February 27, 2024 • 46 mins
In this special episode of Transcending Comics, we warmly welcome renowned writer and artist, Kel McDonald, to discuss their adventures in the vibrant world of web comics and traditional print comics. Listeners of the show may recognize Kel from print comics like Buffy - The High School Years, Misfits of Avalon, and Adventure Time, or their long running web comics like The City Between, You Are the Chosen One, and Sorcery 101.
We also dive into Kel's unique fascination with folklore and werewolves, as we discuss their Kickstarter campaign for their latest comic, Murky Water - a futuristic urban fantasy story from their popular series, The City Between.
Join us as we delve into the techniques behind creating multi-dimensional characters while considering today's dynamic political climate, narratives that inspire, and the charm and complexities of web comics. This episode is a treasure trove for comic enthusiasts seeking a deeper understanding of the stories behind their favorite series.
Please support Kel's latest Kickstarter for Murky Water at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1495959227/murky-water
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Episode Transcript
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Music.
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Welcome to Transcending Comics, a podcast dedicated to trans representation
in comic books, manga, and webtoons, both on panel and behind the scenes.
I'm your host Tommy, and joining me today is a prolific writer and artist in
the world of both web comics and traditional print comics.
They've written for multiple long-running web series, including The City Between,
You Are the Chosen One, and Sorcery 101, the latter of which ran for over 10 years and 1,600 pages.
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Their print comics work includes notable books like Buffy, the high school years,
Misfits of Avalon, and shorts in the ongoing Adventure Time comics.
They're also a known werewolf expert and a lover of folklore,
going as far as organizing comic anthologies such as Can I Pet Your Werewolf?
And Cautionary Fables and Fairy Tales.
Here to discuss the Kickstarter for the latest print release for The City Between,
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Murky Water, is today's guest, Kel MacDonald.
Welcome to the show, Kel. Hi, thanks for having me. So by the time this episode
goes up, I know the latest Kickstarter is going to be live.
I know you've done quite a few of these before, but how are you feeling going into this one?
Oh, I'm a little anxious because Twitter's imploding and social media in general is sort of rocky.
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So my main ways to promote it are on shaky ground.
So we'll see how this one goes.
Yeah, you're not the first creator I've heard mention this of having follow
up campaigns that the ongoing implosion of Twitter is really making the fundraising a lot harder.
So that's a little nerve wracking going into my own first campaign Kickstarter.
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So yeah, sorry to hear that.
But I've been doing a lot of reading of The City in Between lately.
I actually just caught up on the latest page this weekend.
One of the things I'm really enjoying about it is it's kind of unique futuristic
setting for an urban fantasy story.
Can you tell our listeners a bit about the world the comic takes place in and
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why the futuristic setting?
So for one, I always like urban fantasy stories. I liked doing the world building
side of the supernatural a lot.
And while making Sorcery 101, I realized the reason why the mundane parts of
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their lives weren't interesting me is because that was too close to our world.
So kind of when I set out to start The City Between to make the mundane,
regular world also more engaging, I ended up completely doing not our world in general.
Wanted something that's also very clearly not our world so that way I could have more fun with it.
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The other thing was, I remember talking to an acquaintance about how they didn't
like A Song of Ice and Fire because sexism exists in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire.
And while I was like, well, that's part of the story and part of the world,
so it's okay that you don't like that, but it's kind of important to the story.
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And they retorted with, well, if you're going to make up your own setting,
why do you have to feel the need to repeat or reflect things that are wrong with our world?
Like, if you're making everything up from scratch, why not do it completely differently?
And so while I disagreed with them on their opinion about Game of Thrones,
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that sort of sentiment did stick with me.
So while going into The City Between, I was like, since I am making everything
up, might as well change things the way I would want them to be a little bit more.
So it's based on kind of what I find interesting and sort of also a little bit
of wish fulfillment and also based on what I like to draw.
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I don't like to draw cars, so everyone takes public transit.
The other thing was, while watching a lot of supernatural stories,
the supernatural is always hidden from the regular world.
And one thing in The City Between that I was thinking about is,
well, as technology gets more advanced and there are cameras more places and
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more ways to track people's behavior, that would get harder.
And so that's kind of background radiation to all the city between stories is
that it is harder for the supernatural to hide.
I've liked the interesting limitations I've seen you put on this futuristic technology.
Like we'll get a whole 3D projection of a recording of a convenience store from a security camera.
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But like instead of just getting the full image perfectly, like it's still all
from one perspective. So as you're reinventing technology for this future world,
how do you usually go about figuring out the limitations of it?
Or making things more advanced than they are now, but making them limited enough
that they're not perfect tools for solving crime?
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Well, because I was always thinking about like every tech, no technology is sort of perfect.
So having those limitations is part of what makes it more interesting.
So like with the little like 3d
replica thing i was thinking about well
cameras in general have blind spots so no matter where they're recording from
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or how advanced they are like there's gonna be some blind spots that was sort
of the thought process behind it is at least for that one One specifically.
And then the other was what I want the...
It's a fine line between, like, a complete surveillance state and,
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like, what is actually something people will tolerate.
Because, like, our phones today track fucking everything that we do.
So it's, we are kind of getting surveilled, but it's by big tech and it's for
capitalism ends rather than, like, actually spying on people ends.
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So it's also kind of thinking about that. And also, as I read more about different tech companies'
reactions to different things, it's an article that struck me recently as slightly
funny was Amazon is discontinuing Alexa because the way Alexa spies on people is hard to monetize.
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Like they they're mad that people are using
it the way it was advertised in the commercial like they
people just ask alexa to like play music
or what time is it or what's the
weather like and i guess they thought they could
use alexa to get people to buy stuff through alexa
but that's not working so they're gonna scrap it is like a thing i was reading
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recently so it's just stuff Stuff like it's how a technology is developed is
going to limit what it can do sort of angle and kind of pulling at.
Those sort of threads on what I think would be like a logical limitation on it.
So a lot of the stories in The City Between have focused specifically on detectives and police.
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And I'd like to know how you approach telling a story about law enforcement
in today's political climate.
Well, it's only two out of five because Famous Fortune is about a bodyguard.
So she's just hired to be there. and so kind of what I'm trying to do is are
you familiar with the series Discworld? A little bit, I've not read it myself.
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So in Discworld the main character is
sort of like the theme that you're
going to follow so all the Discworld stories
that star Renswin are him like traveling
to a different place and you learn about this new location and then
he says some goofy things and then wants
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to leave and then the watch books are all
closer to mysteries and then
the death books are all about metaphysics and
then the witch books are all about story structure
so it's kind of while they
share the same setting they have a slightly different feel and
so i kind of want to do that sort of
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setup where whenever rebecca of
fame and misfortune is the main character character it's gonna
have to deal with more of the
upper crust of society because that's who's hiring her and
then jeff who is the main character of better
to find you with he has more small town stories and then he's a nurse so i kind
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of want to have empathy be the solution to all of his stories and then the two
cops maria and connor who are the also the main characters of murky water I want it to be more noir,
but also they're bad people because they're cops.
Like, it might not be immediately obvious, but I did have someone comment on
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Murky Water while it was getting posted on my Patreon.
They were like, I keep thinking Connor's the bad guy, but then he's just an asshole.
And I was like, yeah, that's basically every story he's going to be in is maybe he's the bad guy.
No, he's just an asshole. So like those ones, I try to keep in mind why they
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would want to be police officers.
But also how that comments on them as individuals.
And so it's kind of some of it is trying to limit the police more in the city
between world like they have cameras that are on all the time.
And when Connors first introduced he's specifically getting reprimanded for
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interfering with his camera.
And it's also, Conner is fairly politically aware, so part of the commentary
on him as a cop is he is using being a cop for political gain and optics.
So there's like a manipulative side to him.
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And then Maria's uptight and more rule-abiding.
