The Corner Box

Tony Fleecs Gets Grimm on The Corner Box S2 Ep26

• David & John • Season 2 • Episode 26

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Tony Fleecs joins The Corner Box to talk about his "meteoric" rise within the industry, his upcoming work on The Thing, the lack of institutional knowledge at the "Big 2", how to create evergreen characters, focusing on creator-owned work, how Stray Dogs changed the face of comics, and building a winning creative team. Also, the podcast becomes a dog show, Tony shares a Corner Box Exclusive, and there's a "surprise" ending!

Timestamp Segments

  • [02:04] Tony’s career trajectory.
  • [04:59] Where’s the knowledge?
  • [11:16] Are superheroes getting smaller?
  • [15:43] Tony’s Marvel work.
  • [17:59] Switching artists in The Thing.
  • [20:50] Creating evergreen characters.
  • [26:23] Breaking the toys.
  • [27:11] Tony’s creator-owned stuff.
  • [29:00] Is this a dog show?
  • [29:48] The craziest break into comics.
  • [33:57] Stray Dogs’ success.
  • [42:59] Making cool things count.
  • [44:57] Corner Box Exclusives.
  • [45:22] What is Tony drawing?
  • [47:36] Building a winning team.
  • [49:23] Go buy Tony’s trades.
  • [50:25] Corner Box Bonus Content.

Notable Quotes

  • “They should be so lucky, seeing me in my Ben Grimm costume.”
  • “I want them punching each other at the dinner table.”
  • “We are more of a dog show.”
  • “More importantly, check out the stuff that I own myself.”

Relevant Links

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

John is at PugW!
Pug Worldwide

Tony Fleecs is a Powerhouse Creator!
www.tonyfleecs.com

Books Mentioned

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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, my good friend.


[00:35] David Hedgecock: David Hedgecock.


[00:36] John: We nailed it, David. At last, we didn't stumble over it.


[00:39] David: I'm literally fist-pumping right now. I hit the post. I think that might be the first time I've hit the post in 2025.


[00:46] John: Excellent. We're not alone. Mr. Tony Fleecs.


[00:48] Tony Fleecs: Hey, guys. Good to be here. Been a long time.


[00:52] John: I don't know when you guys met. I've known you, going back to My Little Pony days at IDW.


[00:58] Tony: Yeah, I feel like the first time we actually talked was when they started crossing into Transformers, early on, because you were on Transformers, at that time, right? Yeah. So, my stuff would get passed through the Pony people, and also, through the Transformers people. Before the crossover, when it was just—remember, we did a few covers?


[01:16] John: Oh, the covers. Yeah, that's right. I remember, we went to lunch, somewhere in Georgia, at a Con, at one point, or dinner. […] we get back to the same place, two days later, or the next day, and then I think, also even got the same things. That was, at least, a topic of conversation. I don't remember any more details than that.


[01:38] Tony: It's incredible you know that many details. I've been at so many conventions, I feel like I just have the same thing every time I’m anywhere, because it's just a continuous whirlwind. I'm going to Emerald City next week. It's really sneaking up on me, and I haven't been in probably 7 years, but I know exactly where I'm going. “I'm going to go get the breakfast at this place, and I’m going to go get the Thai food over at this place, and there's soup at this place.”


[02:03] David: Man, you're everywhere, it seems like, the last 24 months, dude. Every time I turn around, Tony Fleecs is somewhere, doing something, promoting something. You’ve been a busy man. It's fascinating, to me, that you were—at least a decade, right?—You were the My Little Pony artist. That was your main gig. That was your steady thing. That's how, and I don't mean to put you in a box, or anything, but that's how everybody knew you, as the My Little Pony artist, and then suddenly, it seems like you've just exploded or blossomed. You're everywhere now, and doing all these high-profile projects at Image and Marvel now, right? It's just incredible to see you have, seemingly, an entirely different start of a whole new career, but it's 10 years in. It’s been really cool to see you, for lack of a better term, manage your profession.


[03:01] Tony: It is a weird trajectory that I've been on, and I will allow other people to remark on how weird the trajectory is, but you guys were there when I was drawing My Little Pony. You're supposed to have believed in me the whole time. You're supposed to just be like, “of course, this is what was going to happen. This is what we think all the people that we hire are going to be.” It is definitely a strange path that I've been on, but I started out writing and drawing my own stuff, and then I moved to Los Angeles pretty quickly after I started making comics, which is a dumb place to move to, because it's really expensive to live here. So, in all that time, if I had stayed in the Midwest, or if I had stayed closer to home, that time that I could have been doing a little bit of freelance work, and then pushing my creator-owned stuff forward, I just fell into freelancing for that whole decade, but the good thing was, it was also me learning how to make comics, that whole time, too. When I first started on My Little Pony, I had drawn probably 5 or 6 comics, and then I drew 50, and I wrote some, and I did hundreds of covers. So, by the time that's over, I know how to make comics, pretty well.


[04:12] David: Yeah, you do.


[04:14] Tony: So, when an idea like Stray Dogs comes along, then I can go, “all right, well, I know how to put this together, and I know how to make this look exactly like how I wanted to make it look.” So, I always compare it to--I watched Skottie Young do the Oz books, and then do I Hate Fairyland, and that really was like a lightbulb going off, for me, because I was like, “oh, it's exactly what you're supposed to do.” I mean, it's the same thing the Image guys did, too. Jim Lee draws X-Men. He just goes and makes WildC.A.T.s. It's the same, but then, he owns it. So, that's what led to Stray Dogs, was “what’s was my version of a cute animal comic?” 


[04:51] John: Oh, it's a little different.


[04:52] David: I feel you might have missed the mark, a little bit, on the cute part.


[04:56] Tony: I mean, they're cute. It's just, the things that happen are not as cute.


[05:00] John: Yeah, that's the way that functions, when you do that stuff. There's a bunch of—when you look at Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie coming out from Young Avengers, or Hickman and Dragotta—That was just such a good way to go about things. I can't think of an example of that happening in the post-pandemic era, since you. I’m probably forgetting something that's really similar to that.


[05:22] Tony: Well, I mean, the people that broke after me—the Big Two, right now, are in a weird place, where they're not really building breaking talent like they were. It is not that Gillen and McKelvie—I mean, they were doing stuff together before. They’re not building up talent like that, for whatever reason. I think they're getting on their feet.


[05:41] David: I can tell you exactly why.


[05:42] Tony: Please.


