The Corner Box

Rich Douek is Cooking on The Corner Box S2Ep21

• David & John • Season 2 • Episode 21

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Writer Rich Douek (Batman, Edge of Spiderverse, Drive Like Hell, Heartpiercer) joins hosts John & David to talk about how Rich found his way into comics from prose-writing, turning ideas into stories, the ripple effects of tariffs and Diamond’s bankruptcy, succeeding with a great writer/artist team, and how marketing could save comic books. Plus, David has some thoughts on Infinity Comics, and Rich cooks with comics.

Timestamp Segments

  • [00:50] Rich’s 173-year career.
  • [01:46] David’s thoughts on the Infinity Comics.
  • [04:57] When Rich started loving comic books.
  • [08:34] Comics as a medium, not a genre.
  • [11:15] Making comics a career.
  • [16:35] Making ideas work.
  • [18:31] John reviews Rich’s scripts.
  • [20:02] Getting Gutter Magic out into the world.
  • [23:34] Hitting it big with Road of Bones.
  • [25:37] Sea of Sales!
  • [26:55] 3 Worlds / 3 Moons.
  • [30:52] What’s Rich up to now?
  • [32:22] The current state of the industry.
  • [34:00] The digital comics conspiracy.
  • [35:11] The Diamond silver lining.
  • [40:32] Saving comics with marketing.
  • [45:34] Comic Book Kitchen.
  • [50:05] Rich’s announcements.

Notable Quotes

  • “It’s sphincter-clenching time around comic books.”
  • “In the long-term, we’re going to see, the industry’s going to come out of this healthier than it was going into it.”
  • “Getting people to understand that you have a book out is so different now than it was even 3-4 years ago.”

Relevant Links

David's Fun Stuff!
Did Someone Say Fun Time? Let's GO!

John is at PugW!
Pug WorldwideCornerbox.club.

Rich Douek is Making Cool Things!

www.rdouek.com

BlueSky | Facebook | Instagram | X/Twitter

Books Mentioned

Welcome to The Corner Box, where your hosts, David Hedgecock, and John Barber, lean into their decades of comic book industry experience, writing, drawing, editing, and publishing. They'll talk to fellow professionals, deep dive into influential, and overlooked works, and analyze the state of the art, and business of comics, and pop culture. Thanks for joining us on The Corner Box.


[00:28] John Barber: Hello, and welcome back to The Corner Box. I'm one of your hosts, John Barber, and with me, as always,


[00:34] David Hedgecock: David Hedgecock.


[00:35] John: My good friend, David Hedgecock. Hey, it's me, but we're not alone, finally, and probably for the next many weeks. Rich is a like, “oh, shit. What did I agree to?” No, no, sorry. You're not stuck here forever. Don't worry. We’ll probably have other guests, is what I'm getting at, but we do have a guest, Rich Douek. Rich has been doing professional comic book writing for--


[00:55] David: Yeah, I was going to say, about 173 years, I think he's at, at this point. Sea of Sorrows.


[01:01] John: Road of Bones at IDW.


[01:03] David: Road of Bones. Done a little bit of Superman stuff. Done a little bit of Batman stuff. I just found out today, Rich, that you did a Marvel Infinity comic book. Even though you did that, we're still going to talk to you today.


[01:17] Rich Douek: Okay. Yeah, I actually did a couple. I did a Ghost Rider one, and then I did a couple—I don't know if they're still doing it—they used to be doing these “Who is…?” Such and such character, and they would time them to the TV releases, or the movie releases for people who wanted to catch up. So, when Ant Man came out, I had Who is…? Kang, and when Echo came out, it was Who is…? Kingpin.


[01:46] David: I'm a fan of the Marvel app. I do like the fact that I can read so many comic books, past, present, and future, for such a great price. I still collect physical copies of some Marvel books, but I do a lot of my reading on the app, but I refuse—absolutely, I 100% refuse to read the Marvel Infinity comic books. I don't know why I'm so insulted by those things, but I genuinely am. They make me angry. When I see them on my app, I’m like “this is not a comic book. How dare you try to sucker me into thinking that I'm somehow getting some extra value by Marvel U providing these extra comics for me.” I don't like them. I don’t know why, but I am very vehemently against them.


[02:27] John: This is how you're opening this, David?


[02:30] David: No, I'm going to make an exception, John. I'm pointing out just how much I dislike this stuff, but I am going to read Rich’s books on the Marvel Infinity thing.


[02:41] Rich: Be careful.


[02:42] David: That's how much I appreciate and admire Rich. It's quite an exception I’m making. I just need to make sure everybody understands.


[02:49] Rich: I appreciate it. I'm honored that you would put yourself through that just to read more.


[02:56] John: You know, Ghandi—I mean, David—I don't like throwing the word “hero” around, but when it's appropriate.


[03:01] David: Thank you.


[03:02] Rich: I will say, as a writer, it's a trip writing them, because you really do have to think about the format a lot differently than you would when you're just writing a comic, or even just a regular format digital comic, because you can’t think of it in pages. You have to think of it as “what's being seen on the screen, at any one time?” So, it's like, “okay, well, this is a frame. Then the person's just going to scroll up, seamlessly, into the next frame, and the next frame.” So, it's a little weird to write, but what I found, the most fun part about it is that you can do a lot of fun transitions. We had this one in the Kingpin one, where he's sitting on the edge of his bed, and he's holding a picture of Vanessa, and he's gripping it so hard, it cracks the glass. So, then we have, as you're scrolling, you see the shards of glass trickling down into black, and then that brings you into the next scene. So, it's cool, in some ways, but I think after you read mine, you're going to be hooked.


