Speaker 1: Warning, this bonus episode of x ray Vision candad spoilers
Speaker 1: with Thor, Love and Thunder. Don't listen to it unless
Speaker 1: you have seen that movie. By Hello, my name is
Speaker 1: Jasically Stems and welcome Bax to our Vision the Cricket podcast,
Speaker 1: where we dive deep into your favorite shows, movies, comics
Speaker 1: and pop culture. In this bonus episode, we're gonna answer
Speaker 1: some questions that you sent us about the Thor Loven
Speaker 1: Thunder and then we will clear the lane so that
Speaker 1: comics legend Thor writer Thor God of Thunder writer major
Speaker 1: influence on Thor, Love and Thunder person Jason Aaron can
Speaker 1: be interviewed by us and you can hear him talk
Speaker 1: about just how he created one of the great comic
Speaker 1: arcs of our time. Truly.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: Next up questions. First question from Kate, what's Aersham up
Speaker 1: to Rosie? What's the Rishima?
Speaker 2: Well, this is going back to my favorite topic, of course,
Speaker 2: eternals rishim.
Speaker 1: Of course, the celestial who was kind of pulling the strings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, see in some judgment at the end, he's like,
Speaker 2: come on, I'm just judging you for killing another birthing celestial.
Speaker 2: You know, I like the casual nature of this question, like,
Speaker 2: what's he up to? What's that casual got up to? Well,
Speaker 2: we saw a couple of celestials in thor Love and Thunder,
Speaker 2: which is what I'm sure inspired this question. They were
Speaker 2: peering through Omnipiut and city. We saw a statue of
Speaker 2: Arasham in the Hall of Eternity which got smashed. I
Speaker 2: would assume Arisham is somewhere planning on how to He's
Speaker 2: watching Earth, seeing if Earth is worthy of existing, and
Speaker 2: planning his judgment whatever that may be. And I think,
Speaker 2: like you, Yeah, you brought up something really good in
Speaker 2: the in the our Lost episode author Love and Thunder
Speaker 2: episode about how the celestials could become part of like
Speaker 2: Zeus's god war against the superheroes. So I think there's
Speaker 2: many things that he's cooking up.
Speaker 1: Well, a couple of things I wonder visa v Eirishim
Speaker 1: and Celestials. One, we were introduced to the concept during
Speaker 1: the previous phases of the MCU that the Infinity Stones
Speaker 1: were created basically as a weapon in celestials, So I
Speaker 1: wonder how the celestials feel or have they talked about
Speaker 1: the fact that nothing can hold them in check? Anymore
Speaker 1: like that massive I'm sure will come up with something else,
Speaker 1: but that massive weapon that worked once upon time is
Speaker 1: just like off the table for them, and I wonder
Speaker 1: if they've thought about it. And then two, you know,
Speaker 1: you mentioned your your favorite movie, The Eternals is growing
Speaker 1: on me as well. Actually, but the end of that movie,
Speaker 1: we saw that there is there ended up being a
Speaker 1: huge celestial carcass in the Pacific Ocean, and we expect
Speaker 1: at some point when they put the Avengers back together,
Speaker 1: that that will be the headquarters of the Avengers. But
Speaker 1: I wonder, like, is it a tourist attraction? Like what's
Speaker 1: going with the carcass right now?
Speaker 2: Is anyone has anyone noticed it? Is it something?
Speaker 1: Is it being worshiped? Is it being ignored?
Speaker 2: Has the government tried to move it? I think we
Speaker 2: would all like to know about the cool marblized celestial. Also, like,
Speaker 2: something I really want to know is when the Avengers
Speaker 2: inevitably do move in there, make it the headquarters? How
Speaker 2: arish I'm going to be feeling about that. I feel
Speaker 2: like it's gonna be mad, disrespectful. It was not only
Speaker 2: did you kill this celestial, but now you're just living
Speaker 2: in its body.
Speaker 1: I know. Next question, Spotty Floppy asks can we expect
Speaker 1: Thorn Loki to reunite again? Considering how different their stories are? Well,
Speaker 1: in the comics, Loki has died at times so many
Speaker 1: poet on the board many many times and replaced with
Speaker 1: younger versions of himself or different versions like the versions
Speaker 1: of himself that seem to suggest and set up the
Speaker 1: fact that we can get a Loki, and potentially not
Speaker 1: a Loki played by Tom Hiddleston again in the future,
Speaker 1: like's that's absolutely on the table, that we either get
Speaker 1: a young Loki or a female Loki. That can happen.
Speaker 1: I think that that can definitely happen. What do you think?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so too, And I think that this
Speaker 2: is one of the most asked questions because that relationship
Speaker 2: means so much to people in the MCU and in
Speaker 2: the comics, but especially in the MCU. So I definitely think.
Speaker 2: I think we'll get at least one more Hemsworth Hiddleston reunion,
Speaker 2: even if it's just like fleeting like on the Byfrost
Speaker 2: or something. But I also think you're right, like Kid
Speaker 2: Loki in the event in Young Avengers, very likely we
Speaker 2: already met him in the series spoiler a lot, and
Speaker 2: I definitely think Sophia Dimontino's version of Loki is also
Speaker 2: probably going to continue in the MCU too. So yeah,
Speaker 2: at some point, you know, could see Jane Foster Mighty
Speaker 2: Thor and Sophia di Martino Loki. You never know that,
Speaker 2: you know, there's there's some there's some Thor reuniting that
Speaker 2: could happen in different ways.
Speaker 1: That would be extremely exciting. KGP asks what happens next
Speaker 1: with Thor. Gosh, my guess is if they're going secret
Speaker 1: Wars that it's going to be some It's going to
Speaker 1: be a big secret Wars thing, I think.
Speaker 2: So, Like we've been talking about this a lot where
Speaker 2: basically this phase of the MCU, though it hasn't necessarily
Speaker 2: always been clear directly where it's going or what connects it,
Speaker 2: the one thing that it has had is pretty much
Speaker 2: ninety of the shows have all movies. Shanchi introduced Tarlow
Speaker 2: Secret Society, where they have a special way of fighting
Speaker 2: that can harness supernatural stuff. Miss Marvel introduce the Gnaw
Speaker 2: and the clandestine secret world that is on Earth in comics.
Speaker 2: As me and Jason talked about a lot Secret Wars
Speaker 2: includes a thing battle worlds where all these dimensions come
Speaker 2: together on one Earth. It seems like they're establishing something
Speaker 2: like that, And I think Omnipotent City is another example
Speaker 2: of a secret society like Wakanda, like Carmouitage that could
Speaker 2: become a part of this global battle in Secret Wars.
Speaker 2: But you also did mention something that I think a
Speaker 2: lot of people are thinking after the Stinger in Thor
Speaker 2: Love and Thunder, which was War of the Realms as
Speaker 2: a potential.
Speaker 1: So in War of the Realms, well, who would they gosh,
Speaker 1: who would they get to be the bad guy?
Speaker 2: I wonder if they just replace Malaketh unless they want
Speaker 2: to bring him back.
Speaker 1: So in War of the Realms in the comics, which
Speaker 1: is a great great crossover, super fun crossover, in which Malachith,
Speaker 1: you know, King of the Dark Elves, enters into an
Speaker 1: alliance with rocks On Evil the oil Company, the Evil
Speaker 1: Oil Company, to help conquer some of the other realms
Speaker 1: in return for access to rox On to like unimpeded
Speaker 1: mining and resource extraction from various.