[05:43] David: My opinion is that there is no institutional knowledge left in either one of those companies. Marvel still has a little bit. Brevoort’s been there forever, and there's a couple of people who've been there. There's no mechanism by which editorial can train talent anymore, in either one of those companies, for a number of different reasons, but I think the primary reason being that everybody there has only been working in comics for two or three years. What do they know? They don't know squat. This is not to denigrate anybody working in the profession. I know that working in comics requires you to be have a certain level of intelligence and abilities, right out of the gate, but that doesn't mean that you're qualified to look at an artist, and look at art styles, and know what's trying to happen there, or how to coach somebody into doing it better, or differently, or more. It’s just absent. The knowledge base is just not there anymore, and then I think, the other piece—not to completely take over your interview, Tony. I'm full of opinions today—is that there used to be the Marvel bullpen. That was a real thing. Everyone, if you wanted to work at Marvel, you lived in New York, and you went to the offices a couple times a week, either looking for work, or dropping off work. So, there were editors there that had been working there, since God knows—They've been there for 40 years. So, when they sat you down in their office, they would give you a piece of their mind, and tell you how to do things, and hold your boards in front of you, and say, “this is why this is wrong.” Where is that now?

I mean, in theory, we could create that, digitally, with the advent of Zoom and digital technology, but man, that's not the same as just hanging out with somebody, in person, and going to have lunch, and having conversations, and somebody literally busting out a board and saying, “look. This is what this is supposed to look like.” We just don't have that. Artists are completely left on their own to try to figure this stuff out, and that’s not how it used to be.


[07:32] Tony: I think it also has something to do with the runs being shorter. There’s not a Todd McFarlane run on Spider-Man. There's not a Jim Lee X-Men run. I mean, you look at them, they're just a couple-year runs now, looking back on it, but nobody does a couple of years. You go in for a miniseries, and also, part of that is, I feel like art has gotten, I mean, not more complicated than Jim Lee, but when it used to be, Jack Kirby would do 100-plus issues of Fantastic Four, he wasn't doing as detailed stuff as the modern comic artist does. You can't draw 6 pages a day, like he would, and have it hold up to today's stuff. It is definitely weird. Anyway, the people that came on after me, because of that, are coming from doing their own thing. Patrick Horvath does his own thing, and he’s bubbling right now. That book sells incredibly, and he's putting other stuff out there.

Zoe Thorogood did her own thing. What’s cool about her is, she's leaning towards just being able to keep doing her own thing. She's finding a lane where she can just—I know she got offered some big stuff, and she's just like, “or I could do this thing that I'm already successful at,” which took me a long time, to be like, “I feel safe enough to bet on myself.” I'm impressed when somebody way younger than me is like, “I'm just going to bet on myself.” I feel like that's also generational, or I was not raised to make a big bet on myself, even though I know we're Image guys. I watched my heroes do that, right away. I watched them get the first tiny bit of success—they were millionaires, but I saw them get enormous bit of success and then take a, I guess, not-so-risky bet on themselves.


[09:13] David: The current crop of people coming up, like a Zoe Thorogood, their whole life, they've been looking at webcomics, and it's just, by the very nature, you're creating your own thing, and you're writing, and drawing, and coloring, and lettering—You're doing it all yourself already, from the age of 7, and that's what you're seeing. That's what you're exposed to, the type of work you're exposed to. So, when you put it that way, it's not surprising that Zoe Thorogood's like, “well, why would I do that? I can just keep doing my own thing. That's what I'm used to,” and also, she's brilliant. So, she can do whatever the heck she wants, and it's going to work.


[09:54] John: We were talking to Tim Seeley. He was on here, several months ago.


[09:58] David: Oh, my God. You should see some of the stuff we had to bleep out, we had to cut, that he was saying about you. Holy moly. You should have a conversation with him. There's some weird bad blood going on. Yeah, I don't know what it is, but you guys need to talk.


[10:11] John: Her follow-up to her big year at the Eisner’s, when she was nominated for everything—I don't think she won as much as she deserved—but her follow-up was Hack/Slash. That's from the point of view of ex-Marvel/ex-IDW editors. That's a weird move. That was what she grew up on. That was the stuff she liked—not grew up with, or whatever—whatever age she was reading it at.


[10:34] Tony: I think they are the same age, actually—Hack/Slash and Zoe, or just about.


[10:39] John: Jeez. Okay. Yeah, that's horrifying, that that happens. I just had that earlier today. At the company I work at, we do 3D versions of some Marvel Comics, and the next one that's coming out is the first one that I worked on, when it wasn't 3D, and realizing, “oh shit. That was 20 years ago.


[10:59] Tony: Classic.


[11:02] David: Oh, man, John. Is it Liefeld-related?


[11:04] John: No.


[11:06] David: Okay, I’m […].


[11:07] John: That might be problematic, at the moment that we're recording this, at Marvel.


[11:16] David: I got my 3D New Mutants #98, though. I have several copies of 3D New Mutants #98, at this point.


[11:24] Tony: Wait, how's it 3D? Is it a hologram? Is it a statue? What is it?


[11:27] David: John’s company made a 3D version of New Mutants #98. It is amazing. It’s fantastic. I love it. I am not kidding when I tell you that I have been wearing 3D glasses more often in the last 6 months than I ever have, in my entire life.


[11:44] Tony: Wow.


[11:45] John: This is the glasses that come with it. It does come with glasses. This is […] book, […].


[11:50] David: It's New Mutants #98, Rob Liefeld art, and Tony, I’ve got to assume you're into Liefeld, right? You're into those early-90s guys, right?


[12:01] Tony: Yeah, big-time.


[12:02] David: It doesn't get more coming-at-you than Rob Liefeld, especially in that—#98 is just where he really just—that's the sweet spot. I don't think that's the pinnacle of his stuff, but that's where he really starts hitting his stride, for me.


[12:14] Tony: He’s inking himself.


[12:16] David: All this art, just coming at you, and now, it's in 3D, and it's amazing, and John's team did a fantastic job with it. It really is a nice package, and it's really fun to go through it, and look at it with those 3D glasses.


[12:28] John: Jim Lee X-Men #1’s coming out soon. It's no longer at the docks, as we record this. It is at distributors now.


[12:35] Tony: I haven't done superhero stuff before recently, and doing it now—and I've never not read comics. So, I've been tracking the changes and how it's been going. It’s almost like when you don't see somebody for a long time. If you see somebody every day and they lose weight, you don't really notice. Just […] gradually change. That's how the visuals in superhero comics—I've always been there. So, it just looks normal, to me, but then, when you look back at how big the characters were in Jim Lee X-Men #1, and in X-Force, and in the end of the New Mutants, they were huge on the page, and when you look now, they are drawn pretty small on the page, a lot of the time. I don't know if that's because it's swung more writer, and you got to fit more words in, or if it's just, part of it is digital—you can draw stuff real tiny, if you want to, and do cinematic wide-shots, and stuff, but it's really interesting to see how big they [were]. You look at the Issue #1 of X-Men, and everybody's enormous.


