Inside AMERICAN CAPER A 21st Century Crime Comic

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, welcome back time again for word Balloon the
count Book Conversation show John santras Here brand new coumbook
debuted this week from dark Horse American Caper. It's pretty cool.
It's made by the people that at Rockstar Video Games
made grape games like Grand Theft, Auto three and up

(00:21):
and other wonderful games as well. But it also includes
in the creative team. And this is why I was excited.
My dear friend Shelley Bond, the wonderful editor for so
many years at Vertigo on great books like a Zombie
and the like, and over at IDW with the Black
Crown imprint. I'm a big fan of Shelly's. If Shelley's
eye is on a project, she has my attention. She

(00:43):
is editing this book and to provide the initial art
we got David Lapham. I just sad David on last
month the Stray Bullets guy. I am such a fan
of his, so again, when I heard that these people
were involved, it got my attention. You're gonna be other
members of the creative team as well, including Laslow, the
co writer, and also Chris Anderson. Wonderful people, really interesting

(01:07):
stories about this thing. It's a comic book. I know
they're coming from video games, but they promised me, and
again the proof is in the storytelling. I got to
read the first two issues. This is about a weird
Wyoming town and a lot of people that live there
and how it really is. This wonderful satire on the
American culture wrapped in a couple crime stories. American Caper

(01:30):
from Dark Horse Comics. That's today's subject on today's word Balloon.
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(02:57):
com slash word Balloon. Thanks for listening, and thanks as
always for your support. Full House Tonight, Welcome everybody, Welcome
back to word Balloon, the Comic book Conversation Show. John
Sutris here, we got some newbies, so right off the bat,
this is The American Caper Crew. Everybody, a fantastic news
series from Dark Horse. It just debuted yesterday. We're gonna

(03:20):
get really into it. It's a really really interesting project,
great story. They've been kind enough to send me the
first two issues and this is one to watch. And
you know I'm a sucker for a good crime story. Well,
we've got a couple crime veterans in the house, and
we got the great Vertigo former Vertigo and IDW. Black
Crown editor Shelly Bond, who's kind of the team captain

(03:41):
here as far as editing and everything. Good to see
a shell, thank you absolutely from Stray Bullets and a
wonderful addition to the team. And you know you're gonna
get a good crime comic when you got David Lapham
handling up the art choice. Great to see you, David,
absolutely absolutely. Now two newbies and you'll forgive me.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Guys.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
We got we got Laslow and then we got Chris.
So please introduce yourselves to our our our home audience,
ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
Please you go first. Chris.

Speaker 2 (04:12):
You will, Oh, hey, okay, fine, Hey, I'm Chris Anderson,
cartoonist and yeah, I don't know really what else to
say at this point until we get into it fair enough.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
And I'm Laslow. I'm the co writer and producer on
this comic. We started this comic. Dan Hauser and I
started this company after leaving Rockstar Games and said we
wanted to do games and animation and audio fiction, but

(04:45):
we really wanted to do a comic book. So it
came out yesterday and I went to my local comic
book store and saw it on the shelf, and I
really never ever thought this would happen to be as
a longtime comic book reader.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
Well, congratulations, man, I'm gonna the trailer. Shelley was nice
enough to give me this wonderful trailer. It's on YouTube everybody,
so if you blink and mensa, don't worry. You can
find it under American Caper. So let's take a little
hair out. I'll be like Johnny Carson. I think we
have a clip. Let's take a look at American Caper
from Dark Horse Comics.

Speaker 4 (05:21):
Baroda, Wyoming, a small town like any other, a land
of hunter and hunted, aphex predators and regulations just waiting
to be broken. A degenerate lawyer, a Mormon hit there,

(05:43):
a red pilled housewife, escaped convicts in love, a Mexican
beauty queen on the run. A Wall Street billionaire turned cowboy, dreamers.

Speaker 5 (05:58):
Lost in fantasy and the media actual hell vent on Revenge,
the new crime fiction comic book series from the mind
of Dan Hauser. American Caper, issue number one in stores

(06:18):
now from Absurd Ventures and Dark Horse Comics.

Speaker 6 (06:29):
Come on, I'm the only one who started dancing the
moment that trailer started.

Speaker 7 (06:34):
Come on.

Speaker 3 (06:35):
We had a we had a whole conversation we had
we had a whole conversation about what music would be
right for American Caper. And it's you know, it's set
in Wyoming. It was like, oh, we could go for
sort of Western stuff, and we could we could go
for like spaghetti western thing, and then we landed on
funk and it just fits.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
Come on, absolutely, man, Crime Caper. Yes, absolutely, absolutely, So
this is great. So Laslo, as you were saying earlier
and everything, what you guys are doing with this whole project,
and that you wanted, you know, back and I remember
literally about twenty years ago, you'd hear from these media
companies and go, we're a trans media company and it's like, yeah,

(07:17):
that sounds cool. But given your background and Dan's background
as well, I mean, you guys really are in that business.
So you know, first of all, these the comic is great.
You kind of as they said to let me read
the first two issues, and it really does. You set
up this new town of Verona, Wyoming is where everything
takes place. Correct.

Speaker 3 (07:39):
Correct. And you know, when Dan and I worked together
on the games at Rockstar, we started together in two
thousand and one on Grand Theft Doto three, and we
worked on you know, Red Dead, Redemption and Max Paying
three and Bully and all of those games are about
world buildings, so it's a lot of the same sensibility

(08:01):
and that what are the what are the businesses in
the background, what are the you know, what are the billboards,
what are the who are the fake celebrities? Who were
you know, what's the Because you're building literally a universe
out of thin air. So having done that for twenty
four years, it was it channeled into comics really well.

(08:28):
But we quickly learned that comics are a different type
of storytelling. You know, in the Grand Theft Auto universe,
besides this huge immersive cinematic universe and cinematic storytelling, you know,
we had in game radio, we had in game television.
There was a fake Internet that you could serf. You know,

(08:50):
there's billboards and you would see a billboard while driving
down the street in the game, and then you'd hear
a radio ad for the same product. Product at some
point you'd see a TV commercial, and so we knew
about immersive storytelling there. But Dan wrote the first script
of American Caper, and then we brought in Shelley and

(09:12):
she put together this dream team of David Lapham and
Chris Anderson. And I remember the conversation that we had
where she goes, I've got this idea of putting these
two together, and so we did an art test. I mean,
we know David's amazing and I you know, Chris's work
is amazing, but it was like what happens when you

(09:34):
when you mix you know, peanut butter and chocolate, or
you know, one of those sort of like weird culinary
things that you wouldn't or something you wouldn't normally think of.
It was like putting these two together and it's just
it works. David's He'll take a script that I consider,
you know, because you're always insecure as a creator, you know,

(09:54):
is a seven point five, and Dave takes it to
a nine point nine. And then with his layouts and
the ideas that he and Shelley kick in. You know,
we have this these amazing pencils, and then Chris must

(10:15):
have had a horrible upbringing because the dark gritty, the
dark gritty stuff that he brings to these scenes. I'm like, damn,
that looks incredible.

Speaker 6 (10:26):
Well, I have to just jump in and say that.
To me, that's the greatest thing about being an editor.
And everybody still has like a misunderstanding what it means
to be an editor in comics, and most people think
it's just being a traffic cop or keeping the trains running,
making sure that the schedules are running smoothly. That is

(10:48):
an important part of being an editor, but by no
means does it even crack the surface of what it
means to really edit, to be a legit editor. So
to me, you know, when someone asked me to come
into a project, especially when there isn't a monthly team
on the books, I just want to take a look

(11:09):
at the pitch and then just I will go for
my gut instinct. And when I heard that the book
was called American Caper, first of all, capers are my
favorite type of crime fiction stories. But when someone says crime,
there's only one name that I think of now, a
lot of people will say that David's wife is probably

(11:30):
sending me checks every month. But I truly think that
David is the greatest American storyteller of my generation. I'm
a little older than everybody except John here, but I
think it's true now. When Stray Bullets came out nineteen
ninety five, I fell to my knees and I said,

(11:52):
this is why I'm going to be a comics lifer.
So yeah, of course, first instinct was David Lapham. However,
I know he's a busy guy, and I also believe
that we can only elevate the art form when we
bring new things to the table. And I really felt
like it was important if Lazo and Dan really wanted

(12:14):
to do the monthly comic in the spirit of one
hundred Bullets Invisible Fables, you know, have a book that
people can count on every thirty days.