Speaker 2: Absolutely shocking no one. It basically destroys every realm that's
Speaker 2: essentially like that's the kind of and then you end
Speaker 2: up in a situation where Midguard or Earth is the
Speaker 2: only realm. I think it would actually be very easy.
Speaker 2: I mean, we did see rocks On in like a
Speaker 2: funny Walmart reimagining like Easter Egg in Loki. But I
Speaker 2: do think it'll be really easy to just have Hercules
Speaker 2: instead of being instead of Malacheth being the puppet master
Speaker 2: of that where he just wants to control every realm.
Speaker 2: He wants people to bow down to him, and he
Speaker 2: will put in an alliance with who never to do so.
Speaker 2: And that would also be a reason why Hercules could
Speaker 2: turn his back on his father and team up with
Speaker 2: the Rose as we know he's more than likely gonna do.
Speaker 2: Here's my pitch, So Kevin listening.
Speaker 1: Are you listening? So? I love the Hercules angle. I
Speaker 1: think Hercules we understand that he's got to break good
Speaker 1: at some point, and what we know about Hercule may
Speaker 1: might change it up. But what we know about Hercules
Speaker 1: from the comics is super super strong, really great guy.
Speaker 1: Not the sharpest, He's a he's a he's a dummy.
Speaker 1: He loves to get drunk, and he does not hold
Speaker 1: his liquor as well as some of the other heavy,
Speaker 1: heavy drinkers in the MCU, notably Thor, notably Logan, no,
Speaker 1: the others, every guys, Guardian, I mean, Hercules just gets
Speaker 1: after it. Now, what if it's this, What if Dario Ager,
Speaker 1: CEO of Rockside, we thought.
Speaker 2: Might maybe be a bad guy in Love and Thunder that.
Speaker 1: We did think that who also in the comics, sold
Speaker 1: his soul in order to become the literal minitula total minutes.
Speaker 1: Now we have the police, Now we have the grease connection.
Speaker 2: Hercules in the minute all You're really getting into some
Speaker 2: good deep stuff there.
Speaker 1: So Ager tricks Hercules. He's like, hey, I'll help you.
Speaker 1: We'll get back at Thor. Let's do this, Let's invade
Speaker 1: the realms and will fuck thora up. When really what
Speaker 1: Agar wants is Hercules to take Thor out so he can,
Speaker 1: as the head of rocks On, can just extract all
Speaker 1: the natural resources from Vanaheim or wherever.
Speaker 2: What if it's that is like literally a perfect pitch,
Speaker 2: and I swear to God, I hope Marvel is listening
Speaker 2: because that is one of the best pitches.
Speaker 3: Also, let's put that X ray vision oracle Timfoil, hat
Speaker 3: is happening? That give me the thing I think that's
Speaker 3: a great version, especially because the space where Thor is
Speaker 3: at right now is a space where he has something
Speaker 3: to live for. He loves his family, he wants to
Speaker 3: protect the universe, he wants to protect the realms, and
Speaker 3: so that gives it even more heart to bring this
Speaker 3: kind of ecological analogous story of this evil corporation.
Speaker 2: I think that would be so good.
Speaker 1: I'll say something else. Man, if I am an actor
Speaker 1: out there, Dariel Aggert theoretically is one of the media's
Speaker 1: roles to get it.
Speaker 2: I think that's why who everyone assumed Christian Bell was
Speaker 2: going to play, because you're like, if you can get
Speaker 2: him to come back, what is it for? And obviously
Speaker 2: it was cool, but.
Speaker 1: Dario is so meaty. There's so much meat. It's like
Speaker 1: if uh, It's like if a character from The Wolf
Speaker 1: of Wall Street was also a super villain who turned
Speaker 1: into a huge like bipedal, super strong bull from It's
Speaker 1: it's like a great it would be a really really
Speaker 1: great role. You know, I could just see whoever this
Speaker 1: character is. You know, they're having a meeting of the
Speaker 1: of the shareholders and they're laying into dary Agger. Why
Speaker 1: are we losing this why are we lose? We just
Speaker 1: a massive oil spill over in the government and then
Speaker 1: he just turns into a minute. But I love people.
Speaker 2: Who would be your dream Dario Aga casting, if you've
Speaker 2: got your pitch accepted and they were like Jason put
Speaker 2: together the pitch bible, who's.
Speaker 1: The dream you go?
Speaker 2: First?
Speaker 1: I need to think about it.
Speaker 2: Okay, you know what I would go. I'm like, if
Speaker 2: you're going, who would be? I feel like, you know,
Speaker 2: Miles Teller could do like a very intense right.
Speaker 1: It's actually really really good.
Speaker 2: He could bring that that you know, aggression from the
Speaker 2: film that made him and then kind of bring that
Speaker 2: charm from the newest stuff and and I feel like
Speaker 2: I could see him becoming the Minotaur. I feel like
Speaker 2: he's got the the VI.
Speaker 1: I think Kieran Kieran Kolkin like because there's a good
Speaker 1: there's something really cool like about a kind of slightly
Speaker 1: dickish but unastuming physically human person who turns in this
Speaker 1: monstrous manatals.
Speaker 2: Is incredibly smart and also incredibly likely because it hits
Speaker 2: some one of the things I think Marvel does that
Speaker 2: it's so interesting and that really sets it apart and
Speaker 2: also makes fan casting very fun for us. They love
Speaker 2: to cast someone who has already kind of done the
Speaker 2: thing that they want them to do. So they cast
Speaker 2: Kit Harrington, the most famous from Game of Thrones, and
Speaker 2: they cast him as Black Knight. They cast him as
Speaker 2: a medical conspired hero Circe. Jemma Chan had been in
Speaker 2: this really incredible show where she played like a robot
Speaker 2: who was gaining sentience and freedom from the people who
Speaker 2: created her, very similar to the Journey in Eternals.
Speaker 1: They've often done that.
Speaker 2: I mean Fox, the Marvel Side of Fox did it
Speaker 2: too with casting you know, Santsa Stark as Gene Gray
Speaker 2: like that. I feel like Kieran Coulkin, they would if
Speaker 2: they don't. If they could do Dario Aga and they
Speaker 2: don't cast someone from Succession, that would be a miss.
Speaker 2: Like that is Kevin Big you give extra vision a
Speaker 2: call will consult for you.
Speaker 1: War of the Realms, Carlus, it would be great. Kate,
Speaker 1: why didn't Moon Night show up when gods are hissing?
Speaker 1: It's a great question. Well, first of all, he's merely
Speaker 1: an avatars. The real question is why weren't any of
Speaker 1: the Egyptian gods? Maybe they were, I haven't we need
Speaker 1: to do a real like granular scan of the omnipotent
Speaker 1: city Hall scene, so we don't quite know that they
Speaker 1: weren't there, but I it did feel strange.
Speaker 2: That there wasn't a more prominent The gods that they credit.
Speaker 2: They credited were quite vague, and it will be really
Speaker 2: fun when it's on Disney Plus to go through and
Speaker 2: do that granular look. But it did feel as gods
Speaker 2: are becoming this really important part of the MCU. I
Speaker 2: was definitely also surprised that there wasn't necessarily an obvious
Speaker 2: character from the Ianad that we'd met in Moonlight.
Speaker 1: You would have thought we would have seen Kanshu there.
Speaker 1: Now again, maybe that would have been.