[04:08] John: That's it, yeah.


[04:10] Rich: Infinity comics. It's my favorite thing, even though I don’t collect them.


[04:15] David: Oh, I wonder if that's part of it. Maybe that's part of it. I don't know. I don’t know what it is. I’m very vehemently against them, but I'm going to give yours a try, Rich. This morning, I discovered that had written the Kingpin one, and I was like, “oh, man. I'm going to have to read one of these damn things.” I just don't want Marvel to know about it. I wish I could read it in a way that they didn't know that I was actually opening up one of their Infinity comics. Borrow somebody else's. Yeah, John's probably reading them all the time. Traitor. Traitor is right. You're right, John. We are just acquaintances.


[04:52] John: Web comics are where I got my start.


[04:57] David: So, Rich, we usually start off the show a little bit more eloquently than this. What we ask people, often, is how they made their way to comic book fandom. Not necessarily your first professional gigs, but what was that thing that really grabbed you by the face, and shook you into loving comic books? Do you have one of those?


[05:18] Rich: I think when I was a kid, there were still comics in candy stores and newsstands, and stuff like that. So, my usual weekend routine was, my parents would drag me out to go food shopping, and pick up dry cleaning, and all the other errands, and my reward, I guess, for doing that was, at the end of the trip, “here's $5. Go buy some stuff in the candy store,” and I would usually buy comics, and then I would take them home, and read them, and it's not like I was like, “okay, I’ve got to get this month’s issue of Spider-Man. I’ve got to get this month’s issue of [X-Men].” It was just, whatever was on the stands that looked cool, I would pick up. So, I liked the X-Men, I liked the Hulk, I liked Batman. I remember getting the Blade Runner comic adaptation, because I thought the cover looked cool. So, it's random shit mixed in, and then, like a lot of people, I think when I got a little bit older, in high school and college, and stuff like that, I wasn't reading them so much. I was always geeky, but it was just, you get older, you want to go out and do other stuff, and a lot of people just thought of it as “that's what I used to read as a kid. Now, I'm going to read more mature stuff, like books with words, and no pictures, or anything.”


[06:40] John: David just found out about it earlier.


[06:42] Rich: Yeah, I know.


[06:43] David: That, too, much like Infinity Comics, sounds horrible.


[06:46] Rich: But then when I was in college, I was in New York City, and New York City has a lot of really cool comic stores. One of them was Forbidden Planet, which is still there today, and a lot of times, I'd meet up with friends after work, in Greenwich Village, and just have some time to kill. So, I just would wander into a Forbidden Planet, and just walk around, and look at all the cool toys, and things like that, and comic books, even though I wasn't reading so many, but then, I started to see that 90s Vertigo wave of comic books. I'm talking stuff like The Invisibles and Transmetropolitan, and Sandman, and stuff like that. I know we've got problems with 2/3 of the authors I just mentioned, but at the time, nobody had any idea. So, that opened up, in my head, because I was like, “where's the capes? Where’s the superpower?” This looked really interesting. So, I bought a couple, and I was reading through—Walking Dead was another one. So, I'm reading through this stuff, and I'm like, “holy shit. This isn't just kids’ stuff. Comics can really be emotional, and serious, and you can tell any story you want to tell,” and I think I always knew that, on one level, but that was when it really crystallized, in my head, of “it's just an amazing storytelling medium.” That's really what got me hooked into it, as an adult, and now, 75% of my bookshelves are graphic novels, and stuff like that.


[08:23] David: So, it wasn't any one thing, in particular. It was access to a place, when you got older, that brought you back into the fold.


[08:31] Rich: Yeah, and I think, also just realizing that it was a medium, and not a genre, because I think a lot of people think, you think comic books, you think guys in tights, punching other guys in tights, and things like that, and that's what a comic book is. There were a few sci-fi comics, when I was younger, and fantasy comics. I mean, Conan was out. There was stuff out there, but in my head, it was always just “yeah, comic books are superheroes,” but I think, realizing that they were much more than that just opened up how I looked at them, and that's what really ignited the love of it. I still like comics that I read, as a kid. There are a few that are etched in my mind, because I read them over and over, and over again, but yeah, I think what made me really appreciate them, as an adult, was just seeing the breadth of what's possible with storytelling.


[09:27] John: There's something about that time, at least for me—I don't know if you had the same experience—of a feeling that the possibilities for comics was open for everything else, but there wasn't as much stuff in it. The best of comics seemed more approachable than the best of prose did, and the best movies did, where you're probably not going to write better than Dostoyevsky, and whoever.


[09:51] Rich: Right.


[09:52] John: Sandman or Watchmen, as good as they are, it was like, “there’s a couple of things that good.” Maybe there's three things I’m not going to be as good at, and that was always really exciting, to me. That possibility that great works hadn't necessarily happened yet, or it felt like they were just starting to happen, even though that’s not true. I mean, there's great works from before then that I was maybe not aware of, at the time, or whatever, but it was coming out that era of “Comics Just Aren’t for Kids” headlines, and stuff, and that seemed like the zeitgeist of it, to me. That was at least what I was taking from stuff.