Speaker 7 (12:24):
I felt like.

Speaker 6 (12:25):
We needed to bring someone in, and I was really
conscious about putting David on the full end, because his
storytelling is second to none. Laslow, you said he brings
American caper up to a nine point nine. I disagree.
I think he brings American caper up to a fourteen
point six. Then his wife may or may not be

(12:48):
sending me checks, so I look at that. But I
will say that Chris Anderson's indie work really impressed me,
and I thought, wow, they are both very strong storytellers
in their own right, but there was something extra peculiar
and intense about Chris's work that I thought would capture

(13:11):
the absurdity in American paper and in absurd adventures. And
sure enough, I think it clicked pretty much from the start.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
So Chris, tell me about some of your other art, because,
like Shell said, I'm certainly aware of David stuff, and
also I really do appreciate your guys combination. We have
a process page. It will show, but it kind of
in a very different way. It's kind of like when
Bill Sinkevitch was inking Mike Norton's stuff on Green Arrow,

(13:43):
where it didn't look like sink Kevitch, it didn't look
like Norton. Now I don't know your style, but I
appreciate your inks because it is slightly removed from what
we normally expect from a David Lapham comic. So tell
me about your background for us, and then we can
get into the process page. If you want.

Speaker 2 (13:59):
Yeah, I mean, comics were in my bones from a
very early age. It was I just had always known
that this is what I was going to do, is
be a comic book creator. And you know, I grew
up reading comics in the early nineties, you know, and

(14:20):
up until the end of the nineties, and then you know,
discovered that I could play music and all this other stuff.
Moved to California, was played in bands, kind of stopped
drawing really altogether and reading comics for like ten years.
And oddly, I think that was a good thing, because
I had developed this style that wasn't really good yet,

(14:41):
but I had had this sort of style that was
kind of derivative of the stuff that was coming out,
you know, and from the early image Guys and things
like that, and then stopping for a long for that
long and then coming back to it sort of me
not be influenced by all the other stuff that was

(15:03):
coming out, you know, during that time. And so I
think I just went into it with track purposely, with
blinders on, so that I could sort of develop my
own style. And Los Angeles was the first book that
I released, and then I did like a several other
anthologies and things like that, and then did a lot

(15:24):
of work in wrote and wrote and drew in Heavy
Metal Magazine and Creep Show and and things like that,
and then released my other books Chaotic, Neutral and Spectral
Showcase of Fear, and that is about where you find me.
I'm working on a book right now called Three Headed
Pigman also, which is my own thing. But yeah, and

(15:46):
then I got the call from Shelley and I was like,
it's let's go time, let's do.

Speaker 1 (15:50):
This, David. Have you had other people thank you? And
you know what? What what is that reaction when you
see an other artists kind of you know, put their
spin on what you laid out?

Speaker 8 (16:03):
Oh, I think it's super cool. Yeah, it doesn't.

Speaker 9 (16:06):
I usually do my own like soup the nuts kind
of are, but it has. It does happen sometimes, and
it's always great because it's exciting to see because what
you're going to get back is not what you expected.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
As a matter of fact.

Speaker 9 (16:23):
That but another project that be coming out next year
sometime where a portion of it uh Bills and keviching over.

Speaker 8 (16:31):
Me, which was which is pretty pretty cool.

Speaker 9 (16:35):
But on this like it sort of goes to step
further with with Chris and I because I'm just I mean,
you'll see the process page, but I'm putting it down
and he's he's not just doing doing inks on it,
He's putting his style over it, and which is and

(16:55):
then and then bringing this whole level of absurdity really
uh to the to the story, which really it needs it,
because that's the I mean, that's.

Speaker 8 (17:06):
What it is. It's it's totally insane book.

Speaker 9 (17:10):
It's reality but heightened into this uh yeah, I.

Speaker 8 (17:17):
Mean it's I don't want to say satire.

Speaker 3 (17:18):
But.

Speaker 8 (17:20):
Because it's uh, it's it's.

Speaker 9 (17:22):
Serious, but it's also hysterically funny and surreal and and
over the top.

Speaker 8 (17:28):
And that's and it needs that. And that's what Chris
can can do.

Speaker 7 (17:36):
In addition to amazing texturizing.

Speaker 6 (17:39):
If I might just interject and squash David's words, but
I think you know David will say, oh, I just
do the thumbs and I do the rough pencils.

Speaker 1 (17:49):
Well.

Speaker 6 (17:49):
Well, David Lapham's rough pencils are exquisite, and you can
print them and you know you you can frame them
and consider them gold. But what Chris does when he
comes in, he does another round of pencil and tightens
the pencils and then he throws down some inks that
are just crazy amazing.

Speaker 1 (18:09):
And.

Speaker 6 (18:13):
Let's walk through it. Okay, Basically everything starts with Lasbow
and Dan. They submit the first script. Basically I throw
a little bit of red ink at it, and then
Lasla and I talk about it a bit, and then
we send it to David and this is what we
get back. You might want to go to a to

(18:33):
a two page view.

Speaker 7 (18:35):
On the top.

Speaker 6 (18:38):
You see basically what happens. We do a couple of
rounds on the rough script with last and if you
want to scroll back, basically what you see is part
of David's thumbnails that you know. He'll say they're super loose,
but the bones are there. I mean, David is killer

(18:59):
with foundation, you know, because I'm not just for the art,
but I think we all know that Dave and the
story like nobody's business.

Speaker 7 (19:08):
So it's really.

Speaker 3 (19:13):
Yeah, I think Shelley's PDF is a little busted.

Speaker 7 (19:18):
It's really not.

Speaker 6 (19:19):
I think if you try try it on a one
you have it on a two page view.

Speaker 8 (19:23):
They tried that. It wasn't working.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
Yeah, you see how it's because it did it with
the with the cover shell.

Speaker 6 (19:29):
All right, well, I'll send you another I'll send you
another PDF, and you guys can talk about.

Speaker 7 (19:35):
Me while I do that.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
Yea, one of the we'll we'll, we'll come away from
the from the PDF until she go ahead.

Speaker 8 (19:46):
It's pretty interesting. I think it's interesting.

Speaker 3 (19:48):
And one of the things that's great about David's thumbs,
you know, they're very, very rough, but he puts a
lot of notes on the sides for Dan and I
to read, saying I think we could make this scene
a little a little longer from a storytelling perspective. I'm
currently working on some dialogue fixes for the for like

(20:14):
issue eight, and it's because you know, Dave will add
some some panels and sometimes a whole page and it's like, oh,
we're going to need some some dialogue for this. And
so it's the thing that's been great. You know, this
is our first comic Dan, Dan worked on Max Paying

(20:36):
three comic when that game came out, just a small thing,
but actually diving into a twelve issue series and being
able to collaborate with Shelley and Dave and that they
give honest feedback on the script. They point out, you know,

(20:57):
we've kind of lost the thread on this character. You know,
the worlds that Dan and I build there are a
lot of characters and they're all very broken, and we
follow from issue one. You know, there's this van crash
that has some escaped convicts that hijacked a van full
of migrants that are getting smuggled into America, and that

(21:22):
crashes between these two houses, and you follow all the
characters in each of those houses, You follow the people
that were in the van, and it might be several
issues later and a character that was just in the
background of that van is suddenly in the forefront. And
I love that kind of storytelling, which makes you want

(21:46):
to go back to previous issues and be like, oh,
that's right. So, you know, we we really wanted to
make a comic that showed how a lot of different
broken people. Dan came up with all the characters that
you saw in those Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead

(22:07):
Redemption games, and you know, we we like flawed characters
that are doing bad things for possibly the right reasons,
and but just tragic characters that are on all sides
of the spectrum. This guy's a Mormon, this this person's

(22:27):
gone right wing crazy, this person's gone left wing crazy.
But to feel compassion for for them and and follow
them on their journey, but also to see what takes
people down down the wrong path. I think, you know,
it's like, it's why it shows like Breaking Bad, We're
so so amazing, is that you can you can see

(22:51):
that that journey for people. And and also you know,
the Grand Theft Auto was very much a sound a
tire on America. And you know, we knew we're working
on games, We're working on other projects, but we knew
American Caper is a comic book. And you know, people

(23:13):
areas like, are there going to be a video games?
There going to be a video game or TV show.
It's like, you have a caution, We're making a comic book.
You know. That's that's what we were focused on. And
one of the reasons why I took the job Laslow.

