The Corner Box

Kirby's Galactic Size Legacy on The Corner Box - S3Ep21

• David & John • Season 3 • Episode 21

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0:00 | 45:46

John and David put on their reading glasses and get into Jack Kirby’s Galactic Bounty Hunters, Steve Ditko’s Art, The Conan Revolution, The Return of Bill Schanes, and the Uncertain Future of the Will Eisner Library.

Timestamp Segments

  • [00:33] John can see clearly now.
  • [02:21] It IS possible to collect all of G.I. Joe.
  • [05:01] Jack Kirby: Galactic Bounty Hunters.
  • [13:29] How to get through Invincible.
  • [18:59] Steve Ditko: The Commerce of Art.
  • [22:50] The Conan Revolution.
  • [25:26] Gabe Rodriguez makes his mark.
  • [29:00] The Will Eisner Library.
  • [31:08] The thing about The Spirit.
  • [33:37] Who will buy it?
  • [36:13] Bud Plant: The Return of Bill Schanes.
  • [40:48] The best company for the Eisner Library.
  • [44:18] The Public Domain.
  • [45:25] This is just for David.

Notable Quotes

  • “Congratulations, and welcome to getting old.”
  • “Remember, we live in a world where Steve Ditko did Indiana Jones comics.”
  • “You’ve just been Corner Boxed.”

Books Mentioned

Welcome to The Corner Box with David Hedgecock and John Barber. With decades of experience in all aspects of comic book production, David, John, and their guests will give you an in-depth, and insightful look at the past, present, and future of the most exciting medium on the planet—comics—and everything related to it.


[00:24] John Barber: Hello, and welcome back to The Corner Box. I'm one host, John Barber, and with me as always, my good friend


[00:32] David Hedgecock: David Hedgecock.


[00:33] John: Good to see you, David.


[00:35] David: You too, John.


[00:36] John: Actually, that leads to the thing I wanted to bring up. So, over this past weekend, I tried reading glasses for the first time. Let me tell you, it was like when MacGruber got a gun, and he was like, “this is really awesome. I didn't know they did this.” The backstory is, early French graphic novel, Saga de Xam, was just reissued in English for the second time in the last five years. Anyway, in the introduction, it talks about how small the type is--what do you call it? The lettering--translated to English, but unlike most things, it looks like it's hand-lettered, or some of it, I think, uses the original lettering, and just moved stuff around, so it's in English. I forget who it was. One of those great old French artists from the early Metal-Hurlant days was like, “you have to read this thing with a magnifying glass because of all that tiny writing.” So, in my defense, that was what led me to it, because I just flat-out could not read this thing. Literally, couldn't read it, and I'm like, “oh man.” So, I put on my wife's reading glasses, because she got some a little while ago, and boy, you could read it, everything's big, and here's the exciting part: If you read a regular comic, it's like reading a Treasury Edition.


[01:48] David: Yeah, man. Welcome to old age, John. It's your first pair of reading glasses. Did you go out and get your own then?


[01:53] John: Had the opportunity presented itself in this weekend, I would have.


[01:57] David: I'll try to send you a link to the pair of reading glasses I buy off of Amazon.


[02:00] John: Oh.


[02:01] David: They're very good. They hold up for quite some time. You get two pairs for $12. They look fairly stylish. There's a couple different designs. They’ve got every possible version of magnification you could want.


[02:11] John: Like Elton John ones?


[02:14] David: Yeah, pretty much whatever you want. Congratulations, and welcome to getting old.


[02:21] John: One slight digression. I don't know if he ever listens to this. My longtime comic book friend, Pat Vaughn Frisco, who turned 50 this past week, I just sent him a picture of a G.I. Joe cover, where I stuck a picture of him wearing reading glasses on. So, I just related that story to him, but the reason why I sent that picture is he, for his 50th birthday, completed his collection of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, by buying Issue #155, the last issue he had never owned.


[02:47] David: I think I saw him post that on Facebook. I have no connection to that guy, whatsoever, except I think I follow some G.I. Joe Facebook groups, and I'm pretty sure I saw that post. So, your friend was only buying them if he found them at conventions. That was a thing that you said he was doing. So, he went to a convention and found the last copy that he needed?


[03:08] John: That had been the plan. I don't know if he eventually broke down and just bought it. Those last couple ones, as you know, are pricey.


