Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Okay, which Muppet movies have you seen?
I've seen the pirate one.
Muppet Treasure Island. With Tim Curry. Yes! Very important.
Yes, definitely seen that one.
And Christmas Carol.
Oh yeah. And Muppets Take Manhattan.
Actually, wait. Damn it. Now I'm muddled.
Is there like another Christmas thing where like
Fraggles and Muppets and everyone are in?
I believe so. It's not the Muppets Christmas Carol
(00:23):
because that's just a straight retelling of the Dickens.
Gotcha.
Muppets Take Manhattan is also great.
Okay, so today I am talking with my friend George.
I've known and worked with George for ages.
I met him through the Rocky Horror Picture Show.
His wife Tracy became my boss when
(00:44):
I joined the security team and then I took over for her as head of
security when she broke off. And in the midst of all
that he was making short films and like
YouTube comedy series projects. And at
some point we were at the same comic convention, I think New York
or maybe it was San Diego. Then in the same
panel sort of had this lightbulb moment for the first comic
(01:04):
that we worked on. I think the exact click where they were talking
heavily about zombie comics and like the
rise of horror comics and it being coming oversaturated at that point.
And George and I then had like a two hour breakdown afterwards
of like well, what's the opposite of zombies? Okay, zombies.
Everyone's dying and it's terrible.
So nobody's dying and that's still terrible. And that
(01:25):
led to our book HEALED that we made which
was our first co-project. But I'm looking forward
to unpack what he's doing now.
How the convention system has treated us as we've sort of like
branched out into our different specialtities within it. He's
also a metal musician, so I'm sure he has other concepts that he
can add to conversation.
That sounds really cool.
(01:47):
How have I not met this person yet?
When I met you, we were, I think it was me and
Bird talking about Tarot stuff and you were just kind of floating there the first time
we met.
yeah, I was exhausted and I just needed
to like lean against their shoulder for a little bit.
But George has no tarot knowledge at all so he would
never have jumped into that chat. Like he gets comic readers who are
very different crowd than art fans, who talking to
(02:09):
them about stuff tends to meander weirdly. So
our conversations don't tend to crisscross heavily.
Well, I will certainly make a point of saying hi to him next time.
Yeah, no, but this conversation is definitely
going to be the trick of how do we go back into
topics we've probably talked about dozens of times without
making anyone who listens to this later feel like they
(02:30):
missed a chunk?
Alienation of the audience. Everybody's worst
fear.
There's a little bit of a familiarity that we're gonna try to have
to reiterate. I feel like there's gonna be a lot of sentences to start
with. "I know we've talked about this before."
Well, that's what editing is for.
True. He has a lot more of a business
(02:51):
minded approach to all this stuff which I've always sort of lacked. Like
he actually keeps up a mailing list. He's actually gotten really
good at like making Kickstarter a regular
process in his comic creating. Where like he now just
has a list of people through every campaign who follow him
from comic to comic, which I've rarely seen anyone
be able to pull off with Kickstarter. So it's kind of fascinating. Yeah.
(03:11):
Business expertise sounds helpful to hear about.
Yes, he definitely has a lot more of that than I do.
Cool.
I promised my friends that I would get them a
breakdown of a couple different scenes by this evening.
So I should go do that. Let me know how the
conversation goes.
And take your time with that because like I said, this one will run a little longer.
So expect more like an hour, hour and a half.
(03:33):
Sounds good.
How you doing, George?
I am doing all right. I think like a lot of people.
I could use a nap.
I just did a one day New York City trip, so yeah, I'm
(03:54):
definitely napping once we're done with our
chitchat.
Yeah, yeah, my brain did the 5:30. Hey,
let's think about things like. No. Oh,
we're so close to getting the full sleep I
wanted. Brains are dumb.
Of all the things I'm like, if I bought Apple stock in
1992, how much would it be worth now?
(04:16):
And then I, then I just started just
fantasizing about like, oh, that'd be great, right?
You just, you just place the bets where you need
to, you invest where you need to, and then you can just do whatever the hell
you want.
Honestly, I would be a liar if I said I
haven't had the thoughts. But because it's me, I'm
like, just in case time travel is a thing or like
(04:37):
this is a simulation and I do get bumped back at some
point, I'm trying to actively note what
I can use as actionable.
Well, I don't know. I don't know if I've Ever told you this
story? when my freshman year in
college I was at Occidental
which was just out outside of LA
and in my Econ 101
(04:58):
class was a very young Ben
Affleck. Oh. that at that
time he was only the
basketball player from the Buffy the
Vampire Slayer movie who does the "Here
take it" and gives the ball to
Perry. So you know, so the
fantasy is often like there's the Sliding
(05:20):
Doors. Like oh man, if I knew
then right. I'd probably be an
alcoholic and like a crippling gambling
addiction. but often that is the.
Yeah. You know, and then I get in with the Affleck and
Damon and like now we're a trio type of
thing. But then last night it was the. Well if I'm going back in
time like rather than enter
(05:43):
like the Hollywood machine that was
1992 which was much worse than it
is now. And it is pretty horrible
now. Like. Or I could just you know,
make bets and like ye. just you know,
not do anything.
Or just do vanity projects with all the fucking flood of
cash.
Yeah, yeah it was the. It was the. All right, if I
(06:04):
had $10,000 in
1992, what could I have?
What property could I have bought like put a down
payment on in LA? And what would
that be worth now?
Oh man.
Yeah. Yeah.
So I think we just came up with the premise. Your next comic
book.
(06:25):
It's got ... yeah. Some sort of time travel to
become Damon and Afflack's friend.
That's actually when you think about
it, that's not a bad
premise. And the
title is so easy "My Friend, Affleck".
It's just obvious enough with that nice little hook of
(06:47):
people walking by being like... And you're getting that nice moment
to... "I'll explain."
Yeah, yeah. It
falls apart once you start poking it with logic.
Yeah but it'd be fucking fun.
But you've got VAMPIRES ON MARS still rolling, Yeah?
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. #3 .
we wrapped it up. The Kickstarter is
wrapped up. You know it's a combination of
(07:10):
waiting for the rewards, the books to roll in
while prepping #4 For most likely June.
And then we will Have wrapped my first Kickstarter series.
That's amazing. Not my first Kickstarter...
My first series I've got backed through Kickstarter
No, you have gotten
a good handle on how to make the Kickstarter machine work
in like building an actual following almost of an
(07:31):
audience inside of that metric.
It's... There's still
bigger nuts to crack, rungs
to climb up and more to learn. I mean,
God, man. I... We talked about it, you
know, 15 years ago...
I did... You know, I just wanted to make a comic book with you.
And in those 15 years, I have gained
(07:53):
so many other skills and
insights and tools,
and I just wanted to make a comic.
and now I can talk to you about Kickstarters
and Facebook ads and bleeds
and, you know, all this stuff. You know,
all this ancillary... and I guess it's not
(08:13):
ancillary because they're...
I use them, you know.
Right.
I'm learning them. Like... you know, I am an
active student of this stuff, but it all just
poured from. "I wanna tell a funny book."
It's... Yeah, it blows me away
sometimes.
It's one of those things that I keep running into,
(08:33):
creators who, like, oh, I have this passion project. I just
like fucking around in this medium. And then once
somebody nudges them towards publishing
or monetization, immediately
the changeover of what skills you have
to then absorb, the other roles
you have to embody. It's getting more
(08:55):
interesting as I'm talking to people now who jumped into
it because people pushed them. Got
overloaded and realized that they can't live in that world, and
they just want to go back to making the dumb little thing and having eight
people like it, then trying to sell it and trying to
unpack themselves from each of those other aspects
and get back to roots. Because you can't just
(09:15):
leave. You have to disconnect at each
level at a weird way, like... otherwise you get this weird
whiplash where you can't reengage the process well.
yeah, If you get any insights, let me
know. I mean, pretty much, I'm sure all of this
is just stemmed from a fear of death. And, like,
the closest thing. The closest thing you can get to
immortality, is like... story.
(09:37):
I don't take that
as a positive motivator.
I'm sure some people take the fear of death and
somehow they amalgamate that into,
like, positive energy, and that's how they keep
going.
I think I have figured that out.