Speaker 6 (23:26):
I mean, I looked Dan in the eye and I said,
at his purest form, is this story a comic book story?
He said, yes, it is. We wanted to make a
really cool comic yes, And so I took him out
as word. And it must be said that, you know,
Laslow is giving all the props to everybody else here,
whether it's Chris or David, but the truth of the

(23:49):
matter is that you know. To me, it was a
no brainer to bring in David to not only draw
part of the book, but also just be in the
stage before drawing, you know, which is I consider editing frankly,
And of course my husband tapping me on the shoulder
as he heard me flapping my gums about this and said,

(24:11):
you just talked yourself out of the job because he
had he knew exactly what I was hoping David would do,
which is coming as early as possible and lend us
his supreme storytelling chops. And it's a testament to Dan
and Laslow that their egos didn't get in the way
because you know, come on, you guys, you are superstars

(24:34):
in the gaming world. You could have and I have
been so proud to put my name on this book
and to continue working with you guys because of the
fact that you get it, that you know that comics
is the ultimate collaboration.

Speaker 7 (24:48):
The scripts are liquid. We passed them from person to person.
The editor is quote unquote in charge. I've got the
biggest can of red ink. But ultimately we have the
same goal, and it's to tell the best story, no
matter whose ego. We you know, hurt or destroy in

(25:08):
the process, because it's the story that matters and how
it reads in its purest form on paper.

Speaker 3 (25:15):
Trust Yeah, And you know, Dan will write the first
pass on the script. I'll go through and add some dialogue,
do an edit, possibly add some scenes. I sent it
to Shelley and David. They come back with notes, and
then I'll go to Dan and say, hey, they really
think this scene needs to be bumped up. We think
we need to Rather than saving what's going to happen

(25:35):
in the next issue, we need to bring it, bring
it earlier. And it's you know, the great thing about
working with Chris and with David as artists is that
they're humble and they bring their honest opinion to the
work and it becomes a collaboration, you know. And then

(25:57):
I've had two conversations this week. One with a video
game company that's an indie video game company that is
their their game they just released is selling like bananas.
And chatting with them and you know, we're having a
conversation about about games. And the first thing they said,
American Caper, the art looks amazing like and David Lapham,

(26:20):
how did you get him? And then today I'm meeting
with some top executives at Warner Brothers, and uh, they're like, uh, yeah,
we want to chat with you guys about the games
you're doing and the animation. But they go American Caper,
it looks amazing. How did you get David Lapham? And
I was like, I don't, I don't know, Like we
got Shelley and then she got Chris and David and

(26:42):
they're just like, I don't have.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
One.

Speaker 3 (26:51):
It's the banana phone.

Speaker 1 (26:52):
I'm sorry to say, guys that showed that that other PDF,
it's going to be the same result. I've been testing
it as as less almost talking. Uh no, I nobody
and I try them both. So yeah, unfortunately, but regardless,
and I know we're only seeing half a page here,
but we do get we do get to a better
Uh you can tell though, we can approximate. Yeah you uh,

(27:20):
I mean honestly, But go ahead, David, Yeah, if you
want to talk to.

Speaker 9 (27:23):
I was gonna say, you can sort of see half
Like on the on the left there, ye have the thumbnails,
half a page of thumbnails, and you see, uh where
it's just bringing down more of a stick figure, block
figure type of thing. And I'm pulling the dialogue from
the script and and sometimes I'll suggest small changes the

(27:44):
dialect just based on because how it visually lays on
the page, you know.

Speaker 8 (27:49):
Uh.

Speaker 9 (27:51):
And then that goes back to Laslow and Dan and
and then they'll come back with notes and that's where
we can make changes and really solidify this story. And
then on the right you'll see that's then I'll go
to these the pencils and that's what sure what I
pencil there and that sort of at that point, like

(28:15):
usually there's not any changes because we've worked everything out
in the thumbs and yeah, and then it goes to Chris,
and I think we have two stages of what kind
of Chris does? You see how he comes in with
his pencils and gives hit that that his style on it,
and then he does all this like this insane inks

(28:36):
with all the rush textures.

Speaker 1 (28:38):
And I'm a big Toby guy, you know, Yeah, well
there's almost am I nuts guys, because again sometimes I'm
kind of wrong with my art instincts, but almost a
Bob figureman sort of kind of crazy extreme Chris when
you when you put your inks on it and stuff that.
I mean, David, David's always got grit, but you know

(28:58):
it just feels like, Yeah, the texture I like, there's.

Speaker 9 (29:02):
Almost like has almost like a uh the of like
an underground comic.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
Yeah, you're ass kind of thing onto it.

Speaker 1 (29:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:10):
Yeah, this page, I think this page is uh sort
of more that than anything anything else is A is
a good example of that. I really pushed her crazy
by making those eyes really big, you know, and you
know David, David made them pretty big.

Speaker 1 (29:27):
I made them.

Speaker 2 (29:28):
I made them bigger. I had just you know, exaggerated
some things here and there, and you know, David will
send me the I'll get these David's pencil layouts, and
then it's my job to kind of put my skin
of my style over the top of it. So, especially
in the beginning here, when I around issue six, you'll

(29:49):
see I'll switch to drawing digitally just to make the
process go faster. But these were traditional and so I
have to print them out in blue line. But I
print them out so low that I can hardly see
what David is doing. Because you know, the nuance of
David's expressions and stuff like that. I need to I

(30:10):
need to capture that. Everything else I kind of need
to like forget that David even drew it at all
and just go over the top.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
Of it, you know.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
Yeah, So it was it was a it was a
tricky to figure out how we were going to do
this in the beginning, but it's it's really crazy at
this point. It's hard to tell where for me anyway,
where David ends and I begin, or I begin and
David ens, We've just sort of like becomes this whole
different thing.

Speaker 6 (30:39):
Well, I have to I have to say that Chris.
You you jumped in with both feet and you were
fearless about it. I feel like it must have been
a bit daunting for you when I asked you to
try the sample, because you know, I've said this many times,
it's a masterclass for everybody who is working on AM

(31:00):
and Caper or reading as a fan. This is a
masterclass with David Lapham, full stop. And so I didn't
want to be Chris Anderson. Although I've been quoted as
saying that I would crawl through glass and jump through
sheets of fire to ink David Lapham's work, although he
hasn't let me yet.

Speaker 7 (31:20):
So if I couldn't do it, I'm.

Speaker 6 (31:21):
Glad that Chris actually stepped up and showed us what
it would look like. And I'm grateful that Dan and
Laslow agreed that it was just a knockout team.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
You said that to me really early on, and I
was like, Shelley, why are you saying that to me?
Now I'm thinking about it.

Speaker 3 (31:42):
I from a long from a long time comic book
fan to when Shelley's like, you know, I've got these
two amazing artists, and I've just every script I would
send over I'm scared to death, and the ones that
I was like, Yeah, we nailed it, we did this,
And then I come back with Shelley's notes are in

(32:04):
one color and David's notes are in another color, and
I would go through and just get completely deflated, and
I was like, I A, I'm an impostor. This is terrible.
But you know there's a that page is a is
a perfect example of what these these these two amazing
artists bring to this book. Uh, Because we've got this

(32:26):
character Marnie who the Internet has driven crazy, and you
see her in bed if you zoom in on her
in bed, she's sleeping with them with an assault rifle
like she's her husband. Her husband is staring at the

(32:46):
ceiling with his eyes open and she's over there spooning
an assault rifle, and it's it's just amazing. How you know,
I've seen over the years reading so many amazing comic
books where you see that the writers put in really

(33:06):
copious art notes and ideas, and we definitely throw some
of those in, but by no means you know, there's
like five or six pages. We don't really have a
lot of art notes sometimes, and this team just really
really brings that to life. You know, a woman who

(33:27):
the Internet has driven crazy, sleeping with an assault rifle.
But you know, we show, we show the madness of
all the characters. And Verona, Wyoming, this fictional town. We
knew that we wanted to set something in a new city.
We've done satires of Los Angeles and actually with San

(33:50):
Andreas we did it was a spoof of Los Angeles,
San Francisco and Las Vegas, New York with Grand Theft
Auto four and with Grand Theft Ato three and Miami
and so the rocky mountains we felt were ripe for
a story.

Speaker 1 (34:10):
You know, I've I've.

