Speaker 1: Warning warning.
Speaker 2: Today's episode making day spoilers for multiple live action anime adaptations,
Speaker 2: so beware. Plus, after our chat, I'll be interviewing award
Speaker 2: winning horror and comics author Stephen Graham Jones. Hello, my
Speaker 2: name is Rosie Knight, and welcome back to X ray Vision,
Speaker 2: the podcast where we dive peek into your favorite shows, movies,
Speaker 2: comics and pop culture. We're coming to you from iHeart Podcast,
Speaker 2: where we'll be bringing you three episodes.
Speaker 1: A week, and it's on Saturdays.
Speaker 2: In today's episode, I am joined by Carmen and Ian
Speaker 2: to discuss something I'm always trying to talk about, which
Speaker 2: is anime and in this case, the conundrum of live
Speaker 2: action anime adaptations.
Speaker 1: Ian in common, welcome in. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2: So good?
Speaker 3: I've got my my wig on, I've got my anime
Speaker 3: girl makeup on.
Speaker 1: You wearing a little sailor moon wearing outfit out.
Speaker 3: I'm ready to do a transformation.
Speaker 4: Let's do it.
Speaker 2: I am all. I mean I'm also wearing a ginger
Speaker 2: Eto sweater, so I guess we realize apparently case, I've.
Speaker 3: Been wanting to say, that is a very cute swettter
Speaker 3: you have on.
Speaker 2: Thank you this is this is actually a junge Eto
Speaker 2: drop Dead, which is like an emo band lead singer.
Speaker 2: So it's even sillier, even sillier and more emo than
Speaker 2: a junge Eto is usually. Okay, let's jump in, guys Ian,
Speaker 2: I want to start with you, what is your first
Speaker 2: memory of watching an anime? And then what was the
Speaker 2: first live action anime remake that you saw?
Speaker 4: Okay, so, I think mine is going to be similar
Speaker 4: for a lot of young American men who are of
Speaker 4: a certain age. It's got dragon Ball Z was the
Speaker 4: first for me on Twnami Classic, you know, weekday afternoons
Speaker 4: after school. I would run home and put it on.
Speaker 4: So that was, like, I think, really one of my
Speaker 4: first exposures to anime. And you know, I remember watching
Speaker 4: the series all the way through and couldn't wait to
Speaker 4: get home to see the next episode. It's like, oh,
Speaker 4: gohans still charging up this Okay? Cool? And then the
Speaker 4: first live action remake that I can think of, I
Speaker 4: think it might be that also, Dragon Ball Z. That
Speaker 4: that first live action movie they.
Speaker 2: Did, Cursed dragon ball I'm sorry, man, I'm sorry. Yeah,
Speaker 2: guessing that did not give you a great feeling around
Speaker 2: the nature of possibility. Of anime beautiful boy common how
Speaker 2: about you.
Speaker 3: You know it's funny I brings up Dragon Ball Z
Speaker 3: because I was on the opposite end of us spectrum tunami. Famously,
Speaker 3: if you made it home from school early enough, you
Speaker 3: could catch Sailor Moon. And if I was late if.
Speaker 4: School memories of Moon too.
Speaker 3: Yes, if the school bus was running late that day, though,
Speaker 3: I had to watch Dragon Ball Z, and I remember
Speaker 3: being pissed because I hated Dragon Ball Z and I
Speaker 3: loved Sailor Moon. And now as an adult, I have
Speaker 3: I have expanded my palette. I also have come to
Speaker 3: love Dragon Ball and dragon Ball Z. But Sailor Moon
Speaker 3: and Pokemon were probably my first experiences with anime.
Speaker 2: What's the first live action anime you have adaptation that
Speaker 2: you Yes?
Speaker 3: Okay, so I have seen the dragon Ball Z live
Speaker 3: action adaptation. It wasn't the first one that I saw.
Speaker 3: I think the first one that I saw was either
Speaker 3: it has to have either been the Death Note or
Speaker 3: the Sailor Moon live action adaptations, and they were around
Speaker 3: the same time, so I can't remember from Japan.
Speaker 1: From Japan and those are I have to say, we'll give.
Speaker 2: You hope, Yes, they will give you her an anime adaptation,
Speaker 2: and I think that's going to be a really interesting
Speaker 2: thing to talk about today because a lot of us
Speaker 2: did grow up. I am, you know, I slightly let's say,
Speaker 2: I'm slightly older than both of you, so my my
Speaker 2: how to watch anime was a little different. My family
Speaker 2: also did not have cable. I did have a VHS
Speaker 2: copy of A Kira, so that was definitely you know,
Speaker 2: I was blessed by being introduced into a classic, truly,
Speaker 2: the unbelievably sacred text and obviously blew my mind. I
Speaker 2: think the first live action anime adaptation that I saw
Speaker 2: out at least and remember really watching was a I
Speaker 2: really wanted to see Tony. They had made all these
Speaker 2: Tony adaptations. She is a beautiful, mysterious woman who every
Speaker 2: time she shows up mango crazy and people get killed.
Speaker 2: She was a school student who was you know, betrayed
Speaker 2: by her friends. It's a junge Eto classic and I'd
Speaker 2: read all the books and again, that will give you
Speaker 2: hope if you have a certain kind of taste, and
Speaker 2: I think that is what we need to get into next.
Speaker 2: So ian to you, what do you want from a
Speaker 2: great live action anime remake like what would make that
Speaker 2: work for you? Have you seen one before that kind
Speaker 2: of does capture the magic?
Speaker 1: What are you looking for in it?
