Sterling Gates Part 2 – Superhero Writing Across Comics, TV, and Film

In this second half of our conversation, Sterling dives deeper into his run on Supergirl alongside artist Jamal Igle. He shares behind-the-scenes stories about crafting Kara’s voice, working hand-in-glove with Igle to re-define her place in the DC Universe, and why their collaboration remains one of the character’s most beloved eras.

Sterling opens up about the challenges of balancing editorial direction with his and Jamal’s creative instincts, and how they fought to give Kara her own identity separate from Superman. From comics, we shift back to television as Sterling talks about his time writing for The Flash on The CW.

He expands on his contributions to the ambitious Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover, explaining the difficulties of squeezing the vast scope of Marv Wolfman and George Pérez’s 1985 comic series into a handful of TV hours. Sterling reveals which classic comic beats he tried to sneak into the script.

Sterling also discusses his most recent creative venture: filmmaking. His short film Just the Janitor has begun its run on the festival circuit and at comic conventions, and he talks candidly about making the leap from comics and TV to directing this riveting action film. 

He shares the story behind the film, the lessons he’s learning as a first-time filmmaker, and why he believes conventions are the perfect place for genre fans to discover it. This continuation showcases Sterling Gates as a storyteller constantly moving between mediums, bringing the same passion to a 22-page comic, a TV superhero epic, or a low-budget short action film.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, welcome back time again for word Balloon, the
Commput Conversation show John Suntress here type for part two
of my conversation with Sterling Gates. We were talking about
his work on Supergirl, both the comics and the TV show,
but also his work on the Flash TV show for
the CW, including the Crisis Crossover, the Crisis on Infinite

(00:22):
Earth's and in part one he had just wrapped up
telling us the story of how he and John Wesley
Ship kind of did the pow wow before John's death
scene as the nineties CBS Flash, the first version of
TV's Flash who died in the Crisis. And he had
more great stories as well, and you'll hear those in

(00:45):
this part too. Plus Sterling has made a new short
movie that is on the festival circuit and in fact
will be at a couple conventions. Just the Janitor is
the name of it. I'll let him describe it, and
it's a proof of concept. Perhaps if they get more
funding they can make a full version of it. And
he also talks about how he has gone back to

(01:05):
his home state of Oklahoma and found a lot of
movie work there, which pretty interesting. But you know that's
what's happening right now. Hollywood is being left behind, and
all these states are offering tax breaks to film, television
and films in their states at a cheaper rate. And
then Guy pro cruise and it's very interesting, and Sterling

(01:26):
gives us great insight in that Sterling gates Part two
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Speaker 2 (02:46):
I'm lobbied to have excuse me to have his robot
villains be the Samaroids to the point where I think
episode four oh one, we do the famous cover of
the Flash hanging off the Samurai sword, Like we did
that as an homage to that cover, but also because
I just kept bringing comics into the room and so

(03:06):
one of the issues I brought in was flat that episode.
As it turns out, Crisis super freaking hard to make.
We had one sequence on the bridge of the Wave
Rider with twenty five superhero nineteen superheroes in costume, and
like it was really tough, and kudos to like David
McWhorter who directed, and Phil Shaparro, who was our first
ad for like orchestrating that giant sequence. There's one thing

(03:31):
Guggenheim will never forgive me for. And Guggenheim sort of
show ran the Crisis crossover.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
Yes, indeed, absolutely did.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
We wanted to have a reversal of the Crisis eight
cover of Kara holding Brandon Routh's Superman and like up
on like like the classic Crisis cover. Sure, and on
the day we ran out of time and we just
we couldn't get it. We like there was a compromise
where she kind of falls over and she's holding Amony

(03:59):
evaporates and then it's Lex Luthor and then it's a
whole like the cliffhanger ending of Part three. We just
ran out of time that day. And Mark was very
has been gracious since, but at the time he was like,
why didn't you guys do that? And it's like because money,
because we ran out of time and we didn't want
to to rig someone up so that she can pick
him up would take two hours, like to do it

(04:21):
effectively and safely, it takes time, and we just didn't
have the time that day like.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
That TV, Yeah, TV TV Around the Clock Man. Mark
was mad for like a.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
Couple of weeks, and then I think he got over it, like, well,
he's such as a good friend, so.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
One of my favorite guys, and I'm thrilled that he's
a friend and I love talking to him as well.
But truly, those CW years, you know, they're all on
Netflix everybody, if you're now already where, which I'm sure
you are, but I've been dipping back into Legends of
Tomorrow and some of the crossover stuff, and god, I'm
so glad you brought up Brandon because there was a
real redemption from Superman Returns for Brandon to get another

(04:59):
bite of the apple and get to be Superman again,
and just everything about those things. And god, I mean,
you know Mark was telling me when he was prepping
and stuff, and in fact, Mitch Halick even suggested, oh god,
I forget what character. Oh it was Robert Woll and
he's just he's like, you know, he's the one who

(05:20):
told Mark. He's like, hey man, you got to you
gotta get a cameo for Robert will And he goes, yeah,
you're right, and now we can bring in a Batman
eighty nine. That's a great idea, No, It was. It
was incredible, and truly we were very fortunate for that
decade or so that we went from Arrow to the
wind Up and everything and everything that happened with that
Black Lightning was great. Yeah, I'll admit, and then this

(05:41):
is me, folks. Batwoman was a nice idea well, the
Batwoman crisis episode when Kevin got to play an on
camera Bruce Wayne was yes, please, thank you.

Speaker 2 (05:54):
So yeah, you know, you can imagine those meetings where
it's just a bunch of DC nerds talking about who
to bring in. Getting Brandon back in a Superman suit
was a was a huge feat. And I will tell you,
like I was low on the ladder, so like a
lot of decisions happened around me, and I get it.

(06:15):
But I got to go to set and beyond set
to produce my episode. I wrote it with Warren Certo,
and she was on set for some of the Arrow stuff.
She came from the Arrow office into Flash and again
another lovely human being. She's an incredible writer. She was
only on set for like I think the Constantine Arrow

(06:36):
like all that stuff, and then I was on set
for the back half of our crisis episode when there's
a whole sequence where like Harbinger becomes the anti Monitor
and takes down all the heroes or whatever. We wrote
it as a big action sequence where Harbinger legit punches
the crap out of everybody, and it ended up being

(06:56):
for time cut down to Harbinger kind of makes a
fist and everyone goes down. But there's like there's a
bunch of on the cutting room floor footage of her
wading through each year, like kicking the crap out of everybody.
So to shoot that scene, you know again, nineteen heroes
on a set in full costume. We're doing the read

(07:16):
through of the scene. Everyone's standing on the around the
wave Rider console right in the middle of the set,
and Brandon walks in in full Superman regalia, cape on everything,
and the entire set, every actor, every crew member, everyone
went dead, silent and turned because Superman has just arrived

(07:42):
on the scene and Brandon was getting his cape adjusted
and he looks up and sees everyone looking at him,
and he goes hi everyone, and it was the Superman
like moment and everyone kind of swooned, and then we
all kind of got back to work and now we're like, hey,
now we need to do the read through and like,
we're gonna have to rig this actor because there's a

(08:03):
wire pole and like all that stuff. But like I
got like goosebumps. Yeah, we walked on set. The other
thing that I love that we did is a It's
the Kingdom Come costume with the black s.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
Yes, very much.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
I wrote an entire scene about why it's a black ass,
and then I convinced Mark to make it a yellows
in the at the last part in the last episode,
to show that he is healed. Yes, we gave him
better contact lenses because if you rewatch Superman Returns and
again no offense to someone twenty years ago, the blue
contact lenses were not great contact lenses, okay, Whereas if

(08:39):
you watch the Crisis episode, his contact lenses look like eyeballs.