[13:32] David: It does seem antithetical to what visuals are on social media, or in general, that we see today. Visuals, now, are built for your phone. So, by its function, it has to be large and more simplistic, and big, and in your face. So, the fact that comic books have made this weird turn the other way is strange. You're right.


[13:56] Tony: A lot of it is the digital thing. When I started drawing digital, I started going wider, and I see, artists that I know are digital will especially go really wide on stuff. It’s interesting that once you get locked into it, that's the rhythm that you're drawing, then doing a gigantic gambit, slam-dunking a basketball, it doesn't really fit in with the rest of the stuff you're drawing.


[14:21] John: I think the Orthodox rules that are given to young editors are that you should pull the camera back, leave room for the dialogue, don't crop in so close, and I think that becomes a rule that gets applied to everybody, not a principle that gets applied when things are set-up wrong. Then on top of that, you have a few artists that were—I think Esad Ribić would always would do a lot of mid-shots. I think he helped popularize that stuff, in a way, […] X-Force and Secret Wars, where it was more European compositions.


[14:52] Tony: Yeah, you're drawing vistas and characters feeling like they're on their own, and a great way to do that is just to be far away from them, and they're just all by themselves, or just a couple of them, or you could do that thing where you do a punch that’s far away, and then you flip the page, and the impact of it is bigger. It's definitely something.


[15:14] John: I don't think you see that in manga, on webtoons, and stuff like that.


[15:19] Tony: […]. Those are smaller formats. You're drawing the figures, but they're bigger in the panel. They're more impactful in the panel. Also, in manga, you can, and webtoons, you get a lot more real estate. They can […] 3 panels a page, because there's going to be 200 of them, 250 of them, in a volume.


[15:35] John: Yeah, but that didn't slow down Liefeld and Lee.


[15:38] Tony: That is true. That's why they did so well.


[15:43] David: Tell us a little bit about your Marvel work, and how that came about, and what you're doing.


[15:46] Tony: I mean, I think it came about two different ways. One of them was, Jordan White found Local Man, and he reached out to me and Seeley. He reached out to Seeley. That's what they always do when they find Local Man, because they know him. All my Local Man-related gigs come through Seeley, because he knows everybody. He liked Local Man, and he reached out, and said, “can we do a Local Man-feeling thing for this Venom crossover?” So, we did a Wolverine book in this Venom crossover. It was almost the same process as Local Man. Just Tim and I—Tim would usually write a draft, and then I would do a pass and make changes. We’d work it out ahead of time, and then he would write a draft, and then I would do my pass. That worked pretty well, and then, completely separate of that, Darren Shan reached out to me about pitching stuff for The Thing, which is the current thing I'm working on.

I think my friend Pornsak recommended me to him. I’m not even sure if he's familiar with my work. He just saw that I was a guy, hit me up, but ironically, I never really thought of myself as a Thing—when he said The Thing, I wasn't like, “makes perfect sense,” but getting into it and writing it, I am like, “oh, yeah. This does make a lot of sense. The Thing has an attitude similar to mine, and had his pathos is close enough to my pathos.” So, I'm really able to slide into that character pretty easily, but then I could not punch my way out of a paper bag, and he's one of the all-time great punchers.


[17:14] John: Nobody can see right now, because this audio only, but you are wearing just boxer shorts and a trench coat.


[17:19] Tony: That's right. I'm wearing my blue spandex Fantastic Four Underoos.


[17:25] David: Jesus. Of the four listeners that we have, two of them just checked out.


[17:29] Tony: They should be so lucky to see me in my Ben Grimm costume.


[17:35] David: Well played.


[17:35] Tony: It's definitely different, obviously, from doing whatever I want on Image books, or the little bit of pushback or notes that I'll get on a Boom! book. This is fully involved editorial, and different between different editors, but doing the crossover was a little more challenging. The Thing book, just being out in its own world, has been, so far, a breeze. The weird thing about it is that, originally, it was being drawn by Leonard Kirk, and then he had some health issues, recently. So, he had to step back. So, we've had an artist change, but they hired Justin Mason to draw it, and he went and drew the whole first issue. Leonard had laid it out already, and started drawing, and they were like, “well, this is a weird time to switch artists, if it's 10 pages into the issue,” or whatever. He went and drew off of Leonard's layouts on the first issue, which is really interesting to watch, because Leonard, being an old-school guy, he does draw those big, huge punches, and those big action shots. So, it was interesting, seeing a new-school guy—I mean, Leonard Kirk is not—It's not Joe Sinnott, or something.


[18:43] David: No, but I think it's fair to say. I mean, he’s been around for quite some time.


[18:47] Tony: Yeah. So, that was really interesting to watch, and then, right now, Justin's working on Issue #2. So, getting to see his stuff, and how it's staying close to the—because you've seen his other work in Spider-Punk, and he just finished that book, Sentinels. He did that Rogues' Gallery with Hannah Rose and Declan.


[19:06] David: I really like his work. I'm a fan of Leonard Kirk, as well, but I feel like Mason's actually, in terms of just casting, he's a better fit for something like The Thing, I would think. So, you wrote the first couple of issues, with Leonard in mind, and then that got flipped on you, or that got changed on you. Did you have to make any adjustments to how you're writing now, or is it pretty much just--?


[19:29] Tony: I wrote the second issue, with Leonard in mind. I wrote the first one with nobody in mind, and then the second one, they’d gotten Leonard on. So, I write a little note at the beginning of every issue. That one said, “hey, Leonard,” and then now I'm working on the third issue, but watching Justin do Leonard’s stuff, and then do his stuff, it does give me a good idea of what to lean into. I haven't worked with a ton of different artists. I listen to a lot of podcasts when I'm drawing. When I hear Brian Bendis or somebody say, “well, you’ve really got to write to your artist’s strengths,” and I'm always just like, “I don't even know how to do that.”


[20:06] David: “Nobody did that for me. I’m not going to do that for anybody else.”


[20:09] Tony: They didn’t know who was going to be drawing those ponies.


[20:12] John: I love Brian Bendis. Love his writing. I'm a big fan. There's definitely a point, on some of those books, where I wonder if, in his head, that means “I'm imagining 50 little faces drawn by Mike Deodato versus 50 little faces drawn by Steve McNiven,” and that's it.


[20:28] Tony: How’s David Finch going to draw these people talking at a table?


[20:32] David: How brutal. That new book that he's doing, that new series of graphic novels—Phenomena, I think it's called—with the European artist—that artist’s name escapes me, at the moment [André Lima Araújo], but man, that is a beautifully drawn book—series of books.


[20:42] Tony: Araújo, is that him? […] Avengers A.I.


[20:51] David: Is The Thing in ongoing, or is it--?