Speaker 3 (34:11):
Been to Wyoming several times in Montana and it's a
it's an interesting place where you have folks that have
been there for a long time and want to be
left alone. And you have all these rich maniacs coming
there to ski and snowboard and buy up branches and

(34:31):
pretend to be cowboys and so and you know, there's
there's other themes that Dan and I have discussed through
the scripts, which is how you know, America is basically
a country founded by lawyers for lawyers, and the you

(34:52):
know America is about real estate and snake oil and
monetizing misery, frankly, and that's that some one of the
through lines is people on their phones. You know, these
things are making us insane. And I've got liberal friends

(35:12):
that are insane and conservative friends that have been driven insane.
And it's no longer about sitting around and discussing our
differences and going like, you know what, you've got a
good point. It's like, I just want to consume as
much Internet rubbish as possible and you know, go and

(35:33):
go nuts till two in the morning on TikTok or
Instagram or or Facebook. And so you know, we started
this comic off with this storyline about bulldozing pristine American
gorgeous areas to build exclusive luxury golf resorts, and you know,

(35:56):
to make something authentic. That's the other thing I love
when people will I want to go do something authentic.
I want to I want to see the world. What
are you gonna do? I'm gonna go to Epcot. It's
like nah. So, you know, we wanted to make a
crime drama. Dance known for his his gritty crime dramas

(36:18):
that are also satires. I mean, that's what you and
I have been collaborating on for for years. But it's
also a family comedies. I mean, these these these two
families living next to each other. The degenerate lawyer with
his red pilled, his angry son who is just you know,
consumed with video games and and is becoming more and

(36:41):
more isolated. And then their daughter who's gone off to
Brooklyn and has gone completely off the reservation. She's got
a mohawk, and you know, in the first issue, she
goes off on this diatribe about everything she's mad at
and it's like wow, But but also just the calm
of there's a lot of funny characters, like Marty, who

(37:05):
is the Wall Street billionaire who's Dan and I have
several characters that we've discussed. These people that get really
rich and then are like, I got to figure out
how not to die, right, so they get into like biohacking. Hgh.
They're in a cryo chamber. I mean, Chris and Dave
did this amazing piece of art that I don't remember

(37:28):
which of the early issues it's in, but it's got
Marty who's half naked with his big white cowboy hat
coming out of a cryo chamber where he's just been
freezing himself half to death because it's going to extend
his life. But you know, you you see that with
these Silicon Valley nut jobs.

Speaker 6 (37:50):
Is the splash page where David got to draw the
screwed them.

Speaker 8 (37:55):
I mean no, no, that was way back. That was
but thanks for mentioning that.

Speaker 6 (38:03):
But how to bring up the scrotum? Can I also
just say one other thing, Laslow, not to interrupt you,
but we all know I do that anyway. I'm going
to look for the hypocrites. You know, you've explained quite
a bit about the plot, and one thing to add
to what you were saying, we've got two neighbors who
are very different, and so Lazlo, you should tell us

(38:23):
a little bit about the orson character in a minute.

Speaker 1 (38:26):
But what I.

Speaker 6 (38:28):
Love most of all is that you can't trust anyone.
You want to see everybody get what's coming to them.
And yet there is a hero in this story and
you're gonna love her back to you.

Speaker 3 (38:45):
Well, there's going to be several heroes at the end,
if we like, we're working on on twelve at the moment,
and see this is the first this is the first arc.
We have plans for other arcs if dark Horse will
have us, and and and if you know, people are
are digging what we're doing. But yeah, hypocrisy. And I

(39:12):
think if anyone says that they don't have some level
of hypocrisy, they're a liar. Dan loves to point out
to me that I went through a period where I
was a vegetarian and then my wife would fly out
of town for work and I would go to Costco
and buy a huge thing of frozen chicken wings and
just pounding chicken wings and beer on the couch and

(39:35):
playing video games. And chicken wings are also.

Speaker 7 (39:39):
A character in this book. David, are you thinking? And
Chris are you thinking? When I'm thinking, Yeah, yeah, William's
wing obsession is a Laslow thing.

Speaker 3 (39:50):
And you know, also the sort of double lives about
how they say, you know, William, this degenerate lawyer is
did all the things. He went to law school and
then he ended up working on these law cases. Uh.
He moved to Wyoming to open, you know, to be

(40:11):
the the Wyoming wing of this law firm that's you know,
in Brooklyn and Tampa and and we know, but his
clients who you meet, several of his clients are all
out of their tree.

Speaker 9 (40:24):
Yeah so and crazy billionaires playing playing cowboy and other things.

Speaker 3 (40:31):
And you know, you but you hear that. You know,
there's there's a lot of people with regret about and
even successful people like you've got this you know, this
guy who's made billions and he's he's playing cowboy. And
then you've got people who are struggling financially. But and
everybody's got a level of regret and people that people

(40:52):
that have everything they could ever need are unhappy. And
we've had several characters and stories over the two and
a half decades collaborating together. It's fascinating to see people
who have everything they could ever need but are miserable.
But then also one of the through lines of American

(41:14):
Caper is people that are pretending to be something else
and cosplay, and not the amazing cosplay that I saw
at my first comic con, which was San Diego this
summer when we announced American Caper, but these cosplay experiences
where you dress up as a cowboy and you're in
pretend gunfights, and you know this theme of the kid,

(41:40):
the angry teenager says it, William says it. Other people
say it that they want to be a hero and
they just don't know how.

Speaker 1 (41:47):
How to do it. Yeah. Well, Also, honestly, man, I
love that you chose Wyoming as a backdrop because it
has just as a social observer, that whole dichotomy of
the rich people to move out there to get away
from it all and bulldoze to you know whatever, get
their ranch. And then, like you said, the old homesteaders
that have been there forever, how the hell did they

(42:09):
deal with Henry winkle Not no disrespect the fonts. I
love the fonts, but you know, I know he's got
a place in Wyoming, for example, and it's like, yeah,
how does how does old gus who's been there, you know,
generations and stuff, deal with the fact that, you know,
Henry Winkers ranch is next to his now or miles away,
but they see each other in town or whatever. Yeah,
it's got to be weird and they can really play

(42:30):
up the weirdness in a great way. And yeah, man,
the neighbors. These are two very different families, and Orson
is a very interesting ahead of the of his Mormon family.

Speaker 3 (42:41):
Yeah, so that van crashes between the two families. And
we've talked about the lawyer and his wife, who was
you know, a super a super left wing person early
on and then went the other way. But then the
other family next door, you know, also had some of
their property destroyed by this hijacked van. Is this perfect

(43:05):
Mormon family. The wife is gorgeous. Everybody's fantasize, fantasizing about
her except for her husband. And you know, the the
the religious through line of this and that Orson, you know,
going to his his church elder and being you know,

(43:27):
blackmailed to do these these awful things. You know, I
grew up in a very very conservative environment in Oklahoma
and in one of the it might have been the
first megachurch. It was so conservative that we were told
that we couldn't watch the Smurfs because they because because

(43:51):
they practiced magic, and which I was. My answer was
always like, there's only one girl in the village. They've
got to be swapping her around. Shouldn't we be upset
about that? And and didn't want us to watch Cheers
because it was set in a bar, which sure wouldn't
you know, we weren't allowed to watch movies. Uh, you know,

(44:14):
if you dance, it brings the devil into your soul.
And so people always say, like, what movie Footloose?

Speaker 1 (44:24):
Oh, sure of course, but I.

Speaker 3 (44:25):
Wouldn't know because we weren't allowed to watch it. So
so I, you know, I escaped. Comic books were my
escape during that period, and as well as you know,
fantasy novels and science fiction and I you know, I've
told this story. The comic book store that I would
go to and spend my allowance and then later my

(44:49):
minimum wage money that I was making because I lied
about my age to work at a grocery store. I
would go spend all my money at New World Comics
in Oklahoma City. And I went there this summer and
said to them, you know, I hadn't been in there
in a million years, and said, hey, me and my
friend and this amazing team are making a comic book,

(45:13):
and I would love to have a poll list with you,
which I haven't had since, you know, before I left
for college. And my father will come pick up my comedy.
And he went there yesterday and picked up the number
one with all the variants. So and I was a

(45:35):
bit nervous about him reading it because he's a cop
and or was a cop. But you know, he was
a when my career went from I work in radio
to I'm working on these games where you steal cars
and by the way, there's prostitutes that you can like
virtually sleep with and all this. He was a little

(45:57):
put off, but he saw that we were sat rising
things and that it wasn't some mass shooting simulator. And
then later on actually in Grand Theft Auto three, my
father is one of the callers on the radio who
who's calling in with his very redneck accent talking about

(46:18):
how delicious squirrels are. And then he was a sheriff
in Red Dead Redemption too.