Speaker 2: So funny, like in this really outrageous like orgy having place,
Speaker 2: and you just got cranky old f Murray Abram Kanshu.
Speaker 1: Uh and then finally Kochi nineteen eighty four is a
Speaker 1: crime that we didn't get a separate Valkyrie and Jane
Speaker 1: Foster buddy movie. There's still time.
Speaker 2: I know. I'm like I because I want that.
Speaker 1: I am absolutely sure that Jane is coming back in
Speaker 1: some form of fashion more of the realms.
Speaker 2: I also connect with that because that was had a
Speaker 2: storyline about having a Valhalla choosing to come back, and
Speaker 2: then obviously later on becoming a Valkyrie. But this I
Speaker 2: agree with one hundred percent because to me, those I
Speaker 2: really as you know, if you listen to podcasts, I
Speaker 2: love Door, Love and Thunder. But like the moments that
Speaker 2: I think really sung to me that I would have
Speaker 2: loved to see expanded on were those moments with Jane
Speaker 2: and Val, like when King Val goes and finds Jane
Speaker 2: and Jane's broken the sink Alla Wolverine and the much
Speaker 2: beloved movie Wolverine Origins. You know that moment between them
Speaker 2: where they have you know, are you packed? And they
Speaker 2: both have their weapons and they have the little kind
Speaker 2: of the thing playing Mary J. Blige, And I just
Speaker 2: think I would love to see a whole movie of that.
Speaker 2: I think we could still see it if I was
Speaker 2: gonna pitch it. It would be like a cosmic road trip.
Speaker 2: I want the cosmic buddy movie. Maybe they're both Valkyries,
Speaker 2: Maybe they're rounding up other Valkyries. Maybe they're just going
Speaker 2: on a fun trip, doesn't have to be anything to
Speaker 2: do with trauma action, and they're just like gonna buy
Speaker 2: thor a birthday present, and they want to get him
Speaker 2: like the funniest birthday present in the universe, Like give
Speaker 2: me that movie. I would say it's a crime if
Speaker 2: it doesn't happen. But as Jason said, still lots of time.
Speaker 1: I have one more add on for for what we
Speaker 1: see next, what happens next with Thor and I. But
Speaker 1: I would extend this to like all of Marvel.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: Of course we're waiting for that kind of like unifying
Speaker 1: force to really kick in, And Kevin Figge announced that
Speaker 1: they had a creative Council meeting of a month back now,
Speaker 1: so I'd assume they're working on that too. But like
Speaker 1: at some point, you know, as we've just seen damage
Speaker 1: control as a kind of like human reactionary force to
Speaker 1: the sudden expansion of the population of enhanced people in
Speaker 1: the MCU, bad guys win, like at some point a
Speaker 1: dark rain kind of situation where you know, the governments
Speaker 1: of the world are like enough with these super powered
Speaker 1: people like either Circovia style, sign the shit or we're
Speaker 1: coming after you, and then we get like siege. Yeah,
Speaker 1: whoever takes control of the military slash government in the
Speaker 1: US or in the world is like Okay, let's get
Speaker 1: as guard out of Earth they can go. They have
Speaker 1: like there's seven other realms, like they don't need to
Speaker 1: be on this one.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And I also think something really smart about that
Speaker 2: is like, look, I know that the way that they
Speaker 2: did it and have been the trend realms. Yeah, the
Speaker 2: trend of the MCU so far has been this notion
Speaker 2: of you open a multiverse, you close it. It's a
Speaker 2: closed loop, right, But let's be real. A version of
Speaker 2: Norman Osborne on the King of Marvel Supervillains has been
Speaker 2: to us six one six knows that who it's Spider
Speaker 2: Man is knows the notion of the six one six.
Speaker 2: I just think we shouldn't count out seeing those kind
Speaker 2: of things Siege, Dark Grain, and maybe even seeing the
Speaker 2: MCU's version of some of those more iconic characters that
Speaker 2: we've already seen in the in the Spider Verse, but
Speaker 2: reimagined in new ways.
Speaker 1: I completely agree that would be so awesome. And you
Speaker 1: know what is awesome. Our interview with Jason Aaron Now
Speaker 1: quick note this was recorded before the release of Thor,
Speaker 1: Love and Thunder about a week before, so we had
Speaker 1: no idea what the movie would contain before we talked
Speaker 1: to him. Please enjoy our interview with Great Jason Aaron.
Speaker 1: Jason Aaron, thank you so much for joining us. What
Speaker 1: was your what's your comics origin story? How did you
Speaker 1: decide to be a writer, and then how did you
Speaker 1: how did you start first thinking about becoming a comic
Speaker 1: book writer.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, you know, I think my origin story
Speaker 4: as a comic book reader and involved the spinner rack,
Speaker 4: you know, spinner rack at the local drug store and
Speaker 4: tagging along with my mom every time she should go,
Speaker 4: you know, to the grocery store or wherever, and finding
Speaker 4: new teen Titans and Tory Forst and Blue Devil and
Speaker 4: Long Shot like those are some of the books that
Speaker 4: I'd noticed for the first time that sort of pulled
Speaker 4: me in, and I just I've never stopped reading comics,
Speaker 4: you know. I mean I was fifteen or sixteen before
Speaker 4: I discovered a comic book store because I grew up
Speaker 4: in a small town. But once I did, I've I've
Speaker 4: had a pull list one place or another, you know,
Speaker 4: every year since then. So I've kind of always been
Speaker 4: read and knew pretty quick that I, you know, that's
Speaker 4: what I wanted to do. I love to write, and
Speaker 4: I remember telling my parents when I was a kid
Speaker 4: that you know, yeah, I want to write comics someday.
Speaker 4: Had absolutely no idea how you begin to even attempt
Speaker 4: to do that, especially for kid growing up, and you know,
Speaker 4: it's little town and backwards Alabama. So it took until
Speaker 4: I was I was almost thirty. I was in my
Speaker 4: late twenties, and I won a Marvel Comics talent search contest,
Speaker 4: which was this weird thing that Marvel had never really
Speaker 4: done before in that way they and they haven't done
Speaker 4: it since, so it was this kind of strange one
Speaker 4: time thing. I you know, I sort of lucked into.
Speaker 4: I guess I haven't looked back.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was going to say, it's actually, like really
Speaker 2: rare to find someone who did any kind of comics
Speaker 2: talent search and then ended up getting a career kind
Speaker 2: of consistently writing comics. And that first story I was
Speaker 2: a Wolverine story, right, yeah, yeah, it was so yeah,
Speaker 2: And what was that like for you to you know,
Speaker 2: grown up on those spinner racks, reading those comics and
Speaker 2: then kind of just writing this short Wolverine story and
Speaker 2: it being published in a comic shop that you could
Speaker 2: get from a comic book store.
Speaker 4: I mean, it was. It was surreal. I think it's
Speaker 4: still surreal. I think that the weirdness has never worn off,
Speaker 4: you know. I mean, like I said, I knew pretty
Speaker 4: much my whole life I wanted to be a writer.
Speaker 4: I kind of pursued that in different ways, you know.