[10:29] Rich: Yeah, for sure, and I think also, the 90s, and stuff, there were certain parts of comics that were very gimmicky. You had Death of Superman, and breaking Batman's back, and stuff like that, where it's not like those are bad stories, but it was stunts. I got interested. I have a copy of Death of Superman somewhere, and stuff like that, but that didn't really hold me. That was the tail-end of when I was reading them, as a kid. I think what pulled me back into it, as an adult, was not so much trying to recapture what I loved about it as a kid, and more realizing that there was stuff for me to love now.


[11:11] John: That's cool.


[11:15] David: So, from there, you reignited, or truly cemented your love of the medium, but when did that turn into you wanting to pursue it, as a career, or as a work path?


[11:28] Rich: Yeah, well, I mean, you know those books, those things that John and I were talking about, the books without any pictures, called prose?


[11:35] David: Prose? Is that what you--


[11:37] Rich: Yeah, and I had it in my head, for a number of years, that I wanted to write, and I was going to write some amazing fantasy novel. I was going to write my version of Lord of the Rings, or something like that, and I had a very common problem that I think a lot of newer writers have—I would do all this prep work of thinking about the world and how everything worked, and blah, blah, blah, and then when it finally came time to write it, I would get 5 chapters in, 6 chapters in, and just be like, “I can't do this,” and I guess, a way to get around that is, maybe you write short stories, or whatever, but I think, in my head, I was just like, “well, I love comics. Maybe writing a script—maybe I'm a little more suited for that than I am for the prose thing,” and I think it was true, at least, at the time. I think, now I'm a little bit better, because I've had a decade and a half of discipline of finishing stories, and plotting […], and stuff like that, but I think, at the time—scripting is almost a different muscle than writing prose, and for some reason, I just really took to it. I took a class—I mean, you guys know Andy Schmidt, does Comics Experience—The class project of the writing class is a 5-page script. So, I got that done, and I just said to myself, “hey, it's a 5-page thing. Let me just get it drawn, and I'll see, and if it's terrible and I hate it, then I could just put it in a drawer and never look at it again, and just go back to my day job, and not worry about it.” I got the art in, and I remember opening the e-mail, and just being so excited, and being like, “oh, my God. I can't believe it. Look at this.”


[13:24] David: And that doesn't go away, either.


[13:26] Rich: Yeah. No, it doesn't. Every single time. Seeing the art come together, and seeing it come to life is probably the best part of [it]. 


[13:35] David: Man, every time. They're so great.


[13:37] John: Spoken like two guys that don't work with Andrew Griffith a lot.


[13:42] David: We started our third project at Fun Time Go, which is my little Kickstarter publishing arm, and we came up with our first superhero concept, and I've got Bart Sears doing the designs, and he's going to draw the book. So, he turned in the designs today, and it's just like, “Oh, my God.” It's like a kid in a candy store. They’re so much better than you can possibly imagine—Bart, in particular, because he’s literally a legend, in my opinion. Bart Sears is a legend of comic books. The guy can do no wrong, as far as I'm concerned, but anytime you get any artist, they always surprise you, visually. You just don't know. You have it one way when you're describing it, and then you get something with their interpretation on the page, and it's always so fun and exciting, and cool. I love the collaborative nature of comic books. It’s one of my favorite parts of it, but getting that first fresh page in, man, that is so cool. I love that.


[14:52] Rich: Yeah, and I think I knew, even then, with those first 5 pages, I was like “okay, I guess I'm doing this now because—"


[15:04] David: Because this is rad.


[15:06] Rich: Because this is rad, yeah. I had no idea how I was going to make my money back, or anything. I was just like, “Yeah, more of this, please.” So, I just did short projects for a while to find my feet, and then it just got longer and longer, over the years.


[15:24] David: It's interesting that you say that about the prose thing. I don’t know that I have that in me. I barely have any writing in me. I came at it from the art side. I was an artist, but my friend, Jonathan Maberry, I've been lucky enough to work with him on a bunch of comic book projects, but his primary thing is prose, and I've had conversations with him where he tells me he's writing 5-6000 words a day. Every day, that guy is sitting down and writing 5-6000 words a day, and he does it consistently. He puts out several books a year, full prose, and I sat down and thought about it. I legitimately don't think I say 5-6000 words in a whole week, even with this podcast mixed in, and he's writing that much every single day. It is a unique skill and talent that you really do have to—that's a muscle you’ve got to build big-time to get to that point. So, it's not surprising me that anyone would struggle in the early days of trying to figure that out, man.


[16:27] Rich: Yeah, no, it's mentally taxing, and it’s like anything, a muscle. You just have to build it up and do it over and over, and over again.


[16:34] David: So, you think now, though, if you really had the idea, you'd be able to pull it off?


[16:41] Rich: Yeah, I think so.


[16:42] David: […] designs toward that?


[16:45] Rich: To be honest, I'm waiting for the idea to strike me. When I get an idea, if I'm thinking about it—because most of the ideas that come to me, I'm thinking “okay, this will make a good graphic novel, or this will make a good comic series, or whatever,” but then I've had ideas where it's like, “well, this would probably be better as a TV show or a movie, or something.” So, I'm just waiting for that one to be “this is the idea for the novel,” and I don't want it to sound like a cop-out, or anything, but I just don't really want to force it.