And she would be the person who would respond to police corruption with,
well it's a few bad apples not realizing that
well the rest of that phrase is a few bad apples spoil the
bunch so she's kind
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of blinded to the fact that the institutions that
she's a part of and support are not always
in the right i like how their stories i've
found that like they almost seem to be the
prime suspects through the story since we usually don't meet the
actual perpetrators a little bit later on yeah and
i feel like that's kind of a twist on what i usually see
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in detective stories and i'm kind of curious if
like there are specific noir slash detective story
tropes that like you specifically try to avoid or
subvert with their stories so it's usually
i'm trying to like follow through on pulling a
little thread and following through on
that because so one thing for the city between world
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is a lot of supernatural stuff or
fantasy stuff has used monsters as
minority metaphor and with
the supernatural in the city between world to both do that but not at the same
time is i tried to make it rarer than any actual minority That people encounter on a daily basis.
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So they're not a good metaphor for queer people because there are just significantly less of them.
So it was I tried to look up statistics for different.
Types of rare deformities or
medical conditions because it has to be a thing
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where someone wouldn't disbelieve that
it exists but they're almost never going to encounter it so usually when a werewolf
character meets a human character for the first time it's going to be commented
on that they are the first werewolf that human has met.
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So because of that, Connor is the main werewolf that people see, period.
Like, he's maybe the only one that they know about.
And so that puts him in a unique position that you don't see in a lot of cop
stories or noir stories because he is kind of a celebrity at the same time that he's a cop.
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So that gives him a different angle than a lot of noir stories like because
a lot of noir stories is the detectives and nobody and gets away with undercover
stuff because they're a nobody.
Connor can never go undercover so kind of on that front of how you were designing
the various monster groups in this world i was curious like since you're a known
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lover of werewolves and like Like they're kind of our most prominent type of
monster we see in this book.
How did you go about deciding like which traits you would actually use for this
one and like how that would play with their human lives?
Like, was that hard to narrow down like favorite factors of werewolf stories
for someone who's taken in as many as you?
No, the werewolves in City Between are almost the same as the werewolves in Sorcery 101.
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So I kind of already figured out what I wanted to do. It was just like,
as I said, well, making Sorcery 101, I realized, well, that's the fun part.
So now I need to make the rest of the world just as fun as the werewolf part.
So it's stuff like I'm a firm believer in werewolves are the proletariat of
movie monsters because their humanity is treated as conditional.
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Also they are stronger when there's more of them and they're united together
and they're against vampires who are the one percent and are clearly capitalist
assholes so it's i really liked werewolves as a metaphor for community.
And that's sort of what appealed to me about them.
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Having so much experience then, like working with webcomics,
I mean, working so long on Sorcery 101, now being a few hundred pages into the
city between, and also having worked in print comics.
I'm curious how one goes about establishing the pacing for a webcomic when you
don't have the same set page length that you do with print comics.
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Like is that something that you usually determine well
ahead of time through outlining so i write the whole script
at once because if i don't do that then the
characters will talk and talk forever and the plot won't move forward
and it will kill the pacing i also don't super worry if it's moving too slow
while it gets posted online because most people are going to read it in one
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big chunk So I want to prioritize it coming out in one big chunk over the page by page experience.
So I think sometimes that like, makes stuff a little bit harder to follow,
like the current City Between story that's going up is about a vampire who in
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the City Between world, when vampires drink your blood, they get your memories.
So newbie vampires are not used to
having other people's memories and therefore confuse
their victims memories with their memories so the
current city between story is about a newbie vampire
kind of untangling that so they're an unreliable narrator and since the story
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is in their point of view it is intentionally confusing at points and is probably
more confusing because because it's coming out a page at a time. I find the idea of...
Telling a story that like plays with perspective as much
as the latest chapter does like just very
intimidating and i can't i can't say
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i've read a comic that plays with the unreliable narrator
in quite the same way that shards of reflection does
so is there any like particular media
you're pulling inspiration from in your depiction with this
or like any subjects you've been
researching to figure out how you want to depict this like shared
memory with vampires and their victims so i
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was it's not necessarily a thing like
this so this is where it's like thinking about stuff and then
pulling at a thread and it's so it's sort
of like following a metaphor for to its logical conclusion
so if a vampire is sucking up
people's lives like well what is your life
it is your collection of experiences so i
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it's having vampires do that at the same
time it lets the older vampires do stuff
that is way more sinister but it also answers if
an older vampire like how are
they learning new skills like keeping up with slang.
And keeping up with younger appearance and if they're always eating
20 year olds then they know whatever
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is like the quote they wouldn't
stand out as much so it helps them blend in more
at least the older ones and so
part of it was just me pulling out
a metaphor and having it answer certain questions that would arise with something
that is immortal how does it keep up to date on stuff and then it's also i was
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thinking about with since they're capitalists this is a great way to do corporate espionage,
if they're ever doing that.
And then as far as the style of telling a thing where the perspective is unreliable,
There's a lot of movies that I like that are a little bit trippy.
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Like, I do really like The Black Swan and stuff by that director.
He's really good at, like, using the camera to have weird perspective or tricks
going on with the character and the viewer's perception of things.
And I really wanted to challenge myself, basically, with Shards of Reflection.
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And I had my Patreon backers vote on, because I had this story and then another
story about Rebecca at the same stage of completion.
They were both like half of the script was written. And so I asked my Patreon
backers a few years ago, would you rather have the Rebecca story first,
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which would be more straightforward and a character you already know.
Or do you want this weird one first?
And they they voted for the one
where i was trying to challenge myself so went
with that one and went all in as for your other currently
patreon only books i did want to touch on you
are the chosen one and i've been enjoying how
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it plays so much with the hero's journey and like
a number of fun ways and finding like interesting outs to
get out of the hero's journey formula and like what it
it means so like i'm curious
about your thoughts on that as
a story structure like is the way you're
tackling the story like it means a criticizing the hero's
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journey or is it just finding fun ways to
subvert the tropes that we've seen it's picking at it
basically i was talking to a friend about
so in a lot of media when they
show that a kid is going to grow up to
as a kid they take apart the toaster to figure
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out how the toaster works and i don't know
why it's always a toaster so i feel
like the way i approach stories that i
like when i like a story i want
to take it apart like i'm that kid with the toaster and there
are several sort of chosen one stories that i have
liked but i always wondered like
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well what would happen if like
like they failed like there's this does
supposedly destiny have no backup plan.
Like so the idea of
you are the chosen one came from this god.
Just has a backup plan and there's 23 kids that get the dream telling them they're
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the chosen one and it's also like sort of a metaphor for what gets in in the
way of people's dreams because you have in the first chapter.
There are three kids that like drop out immediately. And those three kids are
kind of examples of the type of stuff that's going to thwart the other three kids.
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So you have the kid that goes back to sleep and dismisses the whole thing as a dream.
So that would be someone who like gives up before they even start and don't really think about it.
So obviously they weren't invested in their dream that much.
But then there's the kid that's told that they're stupid and their dream is stupid.
And they need to like shut up
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and get back to work or whatever is going on in
their real life and like there are
probably a bunch of people that would love to like
do something creative or have some passionate pursuit but
for someone has told them that they can't do it
or has beaten them down like their whole life but then
on a happier note there is the kid in that
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chapter who just has a a dream they care
about more so they're pursuing that one and it's the
kid that's training to be a blacksmith like they're very excited about
getting better at their this other craft rather
than pursuing whatever destiny or
whatever has told them to do as far as fantasy stuff
goes i know you're a bit of a dragon age fan and you've
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mentioned disc world so i'd love to hear about like
what in the realm of fantasy has currently been holding your interest
so i one of my favorite
book series is the October Day series by Seanan McGuire
which is about a half fairy detective solving fairy crimes which is mostly kidnapped
children because fairies always be stealing kids and I used to like the Dresden
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Files but I stopped because they kind of became action books rather rather than mystery books.
And I recently really enjoyed The Goblin Emperor, which is about half goblin,
half elf, fourth son of the elven emperor.
And the opening chapter is him getting told that his three older brothers and
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his dad just died in an airship explosion.
And so now he's pulled out of exile and is in charge of everything.