Speaker 4: For me? I think above all is faithfulness to the
Speaker 4: source material. You know, there you can tweak things and
Speaker 4: update things and moderniz things, because I know a lot
Speaker 4: of certain animes are from you know, the nineties or
Speaker 4: early two thousands, so especially if you're going to make
Speaker 4: something in today's modern age, you know, of course you're
Speaker 4: going to make changes. But I think being faithful to
Speaker 4: the source material is first for me. And then you know,
Speaker 4: I think also you want to see some of these
Speaker 4: fantastical elements or powers or characters or settings brought to
Speaker 4: life in a real and compelling way. So I think,
Speaker 4: you know, not cheaping out on some of the special
Speaker 4: effects or the production design, you like, really putting money
Speaker 4: into it to make it look like it's real. So
Speaker 4: I think those are the kind of the two top
Speaker 4: tier things. And then obviously you want good acting. You
Speaker 4: want to hire people who are going to do good casting.
Speaker 4: So I think those are kind of like the three pillars,
Speaker 4: you know, putting enough money into the budget for production
Speaker 4: wise to make sure it looks as good as it
Speaker 4: can faithfulenss and the source material, and then you got
Speaker 4: to nail the casting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2: Common What did the live action anime that you saw
Speaker 2: and that you loved, What did they make you look
Speaker 2: for when you were kind of expanding out to other
Speaker 2: live action adaptations of these Japanese animed shows.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm I'm looking for a creative interpretation of the
Speaker 3: source material. Of course, I want it to be faithful
Speaker 3: to the source material, as Ian said, But I do
Speaker 3: think you know, when animation has animation of course as
Speaker 3: a medium that you can do a lot with that
Speaker 3: you can't do with the live action for sure. But
Speaker 3: how is the live action going to overcome that? And
Speaker 3: I hope that it does that in a way that
Speaker 3: is creative, that doesn't take me too much out of
Speaker 3: the experience of watching it, you know, and like we
Speaker 3: said that, you know, pay.
Speaker 5: Good for the visual effects.
Speaker 3: I also think we'll talk to we'll talk more in
Speaker 3: a little bit about where it kind of goes wrong.
Speaker 3: But that also creative interpretations of character design also, I
Speaker 3: think are going to be important as well. We have
Speaker 3: to say, like a lot of the anime characters are
Speaker 3: so some of their character designs are super unrealistic and
Speaker 3: very hard to pull off for a live action format.
Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, and also kind of touching on what
Speaker 2: you said earlier, Ian like, some of them are like
Speaker 2: racist and they play into racist character tropes and stuff.
Speaker 2: And so one of the anime adaptations, the rare good
Speaker 2: American adaptations that I know we will touch on and
Speaker 2: I'm going to just bring up here is one piece
Speaker 2: which did reimagine a lot of those really problematic things
Speaker 2: and kind of bring a new element in new aspect
Speaker 2: to it, which doesn't often happen. So something I'm going
Speaker 2: to bring up now before we talk about where some
Speaker 2: of these don't work is I think the biggest issue
Speaker 2: here is a storytelling challenge and a difference in production
Speaker 2: design culture, because, for example, I am a big lover
Speaker 2: of many Japanese anime adaptations, but if you watch them,
Speaker 2: for example, you know some of the really fun ones
Speaker 2: that I've written about over the years, like JoJo's Bizarre
Speaker 2: Adventure Diamond is Unbreakable. The wigs are crazy, the costumes
Speaker 2: are looking kind of cheap, but it captures the bizarreness
Speaker 2: of what you want from the story. It feels real,
Speaker 2: and so I think that for a long time through
Speaker 2: the zeros and the nineties, we were getting more of
Speaker 2: those Japanese style like crazy wig silly costumes, like a
Speaker 2: lot of the early Japanese Death Note movies fall into that,
Speaker 2: even though they are guys really great with incredible storytelling,
Speaker 2: so that for me, the production quality can be low
Speaker 2: if the creativity and feel of the comic is captured.
Speaker 2: But I will say we are entering a new era
Speaker 2: now because Netflix is not only running obviously, like the
Speaker 2: one piece of adaptation is pretty much seen so far
Speaker 2: as our best American anime adaptation, and I think that
Speaker 2: can be a great way to lead into guys, what
Speaker 2: are some of the worst, which we'll touch on next.
Speaker 2: But something that Netflix is doing is they are now
Speaker 2: adapting Korean web tunes mana manga, and they are and
Speaker 2: they're licensing incredible, high quality adaptations from Japan. So things
Speaker 2: like Alice in Borderline, that was Alice in Bordland. That's
Speaker 2: an incredible show, great production value, super scary, and that
Speaker 2: is an adaptation of a comic book of for manga,
Speaker 2: there is the Korean web series that was adapted into
Speaker 2: hell Bound, which is one of the scariest horror ca
Speaker 2: dramas that we've had for years, so we're in a
Speaker 2: new era of it. And I think this kind of
Speaker 2: idea of Dragonball Evolution and then you know Tony or
Speaker 2: the Nana Action nineties anime adaptation or Zero's those kind
Speaker 2: of have a corniness that to us is nostalgic. Same
Speaker 2: with Common I own some of the Saloon ones, but
Speaker 2: I do think we're now in an era where these
Speaker 2: could be truly becoming masterpieces and starting to get a
Speaker 2: little bit more of an understanding that like around the world,
Speaker 2: K drama, JA drama, a lot of them have always
Speaker 2: been drawing from comic books, you know.
Speaker 1: So so let's talk a little bit about some.