[17:24] John: Our Kickstarter for the comic that Andrew and I are doing, we added prose stories, as a stretch goal. Part of that was just, I wanted to embarrass myself to have to write something in public and see how I can do.


[17:35] Rich: Yeah. I mean, it might start like that. “Maybe I'll start doing a few short stories here and there, just get my feet wet, and then we'll see.”


[17:42] John: This isn't technically correct, but you're a part of what I think of as the first graduating class of Comics Experience, where you were part of a group, because you were part of the group that stayed on there for a while. I actually just asked if you knew somebody that I forgot that you knew from that. You were in there with Paul Allor and Amy Chu.


[18:01] Rich: Amy Chu was in my class, yeah.


[18:03] John: I'm probably forgetting some other people who made it out of there and are doing stuff, but it reminds me of that first—In this weird way, the original graduating class of the Kubert School, where it was Rick Veitch and Steve Bissette, all these people who got really big from that, but I don't know. It is something interesting. Not that there aren't more people that came from either one of those places afterwards, but you guys were almost the test case. I don't remember the circumstances. Maybe you lost a contest, and then I was going to review your comic. Something like that. It couldn't have been a good thing for you, and it was right as I was moving. I'm irresponsible, in general, but I remember finally getting back to you, and you being like, “oh, thanks. We printed it,” but I'm sure I was very insightful, but sorry about that. That's when I first met you, was on the forums. I was helping Andy out with some of the stuff. I taught one class there, in person.


[19:03] Rich: Yeah. It was an Internet forum, and you were there as a go-to knowledge source, if you had questions. It was basically an ask-the-pro’s thing.


[19:18] David: John? John was?


[19:20] John: Yeah, I know.


[19:23] Rich: I'm sure you fielded a lot of “how do I write for Marvel?” questions from naive people—myself included, probably, and I think you did actually review one of my scripts, and maybe it was the fact it was some weird timing thing, but I totally don't remember you doing anything wrong, or anything I'd be angry at you about.


[19:46] John: It was for Gutter Magic. I remember hearing from you about it, while I was at IDW. So, it had to have been in my first desk there. […] been just as I was moving. I still have that copy of Gutter Magic, the original version of it.


[20:01] David: Gutter Magic was your first published work, right? And was that through Comics Experience?


[20:09] Rich: Well, I mean originally, it was self-published like that, for a short story I'm talking about, it was a Gutter Magic story, and then I had the idea of, as I was writing these shorts, I would write them all with the same group of characters in the same world, with the idea of, once I had four or five of them, I could put them all together in a regular-sized comic, and do that. So, the first one I did had three of them, and I convinced the guy who ran the copy room at my job, where they had these really awesome copiers that could do saddle stitching, and everything, on really nice paper. Yeah, it was great. He printed me out, I think, 50 copies, or something.


[20:54] David: For free?


[20:56] Rich: Yeah, for free.


[20:57] David: Dang. That is nice.


[21:00] Rich: Yeah. So, I took them with me to New York ComiCon, I took them with me to Baltimore, I took them around, and I think I was selling them for a dollar, if that. Mostly, it was just to give to people, like John, editors at companies I wanted to work with, but then the fact that I did those, and got a good response to them, the people that actually took the time to read it were like “these are actually really good.” The feedback I got that I felt was really good, was people were saying, “much better than I expected a self-published comic to be.”


[21:35] David: Damning with faint praise.


[21:36] Rich: It was more just, I’m some random guy, handing you something, but like most people starting out, you're just not very good. I think I was good, but I wasn't as good as I am now. I wasn't good as I was five years ago. So, I think me handing them something that I just put together, completely under my own esteem, they weren't expecting it to be professional quality, and maybe it was just shy of professional quality, but it was pretty much there. So, that motivated me to do more and more, and I started working on the longer story of Gutter Magic, and found a great artist to work with, and did Issue #1, and then I did the same thing where I just did a really low print run, and just brought it around with me, handing it out. Then Andy gave me a call, and he said that he was setting up a Comics Experience imprint over at IDW, and “would I be interested in doing Gutter Magic as a four-issue mini, where we would take my Issue #1, and then write three more, and basically put it out through IDW,” and I was like, “yeah, absolutely,” and then it was off to the races. It was night and day. After it got published, going to New York ComiCon the next year—the thing I remember, you guys know Charlie Chu? He used to be at Oni. So, I had been talking to him, and I had seen him for a couple of years at conventions, and then when I showed him the thing with the IDW logo on it, he goes “so you're a made man now? You're in the club.”


[23:15] David: It's all it takes.


[23:17] Rich: Just that one.


[23:17] David: That one person to believe in you.


[23:19] Rich: Yeah. I actually never wound up doing anything with Charlie, weirdly enough, but that was I think when I started to feel like “okay, maybe this isn't a fluke,” and then I think Road of Bones, which, Dave, you actually signed a contract on, it was a little bit of an unexpected hit. I know you guys were all into it, and we all liked the book, but I think we just—because I remember when we were just talking about “we'll just do the best we can, and we really love the story. We don't know how it's going to hit,” and then all of a sudden, it's like “hey, we're doing a second printing of Issue #1, and we’re going to do a third printing of Issue #1.” So, it was amazing.