But, yeah, I haven't. I haven't cracked that
alchemy yet. It is. It still
(09:58):
feels negative.
And, you know, I. There's enough
negativity out there, man. I don't want to be fueled by it.
Like, there are some people who. Who
are fueled off of spite,
right. And. And they get stuff done.
That's kind of their fuel. Or maybe that's their ignition.
(10:18):
And once, once the ball gets
rolling and I keep smashing metaphors into each
other, then, you know, the more
positive parts roll from it. But
yeah, I've never... spite has never been
like a, motivator. It's never gotten my
motor running or running faster.
You have a very, tangled relationship with it where
(10:41):
I've always tried to like, push the idea of
optimistic nihilism where like nihilism, the universe is
big and I am small, so I can affect nothing. And that sucks.
So fuck it. And that's nlism. And then
optimistic nihilism is the universe is big and I am
small and I can affect almost nothing except these things. So
this is what matters and fuck everything else. And
(11:01):
because I live there, I seem to
have a little bit more positive with the Momento Mori of like, look, I'm going to be here
this long. No one's going to remember me 50 years after I'm gone. So
let me just enjoy this and make these people's lives better and I'm going to
make some fun shit. And hopefully 20 years after
I'm dead, someone sees it and goes, oh, I'm going toa make something
based on my enjoyment of this. And then
(11:21):
neat. I've thrown it into the future and hopefully the ripple
keeps moving.
Yeah, yeah. It's (11:26):
what side of
the coin of "Nothing matters".
-Yeah-
do you fall on? Is nothing
matters crushing or is nothing matters
freeing?
Yep.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think I'm sliding closer
to that.
I've been dragging you kicking and screaming towards it for years.
Oh yeah. And, when you sit down and you analyze
(11:48):
it, you know, you turn it into like an equation. It makes perfect
sense. But we all have our own
wiring and experiences and lived
experiences that thanks to the power of
therapy, we're trying to undo and untangle.
So you've been doing the, the normal work of comic creating
and then the hard work of making that a
(12:09):
not loss.
Yeah, my, my goal. And again, like,
I gotta... all praise to Tracy. She
knew who she was marrying and has never
once. There'never been one negative
vibe from her towards any of this.
And unfortunately, I think we both know friends
who have gotten negative
(12:30):
feedback from the people who supposedly
support them the most. And I can honestly say
Tracy's never not like
seriously, not once.
No, especially I mean, we knew each through the Rocky Horror
crowd, back in the day. And like so many people from that had these great
creative arcs that got crushed by marrying somebody who
just did not want that sort of
(12:52):
energy or looseness or uncertainty around them.
Yeah. Yeah. so
I feel like the two things I can
repay Tracy the
most. One, acknowledge it and let her
know that I see it and
appreciate it. And number two is don't take advantage of
it.
I've seen other people ruin shit just from that.
(13:14):
Which means, how do I make these
things? And she
can still get Chinese food whenever she wants. You
know, Logan. If Logan needs a new pair of jeans, you can
get a new pair of jeans. You know, can we go on a
vacation? You know, that type of thing.
Right.
and. And, you know, I guess that leads back to
(13:35):
learning about Kickstarter and learning about all these
different things that.
Diana. Our friend Diana.
I'm very much looking forward to talking to her later on.
one of the earlier Kickstarters, maybe like the second or
third, like serious Kickstarter I
did. And by serious, I mean I had put time into
learning the system and the platform
(13:56):
and the mechanics of it. she brought up a great
point that, you know, look at it as
subsidizing.
Yeah.
You know, so I'm not at a. I'm not at a
place yet where at the end of a campaign,
all the art has been paid off, all the books
have been paid off and all that stuff. I'm taking
(14:16):
a chunk out of that, and then I'm investing in inventory.
And, you know, we go to conventions together,
so it's a very long
tale about it all. But,
but again, it's being realistic of
where I'm at, so then I can set.
I know I want to be a hundred yards.
-Yeah.-
(14:36):
down the field. And that's not going to happen in
one Kickstarter. How can I get
two, three yards down the field?
Ya know? Yeah. Build
something.
But you doing the thing of, like, building brick by brick is
the thing that nobody really glamorizes or
teaches or points at. Sometimes they'll point at the
(14:56):
work, but usually is like a romanticized
version of the work. Yeah.
Ah, yeah. You don't. You don't
see the in the trenches work.
You know, I picked up a guitar at 15
because I was blown away by guitar players. I was
like, that looks cool. I want to do that. And the minute
you put a guitar in your hand and you try
(15:18):
and play and it's just a cat dying an
agonizing death, you realize how hard it
is to make it look easy.
Yeah, sorry. I was having a conversation with someone recently about
the Dunning Kruger effect of, like... You have to be a
certain level of intelligence to realize that you're not
intelligent.
Right.
And like, I wonder if creatives... cause I
(15:39):
run into this less with creative people than not. And I wonder if this is why
where like, because you have to experience the failure of
learning a technique where you glamorizde the outcome already
and figured out how these gaps exist
through your own initiative. That maybe that's why
that populates less in those communities. It's
not. There's not an immunity like there's some people who
(16:00):
have it still. But.
Yeah, man, I don't know. You know, guitar playing,
I mean, that started when I was like 15. So, I mean,
I guess there's no better thing
than not knowing and just
trying. You're risking nothing.
The old Adventure Time quote of "The first step of getting good at
something is being really bad at it." (badly paraphrased)
(16:20):
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I think I said that wrong but everyone knows it.
And I've saw some, you know,
quote or something like, first you suck, then
you're slow, then you're good.
It's a long fucking journey.
Yeah.
You know. You know, the Ira Glass as
a great quote out there. It's
(16:42):
not as good as you want it to be. That's because you
have taste. And so you know where you
want the thing to go, but you don't have the
skills yet. But you have the taste.
So keep working and eventually
the skills will catch up to the taste.
There's a common glitch. I first really
(17:02):
encountered this when working on comics with you. You're
starting a project like that, where it's sequential or there's a lot of
pieces to it. And the quality of
the last page compared to the quality of the first
page because you've learned and grown and built up
a system that you had never engaged with much before.
And the quality goes up and up and up. And then you get to the end and
(17:23):
you can see the gap so clearly. And that one
flip that it's palpably painful.
Yeah. Yeah. And that's why, I mean, I,
I still give you so much credit.
with. With HEALED that, when we came to
that stopping point and look behind and you clocked
that, that you
(17:43):
dove back in and
you redid the first story
U. And that's, that's. I don't know,
that's professionalism, dedication,
care. You know, I don't know what
exact word ties into that, but I
know not everyone would have done that.
(18:03):
And there's a line, right? Like at
some point you just got to push the thing out the
door.
Yeah.
And you roll all those learnings and
experiences into the next thing and you hope the next thing is a
little better. And I think I've been telling myself that
for a while so I can listen to
those earlier band recordings were on the one
(18:26):
hand I listened to it. Now I'm like, oh good
God. But you know, I, I try and
be kind to 22 year
old George like he was doing the best he
could and sometimes that's
it. Like give yourself permission to suck
and just do the best you can.
(18:46):
I mean I think this is one of the things that
not being successful is beneficial for
because you don't have the George Lucas thing of like
looking back in that moment and then feeling you have the resources
and power to go back and redo it. You know,
this way you just have to have to accept it and move on to the next
thing.
All Right. It's funny you say that because in my basement
(19:07):
I have the original like
reel to reel recordings that
my band in 1995,
96 recorded on
Like I've got those reels.
That's amazing.
There was a moment I was like, well, you know, with.
I have grown and you know, even as a
(19:28):
producer and an engineer and I use those words very
loosely. It's like, well, what if we digitize this and I take
everything I know and we. It'like ah, those
kids, those young adults, they did
the best they could in the
moment. I don't think there's any polishing that's going
to take a two and a half and bring it up to a seven.
(19:50):
I know people who, they're kind
of using the same songs from 30 years ago,
but oh, but now I've rethought, I'm like, you just like let
that.
Dog lie and - take the inspiration
and make a new thing.
Yeah, yeah.
Like I've dealt with this more in the manufacturing process that I've been
going through where like you meet people who have
(20:10):
ONE good idea. And then you have people
who have a good idea. And are trying to get this one
done so I can get to the next one.