And so it's court intrigue, but like the
twist is that he's nice rather than everyone
being a dick which is usually how those court intrigue stories
go i did like game of thrones and a song of ice and fire i was telling a friend
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that i usually like political intrigue stories in fantasy settings but only
if the fantasy of see politics like affect the outside world.
I was saying whenever vampire politics pop up in a vampire story that I usually
mentally check out and think that they've ruined their story by getting into
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this. Part of it is because...
In Vampire the Masquerade, if the Malkavians are in charge versus whatever one
of the other vampire clans is in charge, they're still hidden from humanity,
so it's not affecting anything which vampire group is in charge.
Whereas part of why i liked a
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song of ice and fire is the lannisters
declaring war against the tyrells means
the lannisters now have to deal with a famine
because the tyrells grew all their food and they
didn't think about that beforehand so kind of
i like it when there's like ripple effects like that my
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friend described it as like a pachinko machine where
cascading dominoes falling down
basically trying to think other fantasy stuff i love that aspect you were touching
on though like the secret society actually affecting the outside world like
i think i've just seen enough of the like the hidden outcasts in their politics
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like i love when we get the like okay okay,
but what happens when the world finds out about the monsters?
They're like, like modern Ninja Turtles comics have like, everyone knows about
mutants now and there's a bunch of them. And I'm like, that's what's going to pull me in.
Same with like modern X-Men doing like, oh yeah, these people like are some
of the most powerful people in the world politically now as well as physically.
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And like, that's what I want since there's any number of countless flavors of
like the hidden group of super outcasts that are hunted.
So that's also why in City Between, the world knows about werewolves.
The idea is that since it's going to get harder for the supernatural to hide.
Werewolves reveal themselves first, partly as a collective supernatural world's
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good PR tactic, because werewolves are human most of the time.
Time so if you become a werewolf you
still have to go to your day job and pay your rent and whatnot so
odds are that any werewolf that outs themselves publicly
is still going to have a lot of human connections whereas
if vampires came out first like in true blood vampires eat people so it's harder
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for them to spin that as a good thing and also a lot of them are legally dead
so they don't have the day job or the more mundane connections,
So City Between Worlds supernatural setup is werewolves are like the guinea
pig for the rest of the supernatural to see how humans will react to it.
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And then there's stuff like how each werewolf responds to humans knowing about them is different.
Rebecca in Famous Fortune is kind of disinterested in humans' opinions,
and I frequently characterize her as skateboarding away while giving people the finger.
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Whereas Connor obviously cares a lot about people's opinions,
and werewolves have tails in the city between for listeners who haven't read it.
So Rebecca always has her tail out because she doesn't care if people know that
she's a werewolf or how they feel about that.
Whereas connor always has his
tail tucked in his pants because he wants
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to seem as human as possible and i jokingly
told a friend that connor would feel like there shouldn't be kink at pride and
that makes sense because he's a cop do you imagine there was like a rough transitionary
period of like all the that subset of emo kids or former emo now furry kids
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that get the werewolf Wolf Tales,
like, now there's a group of people that actually have these,
and maybe it's less politically cool to have those outside.
Well, so this is where them being such a small group comes into play. I'm writing...
Not the story after Shards of Reflection, but the one that will come after that.
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And basically, Jeff and Connor talk about furries. Oh, okay.
Because Jeff thinks that if someone is into that, he will fuck them and oblige.
And Connor's opinion is that Jeff is a slut and doesn't respect himself or anyone else.
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So they have differing opinions on
how they should deal with furries so werewolves
or not so furries kind of take the role of chasers
in this world and now werewolves have to have that discussion
all right i like that yeah now i'm curious
like i've noticed that there's not really any shortage of
vampire apocalypse media out there
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like they i know they can kind of be kind of interchangeable
zombies depending on their depiction but like just plenty
of books movies and everything about like vampires running the
world or swarming like overtaking humanity but i
don't think i've ever seen that done with
werewolves and i'm curious if you'd have any perspective of
why that might be or what you might think that would
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look like part of it is because what
we think of as a werewolf is a
fairly new invention werewolves did
not get it turned by the full moon until the 1940s
wolfman movie like there is one movie before
that where moonlight is the trigger but for the most
part the trigger is a random curse
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or it's a magic coat or belt it is not necessarily tied to the moon in any way
and also it's usually intentional intentional on the person's part if they are.
Like going back and forth a lot So a lot of what we think of as werewolf.
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Stories that are older than the 1940s Wolfman.
They don't usually use the term werewolf it usually is lumped in to witches in general and,
And when it is someone who is turning into a wolf and back, it's like part of
a curse and there's a specific other trigger that kind of metaphorically represents
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civilization. Civilization.
So for Cautionary Fables and Fairy Tales, I did a comic adaptation of the French
folktale Bisclervée, where a guy turns into a wolf at night whenever he takes off his clothes,
and he can't change back into a person until he finds his clothes again.
Clothing being like the symbol of civilization and
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what separates humans from animals and the
story of this clervé is that his wife who
is unfaithful hides his clothes so she can
have an affair with another man and he is then stuck as
a wolf for a long period of time and then you
have stuff like there's an irish legend about saint
patrick cursed the pagans in ireland to
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turn into wolves for seven years and then they'd
turn back into people for seven years and then they'd
turn back into wolves for seven years so it'd go back and forth
seven years at a time and the way to cure
themselves of this is by converting to christianity so again it's using turning
into a wolf to be like a rejection of civilization or something symbolic like
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that so because Because our modern idea of werewolves is fairly new,
we haven't had as much time to play with it the way we've had time to play with vampires.
Because vampires, the modern idea, that started in the 1800s.
So people thinking about Dracula and the vampire story and vampires as a metaphor
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for the upper class nobility, that's been around longer.
So people have had time to play with it longer.
Now, I did want to make sure to touch on your licensed comics while I have you
on the line. First one that caught my eye was Buffy the High School Years.
Yep. And I'm curious how you found yourself working on, like,
an all-ages reworking of Buffy.
(32:13):
So I was working on Misfits of Avalon, which is about magical girls that are jerks.
And my editor on misfits
of avalon at dark horse was also
the editor on buffy while dark
horse had the license and so basically joss whedon was doing a signing at the
(32:35):
san diego comic-con booth and i asked if i could cut in line because i was a
giant buffy fan and by telling my editor that then they They're like,
all right, well, here's a new Buffy thing.
Would you like to write it? So that was kind of just right place at the right time.
Now, was it hard finding ways to make a show that has like that much violence and horror themes?
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Well, so they all take place during Buffy season one.
So actually the hardest part was none of the fun stuff about Buffy's in season one.
And also the characters can't develop in the story because then they will develop
past their season one counterpart.
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So the challenging part is that it had to basically be filler.
Because it does fit in between episodes of season one.
And was it challenging toning down the level of horror and violence for something
acceptable for all ages? Not really, because at least with Buffy season one, it's not that violent.
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The thing is, so a lot of the stuff that would get you censored for violence was already in the show.
So in Buffy, when Buffy stakes a vampire, they always have their vampire face
on to make it clear at a glance that Buffy is not killing a person.
And that's why they poof into dust is so there's no blood or bodies to clean
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up. So it's a lot of the stuff that would make violence hard to tone down was
already in the show and had already been thought about.
So any monster that looks human has to be more monstrous before Buffy starts to fight it.
As for your work on Adventure Time, I know you got to work on that with fellow
(34:28):
comics podcaster Jay Ededin.
And that was when I was especially curious, like the kind of on a similar vein
of like one, how did that opportunity come about?
And like, was it difficult to jump right into something that has as much like
established lore and as much of a sense of humor and tone is.
Well, so those are really short stories and I drew them.
(34:50):
I didn't write them because I did not think I could write the humor and the tone of the show.
But I left that part to Jay. and the
way I got the opportunity is so
several of my friends had done covers for
like variant covers and they introduced me to their editor on Adventure Time
(35:12):
and I did a variant cover and I was waiting to get back notes and it took a
really long time and so then the editor was like sorry Sorry, my assistant just quit,
and so I'm doing my job,
her job, and looking for her replacement.