Speaker 1 (08:44):
Interesting, And that was such.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
A like being face to face and talking to him.
I literally said, we've given you such better contact lenses
this time, and He's like, yeah, they feel like they're
more like my eyes. And I'm like, okay, good. Yeah,
the Superman Returns contacts look like contacts and these look
like eyeballs. And that's such a specific, weird detail, but

(09:08):
it matters. It matters in the close ups, it matters
a lot.

Speaker 1 (09:12):
So two other. First of all, Tyler Hacklan is a
fine Superman and he was so, and he certainly proved
it in Superman and lowis even more so than he
had already done in the CW shows. But all that said,
also justice for John Cryer as Lex Luthor as opposed
to Lenny Luthor. And I was so happy for him.

(09:33):
And also, I mean, I've seen all the interviews. He
clearly was like thank you. Because Superman four, you know,
has its flaws, and there are a lot of them,
but it was really nice to cast him. And that
scene with Tom Welling in the Crossover.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
One of the things I said to John was like
he was talking, he said, I wanted to redeem Lenny Luthor,
and I wanted to pay homage and honor Gene Hackman
that I got to do all these scenes with in
Superman four. And I said, John, do you realize, like
you know, Gene Hackman was Lex Luthor in three movies
for let's say, conservatively seven hours of time. By doing

(10:10):
all of these episodes of Supergirl in Crisis, you've played
Lex much longer than Gene Hackman ever did. Yep. And
he was like, no, I hadn't really thought about that,
And I said, I mean, and in credit to you,
you're so good at being Lex, you know, and he
like he and the end of my episode, he pulls
out the thing and he's written his name and he's like, so,
what are we gonna do now? And it's like that's

(10:31):
like what a Lex? What a what a mechanation that
Lex Luthor would have that he holds the book of
Destiny and writes his own freaking name.

Speaker 1 (10:40):
Then, like, I was so happy we got to do
that beat well and truly and I really did. I
really enjoyed both series Flash and Supergirl in particular, but Man,
Supergol really got to do a lot of fun story
arcs that were homages to Superman stories but also homages
to Supergirl stories. And they were great. They really were.

(11:00):
Oh someone asked earlier, I think it was, yeah, Landon
from a Flash standpoint, and this is a generational thing.
Who do you prefer Barrier Wally.

Speaker 2 (11:09):
In comics or television? Because television, I'm always gonna say
burying because I.

Speaker 1 (11:14):
And you worked on it.

Speaker 2 (11:15):
I worked on it. I thought Grant was so incredible.
I thought John was the ship was so incredible in comics.
Wally was my flash, sure, and in the intervening years
sort of since Flash Rebirth brought Barry Allen back on
the scene, we've attributed a lot of Wally's qualities to
Barry in live action Agree and an animation. You know, Bruce, Tim,

(11:37):
there's a lot. There's a lot of Barry Allen and
Wally kind of crossover in the Justice again made it
stuff for set. But Wally was always my Flash. You know.
I tell this story a lot. When my dad died
in nineteen ninety eight, we owned a comic book store,
Sooner Books and Comics to Also. It was my dad's
passion to run a comic book store. He got run

(12:00):
it for nine years before he passed. And where my
brother and my mother and I are standing in the
comic shop post funeral, two days after the funeral, and
Mom goes, take anything you want because we're gonna sell
everything for pennies on the dollar. And I started flipping
through issues and I pulled out again, I'd love the show.

(12:20):
The show had been off the air for eight years.
I pulled out Flash one hundred quick and the dead
Mark Wade, It's Wally West has died and then he
comes back at the end and in a quote Flash and
I pulled up that issue. It's got a really cool,
like holographic califoil cover and I was like, Oh, the Flash, God,
I love that show. I should I should read some
of these issues. And I just started pulling chunks of

(12:41):
Flash comics out of the long boxes and I fell
in love with Wally West. And I fell in love
with the Flash because Wally's story at that point, you know,
they'd had the Return of Barry Allen, where albard Thon
is pretending to be Bury Allen all that stuff. Wally's
story at that point was I'm taking on the mantle

(13:01):
of someone who's no longer with us, and it's my
responsibility to live up to that mantle. And as a
grieving teenager, that hit hard, really freaking hard. And so
Wally West became my Flash and in my like ADHD brain,
I was like, I have to collect every appearance of
Wally West ever, and that became my comic collecting goal.

(13:23):
And so I I legit, like, if I ever show
you my office, I'll show you a picture. It's I
own every appearance of Wally West up until probably twenty
fifteen just because life, but like I made a point
to really honor Wally as much as I could. And
then Bart came along and again as adhd kid Like,

(13:46):
Bart's journey spoke to me in a different way than
Wally's did, and I became big fans of the both
of them, and Jeff made Bart Kid Flash again and
it's like, oh, kid Flash was my favorite character. Wally
West or Bart whoever, whoever has that mantle, Kid Flash
is my favorite character. And I was on that train
for a long time. And I was very lucky to

(14:08):
write Bart as kid Flash in that Flashpoint mini series.
And then when the show, like when Flash Rebirth happened,
I was supposed to write the Kid Flash spinoff book
that it was me and Cully Hamner, and Kully was
going to do the first six issues, and then as

(14:30):
many things happened at DC, everything got toppled and blown
apart and changed, and the consolation prize was that Kid
Flash Lost series that I did with an artist named
Oliver Nome who has since passed away.

Speaker 1 (14:43):
Sadly forgive me? Is that the second Wally? Then that
is like Iris's brother on the TV series No.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
No, No, This is like original Redhead.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
Like okay, good, all right, and and listen, I understand
TV choices and things like that, and never held against
the actor or the interpretation. But when it came to
the comics, I'm like, all right, you're trying too hard,
you know, I'm sorry you've already And again he's still
I don't even know if in current continuity person of

(15:13):
Color Wall he still exists or not.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
And that's the fun of DC Comedy's continuity is yeah, yeah,
anymore like yeah, sometimes very tough to parse, but.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
Yeah, and wants to know if the Flashtime episode was
based on a market was I.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
Mean kind of like, there's a there's an issue and
I brought so one of the things that I would
do in the Flash writers room is every day I
would bring in a new flash comic for us to
because I have a very complete flash collection, as you
can imagine, so I would just bring in random issues.
And that's how we got the Samaroids. Was like, I
brought in the Samoids issue and said, like, the thinker
should have Robot Samurai and they're called Samaroids, and here's

(15:51):
the cover. And we as a room lobbied to have
excuse me to have his robot villains be the Samoroids,
to the point where I think episode four oh one,
we do the famous cover of the Flash hanging off
the Samurai sword, Like we did that as an homage
to that cover, but also because I just kept bringing

(16:11):
comics into the room, and so one of the issues
I brought in was Flash. I think it's ninety three, No,
it's ninety six, Flash ninety six, ninety ninety five. This
is someone's gonna dig me for this in the comments,
but like, there's a famous issue out of time as
the cover, and the Flash uses Max Mercury's formula to

(16:32):
accelerate his speed to stop a helicopter from crashing. And
I brought that in and we'd already talked about because
flash inter flash time is what we used in the
script to signify slow moo flash time. Yeah, we talked
about can you do a whole episode about this like this?

