The Corner Box

Stephanie Williams' Effortless Joy on the Corner Box S2Ep27

• David & John • Season 2 • Episode 27

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Writer and comic historian Stephanie Williams joins the show! John and David talk with Stephanie about swapping her electron microscope for a career in comics, how the best butts in Marvel gave her a big break, increasing comics access with fewer bookstores, the nature of corporate comics, building momentum in the industry, and Stephanie's exciting upcoming projects. Also, John reveals his true origin.

Timestamp Segments

  • [00:48] Stephanie’s incredibly neat background before comics.
  • [01:59] The yellow brick road to comics.
  • [07:03] Becoming fans of YA.
  • [10:17] What turned Stephanie into a fan?
  • [12:03] Access to comics.
  • [17:28] Working at Marvel.
  • [20:20] Stephanie, the Wednesday Warrior.
  • [21:34] Horrible corporate comics.
  • [27:07] The business of momentum.
  • [28:16] Ignition Press.
  • [31:17] New comics coming soon.
  • [34:45] Comics and side gigs.
  • [39:47] Rewatching old movies.
  • [42:23] Stephanie’s favorite comics.

Notable Quotes

  • “If Alien had come out before babies had come out, Alien would’ve sued the concept of babies.”
  • “Corporate comics are just—they’ve always been horrible. Do not create anything for corporate comics.”
  • “Be careful about turning your hobby into your job.”

Relevant Links

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

John is at PugW!
Pug Worldwide

Stephanie Williams Does the Coolest Things!
www.whysteph.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, with me, as always, my good friend


[00:34] David Hedgecock: David Hedgecock.


[00:35] John: We have with us a special guest—Stephanie Williams, comic book writer, journalist, all-round delightful person. Welcome, Stephanie.


[00:45] Stephanie Williams: Thank you, John. Very nice things that you said about me. I really appreciate it.


[00:48] David: So, Stephanie comes to us with an incredibly cool background. She is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Chicago, and I think you have a science background, but what were you doing before your life in the comic book field?


[01:03] Stephanie: I was an electron microscopist, a career that I didn't know existed, until I interviewed for it, after I graduated. I actually interviewed for another position, and I believe it was for another research lab in the hospital, but someone quit, while I was interviewing, and this particular job, they really needed someone, because it's both clinical and research. So, they sent me upstairs to interview for it, and that's the one that I got. So, fresh out of school, needing a job. So, I just said, “okay. Well, it’s still science. So, I'll do it,” and yeah, seven years later, really enjoyed the work. My boss sucked. It was a small lab. It was just myself, the lab manager, and then a rotating spot of other coworkers, because no one stayed longer than a year or two, except for me, because I was too foolish to leave.


[01:55] David: But, eventually, you got out of there.


[01:57] Stephanie: It wasn't a direct move right to comics. It was this long, winding Wizard of Oz road, basically, where, while still working at the hospital, I was blogging. So, I started blogging, and was talking about--I had just become a mom. So, I was blogging my experiences in motherhood, and likening it to things, like Alien, […] Xenomorph. However, very stressful in that way. I was thinking of Ellen Ripley.


[02:25] John: I thought that if Alien had come out before babies had come out, Alien would have sued the concept of babies.


[02:34] Stephanie: Yes. Then no one would do it. Terminator—another. Sarah Connor, thinking about her son, ruining her day off, sending his dad back in time. So, things like that. Eventually, it branched off to me really getting nerdy and talking about all the comics that I loved, and I started podcasting. So, the podcast that I did was Misty Knight's Uninformed Afro. We focused on black superheroines and characters in comics, because a lot of times, folks would just mention Storm, or if you were lucky, Vixen, and there are just so many other characters. So, we just wanted to take this academic approach, and I got to use my research skills, by reading all this stuff on Marvel Unlimited, and the back webs for issues that I couldn't find, and got invited to the Kennedy Arts Center in 2018. I think that was the moment, where I was like, “oh, okay. Well, this is actually something very serious, and maybe there is something that can be done that will bring some income.” As soon as I had that thought, the podcast fell apart. I’d had all this research for Season 3 of our show. Someone was like, “you should just pitch that to Syfy Wire, or someone, and see if they'll let you write about it.”

So, I pitched it to Syfy Wire, or at the time, Syfy FANGRRLS, and my first piece was the Evolution of the Dora Milaje from comics and film, because Black Panther had come out that year, and next thing I knew, I was contributing regularly, and also, doing little, silly memes, and stuff, online, where I would take still-shots from the X-Men animated series, Justice League, and stuff like that, tell stories, and eventually, folks were like, “you are always talking about comics. Have you ever thought about writing comics?” I said, “yes, but I have no idea how to do that,” because there is no standard way to do that, essentially. There kind of is, but there isn't.


[04:33] David: You just do it.


[04:35] Stephanie: You just do it, and I foolishly picked up House of X/Powers of X, the director's cut, and Jonathan Hickman's scripts were in it. I was like, “oh, well, I'll learn from this,” and that was a horrible decision. It was awful, but I mean, maybe that's what helped me out, because I basically had to take what I thought he did that really worked and I could understand, and then, made my own, and just went from there. So, Parenthood Activate was the first. So, again, taking those tales of motherhood, and making them in comic form. Then, Living Heroes came, and next thing I know, an editor from Marvel reached out to me for Marvel Voices Legacy, not because of any of the comic stuff. It was a piece that I wrote on the Best Butts in Marvel from the 90s. It was this listicle. It was very ridiculous. It was very unserious, and I said, “sure.”