And I told them I understand, so to take their time on notes.
(35:37):
And at the time, I also happened to have a friend from college who was looking for editing gigs.
So I then said, can I give your email to my friend that's looking for editing
gigs? My friend then got that job.
So then when they needed more adventure type people, I had helped lighten the
(35:57):
editor's workload and had gone to college with the assistant editor.
So that's the thing about networking is really it's just everyone comes up together.
So it's not like trying to climb the ladder yourself.
You got to help other people up and it ends up helping you, too,
even if you're not really thinking about that in the grand scheme of things.
(36:21):
So did you have any input on like what kinds of stories were told in that case?
Like I thought it was a pretty great coincidence you got to wind up on a Y-Wolf story.
Well, yeah, we just pitched them. Like, we sent in one-sentence pitches that
why wolves are mad that they're not in the ivory tower of academia,
and that Marceline... So they were like one-sentence pitches,
(36:44):
and they just picked one.
So we came up with ideas and sent them in.
Now, I know that you have a fair amount of podcasting history in your past,
like between Between several appearances on War Racket Ajax and even being a host on your own shows,
is podcasting still something you are actively looking to do?
(37:05):
I really like being on podcasts. I don't want to edit a podcast ever.
And every time one of my podcasts does not happen or continue,
it's because of the who's going to edit this question falls apart.
So I always want to do more podcasting. I was having trouble tracking down your old shows.
(37:26):
Like, do those still exist anywhere in the ether or do those tend to come down when the editor goes?
I would have to ask Amanda if Dirty Old Ladies is still up anywhere.
The other podcasts I attempted, a podcast called A Series of First Impressions,
where me and some friends watch season one of different TV shows.
And I think that's offline because we didn't feel like paying for hosting to keep it online.
(37:50):
Right now, the Iron Circus Geek Show is Thursday nights and is live,
and that's all saved on the Iron Circus YouTube.
But yeah, the old ones are mostly lost to the ether, I assume,
because we don't got money to host them forever.
I think I have a series of first impressions on my computer.
I'm just not posting it anywhere. So as one of the most accomplished web comic
(38:16):
writers and artists that I've talked to so far,
one of the things I wanted to get your perspective on was like the modern world
of web comics and specifically how it's been impacted on things like Webtoon
and other similar platforms like Geared for Smartphones that like almost anyone can upload to.
And like say you were
(38:36):
starting your career now instead of more than
a decade ago like how do you think this would shape the
way you go about publishing and writing your webcomics so
i'd probably write them the same
way but my advice to young newbie webcomicers is make your own website so because
(38:57):
sorcery 101 was already successful while i was still in college My professors
had me do a little presentation on starting a webcomic, even though I was still a student.
And I have been invited back a couple of times by old professors to give that
same sort of presentation.
But the way I've updated it is, here's a list of things that I use to start
(39:19):
my webcomic that don't exist anymore.
And it's just running down all the different internet web services that have
come and gone since I started doing webcomics.
And while it's great that you can put your comic on Webtoon for free,
who knows how long that's going to last.
(39:41):
Hmm so it's like hark a
vagrant used to be hosted on live journal who's on
live journal anymore all those people that
their web comic was posted and
distributed via twitter they're having a hard time now so it's just like it's
not don't use these things it's have a you website that isn't depended on the
(40:06):
whims of some tech overlord who could wake up tomorrow and be like.
I've decided no more pictures on my website, or I've decided that we're shutting
this all down, or charging $50 a month, or whatever.
You never know, the internet changes fast.
(40:26):
And I probably wouldn't change the way I lay out my pages because as cool as
the infinite scroll webtoon thing is, that's a real pain in the ass to put into a book.
Yeah, I'm currently facing that dilemma myself.
Like I'm working on a webcomic. My artists are putting it in the Webtoon format
(40:48):
just since that's like where the vast majority of readers are.
But like that's kind of hanging over me and just the big learning curve is like.
Okay, how are we going to convert this into print down the line?
I'm hoping that maybe converting it more to manga format will work a little
bit better than like traditional comics or full-size graphic novels just due
(41:08):
to the dimensions and plus manga sells a lot better so I'm kind of hoping if
I can get it more in that line or catch eyes for manga readers that that'll
help with sales someday.
Day yeah my day job is at seven seas and
they also translate webtoons and
the production designers like can kind of
crank out the layouts for the mangas pretty quickly
(41:30):
like but whenever they get a webtoon it's
like well that's my week of work rather than
my day of work so it's rough
now i'm still a bit of a newcomer to
the world of web comics and i've now stumbled on
a couple series that like will catch my eye
but then i see they've gone on hiatus and just never really
(41:51):
come back and i'm curious if like
you have any insight to share with potential web comic
creators on like when you think it's the right time to
step away from a series or if it's like always best just to keep pushing forward
until you get to some kind of logical ending i don't know that's up to everybody
everyone's different i'm a weirdo because i insist on finishing everything i
(42:15):
start I feel like maybe toward the end,
I should have ended Sorcery 101 earlier than I let it go on to.
Not because I was like, it was more like crunching the numbers financially.
I was maybe losing money by sticking with and finishing Sorcery 101 earlier.
(42:37):
Than if i had moved on to something new but yeah first you want to one's too long.
Turn it here first folks but as
kind of a closing question here i like to tailor one specifically to the interests
of each guest and you being the organizer behind can i pet your werewolf i've
(42:59):
got to know what werewolf do you think is most deserving of pets Which one do you want to pet most?
Oh, hmm. I feel like Scott from MTV's Teen Wolf is like if a golden retriever is a person.
If you haven't seen MTV's Teen Wolf, the power of friendship makes you a better werewolf.
And the plot of that show is the main character, who's an idiot,
(43:24):
is the best at making friends.
So he's the best at friendship. So that makes him the best werewolf.
And all the villains are trying to find a loophole to
be more powerful without friendship and
they just keep losing to friendship it's like
a shonen anime i feel like there was
a period of vh or mtv and vh1 shows that like they almost seemed like things
(43:47):
you would see as a background gag on the simpsons like shows like date my mom
or like the various other like hilarious dating reality shows But yeah,
the Twilight style,
like modern reimagining of Teen Wolf also seems like something Simpsons or another
cartoon would do as a joke.
(44:08):
But yeah, I don't think any of us expected it to turn out as good as it did
and so much better than its original incarnation. Yeah. Yeah.
Kel, it's been great having you on the show. And for our listeners that want
to support the next volume of The City Between, where can they find you and
where can they find you on Kickstarter?
My website is kelmcdonald.com because I do have my own website,
(44:32):
which every comic creator should have.
And you can get Murky Water, the fourth City Between book, kickstarter.com slash
murky water. I think that's going to be the URL.
Sometimes they throw in a bunch of numbers in between But it will be on there
And I'll have it linked on my website And all the social medias I have There's
(44:54):
too many social medias Right now I'm mostly on Blue Sky And then I have an assistant
that helps me post on Tumblr and Instagram and Facebook,
Twitter is dead to me Every time I get on there it's a little more dead than
the last And I know it's a good thing But there's not been one unified place
to migrate to when, yeah, the social media navigation is only getting harder.
(45:17):
But if the listeners at home have requests or recommendations for comics or
creators you'd like us to cover in the future, you can send them our way on social media.
You can find us on the Transcending Comics Instagram and Facebook page,
on Twitter as at Transcend Comics, or email us at transcendingcomics at gmail.com.
We'd like to thank you for giving our podcast a chance and give a shout-out
to Ray Day Parade for designing our logo.
(45:37):
Our intro and outro music this week is A Little Soul and You've Been Starring by Carlson.
And you can check out more of his music on carlson.com join
us again next time as we continue transcending boundaries and exploring the
colorful world of trans non-binary and gender queer representation in comic
books of all kinds does the curtains fall on this episode of transcending comics
remember that comics have the power to inspire change in countless worlds including
(46:00):
our own keep reading keep writing and keep transcending.
Music.
Music.