Speaker 2: Of the worst of the worst that we all know
Speaker 2: and despise and have talked about many times. Ian just
Speaker 2: list off a few of the anime adaptations from America
Speaker 2: that have not worked, and then we can talk about
Speaker 2: the reasons we think that is.
Speaker 4: Sure, Bill, we already touched on it. The Dragonball Evolution
Speaker 4: movie not great. Ghost in the Shell with scar Joe
Speaker 4: not great.
Speaker 2: She could even play a tree, guys, she could play anything.
Speaker 4: Believe in that Avatar the Last Airbender. Some might say,
Speaker 4: maybe that's not quite anime.
Speaker 2: But controversial because it's not technically an anime. But I
Speaker 2: do think it falls into all the exact same problems.
Speaker 1: So I think you believe it is.
Speaker 4: Both the movie and and the Netflix series have issues
Speaker 4: You Hockey Show Netflix adaptation, and that's and oh yes,
Speaker 4: that one was painful for me because you U Hockey
Speaker 4: Show is my favorite anime of all time and that.
Speaker 2: Is a that's a that's a Japanese adaptation too, right,
Speaker 2: It's still so still felt what did they miss?
Speaker 4: They condensed the plot so much into like four or
Speaker 4: five episodes, and they just didn't give it enough time
Speaker 4: to breathe because there's so many episodes in the like
Speaker 4: some of the arcs are really long, and they can
Speaker 4: they condensed it down to the point where they're cutting
Speaker 4: out huge chunks of the story, huge chunks of the
Speaker 4: character development, character moments. So it's like, if we're gonna
Speaker 4: do it that way, it's like almost not worth doing
Speaker 4: because I could just watch the original and get the
Speaker 4: full story, you know.
Speaker 2: Is it additive? I think that's a really great point.
Speaker 2: Common you know what, what was some of those real
Speaker 2: stinkers that made you think, oh, people shouldn't be doing this.
Speaker 3: I mean, of course, the very first one that I
Speaker 3: ever saw was that Dragon Ball Z the Evolution. But
Speaker 3: I'm going to take it all the way back to
Speaker 3: remember speed Racer. That's probably one of the very first
Speaker 3: bad live action American animal Well, I.
Speaker 2: Just need to say, guys, this is I want to
Speaker 2: warn comment of this. This is a controversial topic. It
Speaker 2: has over the years. It has garnered a cult following.
Speaker 2: But I will say I am definitely on the side
Speaker 2: of you. Is not my favorite Wachowski Brothers. It's not
Speaker 2: my favorite Sisters movie, and it is not something that
Speaker 2: I connect to in the way that so many do.
Speaker 1: But watch out common that could be.
Speaker 2: A sorry sorry, yeah, no no, But I think it's
Speaker 2: interesting because before we jump to an ad break quickly
Speaker 2: and then come back with some of the ones we love.
Speaker 2: I'm going to say I think one of the biggest
Speaker 2: issues there is a cultural misunderstanding of what the stories
Speaker 2: are about. It's not you know, obviously all of these
Speaker 2: have issues with whitewashing, right, and that's a lot of
Speaker 2: times is the biggest issue. Dragon Ball Evolution and stuff
Speaker 2: like that. Shell They often try to use this idea
Speaker 2: of internationalizing a cost by widening the cost.
Speaker 1: But also the.
Speaker 2: Reason Ghost in the Shell sucks when America makes it
Speaker 2: is because Ghost in the Shell is a very specific
Speaker 2: Japanese story about the way that technology becomes the center
Speaker 2: of your universe after you are essentially, you know, stonewalled
Speaker 2: out of the international global conflicts after World War Two,
Speaker 2: Like you can't make that if you won World War two.
Speaker 2: And it's just like this is the coolest step. So
Speaker 2: I think, really like there's everything can kind of be
Speaker 2: put back to that. But yeah, I'm really excited to
Speaker 2: come back and talk about some that we love. So
Speaker 2: let's go to an ad break and then we'll come
Speaker 2: back and I'll be asking mean Common about that fave
Speaker 2: anime adaptations. Yeah, we're back, Common, Why don't you guess started,
Speaker 2: what's your fave live action adaptation that you would recommend
Speaker 2: to somebody who maybe hasn't even watched a lot of anime.
Speaker 2: What's just a great movie? Yeah, or great TV show?
Speaker 2: So you know, going back to Ian we talked about
Speaker 2: it before. Netflix is kind of leading the pack here
Speaker 2: they in terms of production design. Now because of that
Speaker 2: production design, I think that again we only see like
Speaker 2: maybe six eight episodes tops usually of a series, but
Speaker 2: one that I really loved on Netflix, and I'm really
Speaker 2: glad that we have the opportunity to talk about this.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 3: It's me to Parasite, and I'm not sure if you
Speaker 3: watched the Japanese anime. This is a Korean live action,
Speaker 3: not a remake, but it's actually a continuation of the story,
Speaker 3: which I find even cooler about about it. And I
Speaker 3: think that's another area where these remakes or whatever can
Speaker 3: do better is maybe just continuing the story. So this
Speaker 3: is exactly this is what happens in the Parasite the
Speaker 3: Gray story. But if it happened, well, what did happen
Speaker 3: in Korea? And so the Parasite series, it's an anime
Speaker 3: where there's like this alien invasion that takes over people's brains.
Speaker 3: There's this one guy who gets the parasite that doesn't
Speaker 3: go to his brain successfully, it goes to his hand
Speaker 3: and it talks to him and it becomes like a companion.