(16:53):
And it was a very tough time in the show
because our showrunner had just been replaced Topsy Hervey real
world stuff. You can google it if you like. And
our new showrunner said, yeah, we're doing this as a
as an episode where all of time freezes because We've
talked about it for a few seasons, but reading this issue,

(17:15):
it's so effective in the comics, we can do this,
And so you'll notice in that episode the bad guys
are attacking Wade Airfield and that was my tip of
the hat. I tried to get Wearingo's name in there.
I was not successful, but it's like a it's a
Wade and Ringo issue where and like having Max Mercury,

(17:36):
we couldn't use Max Mercury, So Jay Garrett comes in
and like that was sort of the exchange because it's
not a one to one adaptation, right, like to you've
got to work with the tools that you're given on
any given version of the show. But yeah, like it
was very much inspired by that story. It gave me
a lot of life to be able to pitch that

(17:57):
story as this is from the comics. They did a
version of this. What if our version is you know
the Edencore, which is from Chuck Dixon's Green Arrow run,
Like they're the ones that blew up Oliver Queen in
the in Green Narrow one hundred or whatever. Like you know,
we just you pull from all the DC comics stuff
and then synthesize it to make it the version you

(18:20):
see on television, which, again to your credit, to your
point was like TV Guide said, it was one of
the best episodes of the year, and I was over
the moon. My mom was over the moon, which is
what really mattered to me, Like like she has the
framed article flash ninety one, so just before Impulse, because
Impulse is Flash ninety two, right, like so yeah, but.

Speaker 1 (18:43):
Yeah, that's incredible, man, what an honor. And and then
you know, hey, that's it doesn't look bad on the resume,
you know, I mean, you know, so you know, we
and and I hope I haven't kept you long, man,
because again I appreciate the depth that we're going into
and everything.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
Before we started. You've got me for as long as
you need me, Like, okay.

Speaker 1 (18:59):
Buddy, I'll talk all that. Excellent, excellent, And again, folks,
if you have more questions about other other stuff Sterlian
is written. I mean we touched on some of the
like Forever Evil and some of the other things that
he's done over the years. But one new thing that
he did is just the Janitor And yeah, man, no,
you were kind enough to give me access to watch it,
and this is great. Is is it a full length

(19:22):
movie or is it just this short twenty four minute.

Speaker 2 (19:24):
Movie right now? It's the short. Okay, we're running through
the festival, the festival sequence. Right now, we're almost done
our festival sequence. Part of the goal is here's what
we did for not a lot of money. Here's the
feature script. If we have more money, we can make
we can make it on the scale of the script.

(19:45):
You know, we we shot this first of all, thank
you for watching it like that. That means a lot.
I'm glad you liked that. It's the first thing I've
ever directed.

Speaker 1 (19:54):
It's great and you wrote it as well.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
You wrote, yeah, I wrote, directed, produced it. You you
know I had. If you look at my IMDb, I
directed a think in college that is on IMDb. It
is a student zombie film that in two thousand and
five I thought was so funny that an IMDb page.
But it's it's student work. Janitor is the first thing
I've directed as an adult. And to run it back

(20:18):
to Flash, I would not have had the confidence to
put this production together had I not produced, however, many
episodes of Flash and watched incredible directors put together a
production and make a thing like I got to work
sort of side by side with some of I think
the best directors in television, learning how they approach a production.

(20:43):
And in so I left The Flash in the Pandemic
twenty twenty, and I was so burnt out, you know,
talking listening to Greg the other day, like writer burnout
is a real thing.

Speaker 1 (20:57):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:59):
I was so burnt to a crisp coming into the
Pandemic that for all of twenty twenty into twenty twenty one,
I could not bring myself to write something like I
was just so I'd given that show everything I had,
all the juice, all the juice was squeezed out of me,
and I wrote I think one. I wrote one comic book,

(21:22):
like a number one issue that no one will ever
read because it's not good. But like that was all
I could squeeze out across that first year of the pandemic.
And then it was like my brain, like a switch
in my brain literally turned on, and it's like, oh,
your brain, you're ready to write something again. And what
came out of that. The first thing that came out
of that was the script for the short version of

(21:43):
Just the Janitor. Initially, it was going to be about
a retired Superhero and like, and my brain was like,
we're done with Superhero live Action. We're good, We've done it. Yeah, yeah,
now you're good.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
What if it's just a normal guy? Like, what's a story?
What's it like if you just tell the story of
a normal guy who was a henchman for the Mob
or whatever, he gets the crap kicked out of him
and he retires out of the life. What's the thing
from leath the weapon? I'm too old for I'm too
old for this stuff. I don't want to curse. What

(22:17):
if it's that guy and it's just a guy who
has seen it all, has been part of it all.
He's the hinchman that Bruce Lee kicks out a frame
in Game of Death, you know, Like, what if it's that, Like,
what if the camera just tilts and we pan over
to the guy on the ground picking himself up with
a footprint in the middle of his chest? What's that?

(22:39):
And so I wrote that script and I wrote it
in across the end of twenty one into the top
of twenty two. I had made a film in Oklahoma
with some producers, a superhero indie film called The Posthuman Project,
And we did that in twenty thirteen. That's a thing
we get and also talk about in this Grand Career

(23:02):
retrospective we're doing. But the Post you In project, you know,
we made that movie for nothing and it it did
well for us and got distribution, which for an indie
film made in Oklahoma for fifty grand distribution was amazing
for us. Okay, those producers had always said when you

(23:25):
want to direct something, call us, like, we know how
talented you can be, like call us and we will
help you make whatever you want to make.

Speaker 1 (23:34):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
So I Wendy Parker Sure Green shout out to them.
I sent them that script and literally twenty minutes later,
my phone buzzed and they were like, we're in. How
do we make this happen? And I said, well, you
tell me, like you said, you're ready to make it,
how do we do this? And they said, okay, we'll
call you back. And within a couple of weeks they said, okay,

(23:58):
there's a window where you can probably pick up a
lot of crew coming off of Tulsa King, which was
a Silvester stallone show that shot in Tulsa and Oklahoma City.
Their season wrapped and a lot of their crew came
on to Janitor with us Wow, and so we were
very blessed to get their crew, and then as we

(24:23):
got closer to the shoot date, which was the end
of October. Now we're in casting and here's where Melissa
banoised and John Wesley Shipp returned to the story. PJ Sosco,
who stars in Just the Janitor, was on a show
on HBO Max called Girls on the Bus, which was
Melissa's show that she had produced and made after Supergirl.

(24:47):
It was about journalists. The book is about journalists on
the Hillary campaign of twenty sixteen. The show took creative
liberties and did a different version of that story. In
that version, Melissa's character, I don't want to say, hallucinates.
She's haunted by the ghost of Hunter S. Thompson. PJ

(25:07):
played that ghost of huh wow.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
That's amazing. Sure.

Speaker 2 (25:11):
I think he's an eight of the ten episodes, I
don't remember, but he we put out the casting call
with the sides. He was the first person that we
saw from casting. We worked with an incredible casting director
in Oklaholm named Chris Freihoffer. Chris sins twenty six people.
PJ was number one. I watched his audition I was like, well,

(25:34):
that's the guy, Like that's like anyone else isn't gonna
compare to whatever that that performance choice is.

Speaker 1 (25:40):
He gave a Lance Hendrickson vibe of like nineties Lance Hendrickson.