[05:30] David: Your entry into comics was thanks to an article you wrote that was called “The Best Butts of Marvel”?


[05:36] Stephanie: Yes.


[05:37] David: We all enter this medium in various and different ways, John.


[05:40] John: Yeah. Some of us, through the back door.


[05:45] Stephanie: I still can't believe that that was the thing, of all the things I had written.


[05:49] David: It's fantastic.


[05:52] John: Where were the comics coming out? Were you putting them out yourself, or were they through publishers?


[05:56] Stephanie: So, the ones that I did on my own, I posted those myself, either online, eventually, maybe Webtoon, I use a little bit, but that was pretty much it, just posting them online, directly to Twitter, and stuff, and hoping folks would pay attention.


[06:11] David: You certainly have garnered some attention. You've got a really great portfolio of Nubia & the Amazons, Magic Planeswalkers: Noble #1, Nubia: Queen of the Amazons. You did Moon Girl & Devil Dinosaur: Wreck and Roll middle grade graphic novel, and you're doing another YA graphic novel right now, right?


[06:28] Stephanie: So, that is The Raven Boys. So, from the Raven Cycle series. That'll be out August 5th, which I hope stays the same. You know how publishing goes. Sometimes, it changes, but yeah, that was a huge undertaking. Yeah, my biggest project after Nubia—Straight after that. So, I had never done an adaption before, and I think I only had 3 months to adapt that. I watched all of Atlanta Seasons 1 through 3, during—well, it watched me, but I had it on in the background. I was working my way through that, but it was a lot, and the other funny thing is, I did not consider myself a fan of YA, just because the kids are always doing something annoying, and I’m like, “what are y'all doing?” I grew to love the kids, and now, I'm a fan YA. So, here I am.


[07:16] David: My son is 14 now. So, I came up when Captain Underpants was just finishing, and Dog Man was just starting, Judd Winick’s Hilo book series was just getting rolling. I feel like I came in at a good spot. The YA thing really—I got the bug, man. In fact, I told this story the other day, about my son—The new Dog Man just came out. So, a few weeks back, we were in the bookstore, and we walked by this big display of the Dog Man, and I'm all, “oh, the new Dog Man,” and he looked at it and looked at me, and I was like, “oh, you're too old for that now huh?” He’s all, “Yeah,” and I almost cried.


[07:54] Stephanie: Oh, I’m so sorry […].


[07:56] David: A, because he's growing up—that was the big reason, but the other reason was, I'm not going to have a valid excuse to buy the next Dog Man and read it for myself. So, yeah. Big fan of the YA myself. I'm enjoying some of the stuff that's out there right now.


[08:11] John: Well, that's more middle grade, though. YA is where […] gets to say the F-word.


[08:15] David: Is that where we're at with that? Okay. So, what is YA then?


[08:18] Stephanie: I automatically think of The CW. That's a very rude way to put it, but that's […] what comes to mind, but it's your Hunger Games of the world, your Twilights of the world, those type of things. Maze Runner. Basically, young adult, which feels like a lot of adult.


[08:35] David: I guess, that's what we're graduating into then. I've got 5 years. No, I'm excited. I got him into Kaiju No.8.


[08:43] Stephanie: Ooh, yes.


[08:44] David: About a year and a half ago, and got myself into Kaiju No.8, too. Man, I love that book. It's one of my favorite books, and that Kaiju No.8 has—man, I have gone down the biggest manga rabbit hole since that time, and I am really liking manga, lately. It is really scratching an itch.


[09:04] Stephanie: That was me, last year, finally reading some Junji Ito. I went into [a] really wild rabbit hole, where at one point, I was just buying everything I could, left and right, and it all started from the Netflix anime, that was--what was it? Tales of the Macabre, and yeah, that had me like, “oh, okay. I want more,” and I ended up just buying everything. What an interesting man. Brilliant man. Also, very interesting.


[09:34] David: When John and I were back at—John, maybe you weren't there, at that time, but when we were back at IDW, we were having constant conversations about adapting and bringing over Junji Ito’s stuff. It was a non-stop discussion about how to get in front of him, A, and then get his works over here.


[09:49] John: Yeah. I think, if I recall that correctly, also an education in what a “no” sounds like, coming from a Japanese rights holder, versus a “yes,” because they sound very similar, and I remember people coming back, being like, “Oh, we're going to give the rights to everything.” It's like, “really?” and no.


[10:05] David: Yeah. No, it's rights to nothing. Yeah, very polite. So, Stephanie, obviously, deep into the comic book chasm. We ask this of everybody—what is the thing that turned you from the casual reader into “oh, my God. I love this stuff”, the fan geek that you are today?” I assume, you are. I think, you must be.


[10:37] Stephanie: Just a little bit. It was Archie Comics. It was this damn double digest, because were they right there. So, I ended up picking up one, sneaking it onto the conveyor belt at the grocery store, and I remember, I think it was a summer digest, too, and I remember reading that thing, all in one night, and I was like, “I want more. I love it.” It was slice-of-life, very different. It reminded me of--I've never told anyone this. You're getting exclusive here—but The Sims. So, the very first Sims game, you could take screenshots, or whatever. We figured out how to take screenshots. I had started making comics then. I didn't know it, at the time. I thought I was just doing a little silly thing, but it reminded me of the stories I tried to put together with that. I was like, “oh, well, I can stop struggle busting with that, and just read some Archie, for now.” Archie really got me into reading all the time. I even sent off for a subscription. That's how locked in I was with Archie. It progressed to other things, like, of course, DC, Marvel—I was reading Batman for a little while, but I think that was more so because I was just familiar with Bruce. I figured, “well, might as well pick those comics up,” because at least I know that character. Same thing with Wonder Woman, of course, X-Men all day long, but Archie is what made me an avid comic book reader.