(00:17):
Welcome to Transcending Comics, a podcast dedicated to trans representation
in comic books, manga, and webtoons, both on panel and behind the scenes.
I'm your host Tommy, and joining me today is a prolific writer and artist in
the world of both web comics and traditional print comics.
They've written for multiple long-running web series, including The City Between,
You Are the Chosen One, and Sorcery 101, the latter of which ran for over 10 years and 1,600 pages.
(00:43):
Their print comics work includes notable books like Buffy, the high school years,
Misfits of Avalon, and shorts in the ongoing Adventure Time comics.
They're also a known werewolf expert and a lover of folklore,
going as far as organizing comic anthologies such as Can I Pet Your Werewolf?
And Cautionary Fables and Fairy Tales.
Here to discuss the Kickstarter for the latest print release for The City Between,
(01:06):
Murky Water, is today's guest, Kel MacDonald.
Welcome to the show, Kel. Hi, thanks for having me. So by the time this episode
goes up, I know the latest Kickstarter is going to be live.
I know you've done quite a few of these before, but how are you feeling going into this one?
Oh, I'm a little anxious because Twitter's imploding and social media in general is sort of rocky.
(01:28):
So my main ways to promote it are on shaky ground.
So we'll see how this one goes.
Yeah, you're not the first creator I've heard mention this of having follow
up campaigns that the ongoing implosion of Twitter is really making the fundraising a lot harder.
So that's a little nerve wracking going into my own first campaign Kickstarter.
(01:49):
So yeah, sorry to hear that.
But I've been doing a lot of reading of The City in Between lately.
I actually just caught up on the latest page this weekend.
One of the things I'm really enjoying about it is it's kind of unique futuristic
setting for an urban fantasy story.
Can you tell our listeners a bit about the world the comic takes place in and
(02:10):
why the futuristic setting?
So for one, I always like urban fantasy stories. I liked doing the world building
side of the supernatural a lot.
And while making Sorcery 101, I realized the reason why the mundane parts of
(02:31):
their lives weren't interesting me is because that was too close to our world.
So kind of when I set out to start The City Between to make the mundane,
regular world also more engaging, I ended up completely doing not our world in general.
Wanted something that's also very clearly not our world so that way I could have more fun with it.
(02:53):
The other thing was, I remember talking to an acquaintance about how they didn't
like A Song of Ice and Fire because sexism exists in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire.
And while I was like, well, that's part of the story and part of the world,
so it's okay that you don't like that, but it's kind of important to the story.
(03:19):
And they retorted with, well, if you're going to make up your own setting,
why do you have to feel the need to repeat or reflect things that are wrong with our world?
Like, if you're making everything up from scratch, why not do it completely differently?
And so while I disagreed with them on their opinion about Game of Thrones,
(03:41):
that sort of sentiment did stick with me.
So while going into The City Between, I was like, since I am making everything
up, might as well change things the way I would want them to be a little bit more.
So it's based on kind of what I find interesting and sort of also a little bit
of wish fulfillment and also based on what I like to draw.
(04:04):
I don't like to draw cars, so everyone takes public transit.
The other thing was, while watching a lot of supernatural stories,
the supernatural is always hidden from the regular world.
And one thing in The City Between that I was thinking about is,
well, as technology gets more advanced and there are cameras more places and
(04:27):
more ways to track people's behavior, that would get harder.
And so that's kind of background radiation to all the city between stories is
that it is harder for the supernatural to hide.
I've liked the interesting limitations I've seen you put on this futuristic technology.
Like we'll get a whole 3D projection of a recording of a convenience store from a security camera.
(04:50):
But like instead of just getting the full image perfectly, like it's still all
from one perspective. So as you're reinventing technology for this future world,
how do you usually go about figuring out the limitations of it?
Or making things more advanced than they are now, but making them limited enough
that they're not perfect tools for solving crime?
(05:13):
Well, because I was always thinking about like every tech, no technology is sort of perfect.
So having those limitations is part of what makes it more interesting.
So like with the little like 3d
replica thing i was thinking about well
cameras in general have blind spots so no matter where they're recording from
(05:36):
or how advanced they are like there's gonna be some blind spots that was sort
of the thought process behind it is at least for that one One specifically.
And then the other was what I want the...
It's a fine line between, like, a complete surveillance state and,
(05:57):
like, what is actually something people will tolerate.
Because, like, our phones today track fucking everything that we do.
So it's, we are kind of getting surveilled, but it's by big tech and it's for
capitalism ends rather than, like, actually spying on people ends.
(06:21):
So it's also kind of thinking about that. And also, as I read more about different tech companies'
reactions to different things, it's an article that struck me recently as slightly
funny was Amazon is discontinuing Alexa because the way Alexa spies on people is hard to monetize.
(06:45):
Like they they're mad that people are using
it the way it was advertised in the commercial like they
people just ask alexa to like play music
or what time is it or what's the
weather like and i guess they thought they could
use alexa to get people to buy stuff through alexa
but that's not working so they're gonna scrap it is like a thing i was reading
(07:10):
recently so it's just stuff Stuff like it's how a technology is developed is
going to limit what it can do sort of angle and kind of pulling at.
Those sort of threads on what I think would be like a logical limitation on it.
So a lot of the stories in The City Between have focused specifically on detectives and police.
(07:34):
And I'd like to know how you approach telling a story about law enforcement
in today's political climate.
Well, it's only two out of five because Famous Fortune is about a bodyguard.
So she's just hired to be there. and so kind of what I'm trying to do is are
you familiar with the series Discworld? A little bit, I've not read it myself.
(07:56):
So in Discworld the main character is
sort of like the theme that you're
going to follow so all the Discworld stories
that star Renswin are him like traveling
to a different place and you learn about this new location and then
he says some goofy things and then wants
(08:16):
to leave and then the watch books are all
closer to mysteries and then
the death books are all about metaphysics and
then the witch books are all about story structure
so it's kind of while they
share the same setting they have a slightly different feel and
so i kind of want to do that sort of
(08:39):
setup where whenever rebecca of
fame and misfortune is the main character character it's gonna
have to deal with more of the
upper crust of society because that's who's hiring her and
then jeff who is the main character of better
to find you with he has more small town stories and then he's a nurse so i kind
(09:02):
of want to have empathy be the solution to all of his stories and then the two
cops maria and connor who are the also the main characters of murky water I want it to be more noir,
but also they're bad people because they're cops.
Like, it might not be immediately obvious, but I did have someone comment on
(09:25):
Murky Water while it was getting posted on my Patreon.
They were like, I keep thinking Connor's the bad guy, but then he's just an asshole.
And I was like, yeah, that's basically every story he's going to be in is maybe he's the bad guy.
No, he's just an asshole. So like those ones, I try to keep in mind why they
(09:46):
would want to be police officers.
But also how that comments on them as individuals.
And so it's kind of some of it is trying to limit the police more in the city
between world like they have cameras that are on all the time.
And when Connors first introduced he's specifically getting reprimanded for
(10:11):
interfering with his camera.
And it's also, Conner is fairly politically aware, so part of the commentary
on him as a cop is he is using being a cop for political gain and optics.
So there's like a manipulative side to him.
(10:32):
And then Maria's uptight and more rule-abiding.
And she would be the person who would respond to police corruption with,
well it's a few bad apples not realizing that
well the rest of that phrase is a few bad apples spoil the
bunch so she's kind
(10:52):
of blinded to the fact that the institutions that
she's a part of and support are not always
in the right i like how their stories i've
found that like they almost seem to be the
prime suspects through the story since we usually don't meet the
actual perpetrators a little bit later on yeah and
i feel like that's kind of a twist on what i usually see
(11:14):
in detective stories and i'm kind of curious if
like there are specific noir slash detective story
tropes that like you specifically try to avoid or
subvert with their stories so it's usually
i'm trying to like follow through on pulling a
little thread and following through on
that because so one thing for the city between world
(11:35):
is a lot of supernatural stuff or
fantasy stuff has used monsters as
minority metaphor and with
the supernatural in the city between world to both do that but not at the same
time is i tried to make it rarer than any actual minority That people encounter on a daily basis.