Speaker 2 (25:45):
Yes, craggy. I always joke like, oh, yes, craggy in
the way that you want your character actor to be
a craggy dude. Unbeknownst to me, he was working on
Girls on the Bus, so we put out our offer
to him. On a Friday Saturday morning. My Facebook messenger
goes off and it's PJ and he says, can you

(26:07):
call me right now? Call him on the phone and
he goes, man, I'm on this show. I don't know
how to get time in my schedule to come back
for your five day shoot. And I said, that's cool man,
no harm, no foul, like is what it is. Thanks
for thanks for coming out to us like you were
so great in your audition, like a plus. And he goes, well,

(26:27):
let me work on it. Okay, cool, keep me posted.
We're sixteen days out from my shoot. Six days later
he hits me back and he's like, hey, have you
uh have you recast me yet? I said no, you said,
let me work on it. He goes, Yay, I'm still
working on it. I'm still working on I'll give you
a call next week. And I'm like, okay, this is
getting crunchy and scary. Yeah, we're ten days out from

(26:50):
the shoot. Eight days out from the shoot, he calls
me and says, man, I tried. I tried to get
them to redo the schedule. I gotta be on set
for this episode, no harm, no foul. Hopefully we can
work together on something. And he goes, I actually live
in Tulsa. You're shooting Oklahoma City. Tulsa is one hundred
miles away. I live in Tulsa now, but I'm I've
been in New York the past six months doing the show.

(27:11):
Maybe we can hook up in Tulsa at Christmas. You know,
I'll see you then.

Speaker 1 (27:14):
Cool.

Speaker 2 (27:16):
Twenty minutes later, he texts, call me right now, and
so I call him and he's like, so I was wrong.
The first ad has been working with the scheduling guy
and they've built me a few days off. So if
you can have me on your set the first day
on Saturday, I can shoot with you until uh Wednesday,

(27:36):
and then fly back the Friday and be back on
set for Girls on the Bus and I said, dude,
whatever you need to do, and he goes, well, let
me let me figure it out. Hang up the phone.
That Saturday morning, we're one week got from the shoot.
That Saturday morning, he goes, do you know the guy
that used to play the Flash in the nineties, And

(27:57):
I was like, John Wesley's Ship. Yeah, like, I just
did a bunch of stuff with him. And he goes,
He's at my gym right now in New York. And
I said, go talk to him, like come on, And
so half an hour passes and PJ calls me as
he's walking home from the gym and he goes that
dude loves you. And I'm like yeah, and he's like

(28:17):
that he said that if I'm gonna work with you,
I need to move heaven and Earth to do it.
So I'm gonna we're gonna keep We're gonna make this work.
And I'm like, okay, great, thank you John Wesley's Ship.
You saved my movie. And so on the Monday, we
have a Saturday shoot. On the Monday, we're location scouting
the school. A lot of it takes place in school.
We're locations in scouting the school, and PJ called and said,

(28:39):
where a go get me a plane ticket Friday night
at or Saturday morning at five am or whatever. So
he did a full day shoot on girls on the
bus till midnight, went home, slept for a few hours,
got up, drove to Newark Airport, flew to Atlanta, connected
Flu to Oklahoma City, and was on my set by

(28:59):
an am the next morning.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
And so that's how John Wesley Ship saved my movie. Melissa.
A noise played a role like and PJ was, I
mean he was tired, like the first day was kid's
day again. We take place in elementary school. The story
for listeners, it's about a henchman who is retired from
the henching life five years have passed. One of his

(29:24):
hinch buddies shows up and says, hey, you're the janitor
at this elementary school. Now there's a bank across the street.
We're robbing that bank. We'd like to use your elementary
school as our escape route. And the janitor day his credit,
says no, and they say we'll give you one hundred
thousand dollars and he goes, great, I'll see you on
Friday morning. Sounds awesome. Chaos ensues and that's the that's

(29:49):
the two sentence, five sentence pitch, whatever it is. And
so yeah, we we shot at in Oklahoma in twenty two.
We were in post all of twenty three, twenty four,
and now it's almost we're almost done with twenty twenty five.
We've been in the festival circuit for eighteen months now,
maybe less than that, maybe like fifteen months. We've played

(30:10):
all over the United States like Los Angeles, New York,
New Jersey, Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas. I mean we've
played sort of. I made a point like the places
we're playing are places that I know people that I
can go crash on their couch and going for the
festivals and do all that. Sure, sure, but we've done

(30:32):
really well for ourselves, Like people seem to really like it.
And it's you know, it's playing while the audience is
all over the place, and which is you know, gratifying
because it was.

Speaker 1 (30:41):
A lot I think coming from TV and stuff. Yeah,
I think it. The pacing is great for being a
twenty four minute movie, and I know PJA was fantastic.
Everybody in the movie is great. It's great to hear
that you had a pro crew that obviously is doing
great work on Tulsa King. I'm a mass Savanna that show,
and we're only a couple of weeks away from that

(31:02):
coming back for season three, right So yeah, no, no, no,
and yeah, man, that's great And truly I do hope
that prospective studios or producers see this and see the value,
you know, Yeah, I mean, it'd be great if you
guys can all get that together and make a you know,
a longer movie, either that same story or a different

(31:23):
story with the Janet.

Speaker 2 (31:24):
The thing that I've kind of sett all along has
been like, it's the first original thing I've ever done.
Like everything in my career has been someone else's IP,
and I've been very fortunate to work with these giant
corporations and help elevate their IP and do really interesting
work with everyone else's characters. Janitor is the first thing

(31:47):
that is legit out of my brain and on a
screen in a way that I've never had the opportunity
to do in my career outside of again a student
zombie film in two thousand and four or whatever. But
it's the first thing as a professional, as an adult,
that like is legit from my brain on a screen
for people to enjoy. And happily it's been successful and

(32:11):
we've won awards at festivals and all the things, and
people that have seen it really enjoy it. Everyone I've
shown it to yourself included, have been very complimentary. I'm
very thankful for that. Like it's it's a labor of
love and a passion project through and through and like
it's been so gratifying that people are enjoying it because

(32:31):
it's it's it wasn't an easy story. It's how we
get in some really heart wrenching I mean, it's criminals
in a school, Like you can imagine, there are some
heart wrenching sequences and there is a very not so
subtle reference of like this is why it's bad, as
you know, real world aspect to it that I think

(32:52):
if you like code it in a fiction suit, like
the message goes down a little easier. But yeah, it's
It's been very fun to do, and we want to
do the feature. I'm working with a bunch of different
Oklahoma productions right now. I'm from Oklahoma and we shot
Janitor Oklahoma. The only way we were able to afford

(33:13):
shooting Janitor was because we were in Oklahoma.

Speaker 1 (33:16):
I get it.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
Yeah, every location was ultra affordable. Every rental we paired
with a votech school called Metro Tech, and they were
very gracious to supply us with cameras and lighting, and
I mean, like everyone there wanted to see us succeed,
and we would not have been able to make it

(33:38):
without the grace and the grace of the people of Oklahoma.
So so since I you know, I'm from there, I
go back a lot. I'm working on some other productions
that are there that I'd love to come back and
talk to you about later. We're talking about doing a
couple of movies there. There's a science fiction a half

(33:59):
an hour science fiction show that I'm involved with there
that I'm gonna have a big part in their second season.
You know, it's a lot of stuff in Oklahoma's kind
of popping off right now. And we have Killers the
Flower Moon shot there in Tulsa, King and you know,
Reservation Dogs, and there's a new Ethan Hawks show called
The Lowdown that's shot in Tulsa, which is my hometown. Like,

(34:21):
it's been very fun to see the trailers and it's
like I was there, like on that corner at Christmas
what like. It's been very fun to watch all that
stuff kind of unfold.