[12:00] David: That's great. I love that.


[12:02] John: Yeah. I always heard that Archie got into grocery stores because they were mobbed up, but I don't know if that's proven to be true, but I think that is going to be such a flashpoint of things going forward, is where you start getting the access for this stuff, especially if there’s fewer bookstores, and stuff like that, where you might even run into manga, as an idea. There's plenty of bookstores now, but there's less than there were 20 years ago. I used to get the comics at 7-Elevens, and stuff, and […] pick those stuff up from the grocery store. That’s always a worry, for me.


[12:34] David: Is that how you were getting your stuff, Stephanie? From the grocery stores?


[12:37] Stephanie: From the grocery store, actually. Yeah. There was a grocery store in Chicago Heights that we went to. I think it was called Ultra Foods. They literally had a comic section, where the school supplies were, which was near the frozen foods, and every time we went to that grocery store, I beelined there, and I was just there until it was time to leave. It was a nice, full shelf of just books. So, of course, my Archie was there, but all the current stuff, and it is really sad that you just can't go to your local grocery store, or wherever, even a convenience store, and pick up comics. I mean, I feel like, again, the access of it all, but this the convenience—You’re there getting eggs that are $12.00. You might as well get a comic that’s $6.


[13:24] John: Yeah, they average out to being too expensive, but still. The first comics I got were probably from a Chicago-area grocery store, as well.


[13:32] David: Were you living in Chicago, John?


[13:34] John: I grew up in Elmhurst when I was a kid. Elmhurst, IL.


[13:36] David: What? I didn't know that. I thought you were born-and-bred Southern California guy.


[13:41] John: No, I was actually born in New Jersey, because my dad was in the Navy. Wasn't his idea, but he was in the Navy.


[13:47] David: Having you or living in New Jersey? Which one was not his idea?


[13:49] John: […] but yeah. Then we moved to Illinois, and then when I was eight, we moved out to Anaheim.


[13:55] David: I never knew that. I thought you were in Anaheim the whole time. You’ve got Chicago roots. That's cool. I like Chicago. 


[14:01] John: No joke, sometimes the accent comes out, with the way I say certain things.


[14:06] David: Did you ever stop collecting, for college, or anything? Did you ever fall out of the habit, or were you locked in the whole time?


[14:13] Stephanie: I was always collecting. So, I had shoe boxes that are at my parents’ house, just from random stuff that I would pick up. So, at one point, I got really serious into thrifting, but thrifting, specifically, for comics, because you could also still find comics at thrift stores, too, before that became a popular thing. If anything, it might have slowed down to just every now and again during the month, instead of a weekly thing, but no, it's always been a constant. Then, when I discovered—and I hate to say this, but I was a college student—when I discovered that you could download things, the world was endless.


[14:53] David: I always struggle with that. Having worked in the industry for 20 years, I feel it is my absolute duty to buy all my entertainment—not just comic books, but all my entertainment. There have been times in my life, though, where I did not want to buy my entertainment.


[15:09] Stephanie: No, I mean, if anything, Karma did get me, and my me and my laptop got many viruses, thanks to LimeWire. So, trust me, it all evens out.


[15:19] John: I'm sure I told this before. I had to download a complete run of Namor, at one time, to page-check an actual Marvel book, because that was the only way to do it. Exactly, yeah. I've had this talk with other people, too, where we used to use a lot of pirated software, perhaps, depending on the statute of limitations. We may, or may not, have ever done that. When you're in college, there's no way you can buy Photoshop, but when you're an adult, how know to use Photoshop, and they're making their money back off of you, eventually, if you're in that field, or whatever.


[15:53] Stephanie: Trust me. Please don't do that.


[15:57] John: If you do, become a professional.


[15:59] Stephanie: Yes, and you will pay your dues back. Trust me.


[16:03] David: You’ll pay and pay, and pay, and pay, and pay.


[16:10] John: Yeah. Yes.


[16:12] David: In every possible way. I like that. If you pirate comics, you have to become a professional. I like that. I want that clause in the contract. That is an appropriate punishment for comic books, is working in it. I'm 100% on board for that.


[16:29] Let's give it up for our entertainers. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.


[16:34] Hey, Corner Box Clubbers. David here, and I've got something fun for you. My new Kickstarter campaign is launching soon, and I want you to be part of it. Just head over to funtimego.com, and click the VIP banner up at the top of the site. That’s your All-Access Pass to our new book, Miss Mina and the Midnight Guardians, plus some seriously cool perks. If you sign up for our VIP package, you're going to get a guaranteed Remark Edition of the next book that comes out, you get offers for exclusive discounts and incentives, tons of free giveaways during and after the campaign, and you also get access to our private Facebook group, where we do sneak peeks, and talk about the podcast, give bad movie reviews, and generally have a fun time. So, don't miss out. Go to funtimego.com, sign up, and get in on the fun.


[17:22] All right, ladies and gentlemen, back to what you came for. Give it up for more of The Corner Box.


[17:27] John: You started doing more stuff at Marvel, too, right?


[17:31] Stephanie: Mainly, a lot of their Infinity Comics, which—writing those is so different from just regular, traditional—not in a way that's just like “God, why am I doing this?” But you’ve got to think about things a little bit differently. It’s quicker-paced, and they sometimes suck.