[20:52] Tony: It's just five issues. At least, that's what I'm writing right now. If it's a smash hit, if this is the biggest hit Thing book since the 1970s, I guess, we'll keep it rolling, hopefully, but we just planned that as a 5-issue Thing. The assignment was basically “write something that can fit, not outside of continuity, but it's not steeped in today's continuity.” They're trying to put together some evergreen stuff that they can just print as graphic novels. I think, the hope, originally, was that they could have a trade paperback on the shelves, when people come flying out of that movie and into the comic stores, but they have a time period for Fantastic Four that they think of as the evergreen Fantastic Four time. So, you just write it in there. It’s John Byrne-y, around that time.


[21:36] John: That's always a weird thing with Marvel. I was tasked with editing some stuff like that, at one point, of “do these evergreen stories,” and there isn't an evergreen period for any Marvel character. There isn't that time period.


[21:47] Tony: The world outside your door, right?


[21:48] John: There's no version where Peter Parker is working at the Daily Bugle, going to high school, knows Mary Jane—Those thing’s never crossed over, and they do, in your mind, but it's not like Batman, or something, where it's Bat Cave, Alfred, Commissioner Gordon—That's a funny trick with the Marvel stuff.


[22:05] Tony: Yeah, it was definitely interesting because it's not like there's going to be an editor's note that says, “this takes place between Marvel Two-in-One #17 and Fantastic Four.” In the story, the other thing that they asked for—or didn't really ask for it. They just asked me to pitch a bunch of stuff—but then they said, “C.B. likes it when there’s a lot of punching and fighting. He likes it when they're macho and there’s action,” and I said, “all right.” So, I pitched this idea of The Thing having to fight all these Marvel bad guys that he hadn’t really faced off with a bunch, sort of like there's a bounty out on his head, and then all these bad guys come after him. Because it's in this amorphous time zone, it's like, “well, Deadpool is a bounty hunter, but he's not around, yet. So, we can't use him.” So, it was interesting being in that place in time, but also, not really in a place in time. This character probably is not bad here, or is good now, or whatever. Juggernaut's going to be in it, and they announce it, and because announcements don't tell you everything that's happening in the book, half the comments I get are, “does this writer know Juggernaut is not a bad guy anymore?” It's like, “yeah, all right. Fuck me, right? I’m sorry.” I feel like I have to go, one-by-one, explain to them, “well, it's an evergreen, John Byrne-y--”


[23:17] David: See, that's not the approach I would take. I’d be like, “what? Really? Oh, my God. How come nobody at Marvel didn't tell me? I have editors. What?”


[23:25] John: “Who the fuck’s Juggernaut?”


[23:28] Tony: I only know him from the movie, X-Men 3. That's the Juggernaut that I know.


[23:33] John: That's right. That was the best version.


[23:34] David: Here’s my only takeaway from all of this that I'm just hung up on, in my brain, though. C.B. Cebulski likes just a lot of punching and fighting. Amen, brother. I’m 100% on-board for that. That's what I want in my superhero comics, too—A lot of punching and fighting. I don't want people sitting around, talking at a dinner table. I want them punching each other at the dinner table, damn it.


[23:55] Tony: All the stuff that I do, my creator-owned stuff, the ideas that I get the most about, are stuff where, when I think of it, I think, “well, nobody else would think to do this, or nobody's done this, yet.” That's what really gets me charged up and excited about something. So, I feel a little bit out of my depth, going “all right, well, I’ll just do the thing everybody else does. I'll just do the fighting and the punching. I’ve seen the greatest versions of that. I’ve seen my heroes all do that. So, it's not like when I do Stray Dogs, or even a Local Man, which I feel hasn't been done in that way before—When I do one of those, I'm not comparing myself to everyone that I've ever loved, and this is definitely a lot more, “but he gets in a fight with Bullseye. How’s that […].” What would Frank Miller have said? What would Bendis have said, when they had a meeting together in a Starbucks?


[24:51] John: I guess, that's one of the tricky things about going into that, too, is navigating the impossible task like that. There's a certain Marvel comic, and this is one of them, where every constraint that you can have placed on you, has been placed upon you. Not only do you know Thing isn’t going to die, because that's a continuing character, but it also takes place in the past. So, you know what happens next. You also know, whatever happens here isn't going to affect the last 30 years of comics that have already come out. So, you know that's not going to be a thing. That's always such a nightmare scenario to throw a writer into, anywhere. That isn't just--


[25:26] Tony: What will you do, or at least, what I've done—The Thing has to be on an adventure, or in some scenario with the person you haven't met before, and then anything can happen to them, because you haven't heard from them since, or before, and that is even from—I remember when we were first doing My Little Pony. The first stuff we were doing was, they would do these solo adventures, the micro-series, and every issue would be a Pony that you know from the TV, and then some brand-new Kmart-brand Pony that shows up and has an adventure with them, because it wasn't a team-up. It wasn’t Twilight Sparkle and Rarity. It was Twilight Sparkle in her own solo adventure, but she can't just not talk to somebody. So, it's not The Thing and The Human Torch. It’s The Thing, but he can't just monologue inside he head the whole time. So, we bring new people in, and they may, or may not, get killed.


[26:21] David: I'm fine with that. I don't know. There's certain versions of a Marvel comic, where I want you to take the toys out of the toy box, and I want you to break them all, and I know that before you put the toys back in the box, they're all going to be fixed and back to normal again, but I still think, I don't know, I'm suspending my belief quite a bit, already, believing that a giant rock creature-monster-human guy is running around, in the first place. So, I think it's okay for me to think, “oh, no. How is he going to get out of that?” And think that, maybe he's not going to. I’m okay with these toys always having to be Jack-in-the-Box fixed.


[26:54] Tony: That's a mature way to look at it, based on years of doing this. You get a younger reader in here, they’re just going to tell me that Juggernaut is not supposed to be a bad guy anymore.


[27:09] David: So, we started at where you're at right now. What is your creator-owned stuff looking like these days, Tony?


[27:16] Tony: So, I just sent the last script for Uncanny Valley to Dave Wachter, another IDW graduate. We did 10 issues of that at Boom! Studios. It's basically a Roger Rabbit coming-of-age story. It's one of my favorite things I've ever done. The 10th issue is massive. It has big, huge things happening in it, and we've been building up to it for a long time. So, I’m very excited to see Dave’s on that, because he really is doing, I think, career-defining work in this thing. He drew it and colored it. I know he would color sometimes. He colored some Godzilla stuff at IDW, and he would color his creator-owned stuff earlier-on, but the stuff that he’d been doing at Marvel, I don't think he ever colored himself there, except on covers. So, he's just doing bonkers bravura work, coloring himself in this thing, and also, he's doing cartoons, which he's never done before, and coloring these full cartoon backgrounds, and almost building them up, in a saga sort of way, where they're sketches when he sends in the line art, and then when he sends in the colors, he’s built these whole beautiful colored vistas. So, yeah. I sent the last one of that.