Speaker 1 (34:31):
The democratization of television and film and the way the
other states have come and said, play in our backyard,
because we'll give you the tax breaks, and we'll give
you the locations, and we'll give you affordable cost to production.
And it is very amazing that la seems to have
to beg for people to come back or and find

(34:55):
I know Governor Newston is talking about this, and the
industry is talking about this, that they got to find
a way of bringing their industry back, which is kind
of crazy given that it's you know, was in a
lot of ways the birthplace of the industry one hundred
plus years ago, and here we are. The pendulum has turned.
I mean, god, you know my friend Paul Jakins, so
I'm sure you know, you know. And obviously everything good

(35:16):
that's been happening in Georgia now Louisiana, I know, had
good text breaks. I believe that's where swamp thing was shot.

Speaker 3 (35:22):
The well, Vancouver, Toronto like well, and of course absolutely
like I mean, a lot of places have bent over
backwards to pull productions in, you know, Vancouver losing all
the CW stuff like changed Vancouver drastically because suddenly you
have hundreds of artisans out of work.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yeah, losing all the CW stuff. I mean, how many
writers were employed in Los Angeles by all the CW
DC superhero stuff. Oh yeah, We're talking dozens, if not
one hundred plus people suddenly didn't have work. Like, the
pandemic changed a lot of things in our industry. The
strike all also changed a lot of things in the industry,

(36:02):
and we're still trying to kind of put it all
back together piecemeal. And like, I feel very fortunate in
that I have had inroads in Oklahoma productions and have
done a lot of fun stuff with Oklahoma film and television,
and it's a growing industry in that state. Historically, that
state has been an oil and gas industry state. That's

(36:23):
the medi of course, gas education are the three things
that we've been good at. Oil and gas has been
really tough lately, and education has unfortunately really bottomed down
in that state. I think we're ranked fiftieth out of
fifty one, including Washington, DC. So is tough times there,

(36:43):
and so pulling TV and film productions into that state
opens a lot of different doors and I'm a firm
believer that those doors need to be kicked open. And
I say this all the time that like, if the
stuff happening in Oklahoma now had been happening twenty years ago,
I likely would have stayed and I would have just

(37:03):
been in the film and TV industry in that state
and done what I could be a part of that.
Obviously that's not the case. I moved to Los Angeles
in two thousand and six, come up on twenty years
and now I'm looking at Oklahoma, going, oh, so many
amazing things are happening there. How do I contribute to that? Like,
how do I how do I make sure that people
get to do fun projects? And Janetor was such a

(37:25):
fun I mean we opened in a giant martial arts
fight and the people, most of my crew were like,
We've never done anything like this.

Speaker 1 (37:33):
Oh that's great.

Speaker 2 (37:34):
We've never had the opportunity because who wants to make
an action sequence in Oklahoma? Yeah, a lot of drama.
We get a lot kills the Flower Moon, it's period
pieces and like you know, Reservation Dogs, which is like
a comedy, and oh yeah, also King which is like
got some kind of action beats, but it's not one
martial artist fighting five people. Yeah, and janetor like I

(37:55):
think allowed a lot of people to like have the
see the fun of shooting a giant martial arts sequel
and that was, you know, God bless Kevin Chambers, who
is the main martial artist performer in that. He also
choreographed that whole sequence and he's he's just an incredible,
incredible martial artist and that was so fun to shoot.
And we had one day to shoot that whole sequence

(38:16):
and wow, yeah we shot that.

Speaker 1 (38:20):
Sorry, now I's gonna say it's very it was very dynamic.
It was a great way to open the movie. And
uh yeah, it immediately gets your attention. But it is
impressive that that's not a crew that's used to shooting
martial arts fights, and it's it's it's very effectively done.
I think you did a great your your camera choices
as director h come through and it's no, it's it's

(38:42):
a tight twenty four minute story that has a lot
of depth of character and and great action and it's
a it's it's great man. And again I I I
think clearly your time writing television is kind of your
brain to uh to be able to tell a good
story fast.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
I to speak to what you just said. Our cinematographer
is a guy Jacob Burns. Jacob's an amazing director in
his own right. We were very fortunate to have him cool.
We were using an experimental camera to shoot that sequence.
The DJI run in four D, which is a typical camera,
is a body with a lens at the end. Right, Yeah,

(39:21):
this is a body with a lens on a gimbal
so it can move and you can task it to
someone's face, so you can basically have free range of
motion while it's staying focused on one human. That type
of lightweight, steady cam was the only way we got
all of that stuff shot in that way. Wow timeframe.

(39:43):
We shot that fight in about five hours about give
or take. The biggest hiccup on that fight, well, there
were two. One was we broke the boatstaff. There's a
sequence to the bostaff hitting PJ. We broke it and
that was a whole thing that took a few minutes
to fix. The other part. The other hiccup was the

(40:04):
young boy who's a hostage in that sequence. Not to
split For people that haven't seen it was meant to
be an eight year old child of a line of
dialogue who was a SAG actor. That actor could not
attend that day, so the casting agency called a bunch
of people and it became a four year old actor.
And a four year old child is very different than
an eight year old child in an action sequence where

(40:25):
there's you know, tanfas and bo staffs and all these
like things swords and knives. And so he comes on
set and I called in all hands and said, we're
shooting every shot that this child is in first, and
we're wrapping him as fast as possible because I need
this child to not be a part of the action
sequence that we're shooting. So let's let's change what we're

(40:49):
doing and light for this and then go. But a
lot of you know, to your point, A lot of
the tricks and stuff that I used in that sequence
I learned on the set of The Flash. Every lighting
choice in that sequence is a thing. We had a
guy named Briton Spencer on the Flash as a DP.

(41:10):
Every lighting choice in that sequence was stuff Brenton had
told me, and I just took every note he had
to heart, and you know, you light the entire room
and then you adjust, but as long as the entire
room is lit. You're not stopping and changing between every take.
And that became how we you know that's a giant warehouse,
Like we lit a ginormous warehouse, but you wouldn't know that. Like,

(41:33):
we just lit all of it and then we adjusted
a couple of times for different things. Sure, but it's
mostly just worklights from home LED, worklights from home depot
and then Aperture. Now we're getting into the weeds and stuff.
Apture has built lights that are magnetic on the back
and you can just click click click, click click, put
them anywhere and then their LED. You control them with

(41:56):
your phone. All the bursts of orange in the background,
those are just those Aperture clip on lights.

Speaker 1 (42:03):
Wow wow.

Speaker 2 (42:04):
And then you shoot low so people are dancing in
and out a light again, a trick I learned from
Brittain Spencer, and it makes it look like it's a giant,
like million dollars sequence, and we shot that sequence for
less than five thousand dollars.

Speaker 1 (42:16):
That's fantastic, man, the way it goes in five hours.

Speaker 2 (42:20):
The hardest part was we have a child on set
who is not We cut the line of dialogue and
then shot out all the footage of the kid and
then bounced it out and then it was just stunts,
all stunts, all the time.