[17:49] John: David isn't a fan of the format. I wrote couple of Marvel Infinity Comics, before they were the current version of Infinity Comics, where I guess it was HTML4, or something, where you click through it, and then the panels would come out. Now, weirdly enough, I used to be a webcomics guy. That was where I came from, originally, and I used to be one of the two people that was using Flash as a comics reading interface, back in the circa-2000-era, and Marvel started putting their comics up using Flash, and I reverse engineered how Marvel did it, and started doing stuff like that. So, the HTML4, or whatever they were using, was similar to Flash. It wasn't actually Flash. So, it's funny, going back, and reading that, but then when it gets collected, it's so weird, because you get these, I don't know, 12-panel pages sometimes. Wouldn't it have been easier to have written it for the pages then, and then broken it down? It seems like the new version—It seems like it can translate to print a little smoother when they do that, but also, that doesn't seem to be a concern for a lot of the stuff, it isn't Jeff.


[18:51] Stephanie: If it's not Jeff, then it does not matter, because that's the other thing, too. It's vertical. So, we have Spider-Man swinging all the way down the page. How is that going to translate once you try to collect it and split those pages up? I hate to say it, but I don't know if I’m that much of a fan of that format, as I've been working in it, and then I also say that while working on something for DC. So, that is—I am a hypocrite. I basically write whatever, and then poo-poo it later, or the formatting later. I mean, I'm the person, at the convention, when folks come to my table, and they're looking at floppies, I’m like, “sure, you could get that, or you can wait till the trade comes out, and you can have everything, at once.” So, I find myself toeing that line of “do I want to sell you this single copy, or do I want to save you some money?”


[19:48] David: That should never be a question. You sell them everything you have, right in the moment, Stephanie. That is never a question. This is a business. You’ve got to sell those comics. You can't be having them pile up in your house. You’ve got a whole room, somewhere in your house, that's full of your comic books. They’ve got to go.


[20:04] Stephanie: I actually need to take some out that are in this storage bin, because I'm doing a convention in Matthews, NC, tomorrow, which is, thankfully, only 25 minutes away, and I'm getting all of the old back stuff that I have, like “hey, guys. Please, take this from me.”


[20:19] David: So, Stephanie, it sounds like you're a Wednesday Warrior.


[20:21] Stephanie: I am now, definitely, because my son now is like, “hey, I want to read Fantastic Four,” which was so random. He started watching the animated series—the old ones—that's where that came from. Now, I'm taking him to the store […] almost every Wednesday, if we can make it. So, he's getting stuff, like, what was it? Darkwing just came out, I believe. I hope I'm not flubbing on that. I know he wants to pick that up, of course. I think Zootopia has a comic, or something. Powerpuff Girls. A bunch of stuff, and also, Fantastic Four, which is so random, to me.


[20:59] David: Is that because of the movie?


[21:01] Stephanie: No, it's not. It’s because he is that old, and he likes to go back and watch older animated things. I don't know why. I mean, 90s, late-80s-type stuff, and it's always fascinating, to me, because I'm like, “hey, this show isn't on anymore. They don't have toys for this.” I don't have to worry about that now, but there was a point where he would get upset, because there were no toys. I’m like, “I'm so sorry. You're 30 years too late.”


[21:29] David: Your son's an old soul.


[21:30] Stephanie: He is. He really is.


[21:34] David: I want to totally digress for a minute here, John. We’re talking about the Fantastic Four. I think it’s the late-70s. Is that the one you’re talking about? Jack Kirby did the storyboards for a bunch of those cartoons. I think I’ve got that right. John, do I have that right? He did storyboards, I believe, for that particular Fantastic Four cartoon.


[21:56] Stephanie: Pretty cool. Okay.


[21:57] David: It is very cool, except, I'm reading some old interviews with Stan Lee and Jim Shooter, and Jack Kirby, in a magazine called Comics Scene, and this is the premier issue, and I was reading it, and it’s the 20th Anniversary of Marvel, and they're doing this interview with Stan Lee and Jim Shooter, and Stan and Jim are talking glowingly about Marvel, and effusive about all the contributions that Stan made, and then “Oh, yeah. Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby had something to do with it, too,” and then, Comics Scene is brilliant, whoever the editor was, because they have a sidebar. They interviewed Jack Kirby, and Jack Kirby's basically just, as politely as he possibly can say, “F those guys. They stole my stuff, and they won't give it back,” and he's pissed, and it's fantastic. This whole side bar’s that, and then the article moves on to, “we are doing this big Marvel 20th Anniversary thing with Fantastic Four. We’ve got all these great people coming back to the brand. We couldn't get Jack to do anything, but we have his old storyboards from the animation, and we're going to have a bunch of people ink those, and that's going to be in there.”

So, I'm like, “Oh, my God, they're still stealing his stuff,” even in that moment, where he's like, “I won't work for you. F you guys. You guys are horrible,” and they're like, “We're not, but we're going to steal some more of your stuff, and you're not going to get paid for it,” and they're talking about it, the way the article’s presented like they're doing a good thing for the fans. You're totally stealing his stuff. God, you're repurposing his art, yet again, in the middle of this fight that he's having with you, and you're still doing it. It's an interview of 1980/81, and I was blown away, like, “oh, my God.” Marvel—just corporate comics—are just, they have always been horrible. Do not create anything for corporate comics, speaking as someone who's worked in corporate comics for 15 years.