Speaker 3: Well there's somebody else in Korea. The same thing has
Speaker 3: happened in Seoul, Korea, and so it's very I'm not
Speaker 3: going to spoil anything, but you know, because this two
Speaker 3: stories continued, they have a way that they could possibly
Speaker 3: converge in the future. So I think it's really cool.
Speaker 3: This is a really cool example of live action anime
Speaker 3: going well, because you've got the anime, which is really great,
Speaker 3: and then you've got the live action which is really great,
Speaker 3: and then they kind of compliment each other and they
Speaker 3: could possibly end up continuing the story together.
Speaker 5: So nice.
Speaker 1: That's really fun.
Speaker 2: Ian, what's one that you've watched that's blown you away
Speaker 2: and made you think, hey, maybe there's more of these
Speaker 2: that are worth kind of telling.
Speaker 4: So this one's gonna be. It's a more recent example,
Speaker 4: and I think it's for someone who maybe is not
Speaker 4: super into anime or isn't super well versed. I think
Speaker 4: this is a good like entry point, like low bar
Speaker 4: of entry, really easy way to get into it. Detective Pikachu,
Speaker 4: I think was very successful and they did a very
Speaker 4: good job. You know, obviously, Ryan Reynolds is very charismatic
Speaker 4: and everybody loves him. But I also think the way
Speaker 4: they designed all the Pokemon and integrated them in the
Speaker 4: integrated them into, you know, the real world, and just
Speaker 4: the embodiment of the kinds of stories that Pokemon games
Speaker 4: and even the animated series try to tell. I think
Speaker 4: that it was just a very successful adaptation. It's obviously
Speaker 4: geared towards kids, but it's as an adult. I still
Speaker 4: really enjoyed it.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was three times.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've watched it multiple times, and I think they
Speaker 4: just did a really good job of embodying kind of
Speaker 4: the essence of Pokemon. They nailed the character designs. I
Speaker 4: feel like it was faithful to what we all know
Speaker 4: and understand Pokemon to be. And I think they nailed
Speaker 4: the casting. So I think that was just a great
Speaker 4: example of and they didn't try to do too much.
Speaker 4: It's a pretty simple story, yeah, and they nailed it.
Speaker 4: So I think that's a great example of one that
Speaker 4: did work. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I would also say, so I'm going to basically just
Speaker 2: like be a nerd and be like, did you know
Speaker 2: this was.
Speaker 1: Based on a manger or you know, because there's so
Speaker 1: many great recommendations.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean, Aaron and Aboo both popping some
Speaker 2: really good ones in here. Elite a Battle Angel, there
Speaker 2: was an unbeloved Anime OVA adaptation, and for a lot
Speaker 2: of people, the Robert Rodriguez version also very interestingly a
Speaker 2: version that adapted the comic very faithfully because the comic
Speaker 2: is actually set in an international kind of slum land
Speaker 2: underneath a sky city. So there they did a really
Speaker 2: interesting job of who they cast and who they didn't cast.
Speaker 2: I am not the hugest fan of the movie, but
Speaker 2: it is so beloved and I love that people love it.
Speaker 2: That's a great one. I love Edge of Tomorrow. We
Speaker 2: will be getting a new will be So it's based
Speaker 2: on a light novel that was turned into a manga
Speaker 2: at some point was adapt an anime and now there is Yeah,
Speaker 2: there is Kill. It was originally called Kill. I think
Speaker 2: it's Kill Die Repeat, and that is actually now being
Speaker 2: adapted as in another manga which looks gorgeous.
Speaker 1: All you Need is Kill, Thank you Yes, And that
Speaker 1: is really great.
Speaker 2: One of my favorites that I really adore that I
Speaker 2: always recommend to people is Battle Reale, iconic Japanese movie
Speaker 2: by Kiinjin Kinji Fukusawa, one of my favorite directors, was
Speaker 2: a huge influence on me. It came out in two
Speaker 2: thousand based on a manga that was based on a book,
Speaker 2: and there is anime episodes about Orel too that you
Speaker 2: can watch, and basically it's about kids who are put
Speaker 2: on an island and have to fight each other to
Speaker 2: solve Japan's issues with overpopulation and TEENAGEU and juvenile teenage culture.
Speaker 2: It's very cool, very dystopian, extremely influential and just beautifully shot.
Speaker 2: Still one of my old time favorite movies. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean there's so many guys. Lady Snowblood, do you
Speaker 2: love that movie?
Speaker 1: Guess What? Based on a comic.
Speaker 2: Old Boy based on a manga, and that manger of
Speaker 2: Old Boy is just unbelievable. It's so beautiful attack on
Speaker 2: Titan live action movie. I know loads of people who
Speaker 2: really really enjoyed it. It's again, it's a bit more
Speaker 2: of that old school, a little bit crazy kind of looking.
Speaker 2: But yeah, there are so many I'm so excited for this. Guys,
Speaker 2: are there any anime that you're watching right now, can
Speaker 2: be old or new that you would just love to recommend.
Speaker 1: People before we wrap up?
Speaker 2: Hmm, Cormon could be a good time for a little
Speaker 2: Nana love, because you did spark off a lot of
Speaker 2: people in the chat with you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was trying to think if there was anything
Speaker 3: other than Nana, But yeah, I definitely have been going
Speaker 3: back to watch Nana. I have always enjoyed the aesthetic
Speaker 3: of Nana as a Favian West with lover. But now
Speaker 3: that it is in its twentieth anniversary, I have gone
Speaker 3: back and started watching the anime on Hulu. I believe
Speaker 3: you can stream it, so check it out.