Speaker 7 (46:24):
Oh wow, we need to get his pull quote.

Speaker 6 (46:28):
Yes, Papa, I'm trying to know what he thinks of
the series you have.

Speaker 7 (46:33):
That's amazing.

Speaker 1 (46:34):
Yeah, that's I love Itaslo honestly, excuse me, that's thinking
that David Saslov I think our broadcast background betrays said exactly.

Speaker 3 (46:49):
But you know it's been I can't believe that, you know,
we've gone to thumbs uh and and seem to go
to pencils on eleven and I get as someone who's
you know, I'm in production on these video games that
have budgets of hundreds of billions of dollars, but that
the fear is always like, oh my god, somebody's about

(47:13):
to not have any work to do. And I realized
with comic books, and Shelley's always reminding me she's like
Lapham's running out of pages, Chris is running out of
the pages. And it's just you know, the text messages
on Saturday morning. I mean, she's relentless. So it's like, yeah,
get in and get the script done.

Speaker 6 (47:34):
But don't think for a minute that Loaslow isn't sending
text messages to David into me on a Sunday with
notes and questions. So it's twenty four to seven and
that's good.

Speaker 9 (47:45):
This is uh, this is everything other than when like
when we do like here, when Maria my part and
I do straight bull as or we do our own comics.
So that's a very close collaboration. This is like a
true collaboration. Usually, like he goes through the editors. You
you get sent a script and you execute the script,

(48:08):
and all the parts are compartmentalized, and we really all
do work back and forth and make changes and and
and we're far enough ahead too. We've even gone back
and made changes on earlier issues okay when we needed
to and stuff like that. So it's really special. I
hope that comes comes through because I think it's uh,

(48:31):
it's a true collaboration with it.

Speaker 1 (48:33):
We know, no, he goes it's very textured and honestly, here,
let's let's bring the process pages back and again because
we haven't talked about the low Ridge loweredge or Lowridge show,
low Ridge, low Ridge, thank you and another another great
comic book legend that is lending his coloring talents here.
Beautiful stuff.

Speaker 6 (48:50):
Then you can you can remember it if you're so
inclined to look through your record collection and pick up
David Bowie's low album A boat reference in there just
for you.

Speaker 1 (49:04):
John Brian Ferry. But all right, I'll take care.

Speaker 7 (49:08):
We will always have Brian Ferry.

Speaker 6 (49:10):
If enough time today we have to go back to
the Brian Ferry.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
She makes me tell my Brian Fairy story. Last. What
we were talking earlier about your radio actually off the
air and everything. So you used to host a national
radio show.

Speaker 3 (49:25):
Oh god, no, thank goodness.

Speaker 1 (49:28):
What did you do in national radio?

Speaker 3 (49:30):
Well, so it started in radio in Columbia, Missouri, where
I went to journalism school, and then moved to New
York to work for an alternative alternative radio rock network
called the Underground Network based at w DRE, which is
like a famous flagship new wave station. It was back

(49:51):
in the in the eighties. But I joined them. I
joined them in ninety five, and then my program director
a few months after I joined ninety five, he goes,
you know a lot about this internet, right, And I said, yeah,
you know. My father was after he got done being
an undercovered drug darc he somehow became in charge of

(50:14):
all the computers and phones for the Oklahoma City Police Department.
As you do. So I grew up in computer rooms
on the weekends with the like turning like tapes and
all the blinky star Trek lights.

Speaker 1 (50:32):
Yeah, the old computer world, the analog computer world, if
you will.

Speaker 3 (50:35):
And he had he had a computer at home in
the late seventies. That was basically like an electric typewriter
and you would put the phone into a coupler and
dial into like Kansas City, and instead of having a
computer screen, it would print everything out on paper. And

(50:59):
so I was playing Internet computer games in the late
seventies and he bought me a very expensive trs AD
computer when those verse came out, and I was on
BBS's and I was on you know, I was on
the Internet before anybody I knew was so, and you know,

(51:19):
programming computer games that you would type in all the
all the code from a magazine. So he said, uh,
you know a lot about this Internet. I was like,
why don't you go on twice a day and just
do these reports about like the Internet and computer games
and things like that. Started doing that in ninety five,

(51:40):
these short these short features, and I was quickly on
one hundred and fifty radio stations with that around the world.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (51:50):
And then ended up doing a comedy talk radio show
that started on k Rock, New York and ended up
on Sirius XM on The'll be an Anthony channel. But
it's because of radio that I met a guy surfing
in Long Beach, New York because I was always in

(52:10):
the water bodyboarding and bodysurfing. And I met a guy
I had seen him out there before, and we were
both complaining about having to go to Los Angeles because
the waves were amazing in New York. There was a
hurricane offshore and the waves on the wave reports were
garbage in LA. And I said, why are you going.

(52:32):
He's like, oh, me and my buddy started a video
game company. And I said, oh, I do this, you know,
syndicated radio feature reviewing games and you know, talking about
internet stuff. He's like, well, you should come into our
office and do a story on us, because we're going
to try to do something new the video games for adults,
because before Grand Theft, Auto three games were for kids,

(52:55):
and you know, and Dan and Sam Hauser had this
idea of like, let's make games for adults. And they
were huge movie fans and they loved crime movies and
mafia movies, and so they said, you know, come into

(53:15):
the I came into the office to just do a
short piece on them, and I met Dan Hauser for
the first time, and he said, hey, we're making some
fake radio stations in the game, and we want to
make fun of American radio. And I was like, well,
right off the top of my head, here's some ideas
on to make fun of how ridiculous ridiculous it is.

(53:38):
And then over that summer we wrote DJ Dialogue and
Fake Commercials and all of that, and that came out
and was Grand Theft dot three and was you know,
the gameplay and the third person three D world that
you can explore and do anything you want while driving

(53:58):
around listening to this comedy satire radio was how it
all started. And I then over the next few years
saw the saw the writing on the wall, and I mean,
I probably should have done, you know, a podcast at
that point, but video games were so fun and world building,

(54:20):
and that's what I love about about comics is it's
a It's very much like making video games in that
you have a bunch of talented people from different disciplines,
you know, Chris David, Shelley Lee, picos that are all
coming together that without one of those everything screwed, sure,

(54:43):
But but you put them all together and you've made
this immersive storytelling experience. And that's what's been great about
American Caper.

Speaker 1 (54:50):
Are you able to take your video game audience and
alert them, because that's that's what I always love is
when some some group of people from another discipline as
far as fans, suddenly discover, like, you know, that's been
the great thing I think about crime comics is a
lot of crime novel fans have slowly in the last

(55:12):
thirty years or so. Selon David, would you agree that
it seems like we're getting a lot of longtime book
readers that suddenly are like, hey, man, I never I
never knew about straight bullets, I never knew about bru Baker,
and then Sean doing you know, criminal and some of
the other things that are out there and stuff I
don't you know. But yeah, is that I'm the opportunity

(55:35):
is there? Are you letting them know that you're making
this count book as well as you know, the video
games you guys have made in the past.

Speaker 3 (55:41):
Oh yeah, we've you know, we've got an established fan
base from our work at Rockstar, and it's been it's
been great seeing the response. What I really love to
see is people posting I've never bought a comic book.
I've never been in a comic book store, but I'm

(56:03):
going I'm going to go check this out the other.
The other thing that I really have have loved is
when we do signings. You know San Diego Comic Con.
We did two signings and they had to turn people
away on both of them. You know, people show up
that are fans of Chris and they're having him sign

(56:25):
stuff and it, and people show up who are fans
of Shelley and bringing her work. People show up for
David's stuff and are having having him sign Marguerite. Marguerite
this weekend had had people there, and it's exciting to
have these people that have all had very different, varied

(56:47):
careers that people are excited that that they're on this
book and but also huge fans of of their of
their pre his work.

Speaker 1 (57:01):
So I get it. Here a comment from Carrie Carrie's
another podcast, Actually guys should talk to her on her
splash Pages podcast, Leisure to Larry was hilarious. Sierra was
so snarky. If you look at the moose's head in
the wall at the bar, it says that they were
lazy and stole from King's Quest. It stole from Kingsquest.