[03:15] David: Yeah. Congratulations, man. That's a feat, man. That's an accomplishment. I've looked at that a couple times. It is cost-prohibitive, man. I don't think that I'm going to attempt that one, because that's why we talked about the archive collection that I picked up from Skybound. That satisfied my need for those.


[03:32] John: Definitely has those. This isn't a comic he hasn’t read.


[03:35] David: He needed it in the singles as well, which I totally understand.


[03:38] John: Back when we were kids, we both had a lot of G.I. Joes, but he had the USS Flagg. Since then, he's been that big of a G.I. Joe fan, and he finally did it.


[03:47] David: Damn, the G.I. Joe Flagg, man. I wanted that so bad. The closest I got was, I got the G.I. Joe W.H.A.L.E., which was the land and sea hovercraft.


[03:58] John: It was the best.


[03:59] David: I think Deep Six was the driver for it.


[04:01] John: Deep Six was the flying submarine.


[04:05] David: Yeah. You know how a Christmas story, the greatest Christmas gift ever--I think that might be my greatest Christmas gift ever, was when I got the W.H.A.L.E. on Christmas. People are fascinated by old guys talking about old toys that they got when they were kids.


[04:18] John: My understanding, and I remember hearing this, was a lot of those old molds got unceremoniously thrown out from Hasbro. A lot of those molds just don't exist. Some molds from that era do exist, but those do not. I think there were people at Hasbro that were rescuing the stuff, literally from trash bins, where they were thrown out there.


[04:38] David: Wow. Shockingly short-sighted for a corporation to do.


[04:44] John: I mean, I imagine storing every single plastic mold that you ever had would be impossible, in a way that storing movies wasn't really impossible.


[04:54] David: Seems like investing in a couple of storage units would be worth it. Well, that's not what I did this weekend, John. You know what I did this weekend? I had reading glasses. So, I took my reading glasses, and I read Jack Kirby's Galactic Bounty Hunters, the hardcover collection.


[05:13] John: This is another funny one. I actually read Issue #1 of that, maybe in December. This is another one of those weird coincidences of all the off-the-wall things for us to have both done.


[05:23] David: It happens way more than I would think.


[05:27] John: Super weird. I think I read it when it came out.


[05:30] David: It's like we grew up in the same part of the country and are roughly around the same age, and went to the same college. It's like that.


[05:36] John: Yes.


[05:37] David: Jack Kirby's Galactic Bounty Hunters is a post-mortem project. Jack Kirby passed away in ‘94 or ‘95, I think, and this project doesn't show up until July 2006, is when it comes out. So, the hardcover collection is really fascinating, because it's got a ton of back matter material that does a couple of different interviews with Lisa Kirby, Jack Kirby's daughter, who's the driver behind the project, and Mike Thibodeaux, who was the primary artist for the project. One of the people who helped co-write it, Richard French, or no, maybe Steve Robertson--Anyway, there's a couple of different people involved. Scott Hanna does some of the inking. Karl Kesel does some of the inking.

So, the story is, there's this guy who's got a family on Earth, and his kid's a teenager, and doesn't think his dad's very cool, until he finds out that, of course, his dad was a Galactic Bounty Hunter for ages, and is probably one of the best Galactic Bounty Hunters of all time, and he's come to Earth and settled down, basically, to raise a family. So, for various different reasons, the kid gets kidnapped by this bad guy who's discovered this bounty hunter and his family hiding out on Earth. This bad guy comes down and kidnaps the teenager, whisks him off into space, and of course, a bounty hunter, Jack Berkley, needs to go into space and save his kid, and stop these ne’er-do-wells from doing more bad stuff, and that's the story, and that's the setup, and it's a fun little romp. It starts on Earth and does a bit of setup, and then goes off into space, and turns into this fun little sci-fi series. It's what you would expect, I think, from any random issue of Guardians of the Galaxy. I enjoyed it.

If you can find a copy of the hardcover at a decent price, I think it's worth picking up, but what really fascinated me about the project was this back matter, because Lisa Kirby goes into a bit of detail as to how the project came about, and her life as being the daughter of Jack Kirby, which is fascinating, because Jack Kirby, king of comics, and here's somebody who had a front row seat to a lot of it. Unfortunately, like most kids, she didn't pay a lick of attention to what her dad was doing. That’s dad's job. He goes down to the basement and comes back 12 hours later, and he's done with his job for the day. Sounds like she would go down there, every once in a while, but like most kids, didn't pay that much attention to what her dad was doing. So, she comes to it, in some ways, sadly, but also sweetly. She talks about her mother passing away. Her mother, Roz Kirby, passed away three or four years after Jack Kirby passed away.