Speaker 1: Yeah nice, Yeah, it's great. It's about great rosy ways.
Speaker 3: Girls who meet each other on the train and one
Speaker 3: is punk rock and one is like all kind of
Speaker 3: like Lolita, kind of like dainty style, and they're both
Speaker 3: named Nana, so.
Speaker 1: They are and we love them Ian, how about you.
Speaker 4: I'm currently in the middle of my annual you hockey
Speaker 4: show Rewatch. I know I already mentioned it earlier, but
Speaker 4: it is. It is my favorite, and I'm just in
Speaker 4: the middle of the rewatch right now. I'm the chapter
Speaker 4: Black Saga, so I'm loving it and yeah, it's I
Speaker 4: just wish they could nail that in live action, but
Speaker 4: I understand why it's difficult because some of some of
Speaker 4: the things we mentioned, like some of the character designs
Speaker 4: are insane, and it's like, I don't know how you
Speaker 4: do that in live action.
Speaker 1: Yeah, without it looking exactly crazy. So yeah, one day
Speaker 1: we'll get there. I love that one we will.
Speaker 2: Aboo is sad that nobody mentioned my hero Academia. The
Speaker 2: final season obviously huge, huge release going on right now.
Speaker 1: I am currently.
Speaker 2: Doing a lot of work on a lot of best
Speaker 2: of most anticipated lists, so I have been watching really
Speaker 2: great animated came out this year, like Sakamoto Days and
Speaker 2: The Apocryphy Diaries, which I love. Can't wait for the
Speaker 2: new season of that delicious in Dungeon. Guess what, guys,
Speaker 2: you don't even I love Crunchy Role. I have a
Speaker 2: Crunchy Roll account and yes, Aaron I too want to
Speaker 2: do in Dungeon live action show. I also want a
Speaker 2: Sakamoto Days live action show that is a cheap jay drama. Guys,
Speaker 2: you can make that so easily in a seven eleven set.
Speaker 3: I just thought of a really good one that they
Speaker 3: have done, which is the Diary of a house Husband
Speaker 3: or Life of a house I don't know why that
Speaker 3: came to me in the very last minute, but check
Speaker 3: that out, you know.
Speaker 2: Super fun Vignette manga an anime series about execuser who
Speaker 2: is now a house husband and the kind of shenanigans
Speaker 2: he gets up.
Speaker 1: To a stage. It's super fun series where they have
Speaker 1: live action is really good. Yeah, and it's even easy
Speaker 1: to watch on YouTube.
Speaker 2: Listeners, please let us know in the discord what anime
Speaker 2: adaptations you want to find in your stocking this year
Speaker 2: and what your faves are.
Speaker 1: So yes, join us.
Speaker 2: Thank you Carmen and Ian for going through the perils
Speaker 2: of doing live action adaptations of anime. And up next
Speaker 2: my interview with one of my favorite authors, Stephen Graham Jones. Steven,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for joining us on Extra Vision
Speaker 2: this morning.
Speaker 1: I appreciate you being here.
Speaker 5: Grilled to be here, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm a huge, huge fan of your work and
Speaker 2: we've gotten to talk before at places like Noticed about
Speaker 2: your love of comics, and could you talk a little
Speaker 2: bit about how you went from being somebody who loved
Speaker 2: reading and loved writing and loved comics to somebody who
Speaker 2: actually creates all of those things and is also a teacher.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I never planned to be a writer. I was just
Speaker 7: going to be a farmer and drive tractor. So it's
Speaker 7: really completely random, and I ended up doing all this
Speaker 7: stuff I'm doing. It still feels still feels weird, like
Speaker 7: like I fell asleep and this is all a dream,
Speaker 7: you know, And I still feel like I should be
Speaker 7: just like I should be driving tractor.
Speaker 5: But really what driving tractor.
Speaker 7: Was for me was just being on attractor for sixteen
Speaker 7: hours and telling lies and having fun. And that's really
Speaker 7: what I'm doing still, you know. So it's just the
Speaker 7: rose I'm flowing across the page these days.
Speaker 5: But as for how I.
Speaker 7: Went, how I made that transition, it's just a series
Speaker 7: of ridiculous, stupid accidents, you know. It's nothing intentional on
Speaker 7: my part.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's always the way I think that people don't
Speaker 2: realize is so much of being somebody who tells stories
Speaker 2: and gets to be creative is luck to some points,
Speaker 2: because it's about how do you fall into it?
Speaker 1: Do you meet?
Speaker 2: I am a huge fan of all of your writing,
Speaker 2: but I would love to know a little bit about
Speaker 2: kind of when in your process it felt like horror
Speaker 2: and genre was really going to be the space that
Speaker 2: you were kind of most interested in exploring.
Speaker 7: When I went to grad school from undergrad, I didn't
Speaker 7: know what grad school was. My professors had explained it
Speaker 7: to me, and I finally decided, Okay, I'll go to
Speaker 7: grad school if I want me to go so bad.
Speaker 7: But I may have promised myself that I will only
Speaker 7: go if I'm there in ninja mode, like I want
Speaker 7: to sneak in and steal all the craft I can
Speaker 7: and smuggle it back out to Western fantasy, horror, science fiction,
Speaker 7: all the genre stuff that that I loved. Then I
Speaker 7: got into grad school, you know, master's and PhD, and
Speaker 7: of course I fell in love with all the stuff
Speaker 7: they were teaching me there, you know. And so I
Speaker 7: feel like I I didn't lose my way. I don't
Speaker 7: think you ever really, I don't think you ever really
Speaker 7: lose your way as a writer. I just went down
Speaker 7: some different roads for a while, you know.