[24:01] Stephanie: Yes, I learned very quickly, writing for IP is fun. It can be fun. Sometimes, it's fun, but sometimes, it's not wise to give your best ideas, because how will you reap the benefits of that? Sure, you'll get a couple of articles, maybe an interview, and possibly an invite to the red carpet, if the thing goes off to be a movie, but show up, do your job, but this is not the end all be all, as I thought it was, on the outside, looking in, like most people do, and not to say that it's all bad, because it's not. It’s just when those rose-colored glasses are shattered, it's just like, “yeah, this is a business. This is a business, based on these fictional characters, that a lot of us love and adore, but at the end of the day, that bottom line, you don't want it in the red. So, decisions are going to be made, based on that.”

 

[24:52] John: Yeah. That's always a weird trick on that stuff, too, just speaking of people that didn't get invited to the red carpet. There's a quote I always think of, from Liefeld, where he said, “you wouldn't have Elektra without Frank Miller, but you also wouldn't have Frank Miller without Elektra.” There's certain people I think managed to do a good job in navigating those roads of “how do I put my best work forward without screwing myself over, in a way that benefits both sides?” Intrinsic to any corporation is a one-sided demand of loyalty that will never be reciprocated. I worked on a lot of Transformer stuff, and I've made more royalties off of the much smaller amount of Marvel stuff that I've made, and also, that's not very much, but I don't know. What were you going to say, David?


[25:43] David: Well, I was just going to say, Kirby—there wasn't as many avenues open to Kirby.


[25:48] John: Oh, different story from Kirby, by the way. Sorry.


[25:51] David: Yeah, but I agree. Today, there are many more avenues and approaches to a career in comics than there was, at that time. You mentioned Rob Liefeld. Me being a big fan, I think he's someone who did manage his career in a pretty good way. He negotiated himself a decent contract, for the ownership, for having a piece of Deadpool, and Cable, and all the other stuff he did with X-Force, and then, exploded that content up into a huge, massive success—literally, come out of the right field with that stuff, and then immediately parlayed that success and that fandom into his own stuff that he owned, entirely. I think his career has been a good roadmap for a potential way to do it, or one of the ways to do it, and not feel bitter or having been taken advantage of. I don't want to speak for him, but I'm guessing that if you talk to Rob Liefeld, he's not going to say he felt like he was taken advantage of.


[26:48] John: Will say that in Hollywood Reporter.


[26:51] David: That’s not being taken advantage of. That's being dismissed, I think—not being given the flowers that he thinks he deserves, which—I'm on his side. Anytime a comic creator doesn't get their name in lights at the beginning of a movie, then I think it's a travesty. So, I'm with him on that.


[27:07] Stephanie: And this is a momentum business, too. So, you do the big thing, and you don't just sit on that big thing. You’ve got to propel that energy elsewhere, to either your own thing, or whatever the next thing is, too, which I also learned pretty. So, that's why my resume has all that stuff on it, because “well, if I don't write, then editors don't see what I'm doing, comic book shops don't have my books in them. So, got to keep that going.” So, in that way, doing the stuff with the Marvel, DC, IDW, or whatever, is helpful, too, because you're getting paid, and you're also getting, as the kids say, a little bit of that clout.


[27:47] John: That was how the Image guys did it, but you can also see that, a few years ago, when Kieron and Jamie left Young Avengers and did their own comic, and Hickman went off to do all his stuff at Image, and Brubaker, Kelly Sue, Matt Fraction, that class of Marvel people, all made that move, at about the same time.


[28:04] David: We're seeing it now, too, I think, with the Ghost Machine guys, all the top-tier DC guys moving, and doing their own thing.


[28:16] John: Speaking of companies that have just come up, Ignition Press, you are one of the debut creators on that. How hard is it to sit next to Jim McCann and not just strangle the guy? No, I'm kidding. Jim's an old friend of mine.


[28:30] Stephanie: If anything, it's just “wow,” I guess, because a lot of the folks, I'm fans of their work. So, that's the other part of it—trying to be a colleague and not a fangirl, which is interesting, but because I actually saw Jim and his husband, I think, that night that the launch party was, for Ignition Press, which was really nice, but it's been great. It's funny, because Jamie Rich had reached out to me a couple of years back for a Tomb Raider thing that never came to be because of licensing, and then I think I was going to do a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles thing, but that fell through. So, when he reached out to me again, I was like, “hey, Jamie. Well, I'm happy you keep coming back around to me. Please let it be good news,” and they asked me if I had anything in mind, and the thing that I originally pitched to them is not what I'm currently writing on, working on, which is hilarious.

I pitched a thing, they didn't like it, but I think a week or two later, I was having a conversation with a friend, and--because I don't want to spoil anything--basically, it led to a cosmic horror, set in 1905 and I ended up pitching that to Filip while I was at Baltimore ComiCon. He was like, “oh, well, do you want to do something with that?” I’m like, “actually, I do. So, we can just pretend that I never pitched the first thing, and let's move forward with this,” and it has been lights-out since then. It's been really great working with them. Probably never written anything this quickly before, and I think it's a culmination of things. One, you just get better over time, and two, I'm just really excited to be a part of this launch.


[30:09] John: Is there an artist on your book?


[30:10] Stephanie: Yes. Letizia from Something is Killing the Children.


[30:15] John: Oh.


[30:16] Stephanie: I was like, “oh, wow.” Yeah, that’s huge. It has been fantastic working with her. Really been a match made in heaven.


[30:23] David: So, I have one question about Ignition Press, in general.


[30:25] Stephanie: Yeah.


[30:26] David: So, you said you got to meet everybody in-person. What's it like, being in the presence of that handsome devil, Filip Sablik, and not just salivating all over? That guy is the best-looking man in comic books.


[30:39] Stephanie: He's very suave, right?