Speaker 1 (42:31):
So I'll ask you as a as a TV VET,
I'm concerned. I wouldn't stay scared or a frayed or what,
but just concerned where network television will be ten years
from now. Do you think live action drama or comedy
will continue to exist on the major networks the major

(42:52):
networks even play that like they are currently, Because again,
it just seems like that landscape is changing so so much.

Speaker 2 (43:00):
Because the landscape moves so fast now, I don't have
a good answer for you, sure, and I think I
would be foolish to try and predict where that next
evolution goes. Yeah, you know, streaming has disrupted a lot
of what we do, and it's disrupted a lot of
what we make. It's disrupted revenue streams, it's disrupted AD

(43:23):
revenue streams, yep, you know, like it's disrupted syndication. Whereas
like in the olden days, Arrow would run for nine
seasons and then it would run on T and T
for several years, and then all that revenue would go
to all the writers and actors and whatever.

Speaker 1 (43:40):
And well it was the profit for the expenditure of
making twenty plus episodes till you get one hundred, then
you could sell it to syndication and then a studio
can reap back the money that they laid out. And yeah,
that's gone now. It's it's insane. And also, forgive me,
I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I love that

(44:03):
the streamers have discovered, hey, maybe we should run ads,
and I especially I love Pluto and to be you know,
all of the what they call fast channels. And I
always make this joke because it's true. Oh fast means
free advertising supported television or as we used to call it,
television and also radio had learned that lesson in the

(44:24):
nineteen twenties. And it's just like there was just this
rush to make money from a studio standpoint, to get
into the streaming game. And they they's the snake gate,
its own tail, and it's and it's like, I truly
sympathize for friends like you that are in the business
and and you know, need need this system to continue

(44:45):
to thrive. But the but as far as the owners go,
screw you guys, you guys blew it. You guys were
greedy and we're looking for fast, short money, and all
you did was ruin your industry. And I don't know,
as you I wasn't expecting you to I have a
golden answer, because if you did, you'd be running one
of these studios their networks right now. I don't think

(45:05):
anyone has an answer of how this is all going
to sort out.

Speaker 2 (45:08):
No, I think that's a thing that like, unfortunately we're
in a time will tell Yeah, yes, world, and yes,
you know, all we can do is try to make
things that hopefully people want to watch, and then hopefully
I mean, that's all I can do. Man, I'm more
often than not, I'm a cognitive machine for the giant

(45:29):
corporations telling these stories, right, you know, Like we went
on strike for very specific reasons as a writer's guild
in twenty twenty three, and have all of those things
paid out in the way that we predicted they would.
I don't know the answer. Yeah, you know, I'm sure
our friend Mark Guggenheim has very specific answers.

Speaker 1 (45:51):
I do not like.

Speaker 2 (45:52):
My brain doesn't work. My brain doesn't work like that.
I hope that all of the networks continue to exist
and make one hour television, But I also know that
the reality of the next ten to twenty years might
look very different, you know, losing the CW, Like I
said before, losing the CW to what it is now,

(46:16):
which is a lot of golf stuff and Canadian shows.
It's wild because it went from being they were six
nights a week of original programming to I don't know
that there's any I don't know if honestly.

Speaker 1 (46:30):
Yeah, I couldn't tell you either, Bud, I hear you, mom,
and I you know, And there's very few four network show,
five network shows that that I pay attention to. And
again my gud Tulsa King's coming back. Only Murders in
the Building on Hulu is back. King of the Hill
reboot on Hulu.

Speaker 2 (46:50):
All on streamers that like aren't gonna see, You're not
going to see and like we as the creative staff
aren't going to see and revenue in the same way
that we will if CW re ran an episode of
Flashes or whatever, yep, like it's cutting into our it's
cutting into us, like and yes, that's a bummer, And yeah,

(47:11):
I don't have the answers, and I'm smart enough to
know I'll never have the answers.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
I'm hip man, but again you're you're well, you're a
storyteller and and your job should just be try and
tell good stories. And again, honestly, folks, I hope, uh,
I don't know if you will. Will you make Janitor
available as it is now in any way TV?

Speaker 2 (47:32):
Like I said, we're you know, we're running through the
festival circuit. I don't know where home is going to be.
I also, you know, you know, the goal is to
use it as it's a self contained story, but it's
also a proof of concept, like this idea can be
writ large for a few million dollars, I can make
this a giant movie where we blow up the school

(47:53):
or whatever, like whatever that's going to be. The feature
version is different. Like the great part about the feature
script is it's a very different story than this while
retaining the same DNA. I'm with you, and I purposely
did that because we've already made the one thing. Now
I want to see, like what's the next evolution of
that story when there's more money involved. But getting funding

(48:16):
will be a conversation, and you know, we have to
because of the nature of our industry. We have to
get stars attached, and that'll be a conversation, but it's
it's the next big thing that I want to direct.
There's a couple other things that I'm gonna direct next year.
There are a smaller scale, like, like I said, there's
a half hour sci fi TV show in Oklahoma I

(48:37):
want to direct an episode for. And then there's a short.
PJ and I have cooked up a short that we
want to do together that's holiday themed that like it's
it's not the most serious thing you've ever done, but
like it's it's the thing that we think would be
fun to make over the holidays together when I'm back
in Tulsa for any length of time. But yeah, it's

(49:01):
just it's finding fun partners to work with. Is Like
that's kind of where I am right now, is I
just want to make stuff with my friends that we
enjoy making and we want people to see. And whether
that means they end up on YouTube or on Rise
Flicks or eo Flix or any of these Like smaller
Amalto is another one, Like there are a lot of

(49:22):
platforms that monetize short films nowhere where we end up
is a question honestly for next year, Like I'm trying
to get I'm trying to get through the festival circuit.
We have two more festivals this month. One is Big
Bear Film Festival at the end of the month, and
one was La Comic Con.

Speaker 1 (49:43):
We're screening.

Speaker 2 (49:45):
We're screening on Sunday of La Comic Con. Sunday. There's
a guy named Bill. His last name starts. There's a
guy named Bill who runs this thing called geek Fest,
and his whole thing is he wants to do mini
film festival at comic conventions. And so we played Long
Beach Comic Con two weeks ago, we played Rose City

(50:06):
in Portland, Oregon last weekend, and then we're playing La
Comic Con at the end of the month.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
That's great, man, No, that's excellent. Very I'm aware of
these I'm aware of these smaller platforms that are great
for short, short films and things like that. And again,
it is this wonderful democratization of filmmaking that is allowing
this to happen. The technology is there, the crews are
getting better, and again we're getting experienced people like yourself

(50:31):
that cut their teeth in traditional network television and now
you can make these things. No, it's so good, you know.
It reminds me the radio station I worked with in
the nineties, the rock station w x RT, had a
great relationship with the Chicago Film Festival. Cool and and
I saw I saw Sling Blade Billy Bob Thornton the
short years before before the movie happened. So no, I

(50:54):
know exactly what you're describing and stuff. And it was
so great to see Thornton's you know, Vision to Life
is the movie that it did, and and the and
the short is great. And I'm sure if you have
the DVD everybody, it's probably included the short might likely
be included on there. But yeah, no, it's great. And
also just it. It has been a pleasure even since
it started word Balloon to watch good student films, mate

(51:16):
and a lot of adaptations of comic book scenes. Things
like that. Got you know, I was just talking to
Ben Percy earlier this year. Oh cool, Ben's short movies
are really effective and everything.

Speaker 2 (51:29):
How sure he's done.