Speaker 5: And my my.
Speaker 7: Very first the first novel I wrote, I wrote it
Speaker 7: in ninety let's see, I wrote it ninety eight, came
Speaker 7: out in two thousand, and it's not I mean, I
Speaker 7: guess it gets like by default considered literary, but it's
Speaker 7: really just like a big cartoon, you know.
Speaker 5: It's got all these.
Speaker 7: These it's just it's it's not remotely adhering to like
Speaker 7: the tenets of realism anyways.
Speaker 5: And but it's not it's.
Speaker 7: Not horror either, and it's like and it's not staying
Speaker 7: within a single lane of genre. But after I wrote
Speaker 7: that novel, I like had this like wake up moment,
Speaker 7: and I realized, oh wait, I'm al was supposed to
Speaker 7: be in ninja mode all these years. I'm supposed to
Speaker 7: be doing and genre stuff. And so the next novel,
Speaker 7: the next novel I wrote right after finishing The fast
Speaker 7: Red Road, I wrote this in ninety nine, was the
Speaker 7: novel that would become Demon Theory, my first horror novel.
Speaker 7: It wouldn't come out, it wouldn't come out into six,
Speaker 7: but it was the second novel I ever wrote. Then
Speaker 7: the third novel I ever wrote, no Rest for the Wicked,
Speaker 7: was a vampire novel. The fourth novel was a werewolf novel.
Speaker 7: What was it called blood Lines? I think it was
Speaker 7: called Bloodlines. And so the first thing I mean of
Speaker 7: the first like four novels I wrote, three of them
Speaker 7: were horror, you know. Two of them weren't good enough
Speaker 7: to ever get published, I don't think, but one of
Speaker 7: them did finally fund the bookshelf, but yes. And then
Speaker 7: the next novel I did after The fast Red Road
Speaker 7: would be probably All the Beautiful Centers, which is a thriller.
Speaker 7: So it's still genre, but it's not science fiction and
Speaker 7: fantasy horror. It's adhering to you know, crime, thriller, that
Speaker 7: kind of stuff. Then the next one has a serial
Speaker 7: killer book, The Bird Is Gone, which is also an
Speaker 7: alternate history book. And then the next one, Bleeding to
Speaker 7: Me is not horror, but it's got a lot of
Speaker 7: horror in it, a lot of horror story what I
Speaker 7: consider horror stories. The first story in the collection it's
Speaker 7: called Halloween. And and then then demon Theory came out,
Speaker 7: and I'm then, well, you know what happened was for
Speaker 7: the first like probably three books I did, I do
Speaker 7: book events and like book clubs, bookstores, universities, just auditoriums
Speaker 7: with people, and the questions I kept getting they kind
Speaker 7: of whispered to me that people were using these books
Speaker 7: as lenses to focus upon a culture or a set
Speaker 7: of issues. They were they were they were asking me
Speaker 7: indian questions like oh, well, you know, what do you
Speaker 7: think about politics of identity, representation, mascots, all this stuff.
Speaker 7: And and I don't like my books to do these
Speaker 7: like that. I mean, if people want to read it
Speaker 7: like that, that's great, but they don't, they don't talk
Speaker 7: to me about it.
Speaker 1: That's the book club and yeah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and I'm and and and I thought, well, you
Speaker 7: know this sucks. This is not what I got in
Speaker 7: this game for. So what I did was, I said,
Speaker 7: I'm going to run off into the horror fields and
Speaker 7: play in those fields, and y'all can follow me with
Speaker 7: those questions if you want and see if they're still pertinent.
Speaker 5: And so I did that. I ran off.
Speaker 7: I was writing slashers, zombies, werewolves, everything, having a blast.
Speaker 7: But I was also I still have the impulses to
Speaker 7: do the weird stuff that I don't know what you
Speaker 7: call it. I guess it gets called literary. But and
Speaker 7: so I was like two writers for about a decade
Speaker 7: on two different tracks, and that was hard to maintain,
Speaker 7: like just artistically.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 7: And then in twenty sixteen, I was able to cobble
Speaker 7: together randomly Mongrels, my werewolf novel, and Mongrels has a
Speaker 7: delivery system that is in keeping with like the literary
Speaker 7: side or track of the two writers I was being,
Speaker 7: whereas it was using the creatures from the horror that
Speaker 7: I love. And so I feel with Mongrels, I was
Speaker 7: able to like sew myself back together into a single writer.
Speaker 7: And I've been a single writer since then.
Speaker 2: It's been a nice does it feel like as you
Speaker 2: know Stephen Graham Jones post twenty twenty, when people are
Speaker 2: discovering you through the Any Good Indians and you know
Speaker 2: I was a teenage slasher and obviously the Jay Daniels
Speaker 2: books and stuff. What does it feel like to now
Speaker 2: have them going back and reading, you know, Night of
Speaker 2: the Mannequins and the smaller stuff that's being republished now.
Speaker 7: Oh, I mean it's it's hopefully. I mean, I guess
Speaker 7: it's scary number one, because I wonder, I mean, I
Speaker 7: guess I wonder two things. I wonder did I mess
Speaker 7: up in some of those books? But what I really
Speaker 7: wonder is have I lost the muscles I used to
Speaker 7: have in those books, you know, like like like Long
Speaker 7: Trial and Known Dagatti or Not for Nothing or Flashboy.
Speaker 7: I don't have those muscles anymore, I don't think, And
Speaker 7: I wish I did along for being able to write
Speaker 7: like that, Like I'll never write The Birds Gone again.