Speaker 4: I thought, well, maybe I'll go into journalism, and I
Speaker 4: took like two semesters of journalism in college and realized
Speaker 4: that wasn't for me. And I was writing a bunch
Speaker 4: of terrible novels that hopefully no one will we'll ever
Speaker 4: get to read, and going, you know, just anything I
Speaker 4: could do to write. You know, it was just consumed
Speaker 4: so much of my time, which was really like the
Speaker 4: most important thing I did, you know, through those even
Speaker 4: though I don't really have anything to show for it
Speaker 4: in terms of like published work, it was still all
Speaker 4: that time I spent writing was kind of getting me
Speaker 4: ready for when the opportunity would arise. And then getting this,
Speaker 4: you know, this weird random talent search popped up. So
Speaker 4: it's like I got lucky, but I'd kind of made
Speaker 4: my own luck. And then I felt like I was
Speaker 4: ready by that point to do something interesting, and thankfully,
Speaker 4: you know, caught the attention. It was editor Mike Martz,
Speaker 4: who was the X Men editor at the time. I
Speaker 4: was working like a crappy job at a video rental
Speaker 4: store back when they still had those, you know, and
Speaker 4: I had I had a message on my answering machine
Speaker 4: this or on my cell phone. This was like months
Speaker 4: after the contest, and several months after i'd you know,
Speaker 4: just dropped this page, this piece of paper in a
Speaker 4: box and there was a message on my phone just hey,
Speaker 4: this is Mike Martins and Marvel give me a call back.
Speaker 4: And literally my first thought was like, man, that's really
Speaker 4: cruel of the guy to call me just to tell
Speaker 4: me I did not win, Like why would he do that?
Speaker 4: What a terrible guy. But it turns out I did win.
Speaker 1: So yeah, how did you remember when I first started writing,
Speaker 1: just the simple things like trying to figure out like
Speaker 1: what a script format looked like, what all this stuff
Speaker 1: is supposed to look like? Was How did you figure
Speaker 1: all that out at the time?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I didn't. I didn't really have any idea of
Speaker 4: that either, And back in those days, I don't think
Speaker 4: you could really find examples.
Speaker 1: All I find out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it was just the Watchman, the back matter, Watchman,
Speaker 2: which I everyone's writing one page panel description.
Speaker 4: Which I absolutely did. You're absolutely right, because I had that.
Speaker 4: I've got that that big hardcover edition too, that's got
Speaker 4: that script in there, and I like I had found
Speaker 4: at some point years ago, I found this what was
Speaker 4: the first comic script I ever wrote, back when I
Speaker 4: was in high school, and it is absolutely me trying
Speaker 4: to do this incredibly long, incredibly detailed letter to the
Speaker 4: to the artists, you know, like Alan Moore's scripts were, Yeah,
Speaker 4: and then eventually find out, well, really nobody else writes
Speaker 4: comics scripts quite like that. But that's the thing. There's
Speaker 4: no kind of standard format. I think, if you you know,
Speaker 4: I like collecting scripts from from other artists, who who
Speaker 4: whose stuff I like, and there everybody kind of does
Speaker 4: it differently, you know. I mean, some people use like
Speaker 4: standard screenwriting format at this point, but I've never really
Speaker 4: done that. So yeah, back in the day, I had
Speaker 4: no idea. So that was very much, you know, relying
Speaker 4: on my editors and Mike Martz for that initial Wolverine
Speaker 4: story and then I started doing stuff after that Vertigo
Speaker 4: and Will Dennis was a big help and just showing me,
Speaker 4: you know, here's here's how people who are really good
Speaker 4: at this do it, and being able to try to
Speaker 4: copy that, I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what was I mean, like, what were those notes?
Speaker 2: Like Mike Marts obviously saw your storytelling kind of instincts,
Speaker 2: and Andrew what was his notes like this script is
Speaker 2: a mess? Or was he like this is quite good, because,
Speaker 2: like you said, I've read hundreds of comic book scripts,
Speaker 2: and every single one is different, and some make a
Speaker 2: lot of sense and some make no sense.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think I think he told me I
Speaker 4: won the contest just because my idea was different and
Speaker 4: kind of stood out that mine wasn't set in a bar,
Speaker 4: it didn't have Wolverine in flighting ninas. I was. I
Speaker 4: was trying to do like a weird take on a
Speaker 4: Flannery O'Connor story where Wolverine, you know, encounters this this
Speaker 4: woman on a dirt road winding through the woods and
Speaker 4: they have a conversation about faith, you know, before things
Speaker 4: take a take a turn south. But so I think
Speaker 4: it was just kind of something different.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 4: Mine was a little more character driven. But yeah, in
Speaker 4: terms of actual scripting process, I mean, I think it's
Speaker 4: all kind of a blur. You know, it was just
Speaker 4: I think it's ten pages, eight ten pages something like that.
Speaker 4: So we're talking pretty short story. But I remember Mike
Speaker 4: sending me, you know, examples of different scripts to kind
Speaker 4: of to kind of go off of, just because I
Speaker 4: had no clue.
Speaker 1: Really, you mentioned Vertigo, you would go there and release
Speaker 1: a five issue war comic. The other side one aspired that,
Speaker 1: and what was that process like pitching that idea, getting
Speaker 1: that made Well.
Speaker 4: My cousin was Gus Hasford. He was a Vietnam vett
Speaker 4: and a novelist, and he wrote a book called The
Speaker 4: Short Timers, which is what Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket
Speaker 4: was largely based on. So Gus was a big influence
Speaker 4: on me, and that he was, you know, my cousin.
Speaker 4: He was from the same neck of the woods. He
Speaker 4: was the first person I ever met who made a
Speaker 4: live in writing. He was very strange, eccentric guy, spent
Speaker 4: time in jail for stealing hundreds of library books, and
Speaker 4: then you know, he'd died too young. He died like
Speaker 4: in the nineties and in like a flophouse motel in Greece.
Speaker 4: So I never really got to talk to him much about,
Speaker 4: you know, writing, once I was kind of old enough
Speaker 4: to have something to say about it. So I just
Speaker 4: spent a lot of time researching his life and through
Speaker 4: that met a lot of his his fellow marine combat
Speaker 4: correspondence from from his era, and got to hang out
Speaker 4: with some of those guys. And so I think all
Speaker 4: of that led me to want to do a Vietnam
Speaker 4: War book and initially pitched it to Marvel as a
Speaker 4: relaunch of the Noom you know that that eighties series,
Speaker 4: and didn't get picked up there, and just kind of
Speaker 4: pitched it around to different people, and Will Dennis at
Speaker 4: Vertigo I focused in on because he edited a lot
Speaker 4: of the books that I really enjoyed reading. And then
Speaker 4: he also had edited the only you know, war comics
Speaker 4: really anybody had done in years, which were those garthiness
Speaker 4: war stories. So yeah, I sent it to him and
Speaker 4: he turned me down like a couple of times, but
Speaker 4: I was I was politely persistent, which I think is
Speaker 4: another important key to break it. Not you know, not
Speaker 4: like being a bother or pain in the butt, but like,
Speaker 4: be persistent, just be polite, be respectful of editors time.
Speaker 4: So I send him the script. I had written the
Speaker 4: first issue script and said, hey, would you, you know,
Speaker 4: take a look at it at least and let me
Speaker 4: know what you think, And he said sure, told me again,
Speaker 4: you know, I still can't use it, but I'll take
Speaker 4: a look at it. And then he read it and
Speaker 4: you know, liked it and got greenlit it at Vertigo.