Yeah. early 2000s, I
was working with writer, producer,
director'name's Kevin Anderton for about 10 years. We
did a ton of short films together.
Oh wow.
(20:31):
Yeah. And I remember specific.
I know about this.
No, Okay. I remember a specific
conversation we had that he was talking about that, you
know, the, the friend with one
movie idea. One short idea.
And they just couldn't Let it go. And Kevin and I are sitting
on dozens and dozens
(20:51):
ideas. And so we're like, yeah, you know,
God willing someone hear one of these ideas
and want to cash in the lottery ticket, you know,
and so this is 2000. The words
"Sold Out" meant more.
Yeah.
Then so, you know, so, so transport
back 25 years ago. We'll sell out.
(21:11):
We'll sell that one thing so we can make
all these others.
Right.
Because, you know, and, and you talk to any
creator worth their salt. Ideas
are cheap. Yeah.
It's execution, it's follow through its
dedication, it's craft. That's.
Yeah. It's that thing where like anytime
(21:34):
a good version of something of an idea comes out, you
usually can also simultaneously find like four or five other people
who have had the same idea around the same time and just
didn't pull it off the same way. Also where
you get that thing with movies where like two movies with the same
kind of premise come out simultaneously. Just because the
zeitgeist works like that.
Yep. Yeah. so yeah, I mean
(21:55):
it. My, my deathbed
regret will be that there was never enough time
and never enough burners on the stove.
Yeah.
For all the ideas.
Nope. I think that's the one reason we get along as well as we
do because we just both have a
ton of stuff that we like mashing together and see what little idea
babies happen. Yeah.
(22:16):
and then, you know, I also think about Mel Brooks. and I wish,
I wish I could remember exactly. Maybe it was
Men and Tights, but he was talking about
having like two or three ideas moving through the
studio system. And ..."How did you end up choosing this
one?" like. "Well, because the other two were plugged up and this one was moving
so it was like oh. Let's just do that one."
Yeah.
You know. You know, there
(22:39):
is an unromantic
part of that, but it... that's
very practical and that gets you
to done.
Yeah.
A 75% done
project is worth more
than a perfect idea.
I mean this is how. I think this is how we ended up on
(22:59):
HEALED to begin with, wasn't it? Is that you had. I know you
eventually shot the first story in HEALED as like a short
film, but I think, correct me if I'm wrong,
obviously, but I think you had a lot of these ideas
where you were originally like thinking them in the video format
and then you're like, well, yeah, but I can't get a rigging for
this. I can't get the special effects for that. The comics are a
(23:19):
medium where me and One other person. We can
just sit down and make this story happen anyway.
Yeah, it was, it
was you and I, New York Comic Con. It was
Oni Press, and they're like, you know, how it was, like,
"How not to break into comics". And as they were
talking, this light bulb kept getting brighter and
brighter. The. The web series
(23:42):
that I and Tracy, a whole bunch of people were doing.
Oh, 664? - Yeah, 664 (23:45):
THE NEIGHBOR OF THE BEAST
Tracy was pregnant with Logan.
So for about two and a half, three years,
I was directing,
producing, writing, editing almost
all of these web series. And this is, you know, when
web series were five to seven minutes each.
Yep.
(24:05):
And we shot two seasons, 34 episodes
total, I think. And it was a lot of:
"I've gotta write the script, so we can shoot the script, so I can edit
the script, so I can put the episode up, so I can write the script, so I
can..." you know, I was chasing my tail for two and
a half, three years, and I was wrangling the cats.
And by the end of the second season of 664
(24:26):
it's like, "I think I'm done". The idea
of, like, trying to shoot something
again, that gas tank was empty,
right? Empty. And the rule
of thumb, you know, with short.. especially short
film... especially DIY short film,
"Don't shoot what you can't film". So don't
(24:47):
shoot. You know, don't shoot a pirate movie if you don't have
access to a pirate ship. -gotcha- That's why
664, 75% of it took place at
my house. Yeah. Because I owned it.
Sitting in that Oni panel with you, that
was the light bulb of, oh,
you know, you, you bring the right artist who's
(25:08):
digging, you know, what you're... what you want
to do. You can write that pirate
comic. So that
reignited my
passion/hopes
to tell stories.
Yeah. And, and God, now, your
catalog is amazing.
(25:30):
Every now and then I got to remember to kind of like, step
away from the table and just
look at it and remember, you know, 15
years ago, it was one
24 page book that was on the
table. You know, now it's
four completed graphic novels,
(25:50):
two anthologies, and
VAMPIRES ON MARS, a new series that I'm
working on, you know, that I got eight
or nine things on that table.
And honestly, the amount of variety,
because I see a lot of people who have like, multiple series, but they're all sort of
like different versions of the same song.
(26:10):
Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, I'm not
100% sure why that's
where I went. Because again, again, you got to
kind of go to rule of thumb. They'll say
like pick a lane, stay in
it. Build your audience. Right.
So, right.
If you're a horror guy, you hit that horror
(26:31):
thing. If you're a sci fi, hit that. If you're a, you
know, if you're LGBT slice of life
hit that, hit that. You know, hit that note
over and over again. Build your audience. I get that.
And I have seen those people.
Yeah.
You grow as artists grow, as businesses
grow, as audience
(26:51):
support. That's never been my
MO.
Yeah.
So I chase the
idea that I want to see
ye.
I think that's why we click so hard. It is because we both make things that
we, we would, we want to buy and
can't find.
Yeah, that's definitely. Yeah, the
(27:12):
ideas definitely start with something that
makes me go "huh" and hopefully and, and
at some point as I keep
poking, you know that "huh" I will hit the.
"Well, if I don't, if I don't see this, I'm going to get really, really
mad."
Yeah.
there's some, you know, there's some ideas that I'm
(27:32):
still poking at and like "yeah, that could be cool".
and then there's like this short, this, this one
shot comic, that I'm
poking at and I am at the point
with it where like I love this main character
so much. I am going
to find a way to tell this
(27:52):
story because I gotta get her
into the world.
Heck. Yeah.
it is Ah, an 80s comic
about a 16 year old girl and, and
respectfully, but-fuck North Carolina
on the worst day of her life in
1986 when her local arcade
closes.
(28:12):
Oh my God. I already love where this is starting.
And you know, the real story
is those moments that we all go through
when a major pillar of our life
changes. Right... like that could
be someone moving away. That
could be your parents selling your house,
(28:34):
you know. And it just so happens for this girl this, this
arcade has been her safe
haven for the last five years.
In a world where she does not feel like she fits in.
She had this one place. How... What are the feelings that
go into the last day of
your safe haven? Oooh
(28:55):
and I. Her name is Cass.
You can call her Cassie. Don't ever call her Cassandra.
and I love her to death.
The fact that the. I've shared the outline
with a couple people specifically cut some of
the, the women in my life.
Yeah.
and the fact that all three of them told me well,
(29:16):
you made me cry. I'm like, good!
You know, here are the two projects we've talked about. You
know, the sliceiest slice of
life. And I'm also running a
Kickstarter about vampire astronauts
being shot into Mars. Right. Like,
and God willing, someone in the near future
(29:37):
will walk up to my table, see those two
books next to.
Each other... - And then leave with both of them.
You hope so. And I will say, you know, if we want to, if
we want to go on the business side a bit, like I said,
the rule of thumb is like, you know, pick a lane stick in it,
hit that note. What I've got
going for me is I can.
(29:59):
If anybody is willing to slow down and
talk to me, talk to us. Right when we're
together, I can ask them, what mood are you
in right now? Yeah, you
know, are you, ah, do you want something that's going to make you
laugh, break your heart, think.
Are you looking for something sci fi? Do you want
something a little more grounded and if I
(30:21):
can learn where they're at,
I can point them to something?
Yeah. No, I, My favorite bits is when you started doing
the like, what are you watching right now? Like, what s, what's the, what's the
like show or movie or world that you're playing and then
whatever. They said you had a. I've got
this that lives next door.
Yes.
(30:41):
Yeah. You know, like, you know, I don't have any superhero
stuff. So when someone's like, I'm a big Marvel fan,
I'm big DC fan, I can
go, all right. You know, big characters,
Punchy, Kicky. Here's a story
about an ass kicking Santa Claus.