Speaker 7: I'll never write anything close to the Bird Is Gone.
Speaker 7: And I wish I could. I had a different way
Speaker 7: of moving from sentence to sentence back then. I had
Speaker 7: a different way of processing through a story, and I
Speaker 7: missed that so intensely. And I mean that's part of
Speaker 7: being a writer. You change every time you put pen
Speaker 7: to page. You're a different writer. And so it's scary
Speaker 7: to me that people go back and they say, oh,
Speaker 7: he used to be able to do this, and now
Speaker 7: you can't do that.
Speaker 1: You know, how dare they? Isn't that the scary thing?
Speaker 2: You're like, I've been putting out this body of work
Speaker 2: for ten years, how dare you go back and read it.
Speaker 1: And compare it? What do you mean?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 7: But you know, but also I would I wouldn't trade
Speaker 7: like for from two thousand until yeah, maybe twenty sixteen
Speaker 7: or twenty twenty, I wasn't getting a lot of critical tension,
Speaker 7: not not a big audience, any of that. At the time.
Speaker 7: I mean, I wanted worse than anything to have a
Speaker 7: hit because I wanted to pay bills, you know. But
Speaker 7: from the vantage point i'm at now, I think that
Speaker 7: that was.
Speaker 5: My education, my real education. Yeah.
Speaker 7: I went through grad school, I went through a lot
Speaker 7: of writing programs. I've done a lot of.
Speaker 5: You know, a lot of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 7: But my real education was writing these books and for
Speaker 7: a small audience or no audience, and just figuring figuring
Speaker 7: out what I could do on the page and what
Speaker 7: I couldn't do and who I was, and that has
Speaker 7: allowed me to I feel I have a really like
Speaker 7: stable foundation for all the stuff I'm doing now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely you can see that from like a mapping
Speaker 2: the interior to like which they just i know, republished
Speaker 2: in a really nice copy to you know, I was
Speaker 2: a teenage slasher, Like you can draw those lines very
Speaker 2: simply between like the themes and the way you're going.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I definitely it's a surreal experience, even as
Speaker 2: me as a journalist or someone who writes comics, to
Speaker 2: go back and read something I wrote four years ago,
Speaker 2: let alone you know ten you are. You are also
Speaker 2: a big comic book lover, and I just love to
Speaker 2: hear you talk about your favorite comics. So just quickly,
Speaker 2: before you jump into anything else, what's the first comic
Speaker 2: you teach when you start teaching comics.
Speaker 7: When I'm doing a big lecture course, and it's not
Speaker 7: just horror comics, it's not just superhero comics. It's like
Speaker 7: all it's like all comics for people who don't know comics,
Speaker 7: you know. So I've got one hundred and fifty people
Speaker 7: in the classroom. The place I always start is Jim
Speaker 7: Peter's Secret Wars from nineteen eighty four, because I feel
Speaker 7: like that's the snowball that crashed onto the world, and
Speaker 7: that that's the snowball that includes like the Golden Age Superman,
Speaker 7: Batman stuff, the Silver Age Flash and ec comics. It
Speaker 7: includes everything. And I feel like if you read Secret
Speaker 7: Wars the right way, you can understand how the comic
Speaker 7: book works, how the page works, how the panel works,
Speaker 7: how gutters work, how balloons work. You can learn all
Speaker 7: that stuff because they were really competent, but it's also
Speaker 7: really simple. It's not like it's not like Jeff Lamia
Speaker 7: or ramv doing really sophisticated, high level stuff that it's
Speaker 7: going to be hard for a beginner to access, you know.
Speaker 7: And yeah, so I love starting at Secret Wars. And
Speaker 7: that was also the first comic So I'm just trying
Speaker 7: to I'm really trying. I'm really trying to lead them
Speaker 7: back to this.
Speaker 2: Experience, which isn't that what we can do as comic
Speaker 2: book glovers.
Speaker 1: Well, I was going to say, would you like.
Speaker 2: To recommend any things, any books or authors that you
Speaker 2: think people should check out this holiday season?
Speaker 7: Yeah, you know, I guess talking comic books. Daniel krause
Speaker 7: is Athadonesia. I thought that was a really brilliant novel,
Speaker 7: such a such a like a novel concept and novel
Speaker 7: in the sense of new, but novel in the sense
Speaker 7: of like it feels like a novel, you know. And
Speaker 7: and and the art by Danny is just that just
Speaker 7: blows me away. Her line work and the punctuations of
Speaker 7: colors is incredible.
Speaker 5: Are just so powerful.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite is right, yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 7: And you know, Daniel Krausse, He's just such a good
Speaker 7: writer period, whether comic books or novels or nonfiction as well.
Speaker 7: But and I guess I would also recommend, if I'm
Speaker 7: just going novels, I guess a couple of books from
Speaker 7: twenty five maybe Victorian Psycho by Virginia. The book was
Speaker 7: it was so so over the top and fun, just
Speaker 7: blood on every wall. You know, you can't you can't
Speaker 7: take a step in that book without track of blood somewhere.
Speaker 7: And it just came out in October. Adam Johnson's The Wayfinder.
Speaker 7: It's a big old novel about South Pacific islanders back
Speaker 7: you know, eight hundred years ago or nine hundred years
Speaker 7: ago something like that, and it's I mean, it's got
Speaker 7: a little bit of a Game of Thrones. It feels
Speaker 7: it really tell you truth. You can map space opera
Speaker 7: under the wayfinder and it fits really pretty well. But
Speaker 7: it's setting like this, I don't know, five hundred miles
Speaker 7: of islands or something. I was really impressed with that
Speaker 7: note that.