Speaker 1 (51:31):
Pretty good, man, pretty good. And also I wanted to
know because Ben has also written a lot of audio,
and certainly a lot of Marvel audio in particular, would
would would audio drama be something you would be interested
in doing? Sure? I just haven't thought of doing it
yet or I mean, I'm.

Speaker 2 (51:49):
I actually pitched I mean not to talk too far
out of school, but like I actually pitched Warner Brothers
Super Bowl audio drama in only twenty two okay, and
it got up to I think we pitched Spotify and
then the project died. But I wanted to do a

(52:12):
Supergirl Silver Banshee story because I thought that'd be really fun. Nick,
and We're gonna do like A It was like A again,
I don't know what. We pitched it and they said no,
so I can probably talk freely. I'm guessing I don't know,
but we were gonna do like super Girl and Silver Banshee,

(52:32):
our teenagers in love and they have to team up
to fight Black Banshee.

Speaker 1 (52:36):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (52:37):
And Warner Brothers listened to our pitch and said thank
you very much. Spotify listened our pitch and said, thank
you very much. We're gonna do more of this David
Guerrier Batman's stuff instead. And so that was is what
it is.

Speaker 1 (52:48):
I've been enjoying although it's only been the first episode.
But there's a Star Trek Con prequel. Well, it takes
the events happen after Kirk is uh presumed dead in
Star Trek generations, and so Sulu is on the Excelsior.
Tuvak from Voyager is an ensign on Sulu's ship. There's

(53:09):
a there's a historian that has discovered on the ruins
of SETI Alpha five historic documents that Marlon mcgivers, who
was CON's love and history it was a historian on
the Enterprise before she went off with KHN. She was
documenting the progress of SETI Alpha five and Conn's you

(53:30):
know group, and it's great, it's fantastic. The first episode
is wonderful. It's all based on Okay, now I'm blanking
on everybody's name. The director, she.

Speaker 2 (53:40):
Document how they discover how those those bugs make your
brain up.

Speaker 1 (53:44):
Well, we haven't gotten to the bugs going in there, okay.
The director of Wrath of Khan, who time after time
as well, Nicholas Meyer, right, nas Meyer, absolutely so. Nicholas
Meyer wrote this story to be a mini series for
New Track Action. They it didn't happen, so thankfully David Mack,

(54:04):
a great Star Trek novelist and consultant on all the
New Trek stuff, and Christen Byer adapted it into a
mini an audio mini series and the woman that's on
for All Mankind that is the defector that goes to Russia.
And I forget the actor's name, but she's terrific. She
plays Marlon mcgivers Na Seem and I forget his name.

(54:25):
The guy from Lost that was said the Indian the Lost.
He plays Khn. It's great. They got to k to
come back as Sulu in his nineties. They got Tim
Russ's Tuvac and it sounds great and it's a great story.
And also my buddy Susan I Iisenberg, who you may
have met the animated Amazon. You know, she's done a

(54:49):
lot of audio drama work as an actress and everything.
I was talking to Phil Lamar and he did a
wonderful Moriarty series where he played Sherlock Holmes, and it's like, no,
I'm a I'm a nerd dude. I love old time
radio and I always have this.

Speaker 2 (55:04):
I have an entire shelf like you can't like all
the doctor who big finish audios like.

Speaker 1 (55:08):
I great stuff, great stuff. There you go.

Speaker 2 (55:12):
I kind of That's partially why I wanted to do
a Supergirl audio drama was because no one's ever done
it before. A and B. It allowed us to do
a teen a teen version of Supergirl that was before
like we were playing her as she was fourteen or fifteen.
And I had never written a story in that sort
of continuity where she's like at the Midvale School and

(55:33):
then she meets the sort of bad punk rock girl
and then the bad punk rock girl turns out to
have superpowers and then then they have this like really
intense young love story. Okay, I never had the opportunity
to write I was I. I was co writing it
with a woman named Janet Harvey, and I'd never had
the opportunity to write a story like that with Kara

(55:57):
and yeah, and it was such a like shame that
it got, you know, kiboshed, But like that's the industry.
You you pitch the thing, and they they own the characters,
and they say yes or no. And we were partner
trying to partner with Spotify, and that was a whole thing.
Like again, I don't think I'm talking too far out
of school. This is several years ago now, so, but

(56:19):
like I had never had an opportunity to write that
version of Supergirl, and it seemed like a really fun opportunity,
you know, I I don't know, man, I say it
all the time of like, I will write Supergirl anytime
someone asks me to, like, no matter what, I will
bend over backwards to make it work. If it's a
one shot issue, if it's a six page story, if
it's you know, I did a one page story in

(56:41):
Love Is Love, the Pulse graphic novel, solely because I said,
kind of write a Supergirl story to see what her
reaction would be. And they're like, absolutely, and it's a
one pager that Matthew Clark drew. Going back to Greg,
Greg's absolute, And I'm so grateful to have that opportunity

(57:02):
because like, I will write her any day of the
week that you ask, Like, she is one of, if
not my favorite fictional character, and I have a lot.
I still think I have a lot to say with her.
I don't own that character if I don't have the
opportunities to tell those stories, but I would if they
I mean, I'd do it a hardbat, you know. Same

(57:22):
with Flash, Same with Superman. I'm always going to say
yes if someone calls me and says, hey, you know,
we want to do a Superman thing or a Flash
thing or whatever. I'm always going to say yes like
they are. The Flash kept me alive as a teenager.
Supergirl gave me hope in my twenties. Superman has been
a constant presence my entire life. I will always say
yes to those characters, but I don't know the man,

(57:45):
and so that can get tough. That can be tough
to kind of wrap your head around of, Like, I
want to tell stories these characters, but I can't. So
I'm going to go off and do my own thing
and fingers crossed. I got opportunities like that in the future.
But I have other stuff going that I'm really excited
to do. You know, I said to the data someone, like,

(58:07):
I'm miswriting comics. It's my favorite art form. It's my
favorite kind of writing. I haven't written a comic in
almost ten years now because I've been so ingrained in
TV and film and filmmaking and all that stuff. I
really miss comics. They're just fun. They're fun to make,

(58:27):
and they're fun to collaborate with a very small team
of people making a book that goes to press. It's
a unique kind of storytelling magic that I don't think
that I don't think the other storytelling mediums necessarily have prose.
Prose is very solitary with an editor, but it's solitary

(58:49):
of course. Filmmaking, you're a general leading two hundred people. Television,
same thing, comics, it's you and maybe ten other people maximum.
It's a very small team, and you get to work
very intimately with your collaborators in a way that you
just don't in other art forms.

Speaker 1 (59:09):
And the turnaround to seeing it come to print is
a lot faster than a year long movie or TV
or whatever. So no, I can appreciate all that.

Speaker 2 (59:18):
A right, all right, we've hit two hours.

Speaker 1 (59:20):
I should well, I was gonna say, real fast, a
couple of fast lightning questions be things I wanted to
know the key distinctions between Supergirl and power.

Speaker 2 (59:28):
Girl attitude, worldview, overall world worldview, and uh age and
and experience. And I also think like depending on which
version of power goal you're approaching, Like there's a very
bitter version of power Girl that has historically run through
the books in a way that Supergirl is typically not

(59:50):
a great power Girl, Like really felt the loss of
Crypton Kal all that stuff in a different way than Supergirl.

Speaker 1 (59:57):
Absolutely new Supergirl has and I believe so with infinite
crisis and losing Earth you know, Golden Age super Bowl
and Lois as well.