I knew it was going to be that one.
Right. Yeah.
and what it all comes down to
(31:04):
is I've got more ways to
break down people's barriers.
Yeah.
You know, U. And God knows we have talked about
it because, you know, again, I mean we could
try and figure out that's a minimum of 30 to
40 shows we have been next
to each other.
Minimum.
And we have seen the carnival barkers.
(31:26):
Right. Like the people -God- who don't care
about the people at the show. They want
your money.
Yeah.
Um, and we've, we both have that
negative -hurrph- feel about,
about those people. I don't,
I don't have that mercenary
(31:46):
DNA.
No. Neither do I.
I want to sell my books.
Yeah.
I, ah, want to go home with less than I
brought. I want to grow my audience.
I want to, I want, I want to make more
money at these things. I also want the
person walking away excited to read the thing they
(32:07):
just bought. I don't want them buying it to
shut me up so they can go about the rest of their day.
And lord knows we have seen
purchases that were done solely, like, it is
worth my $20 to get away from
you. Right?
No one of my favorite things about tabling next to
you is every year I get to watch the people who,
(32:28):
like, hunt you down, find you and go,
"There you are! So I was telling my friend and I wanted to see what
new thing you had this time" bahbahbahbah. And
like, it's, it's wonderful.
It's. It is very cool. And, you
know, again, I got my own
ego. I've got my own, you know,
negative self talk and all that stuff. So
(32:51):
being at these shows can be a roller coaster. Can be
tough when you see other people just
banging it out, you know, left right and
center. And there are shows where you and I, we
are doing our damnedest, but it's a fight. It is a
flat out fight. And sometimes those
shows, about halfway through, we'll look at each other
and realize we cannot control this.
(33:14):
There's. There's likee. There's nothing we can
do right now other than, like, work to keep our
sanity. So this
really hit home. Going
back to shows after Covid... -Yeah-
having. Whatever that was than nine
months or a year, where we didn't
have any shows and we missed...
(33:36):
And some of the ones that were canceled, we were the ones like,
shows that we've been doing for almost
as long as we've been doing this.
Yeah.
And we have found those, Those, you know, those regulars
that we've. That we've gone. And I know
I had a very deep
appreciation of how special that stuff
was. I will always go to, you know, I'm not
(33:59):
gonna name them because they didn't, you know, but,
ah, I call them my New Hampshire family.
Yep. I know who you're talking about.
Yeah, they found our table, and it was
our book BABY,
that, you know, I think the daughter fell
in love with. And
just flat out we gave them a good
(34:19):
experience. They hung out with us for 10 or 15
minutes. They enjoyed
the interaction. They bought the book, they came
back the next year looking for us. And.
And so we. We'd seen them for, you know, whatever that was,
three years or whatever Covid hits.
Right. And then I'm like, oh, oh, God, I hope
(34:39):
they're okay.
Right? Yeah.
You know, and then that starts expanding about all these
other people who have come by. And so we get back to
the shows. seeing them come around
the corner, you know,
with the. "You're here!" and I'm like, "You're here!"
and everybody's okay. And, you know, for about
a year, year and a half, as we.
(35:01):
We basically went back to our routine. Like,
it really brought home
how special that stuff is.
And then, you know, maybe on a little more of the mercenary
level. Like I said, you and I have had so many of these
discussions about how
we act and interact and how
(35:21):
we want to define our
success that, like, you know, the.
The. That family turning the corner and their
eyes going wide because
they found us and the smile.
Yeah. Honestly, my favorite moments at these shows
are like, both of us have our heads down. There's a little bit of a
wall in the peripheral vision. I
(35:42):
see one of those families coming that I know you
haven't seen yet, and I get to Turn and wait for your
reaction.
Yeah. And that'that's real.
Right? And that is.
That is the proof
that the way we want to conduct
business... works
(36:03):
You know, again, that might sound
very mercenary, but I think I've also babbled
on of how all the
different equations you and I are juggling at
these shows.
Yeah.
You know, how can you. How do
you want to be successful?
Right. Like, what metric are you using on that?
(36:23):
Right.
I think, I think it was an early Baltimore show that. I've referenced this in
our conversations before, but it was that one where I was still
pretty early on, like, doing con sketches. I didn't really have a big print
library. I was just next to you when we were doing the
books. And next to me on the other side was the guy
with the tower of just, like, books and books and
books of prints. And people are just, like, mechanically,
(36:44):
every five, ten minutes, somebody else walks up, flips through the books,
leaves with a print or two. And I'm getting more and more
depressed as the time goes on.
And someone had come up and had me do, like, a commission or
a quick sketch of something. And then you just lean over and
go, yeah, that guy selling a lot of stuff,
but nobody's left his booth, skipping.
And it was just like that little click in my head of, like,
(37:07):
right. I shouldn't, like, wrong
metric to compare myself against.
Yeah. And it's. And it's tough. It is. You
know, the same conversation I've had with
myself is, you know, people who
I would consider peers. Like, you know, we
started writing comics around
the same area, and I've got some friends
(37:30):
now who are writing
you know, Batman backup stories are writing
Superman short stories.
I have that knee jerk. yeah... fuck it.
That gut jealousy reaction.
They're doing it right, I'm doing it
wrong because I'm not
(37:50):
getting those opportunities. Then I have to, you know, get
out of the boo boo face zone and
remind myself that
that's not my path.
I didn't, you know, I started telling my own
stories because I had my own stories I
wanted to tell.
Right.
I, you know, 10 year old George
(38:12):
100% got into comics
because of the X Men.
Right.
51 year old George does not have an X Men
story. I don't, I don't
have to. I don't have this
Wolverine story I've been dying to tell.
I do have, I think what would be a really cool Doctor
(38:33):
Strange. Like an annual. A one shot.
but, but so again that's not
me. You know, I wanted, I want
to tell my own stories. My, my path is
closer to Robert Kirkman and the
Walking Dead and Invincible. The,
the independent
(38:53):
long term story.
Yup.
You know, it's your story told over
100, 150
issues. That's, that's where
ultimately I want to go. That's where my heart
and passion and over-dramatics
wants to go.
So you know, that is my
(39:15):
struggle. You know that I'm
constantly working on reminding
myself of what I'm trying to do.
And you, the other person's success,
you is not a reflection on
me. And you know, I don't know if you remember this or you blacked
it out. Because I wouldn't blame you.
(39:36):
The random New York show we did,
I don't know, five years into doing
this thing.
Yeah.
Were we were right next to a guy
who was just carnival barking and
hard selling...-
That's the guy I picture whenever we talk about
carnival barking mercs
Because that's who I picture.
(39:56):
Yeah.
And yes, by Sunday he had sold
out his entire
run and who knows how many books that was. He
left early because they sold everything.
Yep.
It was one of our worst shows
because of the way he conducted
himself. People would.... because again we
(40:17):
were, if you remember, we were right.
Right next to him.
People were like going
way around our
area of the con to get away from
him.
Yeah. By the time they were, they would get to our table,
he was already yelling at them which then made them bear
left away from us completely.
(40:37):
Yep. Either, either step further away from our section
of tables or if they did get
sucked in and they did give him 20 bucks to shut
him up. They like
blew Past us. They were fucking
done.
Yeah.
And they were not going to risk talking to
anybody else.
Yep. That was nightmare. Often
(41:00):
was.
And I have no doubt he walked away with
10, 20, maybe a 100 times more
than what we made that weekend.
But he's an asshole.
the takeaway I always have is at no
show that he ever goes to, will
anyone ever come around the corner and be like:
(41:22):
"Good, you're here1"
Yeah.
He'll never have that experience that you get with those. With the
New Hampshire family of that whole thing. Like, anyone
who knows he's there, like, he'll get one sale that one
time and never get that person twice.
And I don't know if
he would remember somebody who bought something
from him.
Not likely at all.
(41:43):
You know, he talked.
He didn't listen.
That. Yes. Because again, if
you remember, or you may have blacked this out, he had a
script, and he was stuck to the
script.
We could do his pitch by the end of that weekend.
There was no conversation. There was
no. There were. If he asked about you, it
(42:03):
was premeditated because that's what the script
called for.
Yeah. And it was definitely an easy yes or no that he could just bounce left
or right on. It wasn't like, tell me about you.
