you'vegot the Kickstarter. I'm going
to be linking to yourKickstarter and any other
websites that you want me tolink to in the show notes. But
anything else that Joel wantedto plug while you're here or any
websites you wanted to mentionTwitter, Twitter accounts,
anything?
Well, actually, at this point,after my Facebook experiences,
(19:48):
I've just come to the conclusionmaybe I shouldn't encourage
people to follow me.
Follow me I'm much morepolitically
Yeah, exactly. You're morecharismatic than man. I've just
stopped caring. But as far asfinding the I'd say the best
thing to do right now is go tothe 01 website 01 Publishing
(20:11):
website, which has has a lot ofhelp a lot of my books available
01 publishing.com I'd also liketo plug everything I've done,
please, please, please go byWorld War guide, you go by
utopia, it's which is thecyberpunk story. And if there
it's still in print, titaniumrain, Patrick,
(20:32):
those are good things. You knowwhat I first want to plug the
concept of stretch goals? Oh,
yes, thank you. For ego.
Because case file Arkham is, bythe time this comes out, I've
got my fingers crossed thatwe're going to be past 100%
funded on Kickstarter, which isabsolutely phenomenal. But we
(20:55):
have stretch goals. 8000 is ourminimum for which we will do the
most awesome graphic novel, Ithink, yes, I think anybody's
ever read. But it could be evenbetter. Because at $11,000. If
we get up to 11,000, we're goingto add 20 pages of content for
no extra charge. Yes. And if wemake it to 14,000, we're going
(21:18):
to double the content, forinstance, search. If somehow
some wonderful person came inand said 19,000 got us up to
$19,000, we would triple thesize of the book.
And the way that it works is8000 will get us half the book
(21:40):
three. Yeah, we got up to11,000, we get the whole thing
in one and done whole thing,which is what we really want.
And if we go into 19,000, we caninclude some cutscenes. A lot of
background material, extra artfrom Patrick,
probably an extra short story inthere. You know, lots of things,
(22:01):
all this stuff we could do as
well. We're toying withpublishing, the original Pitmans
model will include the originalPitmans model with some
illustrations from Patrickpossibly.
Yeah, so. So those are reallyimportant. 14,000 is ideally
where we'd like to get and thatwould be wonderful. It's, it's
(22:21):
6000 over our initial goal. Butwe've got a couple of weeks to
make it. And I'd like to askanyone who's thinking of backing
the project or already hasbacked it to think about how
groovy it would be at twice thelength and try to get all your
friends to come on board. Youknow, again, get an extra copy
(22:43):
for your friends. You never cantell when you're going to need
one. I'm sure most of the peopleout there have friends. I used
to have some.
Yeah, I started a podcast.
But yeah, that's the main thingI would want to plug. And we're
(23:03):
working with you that I workedon with Josh and cat, the
publisher of 01. Also, the namerich. The other graphic. I did
two graphic novels last year,how good is life? That one's
more for kids. It's not a swearword in it. And it's a really
fun one. And then I do a podcastcalled The Ninja mountain
(23:28):
podcast, where I'm one of agroup of hosts from all over the
world. And we are talking aboutillustration every week. No, we
don't. We used to do it everyweek. Now we do it whenever we
feel like it because we're alsobusy. And then of course my
website is make a flowgraphics.com
(23:51):
All right. Yeah, I call mypodcast sometimes weekly
podcast.
It's a great name. Yeah, I likethat
sometimes weekly podcast but um,16 days, 16 days to go as of
this recording, I'd love to seeextra artwork in the back of the
book. So folks, get out there.Click that back this project
(24:13):
button. Tell all your friendslike like they were saying get a
get a copy for your friends. Younever know. You forget a
birthday comes up. You can haveit sitting there. Ready to go
for him? I think if you'relistening to this podcast
anyway, you're into this type offiction and your friends
probably are two I'm looking atare we it's just fantastic.
We've got an incentive that Ithink every Lovecraft fan needs.
(24:38):
And that is a shot glass from anauthentic Innsmouth pub. The
dive.
Yes, Josh. Josh created afantastic for the dive. And it's
got to be seen to be believed.
Yes. I love it.
(24:58):
You're still gonna ask us whatCthulhu Therefore,
oh yes. Why did I skip them?Yes. What do you think? Cthulhu
tastes like?
Well I actually put some thoughtinto this since I had some
warning beforehand and I'm goingto say that either he tastes
like the deep dark pit ofdespair where it's filled with
dark matter or or waffle houseor worry tastes like yellow cake
(25:25):
washed down with a glass ofheavy water
well, I don't know I guess Iguess if you mix him with peanut
butter at dark creature whowants to sell it swallow your
(25:46):
soul but sticks to the roof ofyour mouth?
I was just thinking calamari
Yeah, I'm gonna be getting oneof these the dive window
stickers. This is fantastic.
We have an ongoing joke cat andI that every once in a while
(26:09):
this will come up that we keepimagining what a love prep
themed sushi restaurant wouldhave on its menu.
Well, what have you come upwith?
Oh, well, you know, they're therules themselves wouldn't sound
right, you know, just Cthulhuroll Star Spawn Roll Deep one
roll. But what would we actuallymake the rolls out of so of
(26:32):
course there would be the KungFu one would be the calamari.
Right, the tendrils coming outand then I don't know for a deep
one probably would be theequivalent to What's the capital
roll.
I imagined deep ones tastes alot like hamachi. And that's why
(26:52):
you see so few baby deep onesbecause people are always
harvesting the row.
We've seen a few reaction to theword hide you themed roles. So
why not low prep themed rolls anatural fit, it
fits perfectly.
I now want to have a deep onerow roll with a daggone egg on
(27:16):
top. All right, we've made theaudience angry. Leave them
wanting more.
Well, all right. Well,
that's that's all I have for youguys. Thanks for coming on me.
despod being the inauguralinterviews episode for me.
despod. I appreciate you bothtaking the time to come on the
(27:38):
show.
It was good meeting you, David.Yes. Yeah. All right. Well,
thank you very much support casefile Arkham. And I don't know
rock on.
To have a sign off. I normallyjust say we'll see you next time
folks,
(27:59):
and be excellent to each other.Right
in the dark one, take your soul.
I really had a great timetalking with these guys, as well
as a little bit of time with catfrom 01 Publishing. I also feel
better backing a project when Iknow that the creators are
passionate about it. And as youcan tell from the interview they
are please go check out theirKickstarter, which is linked in
(28:22):
the show notes for this episodeand consider back in case file
Arkham Patrick, Josh, thanks forcoming on the show and I wish
you guys the best of luck. Ourtheme music comes to us courtesy
of odd sprite check out more oftheir work at odd sprite.com
Muniz pod is released underCreative Commons Attribution non
commercial no derivativeslicense, which means you can't
change it or sell it but shareit all you like. We'll see you
(28:44):
next time folks
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