(57:23):
That's hilarious. So clearly another fan that's great. No, I'm honestly, guys,
like I said, you were kind enough to send me
the first two issues. It's it's wonderful and it has
that it has that video game vibe of this world
and you immediately are amorced. But yeah, you guys introduced
a lot of characters, and I'm glad you have twelish

(57:44):
issues to uh to explore them. I think it's a
great opportunity. But yeah, David, I mean, are you h
I mean, well, the book just came out, so yeah,
you haven't really you haven't had that chance, yeah, yesterday,
So you haven't had a chance to really find any
new fans that might be aware stuff now because of
you know.

Speaker 9 (58:02):
Yeah, and it's so long. I mean there's a lot
there's like the immediacy of like it just came out.
We have to you know, get everybody before next Wednesday
when new books come out. But the books are also
their books, so they they they stay, they'll be here
you know, a year from now, in thirty years from now.

Speaker 1 (58:22):
So no, absolutely, Yeah, is there is there a plan
Laslow in terms of eventually turning American Caper into the
other media that you've played around in and stuff, Because yeah,
I mean again, I really I love it. Seems like
now as opposed to when you guys first started doing
grand theft and everything that really the rest of media

(58:45):
has evolved and like I mean, audio drama has never
been more sophisticated here in America. The rest of the
world already knew about it. But that's the thing. It
feels like the other platforms have find of it finally
evolved the way video games have. And you know, so
that opportunity is there. I don't know when you want
to pull the trigger on it.

Speaker 3 (59:05):
Well, you know, and I think Chris and David would
agree with this, is you can have something that is
amazing storytelling and looks incredible. Hollywood feels like it's trapped
in the past. The to get I'm surprised that this

(59:28):
town because you know, I was in New York for
twenty five years and we came to Los Angeles to
startup Seradventures because all the video game talent is, you know,
frankly between San Diego and Vancouver. Sure, this this town
is scared to make new interesting things. They they they
want stuff that they release to be it's like this,

(59:51):
but that you know, it's like yes, you know, right,
it's like Seinfeld. But mixed with the you know, the
wire or whatever, and they're scared to do things. And
also the process is so long. It takes you know,
six years of development to make anything. And when you

(01:00:12):
work in video games and what I'm learning now in comics,
you just start making the stuff. You know, straight bullets,
You just make the stuff. Chris is amazing work. You
just start making the stuff. And with American Caper, Dan
and I did the same thing that we've always done.
We just start making it. We didn't have a publisher, right,

(01:00:34):
we just we found Shelley and she put this team
together and we just started making it. And if for anything,
and we never have had the conversation of let's make
this to make a TV show or to make a
video game, it was purely to explore this medium because

(01:00:55):
Dan and I through twenty five years, have never started
a creative project and had a conversation about money and
if it could make a bunch of money. Because the
mantra of absurd ventures and and and indeed, when Dan
and I have worked together over the years is make

(01:01:16):
just make cool shit, and and it will come. And
if if you look at what everybody else is doing
in games or television or or film. Then you're just
gonna get you know, channeled into what they're doing it.
Dan has written of the top five selling video games
of all time. He's written, you know, and creative directed

(01:01:38):
three of those. And he's very strict about like when
when we were working on Grand Theft Auto, he refused
to watch the Sopranos. He did not want it to
to influence his mafia and crime stories at all. I
get it, and and so you know, after we stopped

(01:02:00):
working on Grand Theft Auto, he watched Sopranos. It was like,
this is a damn good show. But you know, I
like that. We had several issues in the can. We
went to Marvel, we went to d C. I spoke
with Jim Lee. They were like, this would be great
for the relaunch of Vertigo. We spoke with Image, we

(01:02:24):
spoke with Skybound, and we spoke with dark Horse and
you know, they're like, oh, you've got several issues that
you've already made. It's like, yeah, we're just making this thing.
And dark Horse seemed like the perfect place to support
our you know, creator led efforts, and you know, they've

(01:02:46):
been super supportive, and it's it's been it's been a
fantastic journey. I mean, you know, I'm scared to death
over the whole thing because it's like, first off, I'm
working with an all star team of Chris and David
and Shelley. But you know, hopefully people like it. I
mean I was told today it's sold out in Ireland,

(01:03:08):
so like that's.

Speaker 1 (01:03:11):
And and really Ireland's great. It's a great comics country, absolutely,
so that's that's a nice that's a nice compliment that that.

Speaker 3 (01:03:18):
And we've we've had a lot of interest in international territories.
You know, the projects we've worked on were huge in
the UK and France and Germany and Italy, and so
we've had a lot of a lot of interest from
those territories, which is which is exciting.

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
So you know, Shell knows from Vertigo and I d
W and stuff too. You know, Listen, we're all about
superheroes here in the States as far as comic books go.
Mostly David obviously had his success with straight bullets, but
really it is the other genres and certainly your story,
I mean, the fact that it's called American Caper certainly helps.
But that's the thing I think your your book is

(01:03:57):
so idiosyncratically a satire of America. I'm sure the rest
of the world is like, let's make fun of America. Absolutely,
let's get more of this stuff. But shall when? Don't
you think? Like didn't in the Vertigo years and Black
Crown years and stuff. I'm hoping your sound is back.
But yeah, didn't it feel like you know, it was
the other genres that did well internationally?

Speaker 7 (01:04:19):
Oh? Absolutely yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:04:21):
And believe me, when I first read the pitch, I
was convinced that had I still been with the original Vertigo,
American Caper would have definitely been under my umbrella, which
is why I came on board, and also just because
I think.

Speaker 7 (01:04:37):
It's important to mention.

Speaker 6 (01:04:39):
When I came onto the project, Laslow was writing saying
that he and Dan had already written many scripts, and
Simon Bisley was a very integral part of the early days.
He did so many of the character development pieces, and
he's one of the incredible variant cover artists on the series.
But I want to jump and I want to throw

(01:05:00):
in a question about someone who hasn't been mentioned, and
it's a character who has been described as a Mexican
beauty queen on the run. David Lapham, You're smiling. I'm
gonna throw this one to you because the character of
Eva is so badass, and we haven't really talked about her,

(01:05:21):
so I want you to kind of share your thoughts
on this incredible character who I think takes over and
runs the show from where I'm sitting.

Speaker 8 (01:05:31):
Yeah, she's she's a terrific character. She's one of the.

Speaker 9 (01:05:34):
People that come out of the the aforementioned van crash,
and she's sort of another element that brings a whole
world of trouble into the into the series because she's
connected to these cartels in Mexico.

Speaker 8 (01:05:55):
Who if they thought that.

Speaker 9 (01:05:57):
The crazy billionaires and Mormon man and the shady lawyers
were like one level of of of trouble in Verona,
and then we have this whole criminal empire of a
of a of another country that eventually will uh work
its way to this little town. But yeah, she's uh,

(01:06:23):
she sort of steals every every scene that she's in Eva,
and she's badness of the kind of of women that
you you remember from like those those vertical books and
from uh there a few in straight bullets and uh

(01:06:44):
that that like like the men can't do that that
she'll do whatever it takes, you know, to get to
stay alive and to ultimately we haven't gotten there, but
hopefully get her revenge at some point. But yeah, she's brutal,

(01:07:10):
brutal and beautiful.

Speaker 1 (01:07:12):
That's cool. Here's a comment from the chat. The Observer
Report says, I honestly like Dan's approached how he approached
the storytelling. It's best to put a pull from pure
imagination rather than letting already existing pieces of media influence
your writing. Absolutely, no, I you know, I know talking
to people. My buddy Tim Steely, who created hack Splash,

(01:07:33):
he didn't watch Buffy for years because he didn't want
the because that was another you know, hackslash was another
monster Hunter book, Young Lady Monster Hunting. You don't want
to be influenced by Buffy. So I get it, and
I think that's part.

Speaker 3 (01:07:46):
Yeah, one of the things about making video games. It's
so much work, and you're creating so many characters and
a living, breathing, three D world that players explore. And
you know, people say to me, have you seen this
show on Paramount? And this show on Netflix and this

(01:08:07):
and that? And there's times that you know, the TV room,
I won't turn the TV on for four months and
people are like, oh, you haven't seen this. You haven't
seen that. It's like, we're creating. We're creating this in that,
you know, we're creating this amazing world of American Caper.
We've got a separate universe called a Better Paradise where

(01:08:28):
we had an audio fiction series, and we're working on
a games that's set in that universe. And then a
third universe called the Absurd Verse, where we've got a
game and you know, animated series and such plan for that.
And and frankly, when I come home, I've got a

(01:08:50):
pile of newspapers and New Yorkers and Atlantics and comic books.
And if I'm not you know, I like going to
printed media to get ideas rather than watching TV and film,
because that's that's someone else's take on it. You know.