Speaker 4: So I think I've never worked harder in my life
Speaker 4: on a comic script than that one, the first, because
Speaker 4: that was the first full, you know, then twenty two
Speaker 4: pages script I'd ever written, which I worked on probably
Speaker 4: for months, so I was still probably the I was
Speaker 4: selling book I've ever written. You know, it's the very
Speaker 4: first one, but it was the most important one, I think,
Speaker 4: because you know, it sort of paved the way for
Speaker 4: everything I've done since then. M h.
Speaker 2: And what was it like to go from like this
Speaker 2: kind of personal, heavily researched comic to then like returning
Speaker 2: back to Marvel and going back into that pantheon of
Speaker 2: kind of these huge, iconic, kind of godlike figures.
Speaker 4: I mean, it was great. I mean, in my mind,
Speaker 4: that's kind of always what I've wanted to do. I mean,
Speaker 4: I love superhero comics. I grew up reading Marvel and
Speaker 4: DC superhero comics. I still read a bunch of them.
Speaker 4: It's not like I'm doing that just because you know
Speaker 4: it's a job or that's what you need to do.
Speaker 4: Like I genuinely enjoyed doing that stuff, but at the
Speaker 4: same time, I wouldn't. I never want to do just
Speaker 4: work for higher stuff, just superhero stuff. I'm always attracted
Speaker 4: to other genres. So kind of right from the get
Speaker 4: go in terms of my career, I was doing, you know,
Speaker 4: create her own stuff, balancing with the Marvel and DC stuff.
Speaker 1: What at what point, so do you win this contest
Speaker 1: you're getting stuff made. At what point were you able
Speaker 1: to pursue comics writing as your full time job. Quit
Speaker 1: the job at the video store, put all that stuff away,
Speaker 1: Explain to people I am a comics writer now, and
Speaker 1: then just do that.
Speaker 4: Well, basically, my son just turned seventeen, clearly like two
Speaker 4: weeks ago. He's he's the same age as my comic
Speaker 4: career because I quit my job when he was born,
Speaker 4: and it was right around the time I was working
Speaker 4: on Scalped number one, the beginning of Scalped. Because my
Speaker 4: son's name is Dashel, just like the main character of Scalped.
Speaker 4: So yeah, it's about seven seventeen years now, I guess
Speaker 4: I've been I've been full time.
Speaker 2: Wow, And what is that kind of people talk a
Speaker 2: lot about like, do the thing that you love and
Speaker 2: you will never get tired of it, And then when
Speaker 2: we do the thing we love, we're also like, also,
Speaker 2: you will burn out on the thing that you love.
Speaker 2: What's what's that journey been like for you? Because you've
Speaker 2: been a professional comics writer almost as long as you
Speaker 2: were just a fan, you know, so like, what what
Speaker 2: has that journey been like for you of doing it
Speaker 2: full time and doing creator own books that people have
Speaker 2: loved and always coming back to those superheroes too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean it's you know, it's definitely a journey.
Speaker 4: I think you can look at it in terms of
Speaker 4: different acts to my career, which some of which may
Speaker 4: be obvious from people who've been reading along the way.
Speaker 4: Some of them may be more personal and not as obvious,
Speaker 4: So they're definitely it's definitely been you know, a series
Speaker 4: of changes, even though for the most part I've been
Speaker 4: at Marvel. You know, I think I've been exclusive to
Speaker 4: Marvel since I want to say, two thousand and eight
Speaker 4: or so, so, you know, even within that. I you know,
Speaker 4: it's spent like six years, six seven years writing Wolverine stories.
Speaker 4: I've spent seven years writing thor stories since then I've
Speaker 4: been doing Avengers. So it's still I've changed over the
Speaker 4: course of that. My work's changed, the companies changed a lot,
Speaker 4: and I and you know, things are still changing for me,
Speaker 4: as they are for most everybody after the last couple
Speaker 4: of years, right, so, I think this next year for
Speaker 4: me will be another one of even bigger changes. So
Speaker 4: but I think all that's good. I mean, from granted,
Speaker 4: not all of those changes have been good. Certainly the
Speaker 4: ones we've all been dealing with lately have not been.
Speaker 4: But I think it's good and that it just I
Speaker 4: don't ever want to get stagnant or bored or just
Speaker 4: feel like I'm punching the clock and and doing this
Speaker 4: just to pay my bills. I think as a creator,
Speaker 4: you always want to feel like you're challenging yourself and
Speaker 4: doing something that's different than stuff you've done before. So,
Speaker 4: you know, I'm very happy and fortunate that I feel
Speaker 4: like I've been able to do that. I haven't spent
Speaker 4: my time doing jobs that were forced upon me that
Speaker 4: I that you know, or somebody else's ideas or things
Speaker 4: that I didn't want to do. So it's been a
Speaker 4: it's definitely been a journey, but been a fun one,
Speaker 4: and I think you do have to be conscious of
Speaker 4: not getting burned out. To me, the only thing I
Speaker 4: think is just the grind of doing ongoing books. I
Speaker 4: think I'm you know, maybe interested in kind of jumping
Speaker 4: off that train at some point and doing more stuff,
Speaker 4: kind of like what I'm doing with Punisher right now,
Speaker 4: or it's just sort of you know, set number of issues,
Speaker 4: set artists, just because I think that can get to
Speaker 4: be a bit of a grind when you're having to
Speaker 4: write for, you know, many different artists at the same time.
Speaker 1: Let's you mentioned thor uh, and we'd be remiss if
Speaker 1: we did not talk about your run on thor beginning
Speaker 1: with God of Thunder in twenty twelve. Of course, it's
Speaker 1: being adapted for the upcoming Thor Love and Thunder movie.
Speaker 1: In our opinion, we read a lot of comics, it's,
Speaker 1: you know, simply one of the best runs ever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we talk about in comics like it's it's some of
Speaker 1: the best.
Speaker 2: You got to have some of the best hotests too,
Speaker 2: and some of the.
Speaker 1: Greatest you know, from east Side Ribbage to rust Ouderman,
Speaker 1: on and on. Did you not, like, at what point
Speaker 1: in the run did you did you ever realize like, oh, wow,
Speaker 1: this is this is really good. We're like, really do
Speaker 1: We're really doing something cool.
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't remember thinking, hey, this is going
Speaker 4: to be really big or I'll you know. I mean,
Speaker 4: I feel like at this point, if I when I die,
Speaker 4: Thor is going to be mentioned in like the first
Speaker 4: paragraph of my obitually right, Like, I feel like I'm
Speaker 4: pretty firmly established as Thor writer forever. But no, I'd
Speaker 4: never stop and think about that along the way. It's
Speaker 4: just sort of the next thing, and it's the thing
Speaker 4: I'm excited to do. And it was a matter of
Speaker 4: good timing and that Thor was not really a character
Speaker 4: I had been long interested in, but that moment in
Speaker 4: time it struck me to whereas, yeah, I think I
Speaker 4: really want to do Thor, and yeah, I got to
Speaker 4: work with an incredible lineup of artists, very very lucky
Speaker 4: over the series of people I got to work with.