[30:41] David: Yeah, every time I stand next to that guy, I'm wearing a baseball cap and a T-shirt and jeans, no matter where I am--I'll be in some high-level meeting—I do not look like I belong, ever. So, anytime I'm talking to Filip, it’s like, “man, I really feel like a schlub.”


[31:00] Stephanie: Because Fil would have a suit coat on, maybe a tie, or just, like I said, a suave guy.


[31:07] David: Yeah, the hair is all perfect, and you’re just like, “ah, man. So successful.”


[31:17] John: When does the comic come out? What can you tell us about that?


[31:19] Stephanie: Tentatively, right now, I believe it's due for an October release, because they even moved it up, which was very exciting. I said, “oh, wow. You guys really believe in this? Thank you.”


[31:30] John: That's cool. What else do you have coming up, that you can talk about, or want to hint at, or anything?


[31:35] Stephanie: So, I do have some stuff with IDW. That will probably be--just check out June solicits, would be my assumption. June or July solicits. I have a project I’ve been working on with DC involving the Amazons. I believe that will be out July-ish, but as far as stuff that I know for sure is hitting the market, that would be My Little Pony: Tournament of Mysteries, which will be out April 30th, if I'm not mistaken. It's the last week in April, so whenever […].


[32:05] David: That looks fun. I was looking into that before our chat, and that one looked like a lot of fun. Who's your editor on it?


[32:10] Stephanie: Bixie, and the inspiration for that story came from the movie, Vantage Point, of all movies. Do you guys remember Vantage Point, at all? It's a random movie from, I think, 2008, or something like that--2007.


[32:27] John: That sounds familiar. No. Okay.


[32:29] Stephanie: There's an attempt on some government official’s life, and you get to see everybody's vantage point that day. I said, “wow, let me do this, but My Little Pony style.” That is the story behind that one.


[32:44] David: You would think that that wouldn't work, but Ponies is so malleable. You can bring so many different things to Ponies. We were talking to Megan Brown a while back, and she was adapting some classic Shakespeare into her My Little Pony story. So, it really does lend itself to all kinds of--I think that's why it works so well. I think that's why it continues to be so popular, is because the Ponies can be so many different things, and it works. It’s got that ability to.


[33:17] Stephanie: I'm here for the My Little Pony/Transformers war, whenever that's going to happen. I know the whole Energon thing is happening, but if we ever circle back, I want to see Friendship is Magic VS Optimus, and all of them, to see what happens.


[33:32] John: We did that. We did a series.


[33:34] Stephanie: Wait, did you guys do a full run?


[33:35] John: Yeah.


[33:36] David: Yeah, we did that.


[33:37] Stephanie: Oh, how did I miss that?


[33:40] David: It’s good, too.


[33:41] Stephanie: Sorry. I'm putting my notes in, because I'm going to check that out as soon as we get off this.


[33:48] John: Even though this wasn't really the crossover, there in fact was an actual--I think there were two. I think we did two series of that, but the very end of Tom Scioli's Transformers vs G.I. Joe, it was going to have this bit--a version of it appeared, but the original pitch for it was a little better. I think they wouldn't let us do some part of it, but it was going to be that Megatron gets sucked into this black hole, or something, and he's going to confront Unicron, but then he lands, and it wasn't Unicron. It was Unicorn, and he was seeing the Ponies show up, but there's still a version of that, I think. I think the story ends with us seeing the G1 Ponies in there.


[34:30] Stephanie: I'm going to be broke, because I see the whole collection here. Well, thank you all so much.


[34:38] John: It's good. Michael Kelly suggested doing a Ponies/G.I. Joe, at one point. I’m like, “Well, that's the movie, the War Horse.”


[34:45] David: So, Stephanie, are you full-time on the comic book stuff? Do you have a side gig? You’re a mom, obviously. Is mom your side gig, or are you doing other work? Is it just full-time comic professional, at this point?


[34:55] Stephanie: No. So, I unfortunately, make some of my biscuits with Amazon Prime Video. So, their YouTube channel, I do a lot of editorial content. So, I cover all the superhero stuff, because that makes sense to do. So, The Boys, Invincible, Gen V, I think now some Batman stuff, because they snuck that in. So, that is what I'm usually doing during the day. In fact, I watched Invincible Season 3, maybe four or five months ago, and I had to be quiet about it, which was awful, and this whole Season 3 is amazing, but I had to hold it. I was like, “oh, man. I can't talk to anybody about this."


[35:36] David: That sounds brutal.


[35:37] Stephanie: Yes.


[35:38] David: What exactly are you doing?


[35:39] Stephanie: So, I have a show called Superhero Club. Very generic, but I'll do, basically, these deep dives, sometimes. So, I'll do the character history. So, basically, comic-to-screen. I've done that for a lot of The Boys characters, which has been very interesting, because the show and the comic, pretty different, exceptionally different, and I've done a good amount for Invincible, as well, and then I'll also just do stuff for Legends of Vox Machina, where you meet the characters, season finale review, recaps, just different things like that, just whatever it is to support and promote the shows.


[36:17] David: It sounds fun.


[36:18] Stephanie: It's fun. For the most part, it is fun. What I don't enjoy is having to edit my audio. That part I hate, and that's because I just want to make the editor’s job a little bit easier, so they're not having to go through me humming and hawing the whole time, and I can cut that out. So, they can just match it up with the cuts that they take from the show.


[36:37] David: We're brutal for Ed. We don't do anything. We just give him the file, and be like, “fix this, man. I don't know how you’re going to do that, but good luck.”