(01:09:11):
I'll read the New Yorker and have some weird story
I'm reading and get an idea for something and be
and be writing it down. Or I'll start reading something
and then suddenly I'm making notes. My my brain's kicked
off on what we should do for the next script,

(01:09:32):
and I'll be texting Dan. I was like, I've got
a great idea for what we can do for orson
on ord and he's like, you know what, that's fantastic.
I'm gonna I'll do that on the first past of
the next script. And so it's you know, I'm sure
David and Chris have the same thing of like you're creating,
you're so busy creating worlds that you just don't have

(01:09:57):
the time to surf the through Netflix and Hulu and
everything else and just watch hours of television every night.
I mean, would you agree, Chris?

Speaker 2 (01:10:06):
Yeah, absolutely, I get you know, I'll take a pause
and sit down with my wife and watch something for
maybe an hour if we're lucky a night. You know,
it's just so busy, like you said, creating and doing
your own thing.

Speaker 1 (01:10:20):
No question here, Alien Centipede wants us to talk about
how the charmer how cool and nice one for for
Laslow there.

Speaker 9 (01:10:35):
Like one of the things that's really fun and funny,
like we do a lot of try and do a
lot of little details in the art and uh, Laslow
and I guess it's Dan or maybe it's all Laslo.

Speaker 8 (01:10:46):
I don't know.

Speaker 9 (01:10:47):
It's like a lot of very very specific details of
things like it's got to be a grill. It's got
to be like you know this you know kind of grill,
and we make up the making model and it may
have a history as the whole history.

Speaker 8 (01:11:04):
Of the Yeah. Yes.

Speaker 3 (01:11:08):
So in Dan's original script for number one, he has
you know this, this weird masculine energy about fire and
cooking and it doesn't matter if it's a campfire or
it's over the grill. You go to a party and
all the men are standing around sort of throwing in

(01:11:29):
their stupid opinions about how to cook flank steak correctly
or whatever the hell and well, you know, holding beers
like something out of a out of a Fox cartoon.
But the orson, who has a much nicer house, is
looking at William's dilapidated house like what what kind of

(01:11:51):
grill is that? Then he's boasting about his grill, and
we uh, Dan and I have talked about these people
that I like ten thousand dollars grills that have like
a you know. And then so Dan and I started
come up with these ideas like oh, you can roast
a pig on this side and do all this, and
they were like, we should do a fake ad for

(01:12:13):
that right where it's just completely ridiculous. And then I
wrote all of these different kinds of that you could
cook with different styles, like different culinary styles, so which
I think one was like Vermont style that is like
Harry and listens to fish. I don't know anyway, So Chris.

Speaker 6 (01:12:35):
Did a great job with that illustration. It must be
said that fake ad. I think if there was an
award for fake ads, Chris, I think you would have
taken the gold for that. That was incredible.

Speaker 2 (01:12:46):
Yeah, that was a lot of fun. That's one of
the few things that's all me in it. So it was,
you know, fun to put my little smile little stamp
on it. But yeah, just all the descriptions that you
put I was like, how am I going to fit
all of this into this grill? I was like, well,
let's just say, like grilling is this person's world, and
let's wrap it around an orb, like a you know,

(01:13:09):
earthly orb all the way to the horizon and show
that cal being taken apart in all kinds of ridiculous ways.

Speaker 1 (01:13:15):
And yeah, but it's also really fun.

Speaker 3 (01:13:18):
It's also part of the theme of American Caper is that
how this the Internet has made us compare our lives
to everybody else, and you know on Instagram you flip
through and like, oh, there's a person having a much
better time than I am, and they're on another great vacation.
And men, you know, are always sort of trying to

(01:13:41):
one up each other on their like, oh, I've got
a great grilling technique and I bought this like fancy
fancy grill. So in the first issue to have these
guys who are you know, or some sort of like
one up and like, oh, you should come over. I've
got this, you know, super expensive grill that I bought.
So I'm glad you are enjoying that.

Speaker 1 (01:14:01):
The detail to the illustrations to Christy reminds again you'll
forgive the comparisons to other books. It reminds me of
everything they were doing from an art standpoint. In Top ten,
that great book that that you know, Geenahai and Alan
Moore and everybody you know, puts everybody all the billboards

(01:14:21):
and like everything that that Lazlo described in terms of
you know, building the environment, the kind of stuff that
you did in Grand Theft Auto and stuff, and it's
it's right there in American Caper. Everybody. It's that kind
of great You're going to spend a lot of time
on the art, looking at the various little things that
Christ and David are putting in there. Andy of course color.

Speaker 6 (01:14:40):
You know, it must be said that the page count
if you're not coming back to American Caper every month,
because you can count on it, because we are working
on issue eleven. As long as we can let David
Lapham leave in a few minutes, he'll be going right
back to issue eleven to do thumbs. But you get
extra story in our pages, and that's huge. There are

(01:15:01):
at least twenty six story and art pages any tissue
of America book, and sometimes more because depending on how
we want the pacing and how we have the page
turns set up, and how we've asked David to create
these amazing montage pages as a light motif or double

(01:15:23):
page spread pages we've put fake ads into not only
make sure the pacing is correct, but like Laslow said,
he and Dan were great world builders with GTA, and
they had all of these worlds within worlds, and fans
love Easter eggs, so everything is integrated. Nothing is arbitrary

(01:15:44):
in this book, and I think that's another reason to
come back for it also, and I don't mind putting
this down live.

Speaker 7 (01:15:54):
One of the reasons I joined.

Speaker 6 (01:15:55):
This book and I stayed with this book is the
way that Dan and Lazlow write their characters. We've got
so many strong female characters, but we also have male
characters that cry a lot. I've already mentioned the nudity,
and it's not female nudity. We've got some male nudity.
I wasn't looking for it. I didn't expect it this

(01:16:24):
kind of nudity to be written in by gaming writers.
I thought I was going to actually have to like
start cracking some skulls and talking about how maybe there's
too much female nudity, and there's I was expecting something
very different. So when I joined the team, I was
all in because of the respect and they write really

(01:16:48):
strong characters, especially female characters.

Speaker 1 (01:16:52):
That's excellent. Mentioning the other back matter, Carrie says, that's awesome.
I love behind the scenes stuff. Scripts are something I've
been starting to call And then the absurd Report says,
I actually know people like Orson, folks whose lives are
so thin on the real substance that they latch onto
one material thing and make it their entire personality and

(01:17:13):
like Orson. They talk about that one possession non stop
because it detracts from the distracts from the fact that
there's nothing else going on beyond the surface.

Speaker 3 (01:17:23):
Absolutely meant uh, because we because we for whatever reason,
you know, we live in an age where you don't
have to go wash your clothes down by the river
on a washboard. I mean, we have pretty cushy lives.
But everybody seems to be completely miserable. And you we've

(01:17:47):
we've taken that that that that idea and the satire
of that in in American Caper. And you know, with
with Marty, he's he's got everything, but like deep out,
he's sort of miserable because he wants to live live
forever as as much as he's sort of crazy and

(01:18:10):
and out there. And I I just love exploring these
characters and and also getting into the heart of what
we as a consumer society, a society like GTA did
this a lot. We we have this idea that oh

(01:18:34):
there's a thing I've just got served up an ad
on Instagram and Facebook and did it. If I buy that,
I'll be happy. And you know, I have friends that
like Amazon is parking a truck out front every hour,
and it's just like I'll buy that thing, I'll buy
that thing, and that will finally make me happy. And
so we've got you know this William's daughter, who's protester,

(01:18:59):
who's and she's into sort of yoga and zen, but
it's like not really working. She's like super super mad
and angry. And it's the the algorithm of the Internet.
And having been on the Internet since the very early
days in the late seventies to today. And I remember

(01:19:20):
doing a report when Facebook launched and I said, this
is a terrible idea. This is going to be a mess.
Is that, like I go back to the monetized misery,
the all of that is done to keep us glued

(01:19:41):
to YouTube, to glued to Instagram, glued to our phones
because they are monetizing our brains. And so yeah, and
that plus the sort of religious through line and people
thinking I'm doing this for God odd is interesting and

(01:20:04):
like I'm glad you brought up Eva because she's a complete,
a character completely outside of all this madness. So and
who's escaping, escaping her own misery and is happy cleaning toilets.
Because about our.