(12:02):
So they're not a good metaphor for queer people because there are just significantly less of them.
So it was I tried to look up statistics for different.
Types of rare deformities or
medical conditions because it has to be a thing
(12:23):
where someone wouldn't disbelieve that
it exists but they're almost never going to encounter it so usually when a werewolf
character meets a human character for the first time it's going to be commented
on that they are the first werewolf that human has met.
(12:44):
So because of that, Connor is the main werewolf that people see, period.
Like, he's maybe the only one that they know about.
And so that puts him in a unique position that you don't see in a lot of cop
stories or noir stories because he is kind of a celebrity at the same time that he's a cop.
(13:05):
So that gives him a different angle than a lot of noir stories like because
a lot of noir stories is the detectives and nobody and gets away with undercover
stuff because they're a nobody.
Connor can never go undercover so kind of on that front of how you were designing
the various monster groups in this world i was curious like since you're a known
(13:31):
lover of werewolves and like Like they're kind of our most prominent type of
monster we see in this book.
How did you go about deciding like which traits you would actually use for this
one and like how that would play with their human lives?
Like, was that hard to narrow down like favorite factors of werewolf stories
for someone who's taken in as many as you?
No, the werewolves in City Between are almost the same as the werewolves in Sorcery 101.
(13:57):
So I kind of already figured out what I wanted to do. It was just like,
as I said, well, making Sorcery 101, I realized, well, that's the fun part.
So now I need to make the rest of the world just as fun as the werewolf part.
So it's stuff like I'm a firm believer in werewolves are the proletariat of
movie monsters because their humanity is treated as conditional.
(14:20):
Also they are stronger when there's more of them and they're united together
and they're against vampires who are the one percent and are clearly capitalist
assholes so it's i really liked werewolves as a metaphor for community.
And that's sort of what appealed to me about them.
(14:41):
Having so much experience then, like working with webcomics,
I mean, working so long on Sorcery 101, now being a few hundred pages into the
city between, and also having worked in print comics.
I'm curious how one goes about establishing the pacing for a webcomic when you
don't have the same set page length that you do with print comics.
(15:04):
Like is that something that you usually determine well
ahead of time through outlining so i write the whole script
at once because if i don't do that then the
characters will talk and talk forever and the plot won't move forward
and it will kill the pacing i also don't super worry if it's moving too slow
while it gets posted online because most people are going to read it in one
(15:27):
big chunk So I want to prioritize it coming out in one big chunk over the page by page experience.
So I think sometimes that like, makes stuff a little bit harder to follow,
like the current City Between story that's going up is about a vampire who in
(15:48):
the City Between world, when vampires drink your blood, they get your memories.
So newbie vampires are not used to
having other people's memories and therefore confuse
their victims memories with their memories so the
current city between story is about a newbie vampire
kind of untangling that so they're an unreliable narrator and since the story
(16:11):
is in their point of view it is intentionally confusing at points and is probably
more confusing because because it's coming out a page at a time. I find the idea of...
Telling a story that like plays with perspective as much
as the latest chapter does like just very
intimidating and i can't i can't say
(16:33):
i've read a comic that plays with the unreliable narrator
in quite the same way that shards of reflection does
so is there any like particular media
you're pulling inspiration from in your depiction with this
or like any subjects you've been
researching to figure out how you want to depict this like shared
memory with vampires and their victims so i
(16:55):
was it's not necessarily a thing like
this so this is where it's like thinking about stuff and then
pulling at a thread and it's so it's sort
of like following a metaphor for to its logical conclusion
so if a vampire is sucking up
people's lives like well what is your life
it is your collection of experiences so i
(17:17):
it's having vampires do that at the same
time it lets the older vampires do stuff
that is way more sinister but it also answers if
an older vampire like how are
they learning new skills like keeping up with slang.
And keeping up with younger appearance and if they're always eating
20 year olds then they know whatever
(17:39):
is like the quote they wouldn't
stand out as much so it helps them blend in more
at least the older ones and so
part of it was just me pulling out
a metaphor and having it answer certain questions that would arise with something
that is immortal how does it keep up to date on stuff and then it's also i was
(18:04):
thinking about with since they're capitalists this is a great way to do corporate espionage,
if they're ever doing that.
And then as far as the style of telling a thing where the perspective is unreliable,
There's a lot of movies that I like that are a little bit trippy.
(18:27):
Like, I do really like The Black Swan and stuff by that director.
He's really good at, like, using the camera to have weird perspective or tricks
going on with the character and the viewer's perception of things.
And I really wanted to challenge myself, basically, with Shards of Reflection.
(18:49):
And I had my Patreon backers vote on, because I had this story and then another
story about Rebecca at the same stage of completion.
They were both like half of the script was written. And so I asked my Patreon
backers a few years ago, would you rather have the Rebecca story first,
(19:10):
which would be more straightforward and a character you already know.
Or do you want this weird one first?
And they they voted for the one
where i was trying to challenge myself so went
with that one and went all in as for your other currently
patreon only books i did want to touch on you
are the chosen one and i've been enjoying how
(19:32):
it plays so much with the hero's journey and like
a number of fun ways and finding like interesting outs to
get out of the hero's journey formula and like what it
it means so like i'm curious
about your thoughts on that as
a story structure like is the way you're
tackling the story like it means a criticizing the hero's
(19:53):
journey or is it just finding fun ways to
subvert the tropes that we've seen it's picking at it
basically i was talking to a friend about
so in a lot of media when they
show that a kid is going to grow up to
as a kid they take apart the toaster to figure
(20:14):
out how the toaster works and i don't know
why it's always a toaster so i feel
like the way i approach stories that i
like when i like a story i want
to take it apart like i'm that kid with the toaster and there
are several sort of chosen one stories that i have
liked but i always wondered like
(20:35):
well what would happen if like
like they failed like there's this does
supposedly destiny have no backup plan.
Like so the idea of
you are the chosen one came from this god.
Just has a backup plan and there's 23 kids that get the dream telling them they're
(20:59):
the chosen one and it's also like sort of a metaphor for what gets in in the
way of people's dreams because you have in the first chapter.
There are three kids that like drop out immediately. And those three kids are
kind of examples of the type of stuff that's going to thwart the other three kids.
(21:21):
So you have the kid that goes back to sleep and dismisses the whole thing as a dream.
So that would be someone who like gives up before they even start and don't really think about it.
So obviously they weren't invested in their dream that much.
But then there's the kid that's told that they're stupid and their dream is stupid.
And they need to like shut up
(21:42):
and get back to work or whatever is going on in
their real life and like there are
probably a bunch of people that would love to like
do something creative or have some passionate pursuit but
for someone has told them that they can't do it
or has beaten them down like their whole life but then
on a happier note there is the kid in that
(22:03):
chapter who just has a a dream they care
about more so they're pursuing that one and it's the
kid that's training to be a blacksmith like they're very excited about
getting better at their this other craft rather
than pursuing whatever destiny or
whatever has told them to do as far as fantasy stuff
goes i know you're a bit of a dragon age fan and you've
(22:24):
mentioned disc world so i'd love to hear about like
what in the realm of fantasy has currently been holding your interest
so i one of my favorite
book series is the October Day series by Seanan McGuire
which is about a half fairy detective solving fairy crimes which is mostly kidnapped
children because fairies always be stealing kids and I used to like the Dresden
(22:49):
Files but I stopped because they kind of became action books rather rather than mystery books.
And I recently really enjoyed The Goblin Emperor, which is about half goblin,
half elf, fourth son of the elven emperor.
And the opening chapter is him getting told that his three older brothers and
(23:13):
his dad just died in an airship explosion.
And so now he's pulled out of exile and is in charge of everything.
And so it's court intrigue, but like the
twist is that he's nice rather than everyone
being a dick which is usually how those court intrigue stories
go i did like game of thrones and a song of ice and fire i was telling a friend
(23:36):
that i usually like political intrigue stories in fantasy settings but only
if the fantasy of see politics like affect the outside world.