Speaker 4: I think for me the biggest thing was I'd been
Speaker 4: at Marvel long enough at that point, you know, I'd
Speaker 4: been writing Wolverine Next stuff for so long. I felt
Speaker 4: kind of comfortable with my position in the company, with
Speaker 4: my relationships with everybody, that I kind of had the
Speaker 4: confidence to sort of say, Okay, I'm taking over Thor
Speaker 4: and I'm going to stay here as long as it
Speaker 4: takes me to kind of see all this through, because
Speaker 4: I knew I was kind of laying tracks like this
Speaker 4: is going to take a while, you know, like this
Speaker 4: is going to take years for me to pay all
Speaker 4: this off. And I kind of just said, like, I'm
Speaker 4: going to stay on here until you know, you guys
Speaker 4: fire me or take me off or I'm done, you know,
Speaker 4: one or the other, and kind of felt again, felt
Speaker 4: confident enough to say, like, I feel like I can
Speaker 4: just do that right, Yeah, And thankfully, you know, I
Speaker 4: didn't get fired along the way, and I got to
Speaker 4: finish the story the way I wanted to.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One of my favorite things about that run from
Speaker 1: Thorda Mighty thorn On is how you know, each different
Speaker 1: arc in the run elevated it and changed what was happening,
Speaker 1: added new emotional layers, added new canonical layers. Even never
Speaker 1: played it safe, was always fantastically creative how much of
Speaker 1: that was you mentioned the track? How much of that
Speaker 1: was laid out at the beginning. Obviously there's a bunch
Speaker 1: of different you know, crossover events that intersected with these stories,
Speaker 1: and a bunch of different things, you know, different directions
Speaker 1: that the company was going on editorially over this run.
Speaker 1: So how much of that were you able to kind
Speaker 1: of lay out at the beginning?
Speaker 4: I mean a lot of it. Like I had a
Speaker 4: big plan for sort of a lot of different stories,
Speaker 4: pretty much all of which I ended up doing. It's
Speaker 4: just as the kind of once I got to the
Speaker 4: the idea of the Jane Foster story, I very much
Speaker 4: changed the order of things. So some of the stories
Speaker 4: that originally were going to be thor Odin Sun stories
Speaker 4: became Jane Foster stories, and things got moved around. So
Speaker 4: I think the Jane part of it definitely shifted things
Speaker 4: around in part because I was so like, I enjoyed
Speaker 4: that story so much, Like I kind of, you know,
Speaker 4: I think I did realize you're talking about in terms
Speaker 4: of realizing like the what we were doing. I realized
Speaker 4: in the midst of that Jane Foster story, I'm really
Speaker 4: really happy and really really proud of this, there's a
Speaker 4: lot of meat on these bones, you know, just emotionally,
Speaker 4: Like I knew this is something not just it's fun
Speaker 4: to watch her go around and punch Odin in the
Speaker 4: face and do all this big stuff like that's cool.
Speaker 4: But I realize this is a very potential if we
Speaker 4: do it right, to be a very powerful emotional story.
Speaker 4: And I feel like we did that. I feel like
Speaker 4: it was first and foremost because it was for all
Speaker 4: of us involved in making it, you know. I mean
Speaker 4: I cried writing issues, and Russell cried drawing them, and
Speaker 4: our editors cried when the pages came in. We'd all cry.
Speaker 4: And I'll still do signings, you know, where people bring
Speaker 4: up door comics and start crying and everybody's crying. And
Speaker 4: so I've never I've done stories that have affected people,
Speaker 4: and done other stories I'm really proud of, and then
Speaker 4: I think all the parts came together in the right way.
Speaker 4: But that Jane Fosters story in particular, I think is
Speaker 4: a bit of a cut of a cut above especially
Speaker 4: the other Marvel stuff I've done, in terms of the
Speaker 4: impact it's had on people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not to spoil anything for the listeners who maybe
Speaker 1: haven't gotten that far, but the the exact page where
Speaker 1: I was like, wow, this is emotionally surprising and hitting
Speaker 1: me in ways that I was not ready for. Jane's
Speaker 1: in the hospital and Volstag is there asleep in a
Speaker 1: chair like in like a like a bag of chips
Speaker 1: on his on his lap, and you know, it's a
Speaker 1: really simple scene obviously contrasted with with the kind of
Speaker 1: more godlike adventures that Jane is having, and it's so
Speaker 1: grounded and it's so grounded in the friendship, really surprising
Speaker 1: friendship between Volsag and Jane, and it was it was
Speaker 1: just amazing. It was just an amazing scene. I love
Speaker 1: quiet scenes like that as a longtime comics reader, and
Speaker 1: it was that was a moment where I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: this is really good, this is special.
Speaker 4: Thanks.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I worked in a comic shop actually in London
Speaker 2: when that was coming out, and it was it was
Speaker 2: one of those books where you could just feel it
Speaker 2: like everyone was so excited when it came in and
Speaker 2: when that first issue of My Etho with Jane on
Speaker 2: the cover and everything, it was just like it was
Speaker 2: the book and it definitely had that kind of emotional
Speaker 2: depth that the best stories that make us fall in
Speaker 2: love comics do. Like me and Jason talk a lot
Speaker 2: about the eighties X Men stuff, like the Clamont stuff,
Speaker 2: that was a lot of what kind of made us
Speaker 2: fall in love with comics.
Speaker 1: And I feel like.
Speaker 2: Those quiet moments and that emotion and the kind of
Speaker 2: impact of that story, which is obviously now still being
Speaker 2: felt like years later, it really comes through in that way.
Speaker 2: And so like, this is the tough situation in the
Speaker 2: work for higher business, is it? What's it like for
Speaker 2: you when you then see Natalie Portman get on stage
Speaker 2: with Taikawai Tit and hold up the hammer and you
Speaker 2: know that she's going to be Jane And then what
Speaker 2: does it feel like a year and a half later
Speaker 2: when you're seeing her on screen in this story that
Speaker 2: this film that is obviously so inspired by the story
Speaker 2: that you guys created.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I can say my experience has been
Speaker 4: good and exciting that entire time, from like you said,
Speaker 4: from when I first hear first found out, oh, they're
Speaker 4: going to do Chain's story to oh, you know, Gore
Speaker 4: the god Butcher's going to be in it, and and
Speaker 4: I got to be, you know, more involved in this
Speaker 4: project than kind of anything else before with Marvel Studios.
Speaker 4: So that was nice too to kind of be in
Speaker 4: the loop and and have my opinions sought out. I
Speaker 4: appreciated that. So yeah, it's I can say it's been
Speaker 4: a it's been a fun experience the whole way. It
Speaker 4: still is, you know. I'm I'm still going to Target
Speaker 4: and buying Jane Foster toys as they pop up on
Speaker 4: the shows.
Speaker 2: The Dream.
Speaker 4: Yes, my guest bedroom is full of of you know,
Speaker 4: Jane Foster stuff. So I'm still having fun and I'm
Speaker 4: you know, anxious excited for people to see the finished
Speaker 4: product and to see what what Taika and everybody involved
Speaker 4: has has done with it.
Speaker 1: How does some what's the workflow like with obviously would
Speaker 1: change from team to team, artists to artists, but generally speaking,
Speaker 1: you know, you're doing a book with with Russell or
Speaker 1: Shad or whoever, how do you work out the mix
Speaker 1: of script and art?
Speaker 4: I mean to me, it's usually the same regardless of
Speaker 4: who I'm working with. I mean, I remember very early
Speaker 4: in my career, I think I was doing a Wolverine
Speaker 4: story with Howard Jakin, you know, and I'd been reading
Speaker 4: Howard Jake and comics since I was a kid, and
Speaker 4: I was very intimidated at the idea of working with them.