That first trade comes out, I think, in April, and it'll be two trades, and hopefully, one day, a hardcover, and then, the ongoing concern, the thing that I'm always working on, is Feral, which is our follow-up to Stray Dogs, and it's me and Trish Forstner and Tone Rodriguez from Stray Dogs, and Brad Simpson, colorist on Stray Dogs, and it's a story about these indoor cats that get lost during a huge rabies outbreak outdoors, and then, it's basically a zombie story with cats. The short pitch is that these cats, if they get scratched or bit, they get turned into mindless, violent monsters.


[28:55] John: They get turned into cats. Mindless, violent monsters being a cat. I'm joking that a cat is nothing but a mindless, violent monster. I'm insulting cats. We don't have a lot of cat listeners, […].


[29:10] Tony: […].


[29:11] David: We are more of a dog show. I didn't know that, but that's true.


[29:15] Tony: The dog guys.


[29:16] David: Yeah, we're more of a dog show. Not that we disparage the cat people. We're more of a dog show. I think we are.


[29:22] Tony: The cats, their nature to be violent and bloodthirsty, is more permissible when they catch this rabies virus, in this book. So, they become unstoppable, killing monsters, and we're working on Issue #13 of that right now—#12 and #13. Trish is drawing cats in #12 and Tone’s drawn backgrounds in #13, and we're doing covers for #15 this weekend. That's ongoing. That's, every month, the main concern.


[29:48] David: How did you get hooked up with Trish? Because wasn’t this her first big gig?


[29:54] Tony: Trish has—we always joke that she has the craziest break into comics story I’ve heard. The first issue of any comic she ever drew sold over 200,000 copies.


[30:04] David: Wow.


[30:05] Tony: Yeah, Stray Dogs #1 was her first book, and then over the course of us making Stray Dogs, and because we were putting issues together for a long time before we were putting it out, she did a couple of Pony issues, as well. She did a Free Comic Book Day issue that came out during—it didn't come out on Free Comic Book Day during Covid. That year they pushed it back or cancelled it. So, yeah. Stray Dogs is her first book. We met through Ponies. She had done some cover work for IDW, but I met her actually, first, when she was a designer on the BronyCon design team. She would do artwork for the programs, and when you go to a Brony convention, there's artwork everywhere. They make big banners that say, “this room is where they do the role-playing games,” or “this room's where they do the costume contest,” or whatever. Every show they do, instead of—ComiCon just puts up that same banner with the Toucan every year—Every convention, they’re always doing new artwork for these things.

So, she had done that, and she had drawn a portrait of me as a pony, and she came up to give me a copy of it at a show, and I liked her style so much, and we got to chatting. At one of these shows, she had a sketchbook, and I always like to buy artists’ sketchbooks more than buying whatever fan art they've done, or whatever, and I got her sketchbook, and in the back of it, she had drawn this portrait of a dog. It was a memorial piece, where she had a dog that passed away, and she did a drawing of it to memorialize the dog, and it was drawn like Charlie from All Dogs Go to Heaven—real Don Bluth-y, and when I had the idea for Stray Dogs, I was like, “this is a long shot, but I wonder if this lady would draw this. I wonder if I could reach out to her,” and she, I think partially—looked up to seems like a weird thing to say—but if the Pony fan artists even cared about the comics, at all, they looked up to us.

There's a whole other branch of the Pony fan artists that did not give a shit that they were comics, to the point that they don’t recognize that. They hardly would recognize it if you drew the cartoon yourself, but she was one of these ones that—she liked comics, and she liked cartoony comics, and she liked the Pony comics, she loves Skottie Young’s stuff. So, when I came to her, it wasn't just a stranger coming to her. It was a person who makes a thing that she knows is good, and that she likes, coming to her, because, at the time, it's not like I was showing up with any success. I just basically had the story of what Stray Dogs was, and I told her that, and she was like, “yeah, I'll do that,” and it feels like the luckiest break in a career of lucky breaks, but she had never done a comic before, and a lot of times, you'll get 10 pages in on a thing, or 50 pages in on a thing, and then somebody will just get a different job, or have a break-up, or something will happen, and they'll go away. Here we are, working on, I think, our 20th issue together, after all the Stray Dogs, and now we're on to Feral, and she's just a trooper. She doesn't like to go out. She likes to stay in and work. She doesn’t have kids. The upside of it, for her, I guess, is that she saw what an incredible success looked like on an Image comic book. So, she knows that there's good reason to stick around, and keep her head down, and work, and knock this book out.


[33:21] David: Feral’s paying the bills for all you guys, basically, pretty much?


[33:24] Tony: It could be paying them a little better. I still live in Los Angeles. It’s definitely paying her bills. It's paying Tone’s bills. My bills are ridiculous. So, that's why I'm doing this other stuff, too, but it's selling amazingly well for a book on its—FOC for #11 is Monday. So, 10 issues in. Most books—Local Man, for sure, was creaking by at 10 issues in, and that was a book that—we got nominated for an Eisner, people loved it, but it's hard out there right now. So, yeah. Feral is doing pretty good.


[33:57] John: Stray Dogs changed the face of comics. There are a lot of comics about animals getting into Stray Dogs-like circumstances now. That had to have seemed like—and I don’t mean this in any way of denigrating stuff. I’m saying this as a guy that was doing Transformers, and coming into something—I'm a Ponies guy. I'm working with a new artist who's a Ponies artist, but not even a super established one—you couldn't have been expecting, three years later, the guy masterminding Batman at DC is going to be doing one, too. Is that weird? I mean, what do you think about that? Never having had a success that, I don’t know what that’s like.


[34:34] Tony: You've had some successes. It’s a case-by-case thing, for me. I'm a petty person. So, in some cases, I'm like, “that's cool,” and in some cases, I'm like, “fuck them,” but also, I don't think of myself as the inventor of this. I know that Trish and I, and Tone, and Brad, figured out a way to do this thing in what I think is the perfect delivery package for this content, because there was—Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely did We3. That's this kind of thing. Pride of Baghdad is this kind of thing, but also, those guys had—and I don't think this necessarily has anything to do with the success of it—but if you wanted to read a Grant Morrison book, you could read one that stars Batman, and if you wanted to read a Brian K. Vaughan book, you could read one that stars the Runaways. Brian's been, as far as creator-owned stuff, been smarter about just making that the only place you can get his stuff, but yeah, Stray Dogs—I think, we take it seriously. It's a really specific vibe, and I'm the keeper of the vibe. I feel like I understand what it is, and it's about being serious about this thing, but not being afraid to have it look adorable, and using that to trick people into feeling comfortable, and then flipping that on them, and hurting their feelings, or frightening them, or whatever.