Yeah. And, you know, when I
think about. When I think back about that, I. Again, you got
to do that internal diagnostic.
Am I willing to do THAT? Am I willing
(42:25):
to be that person to sell
10, 20, 100 times more
and it physically makes me nauseous.
Yeah. I don't have it in me.
It's just the grossest thing I could think of.
No. So, you know, then I.
It's the opposite of my optimistic nihilism thing. Like, it just works
in complete antithesis to it.
(42:46):
Yeah. And. Okay. And now. Now if we want to, you know, if we want
to jump in, jump ahead 10 years, we want to talk
about right now.
I know one of. One of my, like,
big universal
grossness is realizing
how many different people
(43:07):
and institutions and organizations
treat you like an ATM.
Yeah.
You are
something to have money
or time extracted from.
Yeah.
That's it. That's
how they look at you. That. That. That
(43:28):
is you. You're not a human being.
You're an ATM machine.
This is one of my big gripes with the con system. And I haven't done
this rant. It's been a while since I've tried to put this idea
out there. And now we're here and I'm taking this shot.
It frustrates me to no end because we've worked at conventions
that have more respect for artist
(43:49):
alley, for creators, for independents and some
as they've gone more corpo and like different
bigger organizations buy up the smaller shows...
As independent creators... our buying tables
up front funds a lot of the other setup.
Yet we're never part of the consideration
for promotion, foot traffic, trying to find ways to steer
(44:09):
people in. The companies think this way. where like they
want all of us to pay for the tables
and they think they're entitled to that money too. Like they get
weirdly upset if they're not meeting their
minimums on that where they get like aggressive and
strange and then they take that money that
we've invested so that we can get access to their
(44:29):
audience. But they don't steer the audience towards us because they
have contract minimums that they have to pay certain
guests. So the celebrities that they're using to
promote the show, they have to spend all their marketing
monies promoting those autograph things, the photo
photography options of like 10 to
30 second interactions with these celebrities. Because if
(44:50):
those celebrities don't make enough money through that then they're on
the hook to pay them for their time.
So we become deprioritized immediately.
Yeah's. It's a completely... like on
paper the second you unpack it it's like there is no
reason we should be signing up to be part of this
system.
Yes it is it. You gott again
(45:11):
that mercenary brain is just understand like
this is the system.
But then you have moments for and I don't want, I don't want to name drop the showuse I
don't think I'm that like as angry as I am and as much shit
talking as I've done person to person at the
show, I don't want to put it on record in
case things turn around magically somehow. We had
a recent show show that we've done every year since year one.
(45:32):
They made the decision to put a... their biggest
name celebrity guests by the front
door... and then
you had people who were in line outside of the show for
two to three hours to get inside to get in
line with those major celebrity guests for two to three hours
get those signatures. So we didn't even get the walk by
(45:53):
foot traffic that we've been sold on in the past because as soon
as they got that thing they turned around and fucking went to get
food cause they just spent four to six hours waiting for
that one interaction.
Yeah, yeah.
So they just screwed Everyone over for everything. And they
got mad at everyone for being upset that there was no sales or foot traffic
happening in the show.
Yeah. yeah. I don't know, man. I mean, God, what
(46:15):
that was. That was a hell of a learning experience
of it was.
It was that merc mode on full display at a level that, like,
normally gets masked better.
One of the reasons I enjoyed, you know, tabling
with you is. Yeah. When things are good,
like, we have a good fucking time.
Yeah.
Like, like hanging out with you, Especially when
(46:37):
Diana can join us. -Yeeeaaah- That makes
the event so much more fun
to do. The other great thing about
tabling with you is when things don't
go well. Got each youe one.
We've. Well, we've got each other to sanity check.
Yeah.
Each other.
Like, am I crazy or. No, you're not crazy.
(46:58):
Right. and my, you know, my mental
leveling up from that weekend
was like, like, truly looking at
this situation and like, okay,
this really it. This is what it is. This really
is. This has nothing to do with us.
This... We didn't even lose table roulette.
(47:19):
Right.
This is, you know, and we've had shows where it's like, oh,
well, we lost table roulette. What are you going to do?
Well, that's another one of those merc things, though, because the fact there is a
bad spot shouldn't happen.
Right.
You can make a floor plan with the flow of traffic doesn't allow
for it. It's not that difficult.
Right. but you know, that
really understanding Control what you can
(47:41):
control.
Yeah.
And that helped. That helped ease
it a little bit. You know, like, understanding,
like we have nothing to do with improving
foot traffic. Right. Zero. We can
do. What we can do
is stay cool, stay personable,
stay welcoming. So when that
(48:03):
person did come by,
we could still give the interaction we want
to give. We could still be, we want to
give.
They weren't going to walk up to a gloomy storm by
accident and not know why. And then. And we ruined their
day.
And, you know, you're. I. I wish I
(48:23):
could pinpoint exactly where you said this and maybe
you'll remember. It's one of your
things that you said during, you know, probably a similar ish
situation. It's, you know, the "Be the pebble".
-Yeah.-
Concept that you shared with
me and that, like, I have. I have held
on to and, and, and
(48:44):
retold over and over and over again.
Oh, I love that.
Oh, absolutely. Because it's huge.
Because, you know, in those situations,
we can't, we can't we can't change the flow
of traffic. Right. Like, we want to go back to that weekend.
We can't control the flow of traffic.
What we can do, though, is, like, in that
(49:05):
moment, someone comes by, we
can do something that makes them skip
away. Right. And I have seen
you, you know, in some of our
worst shows. Some of our
worst shows, someone comes up,
sees one of your prints, like, loses their mind
over it, and they love it. And I think even before they
(49:27):
can ask how much it is, you just hand
it to them.
Yeah.
And you're. And they're like, "Are you serious?" Like, their face
completely drops because this isn't what's
supposed to happen.
Right.
You know, and you say no. Like, you know, and I
think you've even told people and tell. And if I'm
paraphrasing incorrectly, please let
(49:48):
me know so I can tell this story better.
I mean, got. After this, I'm going to need to recap what "Be the pebble" is
just so anyone listening can get right. The full concept. So.
Yeah, right, right, right.
you know, but it's that. It's that. And I. Again,
this might be paraphrasing, but I think you have literally told people,
look, this has been... Ttis has been a rough weekend,
but this is going to make you so happy. I want you to have
(50:10):
it.
Something like that. Yeah, yeah.
On... On a weekend where like,
15, 20 bucks will actually make a
difference.
Right.
You choose (50:20):
No, I want to send
you away on a positive high.
We can't control the flow, but we can
make people's day more positive.
Yeah, because they can't. It hit me because they. Some of
the first times we did Baltimore, like, there was
some table roulette. I still was a little underdeveloped on, like, what
(50:41):
I had to offer. There's nobody coming by, and I'm just
getting gloomier. And you and Diana are. They're trying to, like,
nudge me, and then eventually you guys are just not. Because you realize that
I'm just. I'm stewing. At some point, it
flipped over. I was just like, no, okay. I could be, like, the
day could be having a bad effect on me. And if I can
do anything to change the mood, I can have
(51:01):
this one interaction. I can't make the
ocean move, but I can throw a pebble. And if that
ripple hits just right, I've made this person happy. And
then they go have an interaction where they've made somebody else happy. And then
that spreads in a way that maybe it builds Enough
momentum somewhere, someday.
And selfishly, I've also
watched you lighten up both
(51:24):
mood and face and voice
when you watch them skip away.
Yeah, I know. That's the value. I stopped thinking
in the Merc brain of, like, I'm not making money. I'm not selling things. I
can't count on paper, whether
I'm. Or any level of success. And
then once it stop being on paper, I'm like, oh, I got it.
(51:45):
Yeah. Yeah. And that and, and those
become the highlights. You know, again, going back
to this. This can. This convention,
you know, Yes, I
can. And I have, you know,
gone on about how
this show just
didn't work this year, but
(52:07):
I will quickly sum that stuff up. So I
can talk about the cosplayer who came
by, and we, like, spent 15
minutes psyching up to get
her the confidence to go meet the artist
-Right.-
of the character she was cosplaying, you
know, so she could come back in
(52:28):
30 minutes with the biggest goddamn
grin on her face. And
she got, you know, she got the interaction she was
hoping for.