Speaker 4: So I thought, well, I'm going to pull out all
Speaker 4: my old American Flag comics and reread them and try
Speaker 4: to write a script just for Howard Jakin. And then
Speaker 4: I realized, I don't know how to do that. I
Speaker 4: can't do that like I can't. I just have to
Speaker 4: write the script the way I write it, which is
Speaker 4: generally I'm you know, I'm not writing those like five
Speaker 4: page panel descriptions like in the Alan Moore Watchman script.
Speaker 4: I'm not. In my mind. My job is just to
Speaker 4: kind of give the artist enough of a springboard and
Speaker 4: then get out of the way and let them do
Speaker 4: what they do. So that's generally what I do, regardless
Speaker 4: of who I'm working with. I think the few exceptions
Speaker 4: are there times I've worked with somebody like Chris Pachallo
Speaker 4: where it would develop into more like a some version
Speaker 4: of a Marvel style approach like which was generally just
Speaker 4: because I would I wrote a full script for him
Speaker 4: and he would change it so radically. It didn't make
Speaker 4: sense for me to do that. Yeah, it's like get
Speaker 4: out of the way of let cause you know, I
Speaker 4: would never have the guts to write a sixteen panel
Speaker 4: page for anybody, even Chris Pachalo, but he would, he
Speaker 4: would break him down that way himself. So I thought,
Speaker 4: it's like, well, why don't we just let him do that?
Speaker 4: So I would, and I think I've done that with
Speaker 4: Adam Kubert. Just a couple of guys who want to
Speaker 4: do that. Not all artists, you know, want that responsibility
Speaker 4: of sort of breaking everything down themselves, but some do.
Speaker 4: But beyond that, you know, I just feel like it's
Speaker 4: not my job to tell Russell or as Old or
Speaker 4: any body like how to draw. They know how to
Speaker 4: do that, I don't. I just need to give them
Speaker 4: some cool ideas, give them the emotion that's necessary in
Speaker 4: this in this panel and this beat, and then just
Speaker 4: get out of the way and let them let them
Speaker 4: draw beautiful pictures.
Speaker 2: So you've written like so many incredible characters at this point,
Speaker 2: like your Black Panther, Sea Waconda and Die. That's like
Speaker 2: one of my favorite comics ever. Yeah, it's such a
Speaker 2: rad take on kind of scrolls and the secret invasion stuff.
Speaker 2: Is there is there any characters that you still just
Speaker 2: really really want to write that you have that kind
Speaker 2: of dream. That's the pedestal character that you keep in
Speaker 2: your pocket.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, I've I've never walked through my
Speaker 4: career with like a long list of you know, how
Speaker 4: I really want to write this guy, I want to
Speaker 4: write that guy. I realized pretty quickly that the more
Speaker 4: important part was kind of the the real life people
Speaker 4: involved in my relationships with the editors and who's going
Speaker 4: to draw it, and really kind of what felt right
Speaker 4: for me at that moment in time, as opposed to,
Speaker 4: you know, a character that I grew up reading and
Speaker 4: loving as a kid. So that's kind of always the
Speaker 4: way I've approached it. That said, there definitely, you know,
Speaker 4: there's a short list of characters that I am such
Speaker 4: a huge fan of that I've never really gotten to
Speaker 4: tell a story with in a big way. I mean,
Speaker 4: you know, Conan the Barbarian was on that list, and
Speaker 4: I got to check that one off the last couple
Speaker 4: of years. So yeah, there are definitely other characters a Marvel,
Speaker 4: you know, a few. I mean, I feel like at
Speaker 4: this point I've kind of gotten to my stories with
Speaker 4: most everybody and some, but there's some I have not
Speaker 4: really written in any significant way, and certainly haven't outside
Speaker 4: of Marvel, haven't really written anybody else, but I you know,
Speaker 4: I would say an oddball when, which will probably never
Speaker 4: happen in my life, is I'm a huge Uncle Scrooge
Speaker 4: I love.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's the good stuff.
Speaker 4: I love. Especially the Don Rosa Uncle Scrooge stories I
Speaker 4: think are really incredible, just great comics, like, regardless of
Speaker 4: the fact that they're about talking ducks, like, they're just
Speaker 4: really really good, beautifully drawn, unbelievable. Absolutely. I recommend there's
Speaker 4: hardcovers out now of all of them from I think
Speaker 4: from fantagraphics, really really well done books. I recommend them all,
Speaker 4: but I think I would the Uncle Scrooge I would
Speaker 4: put on the list probably if I had made a
Speaker 4: list five years ago, been Conan number one, Uncle Scrooge
Speaker 4: number two. So I've marked off one of those. We'll
Speaker 4: see if someday I can get the other one.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's where the beginning of Indiana Jones comes from.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, absolutely, So.
Speaker 2: You know that's some influential stuff.
Speaker 1: Uh, while you're in this sore run, you were releasing
Speaker 1: creator own stuff on image Southern Southern Bastards. Yeah, is
Speaker 1: this wonderful hard boiled southern detective action story that mixes
Speaker 1: like college football at extreme violence. What was it like?
Speaker 1: Where'd that story come from? Because it really feels like
Speaker 1: if anybody knows anything about you, you know, the kind
Speaker 1: of spare bio biographical details that are out there. This
Speaker 1: feels like something that you have been ruminating on for
Speaker 1: a while. It comes from your experience in ways maybe
Speaker 1: that some of your marvel work maybe doesn't.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like I said, I grew up in a small
Speaker 4: town in Alabama, so I grew up with with football.
Speaker 4: I grew up with you know, with religion and football,
Speaker 4: and I think you can see the theme of faith
Speaker 4: and religion spread throughout so much of the stuff I've done,
Speaker 4: going back to that you know, first ten page Wolverine story,
Speaker 4: through all of my thort stuff. So I'd never written
Speaker 4: about football in any significant way until I got to
Speaker 4: Southern Bastards, and it really the first idea was I
Speaker 4: hadn't when I was doing Scalped I had an idea
Speaker 4: for a crime boss who was a high school football
Speaker 4: coach that I winded up never using, and that was
Speaker 4: kind of a great springboard I thought for doing a
Speaker 4: you know, a deep South crime story So it's very
Speaker 4: much about you know, where I grew up, which is
Speaker 4: kind of a as I've talked about, it's a love
Speaker 4: letter slash, you know, letter of rage and anger. It's
Speaker 4: sort of the things you love and that you don't
Speaker 4: like so much about about where you're from. I love
Speaker 4: being from a small town. I love being from the South.
Speaker 4: I still I think I will always think of myself
Speaker 4: as a Southern writer, even though I've lived outside the
Speaker 4: South now for twenty years, twenty two years. So yeah,
Speaker 4: I think it's very much that it's the as Southerners,
Speaker 4: we don't like it when people from outside the South
Speaker 4: talk crap about us. We kind of we only take
Speaker 4: that from fellow Southerners. So it's me, you know, just
Speaker 4: trying to pour all that into into one comic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And as like, you know, you're such a prolific writer,
Speaker 2: and like you said, you've been writing ongoings, you've been
Speaker 2: writing creative owned, you've been writing samperos. Do you still
Speaker 2: you said you never stopped treating comics. So what's like
Speaker 2: a comic or a story or piece of art that
Speaker 2: you kind of always go back to, no matter how
Speaker 2: far into this journey.