Speaker 2: Was a big one. What are you working on right now?
Speaker 2: That's making you excited?
Speaker 7: I just know maybe two days ago finished the story.
Speaker 7: I thought it was going to be I told myself,
Speaker 7: let's write out a thirty five hundred word story, and
Speaker 7: now it's like eleven thousand words, which makes it so
Speaker 7: much more difficult to publish, you know. But right now
Speaker 7: I'm calling it the Vampire of Parking and it's actually
Speaker 7: not it's actually not a horror story. But which is
Speaker 7: It's my first story in a while that's not horror, well,
Speaker 7: my first like long story.
Speaker 5: This is not horror. I do a lot of flash fiction, Like.
Speaker 7: In the past, like five weeks, I bet I've written
Speaker 7: twelve fifteen flash fiction stories.
Speaker 5: I just love flash fiction. I'll never be done with
Speaker 5: flash fiction. It'll never be done with me, I don't think.
Speaker 5: But and so that stuff is all over.
Speaker 7: Sometimes it's horror, science fiction, literary, comedy, whatever.
Speaker 2: Short story collection coming at some point, flash fiction collection.
Speaker 7: I mean, I think tomorrow on December second, which is
Speaker 7: probably the past for one of this posts. My States
Speaker 7: of Grace is coming out from Open Road, which which
Speaker 7: is a reissue of my flash fiction. It was originally
Speaker 7: fifty flash fiction pieces. I want to say now it
Speaker 7: might be seventy because they let me sneak some stuff in.
Speaker 1: It's really cool.
Speaker 2: It doesn't feel nice as it is the want of
Speaker 2: the writer to constantly put things on the page.
Speaker 1: How does it feel to be in a position.
Speaker 2: Where now when you're putting those things on the page
Speaker 2: and getting the ideas out, there's someone knocking at your
Speaker 2: door going like, hey, can we publish that?
Speaker 1: Like does that always feel good? Or some of that?
Speaker 2: Are you like, let me keep it in the back pocket.
Speaker 7: No, No, it does feel good. But also, I mean
Speaker 7: there's still rejection. People will solicit stuff. They'll say, you know, okay,
Speaker 7: we want you to write a story for this theme,
Speaker 7: this issue whatever, And I'll write a story and they'll
Speaker 7: and I'll send it to them and they'll say.
Speaker 2: Well, and we want you to do it, but not
Speaker 2: the one you wrote.
Speaker 7: Yeah, exactly, exactly. So the rejection never stops. But I
Speaker 7: think that's good too. If I stop getting rejected, then
Speaker 7: I'll get nervous.
Speaker 2: We need to feel like it's real. Okay, last question,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for joining me. Is you had
Speaker 2: the incredible Earth Divers You've been at Marvel and stuff.
Speaker 2: Is there a character or a story in the sequential
Speaker 2: kind of storytelling comic book space that you are still
Speaker 2: dying to tell, whether it's your own or someone else's.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 7: There, I've got so many comic book ideas, the reason
Speaker 7: and I have a lot of houses like knocking on
Speaker 7: my door saying, hey, let's do a comic book, But
Speaker 7: I haven't jumped in with any of them yet because
Speaker 7: comic books take so much time. To me, they take
Speaker 7: more time than than novels. Because yeah, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 7: you can write a script in a few days, that's
Speaker 7: not an issue. But that that's not where it ends.
Speaker 7: You know, there's there's there's sketches, there's pencils, there's inks,
Speaker 7: there's colors, there's letters, and there's adjustments. There's so many adjustments.
Speaker 1: I just.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it's like and with the trick
Speaker 6: with writing a monthly title, as you know is you've
Speaker 6: always got your finger in like five different issues at
Speaker 6: different stages, and it's hard to keep them separate. And
Speaker 6: it's it's like comic books will own your life if
Speaker 6: you let them. And that's good, I think. But at
Speaker 6: the same time, as.
Speaker 7: You're saying, I am a professor and I do write
Speaker 7: a lot of novels, and so can I always take
Speaker 7: on a third this is the question, and sometimes I can.
Speaker 5: Yes, Maybe we.
Speaker 2: Can look forward to more SGG comics in the future.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, oh definitely. I Actually.
Speaker 7: I've actually said maybe to one outfit for a character
Speaker 7: that I couldn't say no to. You know, I can't
Speaker 7: announce it yet, but it's a character that I thought
Speaker 7: I would.
Speaker 1: Get to tell you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2: I just I just got mine from DC for the
Speaker 2: first time, so I totally get that.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: I can't wait to see what that is and whenever
Speaker 2: it's announced. Come back on and talk to us again.
Speaker 2: It was really great to speak to you.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 5: Thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Special thanks to Stephen for chatting with me, and thank
Speaker 2: you to Ian and Carmon for popping on talk about
Speaker 2: Some Good add Some Bad live action anime adaptations. Xtra
Speaker 2: Vision is hosted by Jasonteps Young and Rosie Night and
Speaker 2: is a production of iHeart Podcast. Our executive producers are
Speaker 2: Joel Monique and Aaron Kaufman.
Speaker 1: Our supervising producer is Abusa part.
Speaker 2: Our producer are Common, Laurent Dean Jonathan and Fay Wack.
Speaker 2: A theme song is by Brian Vasquez, with alternate theme
Speaker 2: songs by Aaron Kaufman. Special thanks to Soul Rubin, Chris Lord,
Speaker 2: Kenny Goodman and Heidi our discord moderator.