Yeah. And I remember, because you, like, coached her quickly were like, yeah, just
remember that this is where they're coming from. And here's like, don't. Don't
overthink it, because they're going to be psyched to see you. Once they see you, it's
just going to click. And I think what they came back with was
(52:49):
that they, like, were seen in line and pulled out up
ahead of time. So, like, it is exactly the way you told them it was going
to.
Yeah, yeah. and, you know, I. And that's the
story I want to tell.
Yeah.
You know, because, you know, that brought me a
ton of joy, where there was a dearth of
(53:10):
joy, know, so we
can, you know, you know, again, we talk about it
in the. In the convention sense, because, again, you know,
that's. That's kind of where we spend most of our.
Our time. And we have, you know, other than
driving to the shows, when we time to talk to each
other, you know, we're sitting next to each other for,
like, 24 hours. Like, we're talking. We're,
(53:33):
you know, we're talking, that's the only way we're going to
get through this.
Right. Honestly, now that I'm reflecting on it, like, I know I
went a little dark during that one bad show recently,
and, like, the same show that we're just talking about with the cosplay, both did.
Yeah, yeah. And I went around going to
every table, like, here's why everything's fucked. Just so you know, this
isn't an accident, but like, I was doing that out of
(53:54):
aggression and it was also out of that community thing because
everyone acts like if a show goes bad, they're not allowed to talk
about it.
Yeah.
How'd the show go for you? Oh, went good. Did you make table?
Well, no, I'm like, wait, hold on. Did I need you to
tell me what I. Because, right. That
like fear. So I would go around especially. There's a lot of people there for
their first year and this isn't you. You
(54:17):
didn't fuck up. You're not a bad fit. That people
aren't disinterested. Here's all the things that went wrong
that you couldn't have controlled and that these people did on
purpose without considering you at all.
Yeah, just.
And I. And it's. It's not the same version of Be the Pebble, but
I'm hoping that they took that and like, okay, I'm not the problem.
I don't have to sacrifice confidence for my
(54:38):
next decision.
Cause so much like,
until you start like creating
and maybe it's at a certain level
that starts to kick in. How much
confidence or self confidence
is tied to creating.
(54:59):
Yeah.
You know, and,
you know, or maybe that's because, like, negative self talk comes
up a lot in therapy.
I also think there's part of this is another version of that Dunning
Kruger effect, but like, on the actual creative output side of, like,
you know, you're enjoying creating, but you can't
tell until you hit a certain quality level
(55:19):
what... how to measure your quality level.
Right. I mean, especially, you know.
You know, again, I started playing
guitar because of, you know,
you, Eddie Van Halen and all these other guys.
you know, started making comics because of certain writers. Started
making, you know, writing scripts because of certain writers.
(55:43):
And there's always kind of that,
oh, man, I'm nowhere close.
Right. That inhern comparison to your inspirations.
Yeah. and it feels...
you know, so I'm never going to get there. And there. There
is. And
you actually have to learn
(56:03):
how to. I'm never going to get there. And that's
okay.
Yeah.
Like. Like you are on your own
journey and you kind of
don't want it to look like anybody else's.
-That's the thing.-
Because then you're a clone, you know, I mean,
again, a baby. Baby. Heavy Metal George
(56:24):
came online around, you know, the 80s, hair
metal, you know, the number of
look alikes that spawnned the second,
third, fourth wave of
heavy metal in the late 80s. You
know, like, I got to witness that the
people who followed the path of
(56:44):
somebody else, they're not remembered and they're still
not around.
There's a whole industry now, people who
have succeeded, telling people how to succeed.
Right.
But those paths aren't replicatable that way.
Yeah. one of my favorite quotes about
breaking into comics is someone had
said, you know, "Breaking into comics
(57:06):
is like breaking out of prison."
Yeah, you can do it, but as soon as they figure out how
you got in, they're going to wall it up.
Oh my God. I'm keeping that. That is exactly the concept that
I'm trying to pull off on this.
Yeah.
Yeah. So, yeah.
And. And, you know, it is,
it is a different level
(57:28):
of thinking and deconstruction
of, you know, well, how
did that person do it?
And getting stuck on the specifics
which you just talked about. Right.
Like the.
And knowing, like the right level to pull back
on. Yeah, right. Like, so, you know,
(57:50):
let's go Motley Crue, you know, the band that
is inspired by Motley Crue. Well, how did, how did
they make it? Well, they did. They did very specifically
XYZ123. Oh, we're going to do XYZ123
Versus, you know, something a little
more intangible of how did they
promote themselves, you know, again,
not on the specifics... on more...
(58:13):
on a higher level. Right.
So you can take. You can take
the idea, but then mold it to
you.
Yeah, you have to. Into the time because everything,
all those, like, targets shift as you move up. And if
you're, if you're picking the target that existed in the
80s, it doesn't exist. It doesn't work the same
(58:33):
way.
I mean, and the way everything speeds up,
like what you. A year ago isn't going
to work.
Right.
O. Like, I, you know,
something just popped up that
kind of made everybody nostalgic for, like,
the wave. One of like, the
big YouTube influencers,
(58:55):
you know, the people who have kind of been quieter
or pulled back over the last five
or six years, but who,
you know, mid
teens were. Were
dominating.
Yeah.
Thing. It's. It. The.
The.
The world's change, the game change, platforms
(59:16):
change, algorithms change.
Yeah.
But I think there's some intangibles that no matter
what medium or platform you're
in, they. They
work. Yeah. And I feel like that
is very vague, and I don't know
if that's useful or actionable.
Well, so the Action,- or if it makes sense. the actual version of
(59:39):
it is that at the. No matter
what systems are in place, no matter what algorithms
are running, all those things, yes, will
increase who sees you. No matter what publishers are
choosing who gets out there in front of people or what marketing
tactics used, the things that are always going to be
universal are mavens, connectors, and
sellers. You have those three personality types who have
(01:00:02):
the people who are obsessed with the type of thing because it used to
be if you were selling a car, especially like a new version of a
car that had, like, features that were abnormal, you'd go to car
shows where car mavens show up and, interrogate you
on all the stuff. Then those people would have, like, their weekly
meeting with their car club people who would all talk about it.
And then that word of mouth hits one connector who's like,
(01:00:22):
oh, yeah, no, I got this guy who loves cars. You're
looking to buy a car right now. I'll have you talk to him. And then that person starts
telling you, you should buy this car. We've been looking into it, and it's
got these great features that are coming out in that trio of
social energy. It's just the difference of sometimes it's on Reddit,
sometimes it does kick through Tick Tok with the right influencer,
but then as influencer becomes a personality slash business
(01:00:43):
instead of like, that's what they did out of passion.
Like, you just got to keep tracking where the.
The authentic versions of those three people live,
man.
Like, now we're getting like, super,
super into it. But, like, authentic, man, that
is. God, that is such a
fucking powerful word
(01:01:04):
right now. Um. and I. Look, maybe I'm
being overd. Drmatic about it. Maybe some people think that's an
incredibly important word and some people don't give
a shit.
Yeah.
You know, but, you know, and maybe that ties every,
you know, a bunch of other points that we've been making.
Do you want to be the carnival barker that, yes,
you sold out, but, like, right, you
(01:01:26):
didn't make an impact. You didn't make anybody's day
better.
Right.
You want to sell half as much,
but the chances of them reading your
book are so much higher because you made
sure that what they got,
they would enjoy. Yeah, right? Like, is
it about you or is it about me?
(01:01:48):
Right? Like, did I make this just because I have an ego that
needs to be filled, or am I trying to actually tell a
story or make your day or life more
rich with perspective or, a, Narrative that you may not have
come across.
Yeah, yeah. And again, it gets.
It gets weird
because this is art as commerce.
(01:02:09):
Right.
Or the commerce of art, however you want to
put it in there. And I am a
creator who is still seven years
old and wants to, you know, like, look at what I made.
I don't. I like, my stuff is supposed to go on
your fridge.
Yeah. I literally went to my friend's party for New Year's Eve
(01:02:30):
and m what the porrait I did of her was on the fridge. And
I was so derpily excited.