[24:05] David: We'd changed some of the processes, internally at IDW, and Road of Bones was one of the first projects that came through the newer process, and I remember, I was trying to champion a couple of different projects, and Road of Bones was the number one of the two or three projects that I was trying to get everybody to, because IDW—and I think this is true of most publishers—just because one person in the company likes it, doesn’t mean that it's going to happen. I’m going to have to have a general consensus within the entire group. Marketing needs to be excited, and editorial needs to be excited, and the accounting team needs to be excited. At least, that's how things were set up at IDW, and it takes some work to get a consensus like that, but Road of Bones, I knew we had something, because that process was really easy. People would see it and hear the one-line concept, and was like “hell yeah, that's cool,” and not all were like that. Sometimes, it was a real fight. I had to really push to get some stuff through, just because I personally believed in it, but Road of Bones wasn't one of them. It really sailed through, and it tended to be those ones, like Road of Bones, the ones that we would have the most success with. I think it was a no-brainer, after Road of Bones, while I was there, at least, to try to support your projects, as much as we could.


[25:35] Rich: Yeah. I appreciate it. I mean I wouldn't be where I am without it. Sea of Sorrows is the next one, and I remember getting a really nice e-mail from John. He wrote “Sea of Sales” with a big exclamation point.


[25:53] John: I don’t even remember that.


[25:54] Rich: You just, and I was like “fuckin A.” I remember Alex was really happy, too. So, that was a really fun e-mail to get.


[26:04] David: Alex was a really great choice of collaborator for those projects, too. You’d think he really got you, and stylistically, a great choice for the type of stories you were trying to tell.


[26:15] Rich: Yeah, and I mean, Alex is somebody who—I see myself working with him, for as long as we're both in comics, just because we really get each other very well.


[26:27] John: You guys have a Brubaker/Phillips thing, where you just want to see what the next thing you guys do is.


[26:32] Rich: Yeah, and we’re starting to push out a little bit. We did the three horror stories at IDW. We just did Drive Like Hell over at Dark Horse. We did a science fiction story for Jonathan Hickman's 3 Worlds/3 Moons.


[26:48] John: Oh, yeah, that's right. I forgot about that.


[26:55] David: Tell us a little bit about that process. How did that one come down, and how did that project get developed, etc.?


[27:01] Rich: I was at San Diego the year that 3 World/3 Moons started, and Jonathan was there, too. They had a booth, because they were putting out their first print stuff and were just trying to hype it. So, I saw he was at the booth, signing, and the line wasn't too crazy. So, I ran over to the IDW booth, and I grabbed, it might have been Chase, or somebody, just was like, “I need a copy of Sea of Sorrows.” They gave it to me, and I went back, and I just handed it to him, and I just said, “hey, you're a real big inspiration to me,” and I told him a story about a panel I had seen in New York ComiCon, years and years ago, where I just appreciated some of the things that he had said, and I was just like, “but I'm a writer now, and here's my latest book. I'd love for you to read it.” He was just very gracious, like “thanks, and appreciate it,” and everything. I walked away, and I’ve got to say, half of me was like, “oh, maybe he'll read it,” and the other half is like, “it's probably just going in a box, and he'll never see it again,” but I was like, “but at least I took a shot.”


[28:15] David: You did the thing.


[28:16] Rich: I did the thing, yeah. With that mindset, he was also at New York that year, and I was there, and I walked up, and I just caught him, and I was just like, “oh, hey. I don't know if you remember me. I gave you copy of--” and he was like, “oh, no, I remember.” He was like, “it was really good. I liked it a lot.” We just started talking, and he was just saying how they were still planning on how to do it, but they wanted to bring some more writers and creative teams into this universe they were building, and he was like, “we might do it this year. We might do it next year, but I definitely want you writing something.” I was like, “yeah, absolutely. Here’s my e-mail. Get in touch,” and I think, about six months after that, they got in touch, and we talked about what we would be doing, and it started out as, it was going to be just a 10-page short story, but then they decided that they wanted to do something longer. So, they were like, “can you pull this out into a two- or three-part story?” And I was like, “absolutely.” So, it wound up being 30 pages total, I think, and they do Substack publishing. So, they just periodically send out stories. So, it got sent out in three parts, and then I think they just ran a Kickstarter last summer, for print versions of everything. They have 1 hardcover collection, called Legends, that it's going to be in.


[29:43] David: Was it work-for-hire, basically?


[29:47] Rich: Yeah, […] and it was great working with him. I worked mostly with Molly Mahan, an editor, but pitching the actual stories, I had 3 or 4 ideas. So, I sent them to John and Nick Spencer, and then we all got on Zoom and talked about them, and which one they liked, and why, and stuff like that. That was a really cool experience.


[30:11] John: That's cool.


[30:12] David: And then you got to choose the artist for it, basically.


[30:14] Rich: Yeah. We talked a little bit about artists, and I think that they were actually really keen to get Alex, as well, because I think part of what they were trying to do was take teams that had good—I think they liked Alex's art, regardless, but they also tried to keep some teams that had good chemistry together. Do you guys know Chris Condon? So, him and Jacob Phillips, they do That Texas Blood at Image. So, they just had them do a story, and stuff like that. So, yeah. I think part of it was, they knew we worked well together. So, why mess with a good thing?


[30:52] David: Yeah. Is that the last work-for-hire you did, or have you had any work-for-hire since then? What are you up to these days?