Speaker 4: That's a good question. You know, I think certainly lately,
Speaker 4: you know, after we found out George Prez was sick,
Speaker 4: and then most recently when he passed away, like I
Speaker 4: pulled out a lot of George Prez comics because they
Speaker 4: were he As I've talked about, he was the first
Speaker 4: comic artist whose work I could recognize as a kid,
Speaker 4: be like, oh, that's the Teen Titans guy. What's this
Speaker 4: new book he's doing, Crisis on Infinite Earth. So so
Speaker 4: George Prez to find so much of my initial understanding
Speaker 4: and love of comics. And I think even now and
Speaker 4: probably until the day I die, if I if you,
Speaker 4: if I close my eyes and you say, you know,
Speaker 4: picture a comic book page, it's drawn by George Perez,
Speaker 4: always in forever. So I've been pulling a lot of
Speaker 4: that stuff out. You know, I have a lot of
Speaker 4: comics like my I just moved like a year and
Speaker 4: a half ago, so I just recently had to move
Speaker 4: them all. So it made me appreciate even more how many,
Speaker 4: just how many long boxes I have accumulated. So I
Speaker 4: love digging into I'm pulling out lots of old books,
Speaker 4: you know, Like I said, there was a lot of
Speaker 4: stuff from that mid eighties DC period that I loved
Speaker 4: Atari Forrest's kind of forgotten Jose Luis Garcia Lopez sci
Speaker 4: fi book Blue Devil that same period by DC. It
Speaker 4: was a huge book for me. And I think, I think,
Speaker 4: I look at Blue Devil and Blue Beetle and and
Speaker 4: ex Caliber, the original ex Caliber. Yeah, I love that,
Speaker 4: the Giffn demitaeas Justice League, like all those things that
Speaker 4: were funny and irreverent, but also you know, had real
Speaker 4: emotion and waight and well rounded characters to them. I
Speaker 4: think those books together defined so much of what I
Speaker 4: love about comics.
Speaker 1: As a as a fan and a writer. And now
Speaker 1: well into your career, you've seen, you know, the industry
Speaker 1: change from spinner racks to shops to digital and then
Speaker 1: the uh, you know, the resurgence of of the shops.
Speaker 1: Where do you what's what's your take on the way
Speaker 1: the industry has changed and where do you think it's going.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's such a huge question. I don't know
Speaker 4: that I'm qualified to even answer that. I mean, I
Speaker 4: don't know, you know, I'm still I'm still the same
Speaker 4: kid who would pluck those books off the spinner rack.
Speaker 4: I still love going to the comic store and buying
Speaker 4: books off the shelf.
Speaker 1: The reason I ask is because you know, I think
Speaker 1: there was a lot of anxiety when digital came up.
Speaker 1: Digital media, and you understand it, but then it seems like,
Speaker 1: at least anecdotally to me, in the last couple of years,
Speaker 1: there's been Now people have the choice, and there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people coming into comics now and people are
Speaker 1: seeking out that community of going into the shop and
Speaker 1: talking to the person and getting a poll list and saying, hey,
Speaker 1: what's good, what are you liking, what are you reading?
Speaker 1: And that's something people are willingly doing now and it's
Speaker 1: given me a lot of and I feel great about
Speaker 1: kind of where the community is because of that, which
Speaker 1: is why I ask.
Speaker 4: Absolutely I agree. I mean, I think there was that
Speaker 4: fear of will digital is gonna, you know, ruin the
Speaker 4: brick and mortar stores, and we've seen that's not the case.
Speaker 4: I mean, I have always felt that whatever stuff, whoever
Speaker 4: you are, whatever stuff you're into, whatever you like to read,
Speaker 4: there's a comic out there for you somewhere right like you.
Speaker 4: You just have to be able to find it. You
Speaker 4: need to walk into a good shop where they can
Speaker 4: help direct you to it, or you find it, you know, digitally,
Speaker 4: however you find it, however you get access to it.
Speaker 4: Whatever that book is, I think, you know, we just
Speaker 4: want to welcome people into comics, like please, please come
Speaker 4: find that book. And every time I go to one
Speaker 4: of the great comics stores we have across the country,
Speaker 4: where it's you know, Third Y Comics in Maryland, or
Speaker 4: the Isotope in San Francisco, or Our Heroes are hard
Speaker 4: to find, and Charlotte a comic shop in Orlando, like
Speaker 4: these are the shops I go to that Every time
Speaker 4: I walk in, I see how passionate the people who
Speaker 4: work there are, how beautiful a shop is, how it's
Speaker 4: how easy it is to walk in out of the blue,
Speaker 4: never been in a comic shop before, don't know the
Speaker 4: secret handshake or the lingo, don't know anything, just looking
Speaker 4: for something. And it makes me feel good to know
Speaker 4: those people come in this shop, they're in good hands, right,
Speaker 4: They're going to be directed to find a book they
Speaker 4: will enjoy, and they will hopefully make them a comic
Speaker 4: book reader, just like you know New teen Titans did
Speaker 4: for me all those years ago. So I still love that.
Speaker 4: I love that idea of the good shops, and like
Speaker 4: I said, every time I go to them, i'd leave
Speaker 4: excited to go do new work, you know, excited knowing
Speaker 4: like those are the people on the front lines, those
Speaker 4: are the people putting books in the hands of readers.
Speaker 4: So it just makes me happy to see people who
Speaker 4: are loving that and win such a great job of it.
Speaker 1: Finally, Jason, how are you feeling about the SEC? How
Speaker 1: do you feeling on SEC football this time?
Speaker 4: Well? That's we could do a host separate podcast on that.
Speaker 4: I mean, he got you know, you got Texas and
Speaker 4: Oklahoma about to join, you got, you know, my my
Speaker 4: guy Nick Saban infuriating Jimbo Fisher to the point this firing.
Speaker 4: I will just say, you know the like I get it,
Speaker 4: I get it. I get why everybody else in the
Speaker 4: country hates Alabama despises Nick Saban. I probably would too
Speaker 4: if I wasn't from Alabama, if I wasn't a Crimson typhan.
Speaker 4: But he is my guy, and you don't want that
Speaker 4: guy pissed off. You don't want him. I mean every
Speaker 4: time he sort of looks around at the landscape of
Speaker 4: college football and says, hey, is this how we want
Speaker 4: it to be? And everybody says yes it is. He
Speaker 4: says okay, and then he goes and you is that
Speaker 4: to win football games? And I feel like this season,
Speaker 4: this team he's got could be the best team he's
Speaker 4: ever had, potential to be the best team he's ever had,
Speaker 4: which I think should frighten and terrify the rest of
Speaker 4: college football. That's just what that man continues to be
Speaker 4: capable of.
Speaker 1: Jason Aaron, thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you so much for coming.
Speaker 4: Thank you all. This was fun.
Speaker 1: Thank you to Jason Aaron for speaking with us, and
Speaker 1: thank you to all of our listeners for the amazing questions.
Speaker 1: Keep them coming. We love hearing from you. If you
Speaker 1: want to hear more bonus content, send us an email
Speaker 1: or drop a review on Apple Podcasting. You want more
Speaker 1: ex Vision, We'll do our best to oblige. X ray
Speaker 1: Vision is a Crooked Media production. The show is produced
Speaker 1: by Chris Lord and Soul Rubin. The show is executive
Speaker 1: produced by myself and Sandy Rhard are editing and sound
Speaker 1: design who's by Vascillis Photopoulos, Dilon Villanueva and Matt de
Speaker 1: Group provide video production support. Alex Rella for handle social media.
Speaker 1: Thank you Brian Vasquez. For the music, see nex Time