I want you to know, the next time you're at our place,
I want to make sure you know that the. The drawing
you did of me, Tracy Logan, and Bear Bear is on our
fridge.
That's amazing. I love that.
And I. And it is right where I see it
(01:02:51):
basically every time I go to get water and I am trying to
drink lots of water. So I see it multiple
times a day.
Is that the one? Is that the one I did in the blue lead?
Yes.
Oh fantastic. I remember that one.
Yeah. Back on topic.
but yeah, so. So I don't make stuff
to just, like, sit on my
(01:03:12):
computer.
Right.
Like, you know, I have had projects that have taken years
to get over the finish line.
And, you know, one of those
ignition switches that keeps getting hit is
the. I got to get this off my fucking computer.
Got to get it off.
I'm having that trouble with the novel because I. I'm in the middle of
(01:03:33):
rewriting the first one. I still haven't finished the second one because I got two thirds
anding like a, minor character became more prominent. And
in my attempt to try to go back and flush them out more
so they weren't just this weird deus ex character who popped
up. I've kind of gotten lost again.
But I'm at the point with the
first story where I'm like, I just need to, like,
give this to people. I don't even need to sell this. I have it.
(01:03:56):
Once I fix the thing that the friend pointed out to me that I do need
to fix. what am I going to do with
this? It's just going to live here and do nothing. Why did I
make it then? Like, the money doesn't
matter at that point. Like, I'd rather have people read it
and get nothing than have nobody read it ever
for no reason.
Right. Yeah. because then at least you
(01:04:18):
know, because again, you're a creator as well,
which means this wasn't the one thing you were Going to make
right. That you can,
you can get... take the feedback
and learn from it and put it into whatever
next. You know, one of the... -Yeah-
It's like we're the opposite of the corporo metric
(01:04:40):
of like, well, we finished an entire movie but we're going to put it into
storage so we can have it as a tax write off because we don't think it'll do
well. And we're down here like, I finished this entire
thing, but if I give it to you 10 people, because I know you
like stories and you were interested in this, maybe you
come back next time when I have something weirder. Cool. What's up.
It's the grossest fucking thing.
And you know, so your
(01:05:02):
bonus can be bigger.
Right? It hurts me.
Fuck you.
Fuck You.
It's always the people without a creative bone in their body who can't
understand it that are making these decisions.
Yep. Yep. And like, you
know, I follow a lot
of writers on social media. Writers and
(01:05:23):
showrunners. And they will keep pointing out, you know,
in as we now live through the
crashing of the streamers.
Yeah.
That like, you know what? We had a
system that worked.
Everybody got paid and the
rich people got rich.
(01:05:44):
You know, the system, you know, broadcast
television, cable television
worked.
Yeah.
You know, but there's. But the desire of
the few to get more will. Will
enshitify something.
Yeah.
No, it is depressing considering what should have happened is it should have opened
up a lot of smaller projects to have access to an audience and instead
(01:06:06):
it's gotten more gatekeepy somehow.
Yeah. There, some article, a recent ish
article talking about
the shift of like. And maybe it was Netflix and.
But it really could be any of them
that they don't care about the
quality. They just need to hit a
certain metric of "new"
(01:06:28):
right to justify
having people keep their subscription.
Right.
Yep.
So it. So even
that of like, you know, all right, you
know, you're, you're going to get your shot to tell your story
on this platform. But they're
not, they're not going to promote it. They're not going to, you
(01:06:50):
know.
Right.
They don't care. There's a, line on an
Excel spreadsheet they need filled in.
Yeah. I'm going to pepper this in.
Anyone who's listening might hopefully take this as a.
Oh, I could do that. And maybe it'll put pressure on the
system. I don't have subscriptions to
anything. I sign up for A month because
(01:07:11):
it has A thing I definitely want to watch
and I pay for that month, and I cancel it immediately.
It just auto shuts off at the end. I'm going to watch this show.
I paid $7 so I could watch this show. I'm
going to watch the whole show. And maybe I'll check out some other stuff
while I'm here. My week three, I've forgotten and I've stopped
checking. And then by week four, it's gone. And then the next
(01:07:31):
thing that I'm like, oh, that's the thing I would like to watch. I'm on a different
system being like, okay, let's sign up for this one now for A month so I can
watch the new Dune Prophecy series. And I'm going to go into
that. And that way, like, none of that. The rules
that they're playing with of, like, trying to keep people in with new stuff
work on me. And if everyone did this or if enough
people did this, it would. They'd have to change the system
(01:07:51):
on some level. They'd probably do it wrong. But I can
hope.
Yeah, it's. It's a bummer,
you know, it is a bummer because
I'm seeing passionate
creators
get fucked.
Yeah.
You know, and nothing's better.
(01:08:12):
Yeah. I also feel like every generation has some
version of this too, though. It's just more visible now.
That's. That's true, you know, like, you know, this
has all happened before and it will all happen again, you know,
That's Motown.
Let's go.
Right? Yeah. Oh,
so here s. So, yeah, so that's what's going
(01:08:32):
on, Griff.
But, like, how. Where can I go to keep tabs.
For Vampires on Mars? I think just throw
"Vampires on Mars" into Kickstarter and
then the HomelessComics.com You know,
that's where I keep all of our stuff. And I've been using that
to update.
All right. Cause you have the mailing list and stuff.
I do, I do. one of my to dos
(01:08:54):
is being more regular with it.
so, yeah, the Figuring out on the Fly newsletter I'm trying to
make sure is going out more often because there
are people who actually want to know what I'm up to,
which I remind myself is a win.
And then, yes, SwarmOfEyes.com ,
the band where. God, that
(01:09:16):
EP is getting closer and closer to being done.
And so, we'll announce all of that stuff on the
swarmofeyes.com. and
then I have started to spend more time on
Blue sky these days. Oh, shoot.
I just finally got an account going.
Yeah. So, yeah, look me up I'm
using my middle initial because there are like 97 George
(01:09:38):
O'Connors in comics.
Yeah.
So it's George W
O'Connor.
Cool.
On blue Sky. The next convention you and
I are at, you know, we'll just do this
all over again in between trying to sell
comics and Prince.
Yep.
but my God, will we entertain you.
(01:09:59):
It's our favorite thing.
We will be the best part of your show. You just
don't know it yet.
Fact.
(01:10:19):
Well, as predicted, that was
a lot of chatter.
I'm, glad to hear that. I got so many emails
done.
That's one of those things that kind of came up as the
peripheral skills needed to support a
creative path of any kind. And, like, monotony of keeping up with
emails, maintaining an actual schedule, parsing out
(01:10:39):
dedicated time for certain things. You're more organized
than I am at so many levels. Is this
one of them? or is this one of those things you have to, like, twist your arm
more?
I think it depends on
which level you're talking about. If it's
the front facing level of,
like, marketing yourself. I'm not
(01:11:00):
great at that. I think you're better at that than I am.
You at least post regularly.
Fair.
if you're talking about the level of keeping
projects clearly organized and
creating step by
step breakdowns of what needs to happen at what
level, by who and when, then I
(01:11:21):
am quite good at that. Yes.
That's what I was doing over there in the corner as I was making a scene
breakdown so that my animator friend knows
what they need to animate and my scriptwriter
friend knows which bits are going to be
animated so that we can edit the
shot list for when we actually shoot in person in a
month.
(01:11:41):
See, you're four steps ahead immediately. And
I'm so bad at that part. Like, I'm only
good at looking ahead that way when I feel something
wrong and I can spot the problem easier than most
people seem to be able to, but I have no
ability to, like, mitigate that actively
through process. Gotcha. it kind of
(01:12:01):
frustrates some of the people I've worked under where they're
like, you keep pointing out problems and not solutions. I'm like, I don't have a
solution. I just know that's gonna be a problem.
Honestly, I'm not sure if I
suck at recognizing problems or
if I'm good enough at organizing that they don't
usually come up.
(01:12:22):
I feel like that naturally occurs. Like, if you're
good at organizing... problems have,
less doors to sneak in through.
Yeah. There are fewer opportunities for problems
to arise.
And it's also easier to roll with the punches and
make the problems matter less if you have
(01:12:44):
a clearly defined structure for what you're doing already.