[36:47] John: I left the mic in the hallway, one time, and it was like, “Ed, deal with it.”


[36:51] Stephanie: Record the entire podcast, in fact.


[36:53] David: Ed, can you just speak? Just do 20 minutes?


[36:58] Stephanie: But no, it's a fun gig, because, I don't know, for me, the way that I see it, it's not too far removed from what I'm doing on the comic side, anyway. So, whenever folks ask what else I do, sometimes I don't even consider it as an outside day job type of thing, because it all feels connected.


[36:18] John: Well, that's one of the--I don't know if “secrets” is the right word--but anybody writing comics is almost always going to have another gig, on one side or the other, whether you're Matt Fraction show-running a Godzilla show, at the same time you're writing Batman, or you’re somebody teaching, or working at FedEx, Kinko's, or whatever.


[37:38] David: Kinko’s, John?


[37:39] John: I couldn't remember what it was called.


[37:40] David: I don't think Kinko's been around for 20 years, bro.


[37:43] John: When is the last time I went somewhere to make a copy?


[37:46] Stephanie: For me, it was 15 years ago.


[37:48] David: […] one of our four listeners.


[37:50] Stephanie: The one working at Kinko's. The last Kinko’s next to the--


[38:56] David: So angry. There’s still Kinko’s.


[38:02] John: Because the comic stuff can be so uneven, it always seems like that's worth--What you’re doing, that's as close to the same thing as I think you can get. Yeah. That's funny.


[38:14] David: If you're making a comic, you're in comics. I think that's how I've always approached it, paid or not. I mean, if you're getting paid, even better, and I guess you could say you're a comic book professional, but a lot of people are doing this as their extra gig, or side gig, especially, as you say, John, writing today is--but I think maybe it's always been this way. If you're a writer, you're writing. You're writing for your YouTube channel. You're writing for a comic book. You're writing an article for some website. That's all the same stuff. You're a writer.


[38:45] John: Yeah, if you go back into the 70s, or something, when you had the people that were just writing comics, they were also editing them. You forget that Roger Stern's writing Avengers, but he's editing a bunch of other Marvel books, and all that kind of stuff.


[39:01] David: I don't think Gerry Conway ever hired anybody but himself as an editor.


[39:04] John: I believe, I don't know if this is actually true, but this isn't the story that I've seen other places, and maybe the timeline doesn't even match up, but the idea of the writer/editor at Marvel started with Gerry Conway. When he was leaving New York to go work on TV, because he was one of the first guys to actually move from comics to writing TV, in any successful way. So, they created Spectacular Spider-Man. So, he could keep writing Spider-Man, because it wouldn't let Amazing leave house. That was how that worked. Yeah, I think Gerry Conway might have invented the thing. […].


[39:44] David: What else do you feel chatting about? Anything?


[39:47] Stephanie: Well, I mean it's not related to anything I'm working on, but have you guys been watching Common Side Effects? Creators of Scavengers Reign.


[39:55] John: No.


[39:56] Stephanie: I have to rave about this show, because Mike Judge is an executive producer on it. So, you get to hear a little Hank Hill, but it is a show, basically, of course, about Big Pharma, but it’s just very weird.


[10:40] David: Oh, is that the one where one of the characters from King of the Hill is grown up now, and it's his story now? Is that what that is?


[40:17] Stephanie: No, it's totally, completely different. It's just that Mike Judge is, I think, voicing one or two of the characters. So, I just keep seeing Hank every time that character talks, but it's this trippy show that, if you have seen Scavengers Reign, it's in the same vein of that, but basically, this guy finds this mushroom that can pretty much eradicate the need for Big Pharma, and of course, Big Pharma is not having it. It's this espionage weird thing, but it's been really fun watching that. It's on Adult Swim. So, you can watch it on Max the very next day. It airs every Sunday at 11:30. Wow, look at me doing promo for […]. White Lotus is back. I like to see rich folks go on vacation and have a not-so-great time. So, that’s my thing I’ve been watching, and I recently rewatched the Legend of Chun-Li, that Street Fighter movie from 2009, which, very 2009, but I needed to be transported back to an easier time, even though the recession was going on.


[41:33] John: Possibly, those words, “I just rewatched the Legend of Chun-Li” have never been said in that order before.


[41:37] Stephanie: No. I'm the first person to say that. I need to feel what it was like to be in 2009 again. I feel like that’s the perfect movie.


[41:47] David: I'm doing that, but I'm going all the way back to 1977/78. I'm watching every Kung Fu theater flick that you could possibly imagine.


[41:56] Stephanie: As you should.


[41:57] David: Oh, man. I just watched, this one is a mix of Kung Fu and blaxploitation, but Three the Hard Way.


[42:03] Stephanie: Yeah.


[42:04] David: Best damn movie, ever. So good. So, yeah, I feel you on that. Get me out of this timeline.


[42:13] Stephanie: I'm good, but that's the--80s action movies, early-90s, that's my jam. All of it.


[42:21] David: Yeah, that’s my sweet spot, too.


[42:23] John: Any comics you're especially liking now?


[42:26] Stephanie: I just read Mat Johnson and Steve Lieber's Backflash, which I thought was really good. So, basically, the story is this guy who just lost his mom, and he's able to travel back in time by listening to music, or he thinks he's traveling back to time. He could be crazy. Who knows? But it's a good read. Everything else has been for work, which, spoiler alert, if you make comics for a living, you're probably going to be reading stuff for work.