I was saying whenever vampire politics pop up in a vampire story that I usually
mentally check out and think that they've ruined their story by getting into
(23:59):
this. Part of it is because...
In Vampire the Masquerade, if the Malkavians are in charge versus whatever one
of the other vampire clans is in charge, they're still hidden from humanity,
so it's not affecting anything which vampire group is in charge.
Whereas part of why i liked a
(24:20):
song of ice and fire is the lannisters
declaring war against the tyrells means
the lannisters now have to deal with a famine
because the tyrells grew all their food and they
didn't think about that beforehand so kind of
i like it when there's like ripple effects like that my
(24:41):
friend described it as like a pachinko machine where
cascading dominoes falling down
basically trying to think other fantasy stuff i love that aspect you were touching
on though like the secret society actually affecting the outside world like
i think i've just seen enough of the like the hidden outcasts in their politics
(25:03):
like i love when we get the like okay okay,
but what happens when the world finds out about the monsters?
They're like, like modern Ninja Turtles comics have like, everyone knows about
mutants now and there's a bunch of them. And I'm like, that's what's going to pull me in.
Same with like modern X-Men doing like, oh yeah, these people like are some
of the most powerful people in the world politically now as well as physically.
(25:24):
And like, that's what I want since there's any number of countless flavors of
like the hidden group of super outcasts that are hunted.
So that's also why in City Between, the world knows about werewolves.
The idea is that since it's going to get harder for the supernatural to hide.
Werewolves reveal themselves first, partly as a collective supernatural world's
(25:48):
good PR tactic, because werewolves are human most of the time.
Time so if you become a werewolf you
still have to go to your day job and pay your rent and whatnot so
odds are that any werewolf that outs themselves publicly
is still going to have a lot of human connections whereas
if vampires came out first like in true blood vampires eat people so it's harder
(26:16):
for them to spin that as a good thing and also a lot of them are legally dead
so they don't have the day job or the more mundane connections,
So City Between Worlds supernatural setup is werewolves are like the guinea
pig for the rest of the supernatural to see how humans will react to it.
(26:38):
And then there's stuff like how each werewolf responds to humans knowing about them is different.
Rebecca in Famous Fortune is kind of disinterested in humans' opinions,
and I frequently characterize her as skateboarding away while giving people the finger.
(26:59):
Whereas Connor obviously cares a lot about people's opinions,
and werewolves have tails in the city between for listeners who haven't read it.
So Rebecca always has her tail out because she doesn't care if people know that
she's a werewolf or how they feel about that.
Whereas connor always has his
tail tucked in his pants because he wants
(27:20):
to seem as human as possible and i jokingly
told a friend that connor would feel like there shouldn't be kink at pride and
that makes sense because he's a cop do you imagine there was like a rough transitionary
period of like all the that subset of emo kids or former emo now furry kids
(27:41):
that get the werewolf Wolf Tales,
like, now there's a group of people that actually have these,
and maybe it's less politically cool to have those outside.
Well, so this is where them being such a small group comes into play. I'm writing...
Not the story after Shards of Reflection, but the one that will come after that.
(28:03):
And basically, Jeff and Connor talk about furries. Oh, okay.
Because Jeff thinks that if someone is into that, he will fuck them and oblige.
And Connor's opinion is that Jeff is a slut and doesn't respect himself or anyone else.
(28:25):
So they have differing opinions on
how they should deal with furries so werewolves
or not so furries kind of take the role of chasers
in this world and now werewolves have to have that discussion
all right i like that yeah now i'm curious
like i've noticed that there's not really any shortage of
vampire apocalypse media out there
(28:48):
like they i know they can kind of be kind of interchangeable
zombies depending on their depiction but like just plenty
of books movies and everything about like vampires running the
world or swarming like overtaking humanity but i
don't think i've ever seen that done with
werewolves and i'm curious if you'd have any perspective of
why that might be or what you might think that would
(29:10):
look like part of it is because what
we think of as a werewolf is a
fairly new invention werewolves did
not get it turned by the full moon until the 1940s
wolfman movie like there is one movie before
that where moonlight is the trigger but for the most
part the trigger is a random curse
(29:31):
or it's a magic coat or belt it is not necessarily tied to the moon in any way
and also it's usually intentional intentional on the person's part if they are.
Like going back and forth a lot So a lot of what we think of as werewolf.
(29:52):
Stories that are older than the 1940s Wolfman.
They don't usually use the term werewolf it usually is lumped in to witches in general and,
And when it is someone who is turning into a wolf and back, it's like part of
a curse and there's a specific other trigger that kind of metaphorically represents
(30:15):
civilization. Civilization.
So for Cautionary Fables and Fairy Tales, I did a comic adaptation of the French
folktale Bisclervée, where a guy turns into a wolf at night whenever he takes off his clothes,
and he can't change back into a person until he finds his clothes again.
Clothing being like the symbol of civilization and
(30:39):
what separates humans from animals and the
story of this clervé is that his wife who
is unfaithful hides his clothes so she can
have an affair with another man and he is then stuck as
a wolf for a long period of time and then you
have stuff like there's an irish legend about saint
patrick cursed the pagans in ireland to
(31:01):
turn into wolves for seven years and then they'd
turn back into people for seven years and then they'd
turn back into wolves for seven years so it'd go back and forth
seven years at a time and the way to cure
themselves of this is by converting to christianity so again it's using turning
into a wolf to be like a rejection of civilization or something symbolic like
(31:26):
that so because Because our modern idea of werewolves is fairly new,
we haven't had as much time to play with it the way we've had time to play with vampires.
Because vampires, the modern idea, that started in the 1800s.
So people thinking about Dracula and the vampire story and vampires as a metaphor
(31:51):
for the upper class nobility, that's been around longer.
So people have had time to play with it longer.
Now, I did want to make sure to touch on your licensed comics while I have you
on the line. First one that caught my eye was Buffy the High School Years.
Yep. And I'm curious how you found yourself working on, like,
an all-ages reworking of Buffy.
(32:13):
So I was working on Misfits of Avalon, which is about magical girls that are jerks.
And my editor on misfits
of avalon at dark horse was also
the editor on buffy while dark
horse had the license and so basically joss whedon was doing a signing at the
(32:35):
san diego comic-con booth and i asked if i could cut in line because i was a
giant buffy fan and by telling my editor that then they They're like,
all right, well, here's a new Buffy thing.
Would you like to write it? So that was kind of just right place at the right time.
Now, was it hard finding ways to make a show that has like that much violence and horror themes?
(33:00):
Well, so they all take place during Buffy season one.
So actually the hardest part was none of the fun stuff about Buffy's in season one.
And also the characters can't develop in the story because then they will develop
past their season one counterpart.
(33:21):
So the challenging part is that it had to basically be filler.
Because it does fit in between episodes of season one.
And was it challenging toning down the level of horror and violence for something
acceptable for all ages? Not really, because at least with Buffy season one, it's not that violent.
(33:43):
The thing is, so a lot of the stuff that would get you censored for violence was already in the show.
So in Buffy, when Buffy stakes a vampire, they always have their vampire face
on to make it clear at a glance that Buffy is not killing a person.
And that's why they poof into dust is so there's no blood or bodies to clean
(34:05):
up. So it's a lot of the stuff that would make violence hard to tone down was
already in the show and had already been thought about.
So any monster that looks human has to be more monstrous before Buffy starts to fight it.
As for your work on Adventure Time, I know you got to work on that with fellow
(34:28):
comics podcaster Jay Ededin.
And that was when I was especially curious, like the kind of on a similar vein
of like one, how did that opportunity come about?
And like, was it difficult to jump right into something that has as much like
established lore and as much of a sense of humor and tone is.
Well, so those are really short stories and I drew them.
(34:50):
I didn't write them because I did not think I could write the humor and the tone of the show.
But I left that part to Jay. and the
way I got the opportunity is so
several of my friends had done covers for
like variant covers and they introduced me to their editor on Adventure Time
(35:12):
and I did a variant cover and I was waiting to get back notes and it took a
really long time and so then the editor was like sorry Sorry, my assistant just quit,
and so I'm doing my job,
her job, and looking for her replacement.