So, seeing other people do it, I feel just the success of our book opened up doors for people who, maybe not necessarily—I don't think Tom King saw Stray Dogs and was like, “I'm going to make a book about dogs.” I think he had an idea to do a book about dogs, picking around his back pocket, and then the publishers see Stray Dogs, and everybody knows it's not suicide to put out a comic book about dogs, or in the case of Beneath the Trees, which I think is a brilliant book, you guys were at IDW—you know they weren't like, “well, we could probably do a teddy bear murder book,” back before, say, I don't know, 2021/22. It’s supposed to have happened in those years, that it was like, “you could probably make money doing something cute and murder-y,” and they did, but there are times when I see a Stray Dog-ish thing, and my immediate thing is, “I can't believe they didn’t call me for that,” but then after that, I'm reading it very closely to see if they adhered to the rules that only I know, in my head, that make a good dog comic, or a cat comic that people would care about.


[36:55] David: Is that what you do, John, when you see other robot comics? You like looking at them, and being like, “did they follow the three laws of robotics on this book?


[37:03] John: There have been times, where I've seen a robot comic come out, a company-owned book come out, and be like, “I know how to do that.” That part, I do.


[37:10] Tony: You guys were doing that. All your Scioli stuff was, “it’s one big universe, and we're taking an artist that's idiosyncratic, and letting him loose on this thing,” but I feel like what they're doing now is, they took it one more step forward, because IDW always had the real Transformers comics. […] Transformers. No offense, and then the other ones were the fun ones, where it's idiosyncratic, and they're trying […].


[37:39] David: The good ones.


[37:42] Tony: But I think what they're doing on Transformers now is, they're like, “well, let's just have that be the same one. The real one is the idiosyncratic, fun one, and we'll just let an auteur really cook and do his thing, and have it be the only one that counts.” Except, there is—well, there's not. There's just the GI Joe comic that still is the old one. Let that guy make that comic for the rest of his life.


[38:02] David: I'm a GI Joe guy, for sure. I've been a fan a long time, at this point. I bounce in and out of the book, just like anybody. Over the course of 325 issues, you're not going to be slavishly dedicated. Although, I say that, and I'm thinking that I've bought every single issue of Groo, almost exactly when it came out. So, I'm pretty close with that one.


[38:24] Tony: John, when you see them doing stuff—do you keep up? Do you read the Transformers stuff, or do you flip through it, at least?


[38:30] John: I mean, I was reading it when it was coming out, and really enjoying it. I dropped off. In all honesty, I wasn't as into the GI Joe spin-offs as I was Transformers, and I've just got a stack of comics I need to read.


[38:41] Tony: Do you see them do stuff, where you're just like, “they wouldn’t let us do that?” Does that happen a lot, or are you able to separate?


[38:46] John: There's definitely a few things, where yeah, we wouldn't have been able to do it. I think the approach on the GI Joe stuff was really interesting and smart, because I think I'm responsible for more failed relaunches of GI Joe than any other human being. It’s a tough nut to crack, I think, other than do Larry Hama, but even that—people can get excited about it, and then they'll—yeah. GI Joe is such a weird thing, in that it's half Larry Hama talking about the difference between NATO 5.63mm bullets versus Warsaw Pact 7.72mm bullets, and you'll have stories where that's the main thing, where they're listening to bullets going by, and knowing where they're coming from, and the next issue thing is a samurai robot trying to destroy the space monster, but I think they did a really good job in coordinating the GI Joe stuff in there. Daniel Warren Johnson's great. That stuff was awesome, and the artist that took over after him, Corona—for some reason, I didn't put together that I liked him from other things before he came on to Transformers. I’m like, “this guy’s awesome.” Then I’m like, “I'm literally reading the other series that's still coming out right now, by him,” that he was doing with Skottie, or whatever.


[39:55] David: My big thing about the Transformers, in particular, with Daniel Warren Johnson was, I felt like that was such a big gamble on Daniel Warren Johnson's part, because at the moment before he started Transformers, he could write his ticket and do anything he wanted, and he had already proven that he was able to do his own creator-owned stuff, stuff that he owned, and make really good money doing it. He’d already proven that. For him to move on to a licensed property, where he doesn't own anything, seemed like a bit of a risk, seemed like a bit of a gamble—gambling with his career a little bit, and it's paid off, because I think, somehow, impossibly, his star has risen even higher, thanks to the Transformers work. I think his work has been exposed to a bunch of people who probably wouldn't have ever been exposed to it, in some ways. So, I think it paid off for him in spades, for sure, and of course, Skybound, but Skybound was always going to benefit from Daniel Warren Johnson's talent, but Daniel Warren Johnson, himself, I think, actually benefited from it, too, which is great. Everybody won. For me, “what is Daniel Warren Johnson doing, man? Dude, why?”


[41:04] Tony: Part of it, too—I mean, I've heard him talk about how it was a nostalgic thing, that's something that he really loved, and you can see, the way that he draws it is presenting it in a rose-colored—It's not in the nuts and bolts of, “which one of these Transformers has beef.” It's a misty, watercolor memory of Transformers, at least at the start of it, where it's just, “we're looking through this. This is how it feels to love Transformers. It's got real people and real emotions, and Spike Witwicky’s dad is having trouble at work,” just real dad stuff in there, which I think is Daniel’s secret weapon—his dad stuff. […] a real strong dad POV, but also, even having done Wonder Woman before this, and he did the Jurassic League thing, and he did Beta Ray Bill at Marvel, I do feel like, it's like Kendrick—sometimes, you have to pop out and show people.

I feel like, right now, Daniel Warren Johnson—and this is all Monday-morning quarterbacking—but the only thing he could do after this is a brand-new Batman #1—they wipe the slate clean, and there's no DC Comics, except his Batman—that’s the only mainstream move for him. Otherwise, it would just be “just do your own stuff and just be rich selling your artwork for the rest of your life,” but it did seem like, especially at Marvel—I don't know if he only wanted to do Beta Ray Bill. Beta Ray Bill is a shocking one, for me, because you see DC, they’re like, “give him a Wonder Woman prestige format thing,” but they weren't putting him on Batman. He's not doing a Hush. I mean, I'm sure if he was free, they would have loved to have him on an Absolute book now, but that’s having seen Transformers. That's having seen this take a different swing, take a different perspective, get a Felix-y artist, and then just put them on this thing, and let them go crazy. I do think that showing people that Transformers, if there was a gamble, it sure paid off, because now everybody sees, “that's how you do it.”