[30:58] Rich: Well, my most recent work-for-hire, I did a Spider-Man story earlier this year, or last year, rather. Early last year. I did a Batman story for The Brave and The Bold, that just came out in November, and then I also did an issue of Flash Gordon Quarterly for Mad Cave. It was a lot of fun.


[31:19] John: Oh, that's cool.


[31:20] Rich: Yeah. So, for me, work-for-hire comes in dribs and drabs. I don't know. I feel like, every time I reach out, asking about it, I get nothing, and then I just get a random e-mail being like, “hey, can you do this, or can you do that?” And I’m always like, “yeah, sure.” I guess, what I'm up to now—I'm doing one project with Mad Cave. That's work-for-hire. Hasn't been announced yet. So, I can't really talk about it, but it's going to be with--


[31:52] David: Nobody listens to this podcast. You could talk about it. It’ll be fine.


[31:56] Rich: It's going to be with one of their ongoing titles, and I'm taking over for an arc, and then I'm mostly just working on pitching new projects with different artists, and just targeting different publishers, and we’ll see what happens. I can't say that I'm super optimistic, but not because of the quality of the work. That’s because of the state of comics publishing, and all the--


[32:19] David: Yeah, man. So, you're feeling like you’re already being affected by how things have been going on, in the last couple months?


[32:28] Rich: Yeah. I just feel like resources are really scarce, right now. So, unless something is going to be a no-brainer bona fide hit, the answer I would anticipate getting is, “I really like this, but we can't really approve stuff like this, right now. Check back in a few months, or something.”


[32:46] David: As we're talking, Diamond is in the middle of its bankruptcy. There's questions about whether or not it's going to be able to pay all its vendors, which include publishers. Dark Horse just announced a series of layoffs. IDW announced another series of layoffs. So, it's sphincter-clenching time around comic books.


[33:07] Rich: Yeah, and then on top of that, you have tariffs. If you print in Canada, or you print in China, there's a lot of uncertainty, and you're feeling like, if all of a sudden, you're paying 25% more—I know that things got suspended, but if you're spending 25% more to bring your books in, as the publisher, you’re not going to eat that cost. You have to push it onto the cover price, and at some point, it feels like something has got to give. I don't know. On the other hand, though, comics books have been dying for at least 25 years now.


[33:50] John: I think, since the end of World Two.


[33:52] Rich: Yeah. Somehow, we always find a way to survive.


[33:58] John: No taxes on Infinite Comics, David Hedgecock.


[34:02] Rich: Yeah, there you go.


[34:03] David: You're not going to convince me, John.


[34:04] Rich: Maybe this is a big conspiracy just to get us onto digital.


[34:08] David: See, that's what they do. That's what I don't want—Exactly that. I don't want anybody encouraged into thinking that these Infinity Comic things are acceptable forms of entertainment. They're not. It should not, and does not, and will not, and cannot replace the comic book, goddamn it. It's not a real comic book. As you say yourself, you had to write it differently. It is a different reading experience, and that's okay, for people who don't know about comic books, but I already know about comic books, and that's what I like, and that's what I want. So, I'm not going to encourage anything other than that.


[34:41] John: For both our listeners, this is not the official opinion of this podcast.


[34:51] David: Are you insinuating that that I am an old man, shaking his fist, John? How dare you.


[34:57] John: Well, yeah, you did prevent me from making a joke about Substack being the worst method of comic distribution ever developed. I didn't want to pile on to us complaining about all of Rich's format.


[35:11] Rich: The thing with Diamond, if there's a silver lining to it, it's that it didn't come as a huge surprise to anybody, because I talked to my comic store owner, and I'm like, “you guys okay? You getting […]?” He’s like, “no. We figured it was going to happen. It was just a question of when.” So, he had spent the past few months lessening what he was ordering through Diamond, and getting most of his stuff that he could through PRH or Lunar, and stuff like that, which weirdly enough, probably made the problem worse, because I bet a lot of comic stores were trying to do the same thing. So, it makes it harder for Diamond to crawl out of that hole, but in a lot of ways, they had themselves to blame, I think.


[35:55] David: My gut feeling on the whole thing, which I haven't really expressed yet, one of my many opinions about this that I haven't expressed yet, is that I think the monopoly that was Diamond, was, for the most part, detrimental to the industry, over the course of the last 30 years. I think, overall, it added a dampening effect on the industry—Not to say that there weren't good things about having a single monopolistic distribution system, because I know there were, and I think we're seeing some of the ways that that monopolistic system was beneficial to retailers, in particular, now that it's not there. In the short term, I think there is going to be some pain points, as everyone really dives into this new reality that we're dealing with, but overall, I think the health of the industry is going to be better, by having multiple distributors. It just makes sense that having multiple distribution streams is going to cause and create more opportunity and more growth, across the board, within the industry. That’s just how stuff works. So, I know that, in the short term, we're seeing a potential contraction, or some problems with publishers, and maybe with some retailers, but I think in the long term, we're going to see, the industry's going to come out of this, healthier than it was going into it. I have no doubt on that.