And I told them I understand, so to take their time on notes.
(35:37):
And at the time, I also happened to have a friend from college who was looking for editing gigs.
So I then said, can I give your email to my friend that's looking for editing
gigs? My friend then got that job.
So then when they needed more adventure type people, I had helped lighten the
(35:57):
editor's workload and had gone to college with the assistant editor.
So that's the thing about networking is really it's just everyone comes up together.
So it's not like trying to climb the ladder yourself.
You got to help other people up and it ends up helping you, too,
even if you're not really thinking about that in the grand scheme of things.
(36:21):
So did you have any input on like what kinds of stories were told in that case?
Like I thought it was a pretty great coincidence you got to wind up on a Y-Wolf story.
Well, yeah, we just pitched them. Like, we sent in one-sentence pitches that
why wolves are mad that they're not in the ivory tower of academia,
and that Marceline... So they were like one-sentence pitches,
(36:44):
and they just picked one.
So we came up with ideas and sent them in.
Now, I know that you have a fair amount of podcasting history in your past,
like between Between several appearances on War Racket Ajax and even being a host on your own shows,
is podcasting still something you are actively looking to do?
(37:05):
I really like being on podcasts. I don't want to edit a podcast ever.
And every time one of my podcasts does not happen or continue,
it's because of the who's going to edit this question falls apart.
So I always want to do more podcasting. I was having trouble tracking down your old shows.
(37:26):
Like, do those still exist anywhere in the ether or do those tend to come down when the editor goes?
I would have to ask Amanda if Dirty Old Ladies is still up anywhere.
The other podcasts I attempted, a podcast called A Series of First Impressions,
where me and some friends watch season one of different TV shows.
And I think that's offline because we didn't feel like paying for hosting to keep it online.
(37:50):
Right now, the Iron Circus Geek Show is Thursday nights and is live,
and that's all saved on the Iron Circus YouTube.
But yeah, the old ones are mostly lost to the ether, I assume,
because we don't got money to host them forever.
I think I have a series of first impressions on my computer.
I'm just not posting it anywhere. So as one of the most accomplished web comic
(38:16):
writers and artists that I've talked to so far,
one of the things I wanted to get your perspective on was like the modern world
of web comics and specifically how it's been impacted on things like Webtoon
and other similar platforms like Geared for Smartphones that like almost anyone can upload to.
And like say you were
(38:36):
starting your career now instead of more than
a decade ago like how do you think this would shape the
way you go about publishing and writing your webcomics so
i'd probably write them the same
way but my advice to young newbie webcomicers is make your own website so because
(38:57):
sorcery 101 was already successful while i was still in college My professors
had me do a little presentation on starting a webcomic, even though I was still a student.
And I have been invited back a couple of times by old professors to give that
same sort of presentation.
But the way I've updated it is, here's a list of things that I use to start
(39:19):
my webcomic that don't exist anymore.
And it's just running down all the different internet web services that have
come and gone since I started doing webcomics.
And while it's great that you can put your comic on Webtoon for free,
who knows how long that's going to last.
(39:41):
Hmm so it's like hark a
vagrant used to be hosted on live journal who's on
live journal anymore all those people that
their web comic was posted and
distributed via twitter they're having a hard time now so it's just like it's
not don't use these things it's have a you website that isn't depended on the
(40:06):
whims of some tech overlord who could wake up tomorrow and be like.
I've decided no more pictures on my website, or I've decided that we're shutting
this all down, or charging $50 a month, or whatever.
You never know, the internet changes fast.
(40:26):
And I probably wouldn't change the way I lay out my pages because as cool as
the infinite scroll webtoon thing is, that's a real pain in the ass to put into a book.
Yeah, I'm currently facing that dilemma myself.
Like I'm working on a webcomic. My artists are putting it in the Webtoon format
(40:48):
just since that's like where the vast majority of readers are.
But like that's kind of hanging over me and just the big learning curve is like.
Okay, how are we going to convert this into print down the line?
I'm hoping that maybe converting it more to manga format will work a little
bit better than like traditional comics or full-size graphic novels just due
(41:08):
to the dimensions and plus manga sells a lot better so I'm kind of hoping if
I can get it more in that line or catch eyes for manga readers that that'll
help with sales someday.
Day yeah my day job is at seven seas and
they also translate webtoons and
the production designers like can kind of
crank out the layouts for the mangas pretty quickly
(41:30):
like but whenever they get a webtoon it's
like well that's my week of work rather than
my day of work so it's rough
now i'm still a bit of a newcomer to
the world of web comics and i've now stumbled on
a couple series that like will catch my eye
but then i see they've gone on hiatus and just never really
(41:51):
come back and i'm curious if like
you have any insight to share with potential web comic
creators on like when you think it's the right time to
step away from a series or if it's like always best just to keep pushing forward
until you get to some kind of logical ending i don't know that's up to everybody
everyone's different i'm a weirdo because i insist on finishing everything i
(42:15):
start I feel like maybe toward the end,
I should have ended Sorcery 101 earlier than I let it go on to.
Not because I was like, it was more like crunching the numbers financially.
I was maybe losing money by sticking with and finishing Sorcery 101 earlier.
(42:37):
Than if i had moved on to something new but yeah first you want to one's too long.
Turn it here first folks but as
kind of a closing question here i like to tailor one specifically to the interests
of each guest and you being the organizer behind can i pet your werewolf i've
(42:59):
got to know what werewolf do you think is most deserving of pets Which one do you want to pet most?
Oh, hmm. I feel like Scott from MTV's Teen Wolf is like if a golden retriever is a person.
If you haven't seen MTV's Teen Wolf, the power of friendship makes you a better werewolf.
And the plot of that show is the main character, who's an idiot,
(43:24):
is the best at making friends.
So he's the best at friendship. So that makes him the best werewolf.
And all the villains are trying to find a loophole to
be more powerful without friendship and
they just keep losing to friendship it's like
a shonen anime i feel like there was
a period of vh or mtv and vh1 shows that like they almost seemed like things
(43:47):
you would see as a background gag on the simpsons like shows like date my mom
or like the various other like hilarious dating reality shows But yeah,
the Twilight style,
like modern reimagining of Teen Wolf also seems like something Simpsons or another
cartoon would do as a joke.
(44:08):
But yeah, I don't think any of us expected it to turn out as good as it did
and so much better than its original incarnation. Yeah. Yeah.
Kel, it's been great having you on the show. And for our listeners that want
to support the next volume of The City Between, where can they find you and
where can they find you on Kickstarter?
My website is kelmcdonald.com because I do have my own website,
(44:32):
which every comic creator should have.
And you can get Murky Water, the fourth City Between book, kickstarter.com slash
murky water. I think that's going to be the URL.
Sometimes they throw in a bunch of numbers in between But it will be on there
And I'll have it linked on my website And all the social medias I have There's
(44:54):
too many social medias Right now I'm mostly on Blue Sky And then I have an assistant
that helps me post on Tumblr and Instagram and Facebook,
Twitter is dead to me Every time I get on there it's a little more dead than
the last And I know it's a good thing But there's not been one unified place
to migrate to when, yeah, the social media navigation is only getting harder.
(45:17):
But if the listeners at home have requests or recommendations for comics or
creators you'd like us to cover in the future, you can send them our way on social media.
You can find us on the Transcending Comics Instagram and Facebook page,
on Twitter as at Transcend Comics, or email us at transcendingcomics at gmail.com.
We'd like to thank you for giving our podcast a chance and give a shout-out
to Ray Day Parade for designing our logo.
(45:37):
Our intro and outro music this week is A Little Soul and You've Been Starring by Carlson.
And you can check out more of his music on carlson.com join
us again next time as we continue transcending boundaries and exploring the
colorful world of trans non-binary and gender queer representation in comic
books of all kinds does the curtains fall on this episode of transcending comics
remember that comics have the power to inspire change in countless worlds including
(46:00):
our own keep reading keep writing and keep transcending.
Music.
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