[42:58] John: That goes back to what we're saying about the pullback art stuff. There's such a house style on a lot of stuff, and a lot of the Big 2 comics, and yeah, Transformers, one of the things I think it really proved, and one of the reasons I think it got so hot, was just, people wanted the exciting art. People wanted the stuff that was really exciting. All the stuff that Daniel Warren Johnson had done at other places was always—it was like the Scioli stuff. It was the side project. It's the, “here's the weird Wonder Woman book, the weird-ass—Beta Ray Bill? All right, here's a weird Beta Ray Bill book.” The Doctor Strange comic by the guy that did—Tradd Moore. I totally forgot Tradd’s name for a second. That's an awesome book. It's really great, and got Eisner-nominated, and all that stuff, or won. I don't remember, but it's still off to the side. It isn't even the main Doctor Strange book. That genius of putting the crazy thing up front, like you said, you're right. That blew a lot of eyes open. That's the phrase I'm going to use now.


[43:52] Tony: I really had my eyes blown open by that book.


[43:55] John: When you see that Nick Dragotta Batman, when is the last time you saw Batman and were like, “ I can't wait to read a comic that's drawn like that, so I can see Batman like that?” Man, it's been a while.


[44:04] Tony: It's almost like those are the main ones, even though they were designed to be—I don’t know. Again, from the peanut gallery going “how come they did this?” But I don't understand why it's Absolute and All-In at the same time. I want Age of Apocalypse. Make the cool thing be the thing, and then, however you’ve got to explain it away, do that, but make it count. Make it be my thing.


[44:31] John: The story gimmick on all of those is, what if the DC heroes were poor?


[44:37] Tony: Relatable.


[44:38] John: Yeah, and it's a trick to do that with Superman, but they did.


[44:41] Tony: I mean, raised on a farm. There's not a ton of money there anymore. 


[44:45] John: Yeah. You found out that Jor-El wasn't the super scientist of Krypton. He was a poor scientist on Krypton.


[44:52] Tony: Obviously, they weren’t listening to this guy. Me and Tim Seeley are, right now, starting our new thing, after Local Man.


[45:02] David: We're getting the exclusive, John.


[45:03] John: If you don't have it figured out, freebie for you: International Man.


[45:07] Tony: Everywhere Man.


[45:08] John: Everywhere Man. That's why you're successful.


[45:10] Tony: International Man of Mystery. Yeah, but that's October this year, probably, if we can get our shit together.


[45:16] David: Are you guys going to draw it again?


[45:18] Tony: Yeah, this one--


[45:19] David: That's the only thing you were drawing. It's funny, again, the first ten years of your career, all you did, for the most part, was draw, and now, you're really leaning into the writing side of your skillset. What are you drawing right now?


[45:33] Tony: I usually am doing covers, all the time, for something, or another. So, while I was doing Local Man, I was also doing covers for the Army of Darkness that I was writing. I’ve been doing covers for Uncanny Valley, and then right now, I'm doing Beneath the Trees covers, for the new Beneath the Trees series, and then always, on Feral, or Stray Dogs, I do the thumbnails on those, and then, I usually do the covers—we collaborate on them, where I’ll do a rough, and then Trish draws in the cats, and then I take it back, and I ink it, and then put the background.


[46:04] David: So, you're not writing full script? You're just writing a rough script, and then thumbnailing it?


[46:10] Tony: We've done it both ways. All the Stray Dogs was full-script, and then for Feral, the first arc was full-script, and then the second arc, we were like, “let's try doing thumbnails first, almost Marvel-style, for myself.” I have an outline, I know what the story is, and I thumbnail it out, and then I would do the letters, and I would tighten it up, and write it there, and then now, we're back to full-script after that, because it would become the most stressful 3 days of my month—would always be like, “oh shit. I’ve got to letter this whole thing, and write it, at the same time as I’m […] it.” If anything else was happening, I would have a full crisis, because I'd just be like, “I can't think about that right now. I have to write and letter a thing, at the same time.” Now, it's a lot more peaceful. I have it written before I’m thumbnailing it, and then, because of the weird way that we make Feral and Stray Dogs, it's almost working with, when you're doing bi-monthly shipping, where you're writing for two different artists, at the same time, because I do thumbnails, Tone draws the backgrounds, and then Trish draws the cats over top, or the foxes, or wolves, or whatever. There's a bear in the new one--Spoilers--So, she’s in charge of animals, Tone’s doing backgrounds, and I'm doing, basically, the storytelling part without the acting. It's all just little faceless blobs. So, I have to have the script done early enough that Tone can be working on backgrounds, while she's working on drawing the animals, and the stuff that's already done. It's a ball that’s always up in the air, and I'm just trying to not let it hit the ground.


[47:36] David: Just hearing that, it's not surprising that the book is so successful. I mean, Tone Rodriguez—that dude's a beast. He's one of my favorite human beings, and then you've got a rockstar shooting star artist coming in, doing the animals, and then you've got 15 years of experience doing Ponies, and all this stuff. That's a killer team, man. There's a reason why certain books rise. Cream always rises to the top. What a great group of talented folks you've got around you, for this project. There's no doubt that it was going to be successful. I’m saying that, after the fact, but what a great team.


[48:10] Tony: We definitely built it, and even Stray Dogs before, we built it--I remember when Robert Rodriguez would talk about making El Mariachi. He'd be like, “well, I’ve got a buddy that's got a school bus, and I’ve got a guitar case, and a turtle,” and he thought about all the things that we had access to, that we could put together, and that's Local Man, too. Seeley can draw superheroes in that 90s style, and I can do that noir-y Michael Lark-y PhotoRef-y style. It was always just about figuring out what little pieces we had, and then how we could put them all together, and in the case of Feral and Stray Dogs, is what big—Tone’s the funniest, because when I do the thumbnails, I make very clear to tell him, “Don't go crazy here. You don't have to draw the full forest. You don't have to draw every leaf,” and he always draws every leaf.


[48:57] David: I don't think he can help himself.


[48:58] Tony: He definitely cannot. The only way to stop him is, I'll do close-up panels, and I'll write on the thumbnails “no background, at all.” He will do no background, but he won't do half a background. That’s what we've learned.


[49:11] David: That's awesome. Well, Tony, thanks for coming.


[49:16] Tony: Happy to be here. Have me and Seeley come back when we do this new thing in the fall. I’d love to come and--


[49:21] David: Oh, that'd be fun.


[49:22] John: That'd be great.


[49:23] David: So, anything you want to pitch or plug, or push?