[37:26] Rich: I think it has to do with the distribution, but also, I think something similar has been happening, as far as social media goes, and promoting books. There is no one place anymore to go. Way back in the day, you had Wizard Magazine, or you had Diamond catalog, and it's like “okay. You want to make a hit? Put it on the cover of previews that month, and you're going to see a bump in orders.” Nowadays, everything’s so fractured. You're putting your chips on a roulette table, and hoping it's going to hit. I know, when I put out books, I do podcasts that have listeners in the thousands, and I do podcasts that have listeners in the hundreds. I do YouTube streams, or whatever, where I'll go back and look, and it says it's got 15 views, or whatever, and it's hard to build something up when everything is so scattered, and I'll talk about my shit all day. I'll talk about it for an audience of 1, but the tried-and-true ways of making a hit, or even just getting people to understand that you have a book out, is just so different now than it was even 3-4 years ago. It's a lot more work, and a lot less clear, as to how you’d do it.


[38:57] John: I totally agree, and I think the lack of innovation that Diamond was able to not have—they had a lack of innovation. They were not innovating on stuff for as long as they had that monopoly. It created a situation where, as soon as there was a viable alternative, a lot of places were going to start going there. I mean, it's like that Simpsons joke about alcohol being the cause of, and solution to, all life's problems. If Diamond had gone bankrupt anytime in the past 30 years, other than the past year or two, it would have been apocalyptic, not catastrophic. It wouldn't have happened in 2004. If it had happened in 2004, what in the world would anybody have done? And now, there's so many other distribution systems, and the way people access comics, David's hatred aside, people engaging with comics on their cellphones, engaging them in bookstores, and online, in comic bookstores, on Kickstarter—every combination of those things. There's so many more channels, and they're all smaller than Civil War coming out in 2004, but they're less open to one thing being a systemic collapse. There we go. We’ve solved it. It's another one down.


[40:13] David: Once again.


[40:15] Rich: It's going to be everybody wandering through the fog, but then somebody will do something that hits it big, and then everyone will be like, “okay. That’s how we do things now.” The cycle will start anew.


[40:32] David: You touched on, a little bit, your day job is, you're in marketing. So, what are the real-world lessons that you've learned in your day job that comics hasn't applied yet? What are the things, marketing 101 things, that you don't see happen in the comic book industry? Do you see anything like that, A, and why do you think that is, B, if you do?


[40:58] Rich: Yeah, it's stupidly simple, but it's really just money, honestly. What comics does a lot is preaching to the choir. Most of the people that the comic industry is talking to are already reading comics, are already going into the store every Wednesday, or whatever, and that's fine, and stuff, but it's not going to grow. It’s not marketing that's going to make your audience grow, and there's a lot of things you can do. On a very simple level, it's about not posting just on your Facebook page. It's about buying a Facebook ad that's going to be sent to people, but there's other larger things you could do about bringing comics into different spaces. People who are fans of the movies—in a perfect world, that would translate into comics, and there are ways you could do that. You could hand out free comics. Every time you go see The Avengers, you get The Avengers comic, or you get a coupon to go to a store to get The Avengers comic, or whatever it is. The fact is that everything I'm talking about requires an investment of time and money. When the margins in the comic book industry is so small, your marketing budget could often be half the cost of what it takes to create the book. It's not that there's nothing we can do. It's just that we have to try to find money to do it. There’s no free rides.

It's similar in the entertainment industry, where a movie makes $250 million, yet it's considered a flop. How is that possible when the budget of the movie was only $80 million? It's because there was another $200 million of marketing, on top of that. Everything from flying the stars around to go appear on all the different talk shows, to putting ads in trades, to cutting a trailer, and stuff like that, and honestly, that's the surefire thing that would work, is putting money into it, and when you don't have money to put into it, you’ve got to put something into it. So, if you don't have money, then you have to put time. So, as an independent creator, if you want to be in comic stores, you have to get ready to make 1000 phone calls, or send 1000 e-mails, or really put in the time to get out there, and that's increasingly hard to do, when you have all your comic stuff to do, and have your day job, and have your family, and have to sleep, and stuff like that. I'm not trying to call anybody lazy or cheap, or anything. I'm just saying, the industry, as a whole, doesn't really invest in marketing, the way it needs to if it wants to grow.

I don't have the money. I'm not a millionaire. If I had $44 billion, or whatever, I could grow the comics industry like crazy, but it's like that old Steve Martin gag, where he's like “how to make $1,000,000. All right. You start with $1,000,000.” It's just the inescapable part of it, but that's really what it is, but I will say, it's really just about reaching other people who are not currently into comics, and getting them into comics. So, if you can identify who those people are, then you can figure out what you need to do to get to them.

There was an editor who asked a similar question on, I think Twitter or BlueSky, where they were like, “how do we get more 20-35-year-old readers?” I was like, “well, you’ve got to understand that if you're talking 20-35-year-olds, those are your most social years, where you've just been stuck in high school. So, you're in college, you want to go out, you want to find your people, you want to go to all your music festivals. So, you look at what those people are into and what they're doing, and then you find ways for comics to show up there, or be relevant to what they're doing,” and that's really all marketing is. It's figuring out who you want to sell to and how you can sell to those people without driving them crazier or turning them away.


[45:25] David: It’s good stuff, Rich. What I wrote down was “$200 million budget.”


[45:30] Rich: There you go.


[45:34] David: You’ve found one interesting way of being where the kids are at, or finding ways to get comics into different spaces, with your Comic Book Kitchen video blog. I don't know. What do you call that?


[45:46] Rich: Yeah, a video series or--.


[45:49] David: Tell us a little bit about that, and how did that come about? I’m curious.