Speaker 6 (01:20:22):
Cover artist Tyler Boss on the first cover.

Speaker 3 (01:20:29):
Yeah, yeah, Tyler. So as a longtime commic fan, I
was nervous about the covers in that do we have
to have them all look very there's some amazing series
that the covers all have a very similar theme, and
working with Tyler and chatty with Dan about the through

(01:20:52):
line of it, we wanted to mix things up. And
so his cover for number two is way different from
number one, and so but we've found sort of sort
of a rhythm and his cover for number two, we're
bringing back that theme for number six and so it's

(01:21:13):
you know, I I love what like Beneath the Trees
has done with their variant covers, and I just we've
got some covers coming up that are wildly different from
anything else that that you've seen, you know, and we're
we're curious on exploring other art styles and and homages

(01:21:37):
to to things like Norman Rockwell and famous old paintings
and things like that. So this has been a journey
and Chris and David and Shelley have have have taken
Dan and I on this journey and we really hope
that people enjoy the book.

Speaker 1 (01:21:56):
That's great, well, you know that covers the front door
and it's really important strike.

Speaker 8 (01:22:00):
I think that reflects the series.

Speaker 9 (01:22:01):
I mean this one of the things you think of
a caper is obviously because a crime caper, but it's
it's sort of a carcophony of of all these different
elements and usually a lot of things going wrong, and
that that's like, that's very much the theme of the the
of the series. And it does it does reflect it

(01:22:23):
does reflect American this whole culture and everything. But it's
sort of like it's it's not with any sort of agenda.
It just presents these characters in the world and uh
and carries them to to where the where the world
takes them whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:22:39):
That is a lot a lot of comments here from
the observer absurd report he really gets or she I'm
not sure gets what you're talking about. Another thing I
really appreciate is how Dan calls out the absurdities of
both the left and or right. He highlights that even
when you think you're not picking a side continued, you

(01:23:00):
are still taking a position by default. We fight for
what we believe are good intentions, but it's worth questioning
whether those intentions are really as noble as we feel
justified or as we justify telling ourselves. Yeah, absolutely no,
pretty cool.

Speaker 3 (01:23:16):
And I think good satire. And we always worked hard
to do this. When you're satirizing America in Miami, Los Angeles,
New York, all of those places that we spent spent
years satirizing modern day or the eighties or the nineties,
you have to skewer both sides with equal enthusiasm, agreed.

(01:23:39):
And it's some of the funniest moments when we were
going through comments on our work was we would make
fun the radio in Grand Theft Auto. We always had
a left wing station and a right wing station, and
we would get people that were really upset at how

(01:24:02):
we spoofed in PR but uh, you know, because they
were leftists, sure, but they loved our spoof of right
wing radio and we would get we would get that
from both sides. I'm like, we've done it successfully. Like everybody,
everybody needs to be checked. And that's what's great about
the wide character set that Dance put together on this

(01:24:26):
and that you know that Chris and David and Shelley
have helped us develop, is that we are skewing multiple
places and multiple kinds of people, and it's you know,
it's it's a it's a story with people from Mexico,
from people that have escaped from prison, you know, lawyers

(01:24:49):
from Brooklyn and locals from from Wyoming, and so it's, uh,
you know, I think that one of the tough things
is as we get to the end, close to twelve
and David and Shelley and I have been having these conversations,
there were people that we were like, well, this person
is certainly getting murdered. They're despicable.

Speaker 6 (01:25:11):
But then but then we ensemble cast can grow and
grow and grow, and it's important. I think that, you know,
you've got to get rid of some of these people
in fast or else just gets a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:25:25):
Line and we do. It's it's but there's characters that
you're like, you know what, there's a redemption moment here
where they can find like I'm on the wrong path
and they could be reunited with their family or reunited
with their God, or reunited with this or that, or
they turn themselves around them with their God. Well that's

(01:25:49):
what's that's what's now, that's where to understand what you're saying.
That's what's great.

Speaker 9 (01:25:56):
You cannot you can't force you can't force your characters
into the plot. You know, So you think when you
start out, you have a plan. I think this is
where this is going to end up. Well, when you
get there, you know the character may have taken an
unexpected turn and that's not where they end up, and
you have to be open to all of that.

Speaker 3 (01:26:18):
But we certainly at David's recommendation and Shelley. There's a
lot of people getting murdered, and there seems to be
a dead animal in every issue I think. I mean,
the front cover has got a bison that's been hit
by a fan or something.

Speaker 2 (01:26:38):
I just got back from a long trip to from Minnesota,
where I'm from, and it was working up in the
woods there and I was telling David.

Speaker 8 (01:26:48):
I said, God, there's roadkill.

Speaker 2 (01:26:49):
All over here.

Speaker 7 (01:26:50):
I've been taking a lot of pictures.

Speaker 2 (01:26:52):
And he said, well, there are any turkeys, because that's
what's coming on. And then I walked out the front
door and there are about forty turkeys in the front yard.

Speaker 1 (01:27:02):
There you go, hilarious.

Speaker 6 (01:27:03):
I knew I hired the right people for the job. Clearly,
that's the number one skill that the editor has from
the beginning. Hire the right people for the job, and
then make sure that they show up and deliver the
goods In spades, and let me tell you that happens
every month on American Caper.

Speaker 1 (01:27:21):
I've always trusted your eye and your tasteshell and I again,
I don't think this group is disappointed in any way
American Caper. Again, based on the two issues that I
got to read, I'm very impressed. It is a great
layered story. There's a lot going on, and again that's
what you want, you really listen. As we all know,
the cover price of the comic book is not cheap
these days, so you really want your bank for your buck,

(01:27:44):
and you are going to get that. And this is
this is not as as Jim Storenko is well known
for saying, I want to be able to take a
comic book to the bathroom and actually still have to
read it before I'm done with my business. And it's like,
that's the hallmark of a good comic book. And I
think you're going to get that America of a lot
of and I mean that in the best, in the best,
like putting a bathroom reference on it.

Speaker 8 (01:28:05):
So that's well.

Speaker 3 (01:28:07):
Thank you, John, and thanks Shelley and Dave am Chris
for all your hard work.

Speaker 8 (01:28:11):
Thank you, and.

Speaker 6 (01:28:12):
Thanks also to Nate Picos our letterer for Blambot and
all the variant cover artists who have been a big
part of American Caper so far, Joe Conunz, Marguerite Savange,
Simon Bisley of course we mentioned he's coming back and
has quite a few variant covers, and we've got some
other superstars that we'll be announcing in the.

Speaker 7 (01:28:33):
Months to come.

Speaker 6 (01:28:34):
Excellent, So stick with us, and thank you so much
for joining us tonight.

Speaker 7 (01:28:38):
John always the host with the most thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:28:42):
It's my pleasure. I get out of the way and
let you guys tell your stories and that's uh, that's great,
and you guys really honestly, I think you've you put
together a nice production and it's really exciting to get
people coming in like Laslo that are comic book fans
and Chris you know that are that can sit with
the vets and give us something different in something new,
and I think that's what people will find from America Caper. Again.

(01:29:06):
Dark Horse facilitates the project. I'm sorry. Last look, give
me the name of your company again. Absurd absurd ventures everybody. Yeah,
so again, these these people are rockstar damn it. You
know I suck at video games. Lastly, you forget me.
You came from Rockstar, right, yeah, rot yeah, but absurds

(01:29:27):
the new company and listen, it's it's uh, this is
worth seeing it and I'm worth checking out everybody. I
understands now. It came out yesterday on Wednesday, so check
it out. But thanks guys, great, great conversation and truly
I'm I'm thrilled to let everybody know about it. Pete, China, Grease,
cool stuff.

Speaker 8 (01:29:43):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:29:45):
So oh Pete, I love that guy.

Speaker 1 (01:29:49):
Well, I beg your pardon. See you get short eyeballs,
so I'll probably say his name wrong. I apologize, Pete,
But all right, everybody, thanks a lot for watching and listening.
I believe Philip Kennedy Johnson will be joining me next
week because he's coming to Chicago and he's gonna tell
us about that. But you know, he's killing it on
the Hulk, and he's killing it on Batman and Robin
and his wonderful work as well on Superman. We'll be

(01:30:10):
talking about all that and more next Monday on Word
Balloon Live. I hope he'll join us live for that.
Until next time, everybody, stay safe, stay happy, stay healthy,

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