[49:26] Tony: I feel like we may have oversold how well Feral is doing. It does great, but it could always sell more. Make sure, if you're on the fence about it, go out and pick up those trades. We’re not at the place, yet—when we do a certain number, I'll just be like, “go ahead and steal it off the Internet, whatever,” but right now, we're in a “go buy the trades. Tell your retailer you want to have it on your pull list. Buy it monthly is the best way.” Check out Feral every month from Image Comics, and then we talked about Uncanny Valley. That book is still coming out, but the trade will be out soon. Feral trade, I just got my comps for the second volume yesterday. So, that'll be in stores in the next week, or so. Keep up with Feral. Check out my creator-owned stuff, and The Thing from Marvel in May, with Justin Mason on art, that’s going to be cool. Check that out, too, but more importantly, check out the stuff that I own myself.


[50:11] John: If we steal it from the store, it counts as a sale, from your point of view.


[50:14] Tony: Absolutely. Rip off the retailers.


[50:17] John: Thank you for coming on. Great to talk to you. Thanks, everybody, for joining us for The Corner Box. We'll be back next week.


[50:23] David: Thanks, everybody.


[50:24] John: Bye.


[50:25] Hey, you. Yeah, you. The guys left their mics on after the show ended. So, here's some Corner Box bonus content, but shh. It's a secret. Oh, maybe not, since I just told you. Shit. Well, here it is.


[50:37] Tony: David's like, “listen, I just want to tell you, one of those artists you're working with is doing incredible work, and I didn't want to say it publicly, but I feel like, secretly, now that we're not public will be a good time to compliment this guy.”


[50:48] David: I was saying that Dave Wachter on Uncanny Valley—I was asking if he had a multiple personality disorder. I felt like maybe I shouldn't say that. The reason I was asking is because he's doing so many different styles in one book. It’s crazy what he is pulling off. It really, truly is quite an impressive feat, what he's doing, artistically.


[51:10] Tony: When I was initially cooking up this book, and before it was even at Boom!, I was thinking to myself, “I'm going to have to do this with two artists, because it doesn't make sense that one artist would be able to do both.” Besides me, I didn't know anybody that could do it, and Dave does it way better than I could. I could do a shitty version of this. He's doing the big-screen version, but I had asked him, when I was thinking it was going to be two people, I was like, “hey, I have this idea, and it's a cartoon world/real-world Roger Rabbit-type thing, but it's about a family, and a coming-of-age story, and an adventure story. Would you want to draw the real-world stuff, draw the boy and his mom, and their home, and stuff, and then I'll have a true artist, a cartoonist, come and draw his grandpa and other cartoons in the cartoon world?” And Dave's always been real game, but this is the one time he was like, “no.” He said, “you just want me to draw the boring parts of a […],” and I was like, “I guess, when you put it that way, that is what I want you to do.”

So, we just went our separate ways, and I kept thinking about who could possibly do it, and then, when we got into figuring it out with Boom!, I very quickly realized, they weren't going to spend the money to have two artists on this book.


[52:28] David: Shocking.


[52:29] Tony: Yeah, but I was like, “who could do it?” So, I called Dave back, and I said, “hey, remember that thing—" It had probably been 10 years since we talked about it—“Remember that thing I brought up? Do you think you could do the cartoon-y stuff, too?” and he was like, “yeah, of course, I could do it,” and I was like, “oh, great. This is wonderful,” and he sent some samples over, some stuff, and we kicked ideas back and forth, and he had it right away, but then as the book went on, and like you said, it's not just him doing a Looney Tune grandpa. He’s doing Alex Toth-looking guys, and classic anime-looking guys, and Disney princesses, and all this different stuff, and when he was really cooking on that—Issue #6 of that has--Steamboat Willie’s in it, and he's just doing these spot-on versions of all these different styles, and he was really cooking, and I hit him up, and I was like, “it’s so crazy. I had no idea you could draw cartoons like this.” He was like, “oh, yeah. Me neither. I was just bluffing. I just figured I could probably do it,” and then, he could.


[53:28] John: Have you ever seen the Marvel graphic novel of Roger Rabbit? I always think that's going to be really cool. For long time listeners, the realistic part was drawn by friend of the show, Dan Spiegle, the late Dan Spiegle, who died long before we started this show, but who comes up a lot, and I can't remember who drew the cartoony part, but I always think “I’ve got to get this. This would look awesome,” and it doesn't. It looks disappointing. This looks how you wanted that to look.


[53:56] Tony: The Cool World comic is the same way, that DC put out. There's a disconnect because both of those were made at a publisher, where it's people who know how to make comics, putting comics together, in the way that you put comics together. You can draw whatever different styles you want in the Cool World comic. When you pass it off to the inker, if they’re inking, and you’ve both got the same line weights, all of a sudden, it's not two different things. It's the same thing. So, having done Stray Dogs, which we very intentionally drew in a flat cell-colored style—the dogs are never rendered. They don’t have shading. They're just flat cells on rendered backgrounds, so that it looks like an animated thing. The only thing I told Dave was, “when you're coloring this, you'll save time on these cartoons, because none of them should have rendering.” Just doing that, separates it, immediately. You look at it, and it's a real person and a cartoon person, standing next to each other. It does the trick right away, but that was really the only thing I said. Dave went and figured it out himself, and the stuff that he's done up till now--Issue #6 is the high watermark, for me.

It's a real cool history of the cartoon world thing. It's one of these things that, when I had the idea for this thing, it was like, “This is a Planetary-sized—Planetary, the comic—where this is a world where it lives right underneath the stuff that we know, the whole history of the world, also, is mirrored in this cartoon world, and what's a way to show that?” So, we did this history of the cartoon world in that issue, and Dave drew all these different styles, and made it dramatic, and beautiful, and heartbreaking, and what we're working on right now, the last issue is--again, he's going to be drawing cartoons that we haven't seen before—Big, crazy action stuff, and emotional stuff, and I'm very excited about it, just because of how cool this stuff has been. I just got colors from Issue #9, and that's beautiful, and then, the stuff that he's doing in Issue #10, that's going to be—No pressure on him. I keep telling him, “No pressure, but this one's got to be the big one.” If anybody even sees it. I don’t know how the book sells. I know that we love it, and the people we talk to, that read it, love it.


[55:54] David: It's 100% recommended. The story's great. The artwork, Dave really is doing some stuff that—there's not a lot of guys out there that can do what he's pulling off. It really is impressive.


[56:04] John: I want to point out there's bonkers that, of the three creator-owned comics you're talking about, that's the one that's drawn by one person.


[56:11] Tony: Exactly.


[56:14] David: That's a good point. All right. There you go, John. Our first secret backtrack. What do they call them? Bonus track.


[56:22] Tony: After-credit scene.


[56:23] John: We'll put in 20 minutes of blank, like an old CD, like we're at the second pressing of Nevermind.


[56:31] David: Perfect.


[56:32] Tony: John, go get your lunch.


[56:33] John: I'm going to eat this dog if I don't get to go soon.


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