One of the things that I, have built into
the calendar for this project...
the writer has a hard deadline because
he wants to submit to festivals. So as
I'm talking to animators and
editors and we're putting it all
(01:13:05):
together, I have set
everybody's deadline several weeks
before the actual hard cutoff. Because we're all
students, we all have finals going on at this exact
same time. So
I need to be able to
anticipate somebody's gonna be a few days
(01:13:26):
late and that's gonna offset somebody else.
And it's also a priority for me to be
kind and understanding and generous in
this.
Yeah.
I never want somebody to
feel like they've ruined everything
because of circumstances that were out of their control.
(01:13:47):
So while it is slightly more stressful for everybody's
deadlines to be a few weeks earlier than they
actually need to be, I
do that because it saves us
all guilt and,
taking on the responsibility of ruining a whole
project because nobody is actually going to ruin
(01:14:08):
a whole project. But if
somebody being a few days late was the thing that pushed
us past this deadline, they
would feel bad. And my goal is for nobody
to feel bad about this.
Yeah. Especially like creators in general have a tendency to
catastrophize. And it is nice of you to
take that functionally out of the equation by being
(01:14:30):
proactive about those.
Yeah. It's also the difference
between personal
solo projects and group
projects. you and I are both
good at getting things in under the wire
and getting things done quickly
and well at the same time.
(01:14:53):
But that can't
always be relied on when other people are
relying on you.
Right.
so that was something that I
had to learn the hard
way in high school, was
I was doing a, collaborative project.
I kept procrastinating
(01:15:16):
my part of it, and I ended up
really frustrating and deeply
inconveniencing a couple other people I was working
with because of that. And
I felt absolutely terrible because these were people I was
very close to and I didn't want to
let them down. So that experience
(01:15:37):
of just the deep shame
that I probably didn't need to feel as
much shame and guilt as I did
was that level of it was not
productive. But the experience of
I let my confidence in my own
abilities negatively
(01:15:57):
affect other people,
that has stuck with me in like, okay, My own
personal projects... mess around with deadlines
all you want because I know that I can get it done,
but if I'm working with other people, my deadline is
a week earlier than it needs to be.
Exactly. Yeah. No.
(01:16:19):
When you are used to getting yourself across a finish
line very easily at the last minute and you
fuck it up for a group thing. Yeah.
I've lugged around the extra
excessive amount of strain or guilt that
that causes because it was fixable.
It was, it was fixable. And now we
(01:16:41):
learn.
Yeah.
And that's part of what we're doing here.
And honestly, I've kind of
translated that knowledge into my social life
too. Whenever I'm trying to make plans with friends and be like, hey,
we haven't talked in a while, let's catch up in person. I'll get somebody who's like, okay, well
we can do like Tuesday or Thursday, or I could do Sunday. And I'm
like, okay, well let's aim for Tuesday. And if something goes wrong, we
(01:17:03):
have two fallback dates as opposed to like pushing it off to Sunday
and then having that not work and having no backup.
Like, it just keeps everything... -I have experienced this, being your
friend.
Suppose you would have, wouldn't you? this does kind of
fold over into. George and I
have a, different business
(01:17:23):
approach compared to a lot of other creatives that we
know, especially working in like conventions and
stuff is there. You know, you pay for a table,
you need to get a return on investment to make it worth your while.
And you're kind of competing with
the con advertising things that
aren't our table because they have
(01:17:43):
celebrity guests who are guaranteed a certain minimum. And
if they don't reach that, then the convention has to pay them out
of pocket to beat the balance. So we kind of fall between the
cracks. So when we have to like,
want to succeed while hoping that the foot
traffic matches our needs and the right people find our
table at the right time.
(01:18:03):
And there are some people who are more like aggressively
trying to hook anyone walking by in
to try to get every transaction possible.
And he and I don't have that. And we sort
of fucking hate it watching other people do it.
I'm trying to see if that rings true in my own
(01:18:24):
experience.
Well, I'm kind of curious. You spend more time walking the
floors. Like, have you had many positive
interactions with anyone who's like, Tried to forcibly
get your attention on a walk by?
I think it depends on what you mean by forcibly try to get
my attention. Because there are people
who like
(01:18:45):
you just talk to
anybody who walks past m and
say the same sentence the same way that
I always say, "hi there, how are you doing this
evening?" To any patron who walks into a theater to
be seated.
Right.
There are people who say they have
(01:19:06):
their "Press A to talk" lines
and.
Then I hit "Skip". Yeah.
But there are several
vendors who I've met at
conventions because they did make an effort to talk to
me, but they made a personalized effort. Like
(01:19:26):
people who compliment what cosplay I'm
wearing, or people
who see that
I, if I'm in street
clothes, see that my general aesthetic
matches their vibe.
And so connections can be
made on
(01:19:48):
a level of still a vendor trying to make
a sale. But I think there are
effective and personal ways
to be talking to people trying
to get them to stop that are not
as cold, impersonal
and scammy as you make it
(01:20:08):
sound. There are also a couple of
vendors who I do intentionally seek
out. there's an
artist who I've Met the past 3
MCM London Comic Cons that I've been
to because I love their art so much.
I had one of their stickers on my
laptop for a couple of years.
(01:20:31):
The sticker got quite worn down. So the next time
I was at MCM, I
sought out their booth and I said, hey, I've had this
sticker on my computer for a couple of years. I love it so much.
I'm here to buy a new one so that I can put it
back and have it be nice and fresh. And because
I've had so many lovely interactions with this
vendor, they gave me that sticker
(01:20:53):
for free.
I was going toa say they had to have made their day, which,
yeah.
They gave me the sticker for free. We had a wonderful
conversation. It was still important to me that they
get money. So I ended up buying other things.
Nice.
And they're also like, you've seen
it, you've seen the purple and grace sweater that I wear all
the time. the Spinner's Court kefta.
(01:21:15):
And I, would.
That's great.
I love it too. I looked at that sweater
at every con I went to and
online for a year before
I decided that it really is actually worth
how much money they're charging for it. And it absolutely
is. I wear that sweater all the time. And every time I
have seen them at a con since, I've made a point to
(01:21:37):
go over to the booth and tell them, hey, I'GOT
this sweater. It was absolutely worth it. I love it
so much. You guys are doing great. Because I
think it's important to tell people when you
appreciate something they're making so that they
feel better about continuing to advertise
themselves.
Yeah. No, and that's kind of what George and I
(01:21:58):
concurred on for the entire time, is the fact that we appreciate those
interactions infinitely more than if we were
succeeding at selling more things but not getting those
moments. But it's tough to manage the
sense of being authentic as a person while also
marketing is... it doesn't come to everybody
all, right. To be a little more empathetic. I feel bad because I do think that people who end
(01:22:18):
up in that merc mode of just like, brow beating
people, they might just not have the social
dynamics and have found some way to make it effective. And
that's unfortunate that they
opted for a script that they could spam
as opposed to, like, trying to develop the social skills.
But I don't know what their stories are. Do you
have any cons you're looking forward to in the near future? When are you coming to Boston
(01:22:41):
next?
FanExpo Boston, my beloved,
my home con. I will be there this year.
very much looking forward to returning.
You were missed. I felt it. I felt the loss
of not being able to go last year.
And they did shuffle the date, so it did kind of screw it up on you.
Yeah. If they hadn't moved it two
(01:23:03):
months early, yeah, I would have been there.
And I'll be there. I will be at
FanExpo Boston. I think that is the next con
I'm going to. Unfortunately, my schedule
until August is
pretty cramped.
No. And I have to be, in New York
soon, so I'm gonna make time to see you. I still don't
(01:23:24):
exactly know how I'm gonna make it work, but I have to go see some
shows with Bobby for the weekend. And that's the same weekend I'm going
toa try to get to Twenties out of Tavern. And I'm taking you with
me. If that wasn't obvious in my phrasing.
Oh, no, of course you were taking me with
you.
I didn't know if I had spelled it out hard enough.
Well, I can hear the big adult job calling my name,
(01:23:46):
so unfortunately, I think I gott close the laptop and
toss my cup in the trash on my way out.
Fair. I'll see you next time.
Sounds good.
(01:24:30):
Musical Interlude -Vocalization of "Shave and a Haircut" That's definitely how the music sounds.
Yes, exactly like that.
I had Bugs Bunny.