Speaker 2 (01:00:06):
I've never gotten I've always wanted to do a Power
Girl super Bowl team up, and I've never gotten a
do one. And that's, you know, again like bucketless things
of like stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
I don't ways, you know, yeah, And I don't know
how much that's really been touched in the comics, and
it should be because there they really are in a
very different way than Bruce Earth two and Bruce Earth one,
or Clark Earth two and Clark Earth one. Yeah, yeah, No,
I think that's an interesting character dynamic and wants you
to know us you did the impossible making him like

(01:00:36):
Vibe and the awesome many that you made. Did you
pitch that or was that brought to you?

Speaker 2 (01:00:43):
I came in an issue three. They'd written the first two,
Jeff and I got him in here. Christberg had written
the first two issues, and I came in on issue three,
I think, and then we were supposed to be a
twelve issue like MAXI series, and then then we were
cut into a nine issue series, and then I wrote
the ending, and then they gave us an extra issue

(01:01:04):
and so I got to expand the ending. It did
not sell well because at that time, this is twenty thirteen,
Vibe was not on TV every week on the Flash,
he was not on the Justice Society of America mural.
In the Superman movie, he was a character no one
cared for because what people knew about him was he
was like the breakdancing, jokey superhero of nineteen eighty five.

Speaker 1 (01:01:27):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:28):
We tried really hard to sort of rehabilitate that. We
try to rehabilitate that character, and I just think the
audience wasn't quite ready for it because it was I
think if you did a Vibe mini series now, which
by the way, Vibe has not appeared in a DC
comic book since Forever Evil in twenty thirteen when he
got shunted to a pocket universe with the rest of
the Justice League. And I've pitched every way I can.

(01:01:51):
I've pitched, let's bring Vibe back into the universe, and
no DC editor has ever gotten back to me on
that pitch.

Speaker 1 (01:01:58):
So that's interesting again, especially with the idea of inclusion
and where we are despite the governments tries to the contrary, No,
I think Vibe would be this is the chance to
redeem Vibe and the way that he was redeemed in
the Flash TV show. I always say it was Meltzer
and John's and whoever else they were friends with that

(01:02:20):
when they were in college, they were the only ones
that were enjoying decent jail at.

Speaker 2 (01:02:25):
Detroit, Justice Leig, Yeah, yeah, yeah, and I just.

Speaker 1 (01:02:27):
Saw I just hung out with angle Heart in uh,
because I wasn't either right or no. Was it was
it Conway or Angleheart that wrote jail a Detroit? It
was Conway.

Speaker 2 (01:02:35):
I think at that point it was Conway with Chuck
Patton maybe, oh.

Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
Sure, yes, of course, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I think
you're right about that, all right, because I was going
to say.

Speaker 2 (01:02:47):
Maybe maybe someone of the comments is going to call
us out on that, but like.

Speaker 1 (01:02:51):
I'll look it up.

Speaker 2 (01:02:51):
But also forty years old and a lot of since then,
so you know.

Speaker 1 (01:02:57):
No, And again, thank god, you guys really did give
justice to Vibe, and I think he was much better
portrayed on the TV show. Thank you. Mario reren Schmidt
is Margo on for All Mankind, and she is Marla
mcgivers in the New con series. Yeah, Jerry says Conway
as far back as I remember, And then Jerry, I
wanted to give you a moment because, as you said,

(01:03:19):
if I may, it sounds like studios and that we're
television want to shift over to streaming if it means
writers and other people are losing revenue. That's something I
never considered before. But yeah, no, that's I think you're right,
and that is my suspicion that there will always be
an over the air product, but they really want you
to get into the subscribing mode in some way and

(01:03:41):
maybe you know, sorry, go ahead, No, I'm just gonna say,
I don't know what will make up the programming of
the over the air product. I mean, we're saying now
all the game shows and reality shows that we're getting
in lieu of script to television. But yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:03:56):
I am hopeful that The Flash sees syndication at some
point because that revenue stream would be very welcome.

Speaker 1 (01:04:04):
I get it.

Speaker 2 (01:04:05):
You know, it's right now it lives on Netflix, and
I suspect it will live on HBO Max once it's
Netflix syndication goes away.

Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
That's my assumption. Yeah, all those shows, I love for.

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):
It to be on TNT because I would love for
the seventy writers that work in that show for ten
season to nine seasons. I'd love for all of us
to see syndication. Yeah, yeah again, I'm not in charge,
so we'll see what happens.

Speaker 1 (01:04:30):
I hear you. Man. Well, the good news is you've
made the excellent movie again. Everybody, just the Janitor hopefully
to be coming. Well, will you if you're going to
you said La Comic Con.

Speaker 2 (01:04:44):
Yeah, we're playing hold on. I can tell you exactly.
It's La Comic CON's Sunday at I think two thirty.
I mean, I don't want to hold on. I pulling
it up on my phone.

Speaker 1 (01:04:54):
It's all good.

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
Um, I'm gonna have to actually pull it up on.

Speaker 1 (01:05:02):
No no worries while while you're doing that will remind people
that the omnibus that collects Supergirl and the whole really
the entire New Crypton story that James Robinson, Greg Rucca
and Sterling gave us got however many years ago, that's
coming back. And yeah, I'm thrilled about that. There's another
great cover.

Speaker 2 (01:05:22):
La Oh my gosh, I Josh Middleton shout out to
Josh Midleton. I love this cover so much, putting night
Wing in Flamebird up against Supergirl was such a fun
that was this is the crossover that I wrote with Greg.
Those issues were such a joy and working with Greg
was such a joy.

Speaker 1 (01:05:37):
Like He's the mess.

Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
Justin Jander is playing at La Comic Con at the
Los Angeles Convention Center September twenty eighth, which is a
Sunday at two o'clock in Room four three B.

Speaker 1 (01:05:50):
Beautiful.

Speaker 2 (01:05:51):
I heard it here first, folks.

Speaker 1 (01:05:53):
Excellent, there you go. And yeah, man, no, dude, great
seeing you and you know, no, and you have something new,
whatever medium it is, please let me know and we'll
absolutely talk about it. And it's an excuse to get
back into some of the great work that Sterling Gates
has given us over the years. So I really appreciate
you and let me know, Hey, I got something new.

Speaker 2 (01:06:13):
Well, you know, we talk I you know, our conversation again,
Like the last time we talked was New fifty two
era and that we had to scotch that whole that
whole podcast because of you know, real life. It's Hawk
and Dove because of Hawk and Duff. But it's always
a pleasure to talk to you, man, like I enjoy
I really enjoy listening uh to word balloon to your

(01:06:35):
pod and like, I think you get some of the
best interviews from comment creators, and it's you know, it's
I'm so glad we have to sit and chat, and
I'm glad you liked the movie. It's, you know, a
labor of love. And yeah, I hope that I have
something fun next year and we can sit down and
do it again.

Speaker 1 (01:06:53):
You're here hopefully. Thanks Sterling Gates, Thanks everybody. Next Monday,
I believe the plan is Jim's up. We'll be back Jim,
who's having an epic run on Conan. Conan is going
to celebrate its twenty fifth anniversary with Titan in October,
and they're gonna have a very cool anniversary, a fully
painted issue. I'll let Jim give us all the details,

(01:07:15):
but it's a great chance to talk to our favorite
current Conan creator. No disrespect to Barry Windsor Smith and
Roy Thomas and their fine work over the years. So
that's gonna start off next week. Word balloon love. Join
us then until next time, everybody, stay safe, stay happy,
stay healthy.