[42:54] David: Yeah, be careful about turning your hobby into your job. It is fraught with peril, for sure. Since I've made comic books, my sideline gig, more than anything else in the last several years, I have fallen back in love with comics, in a way that I didn't know was possible, and really, all it took was me not having to grind on it 8 hours a day, 10 hours a day, every day, for years and years, and years. Yeah, you’ve got to be careful. You can stop loving it, which I didn't think was ever possible, but if you're not careful, it is possible.


[43:31] Stephanie: Dog Man. That's what I've been reading. My son is really into Dog Man, and we saw the movie, and I thought it was very good. In fact, I would even say Oscar-worthy. Not being serious, but it was really good.


[43:44] John: We're big Dog Man fans here. We did a whole podcast with me crazy deep diving into Dog Man, and into the history of it, and stuff. I’m a gigantic Dog Man fan. I remember seeing the trailer, we were talking earlier, I'm a little burned out on some of the Marvel movies, and then, when the trailer for Dog Man dropped, I remember being excited, and saying to my 5-year-old son, “if you look at his desk in this shot, it's not the same scene as the previous shot. There's Flippy there. They're going to do the Flippy story.”


[44:18] David: That is awesome.


[44:20] Stephanie: That was my son ribbing me at the movies when we saw it, and I don't know what joke happened, but it cracked him up, he slapped his knee, and then he's like “classic Dog Man joke,” and it’s the cutest thing. You're right.


[44:34] John: How old’s your son?


[44:35] Stephanie: He's 9.


[44:36] John: Oh, 9, okay. […] 6. Whenever he does something that I think is old-timey kids’ stuff, I just think that’s adorable. Literally knee-slapping—that is funny. That’s great. I can't think of the stuff he's done, but there’s just some words, where it's like, “did you get that from an Our Gang episode? Where do you know that?”


[44:57] Stephanie: What are you talking about? Well, one last kid tangent. I got into Curb Your Enthusiasm. I was so late watching it, but I finally watched the season where it's the last Seinfeld, they're redoing that, and then that made me go back and watch the entire thing, and I think he was maybe 5, or whatever, 6. So, there is the music. So, he was in kindergarten. Something happened. I forgot what his teacher did, but he started singing the Curb Your Enthusiasm music. She sent me a message, and she was like, “okay, one, maybe don't watch Curb Your Enthusiasm with your kid around, but two, I just want you to know that when he did sing the song, it fit, and none of the kids knew what was going on, but I knew what was going on.” I felt really bad.


[45:46] David: No, you'd be proud.


[45:49] Stephanie: I am proud, but at that time--


[45:50] David: You’re raising a genuine, bona fide pop culture nerd. You’re doing it right. That’s some high-quality parenting right there. I 1000% approve. I was thinking about Fantastic Four, speaking of your son. I think it might be a good time to get into Fantastic Four, because Ryan North is getting all the flowers on his gig right now, and also, all the stories are 2-issue arcs. So, it's set up and knocked down every two issues. So, it might be a good time for him to get into it. I think your son's instincts, somehow, he knows.


[46:20] Stephanie: He unfortunately does know, and I only say that because whenever he reads my stuff, I'm getting notes back. That Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur: Wreck and Roll.


[46:34] David: You got some notes?


[46:35] Stephanie: Yeah, many notes back. I said, “wow, okay, well, next time, I will let them know that you need to be editor on this.”


[46:43] David: I can’t get my son to sniff a comic book to save my life. He’s a contrarian, which—shocker. He's much like his dad. So, he's a contrarian. If I'm into it, he's like, “I don't know about that.”


[46:55] Stephanie: Does he game?


[46:56] David: Oh, he's 100% into the games. He's playing Marvel Rivals, and loving it, and I'm like, “oh, there's a comic book for that.” He’s like, “why would I? I’m playing the game.” So, trying but failing.


[47:06] John: I forgot to tell you this, David. I think you'll enjoy this. My son found the one comic that I wrote that's at a school library. Angry Birds/Transformers.


[47:16] David: Yeah, baby.


[47:18] Stephanie: Perfection.


[47:19] David: I am super proud of that.


[47:21] John: I'm pleased with that comic, too. I think it's much better than it deserved to be.


[47:25] David: Marcelo Ferreira was the artist on it, and he blew the doors off that thing.


[47:29] John: Yeah.


[47:30] David: Did he like it?


[47:32] John: He didn't read it. He did come back with--on your birthday, you can pick a book, and it gets donated to the library, and you get to bring it home for a week, and read it first--and he picked this graphic novel called InvestiGators. It's a very Dog Man-influenced book, but yeah, he brings it home, and he’s like, “I think this is something you wrote.” I'm like, “oh, that's cute. He at least thinks it's something I did.”


[47:56] Stephanie: That’s fair.


[47:57] John: That's probably a good enough place to stop. Thank you very much for joining us. We'd love to have you on again, sometime, to talk more stuff.


[48:03] Stephanie: Yes, please.


[48:04] John: And thank you all for listening to The Corner box.


[48:08] David: You said that like it was a question. I think that's a more definitive statement. Yes. Thank you, everyone, for listening to us.


[48:15] John: Are you one of those people that just skips to the ‘thank you’s, to see if we thanked you in this?


[48:18] David: See if we thanked you. Thank you, Michael. Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Janice. Oh, John, we should start a Patreon, and then we can say everybody's name that pays us. It'll take 2 seconds. It’ll be me and you, and probably, your mom, and that'll be the people we have to thank.


[48:35] Stephanie: Thanks for having me.


[48:36] David: Thanks for coming, Stephanie.


[48:38] John: Thank you. We'll be back next week with something else.


[48:41] David: Bye. Should we start recording?


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.