[45:52] Rich: Yeah. So, Comic Book Kitchen, it's a series I do on TikTok and Instagram, where I will pick a comic book and cook a dish, either inspired by the comic book, or by the people. I did one of Ed Brisson’s books, and Ed Brisson and I, whenever he comes to New York, we always go out for noodles. I cooked some noodles that reminded me of that, but basically, it's just about pairing comic books and cooking, and the way it came about was, I got laid off from my job a couple of years ago. Last year, I was freelancing, but I did have a lot more time on my hands. I have always loved to cook. So, I think I was cooking lunch one day, and just realizing, when I look at TikTok, most of my feed is cooking stuff, and just seeing these videos, and being like, “okay.” I might have been doing a recipe that I saw online, and then, I don't know, I just, in my head, was like, “well, I’ve got a lot of time, and I'm cooking every day anyway. So, why don’t I just film it?” And then I was like “but that's boring, because there's hundreds of people doing this stuff. So, what's a unique spin I can do?” And I was like, “comic books. I do comics,” and then I looked at my friend, Scott Bryan Wilson and Liana Kangas.

They had this book called Trve Kvlt, that was all about a cult in a fast-food restaurant. So, I was looking at the burger, and I was like, “this comic is about a burger. Maybe I can make a burger, and call it the Trve Kult burger, or something.” That was an easy one, but just having that idea, and then I was like “well, what would I cook for this comic? What would I cook for that comic? What would I cook for Road of Bones? What would I cook for Sea of Sorrows?” Stuff like that, and I just started having these ideas, and I would just jot them down, and then I just, one day, did a test video, and had some fun doing it, and had fun editing it, and then just did more and more. So, I’ve 20 in the can now that are out, and I took a little bit of a hiatus, but I'm going to start again. I just figured I’d do seasons, more or less. So, I could take a little break, and I'll get going, do Season 2, starting in a couple of months.


[48:05] David: Nice.


[48:06] John: That's awesome.


[48:07] David: So, just totally organic, it sounds like, and just a thing that you wanted to do, more than anything else.


[48:12] Rich: Yeah, it was almost like, “okay, in this hand, I really love cooking, and I love cooking videos, and in this hand, I really love writing comics and reading comics. So, what if I put those two hands together and just see what happens,” because part of it was, there were no consequences. It's not like I was like, “all right. I'm going to spend $3,000 on some really sweet video equipment, and professional knives, and stuff like that. It was just like, “I'm just a schmuck, in my kitchen, cooking […] that I'd be cooking every day.” So, it was like, “okay, if people watch it, great, and if people don't watch it, at least I have amused myself,” and as long as I thought it was fun and funny, there just seemed to be no downside, to me.


[48:57] David: I really like them, and I will tell you, I don't know what it is about cooking videos—historically, I’m not a big social media guy. Never really been on Facebook, or anything like that. I don’t know which—


[49:09] Rich: I think we've established that.


[49:12] David: But recently, probably in the last couple months, I've been on Facebook a little more, because I'm using it for a lot of my marketing for the Kickstarter stuff that I'm doing, and I have discovered that anytime there's a person cooking food on the street, I will immediately stop and watch that video. Those street cooking videos, man, I cannot get enough of them. I will watch that for a long time, and I did not know that that was a thing that I was interested in, but man, I am very interested in that. So, your Comic Book Kitchen is right up my alley, man. I love it.


[49:44] Rich: There’s something weirdly hypnotic about the chopping and the sizzling.


[49:49] David: Yeah, I'm just always fascinated, because a lot of times, they’re cooking, they're doing bulk, 7 chickens at the same time, and I don't know. I don't know what it is about that stuff, but I love watching it, and I'm always hungry. That's probably part of it, too. “Oh, man. I want to eat some of that.” Do you have anything that you want to promote or push, as we’re wrapping up here?


[50:11] Rich: Yeah. I mean, as far as new stuff goes, I'm still a couple of months out from being able to announce anything, but I do have some stuff recently out. Drive Like Hell came out in trade paperback in December. Heartpiercer is another one. Both great books, from Dark Horse.


[50:30] David: Definitely recommend Heartpiercer—Well, I recommend both of these, but I just got a chance to read Heartpiercer recently, and really enjoyed it. That Gavin Smith art--


[50:39] Rich: Yeah, Gavin’s amazing. Yeah. I'm on BlueSky and Facebook, and Instagram, and Twitter, still a little bit—X, excuse me—but it's @rdouek. If you see that, it's probably me. My website is rdouek.com, and there's a link there to sign up for my newsletter. So, when I am finally able to announce my next stuff, that will be the first place where it hits.


[51:07] David: All right. Cool. We'll put that in the show notes, too, for people who want to get easy access to those links. It's rdouek.com. All right. Well, thanks, Rich. We appreciate you coming on.


[51:20] Rich: It was great catching up.


[51:21] David: It's good to see you.


[51:22] John: Yeah, I'll see you the next show, or something.


[51:24] Rich: Definitely.


[51:26] John: Thanks for being here. We'll be back next week, with something else exciting.


[51:30] Rich: More exciting than me? I don't know if that’s possible.


[51:32] John: That wasn't what I was going to say. […] in that way, and it was—


[51:36] David: Just sign off, John. Just sign off.


Thanks for joining us, and please subscribe, rate, and tell your friends about us. You can find updates, and links at www.thecornerbox.club, and we’ll be back next week with more from David, and John, here at The Corner Box.