So, it was Lisa Kirby who was left, essentially, to take care of the estate. Specifically, all the art that Jack left behind, she had to go in and curate it and catalog it. She brought in Michael Thibodeaux to help her with this. Michael was a longtime assistant of Jack's, and he drew or finished the Image comic book that they did. They published it at Image, and then it went to Genesis West, and the name is escaping me right now. What was the name of that book? It wasn't Captain Victory, but he was involved in Captain Victory as well, and the Galactic Rangers, and then there was a project at Image.


[08:54] John: Is that the Jackie Chan one?


[08:56] David: It was a Jack Kirby creator-owned project.


[08:58] John: Yeah. He did, if I remember right, Last of the Viking Heroes too, right?


[09:02] David: Michael Thibodeaux did, yeah. Phantom Force.


[09:05] John: Oh, I might know what that is. I think that started off as a Jackie Chan project.


[09:11] David: I didn't know that.


[09:12] John: Yeah.


[09:13] David: So, Michael Thibodeaux was a longtime art assistant of Jack Kirby's. It seems like he inked a lot of his stuff, did his own project that you already called out.


[09:23] John: Last of the Viking Heroes.


[09:24] David: Last of the Viking Heroes, yeah, and 14 or 15 issues of that came out. He did several issues of the project at Image, Phantom Force, and then this Galactic Bounty Hunters, he was deeply involved in it. So, Lisa Kirby brought Michael Thibodeaux in to help basically figure out what the heck she even had, and while they were going through all of this material Jack left behind, there was a particular set of designs and drawings that Lisa really was enamored with, basically. Kirby was working on Issue #7 of Captain Victory and the Galactic Rangers, which I believe was published by Pacific Comics back in the day, and we're going to get back to Pacific Comics by the end of this episode, dear listener. So, this will all come back around, but he created some designs for some villains, and Michael Thibodeaux was actually in the room, and when he finished designing it, he said, “you know what? These aren't right for what we're trying to do. These aren't villains. These are heroes,” and that was all Michael Thibodeaux really remembered of it. He conveyed that information to Lisa when she was looking at the drawings. Over the course of the next couple of years, it sounds like, they just kept going back to this particular set of drawings and designs, and built out a whole story, fleshed out a whole world for it, originally for an animation project that they were trying to get off the ground, but eventually, it turned into Jack Kirby's Galactic Bounty Hunters, the 6-issue miniseries that was published by Marvel through their Icon imprint, which was a creator-owned imprint.

So, cool that Lisa Kirby came full circle with her dad on that. Seems like a sweet story. The way she tells it, it doesn't sound like most of her life she was super interested in what her dad's job was. Sounded like she appreciated it, but wasn't super interested in it. I totally understand that, 100%. My son couldn't care less about the comics that I make, but in making a comic book herself, she's like, “I didn't know it was this hard.” So, I think she had a new and deeper appreciation of what her dad did, which I thought was fun to hear and read, and see how that came full circle for her. So, that part is really fascinating. The interviews with Lisa Kirby and Michael Thibodeaux in the back, talking about how this project came to be is really cool. They do a little bit of a reminisce or history of Jack Kirby, and they have a brief Marvel catalog of all the Marvel work that he did. It might be his DC work as well. Anyway, they've got a catalog of everything he generated at Marvel when he came back, when Timely became Marvel Comics, basically.

One of the other fascinating things about this book was that Michael Thibodeaux did a lot of fine art and poster art, and worked, for a long time, for a major poster company who did covers for KISS, and stuff like that, and logo designs, and stuff, and he was influential and very important in the company that he was working for, and the comic books were a thing that he just loved. He really had a deep passion and appreciation for Jack Kirby, and the thing that's interesting about Michael Thibodeaux in this book is that, in the ‘94 earthquake that happened in LA, a bookshelf fell on his right hand, his drawing hand, and injured his hand, and he tried to draw through it, work through it, and it made it worse. So, by the time they got to drawing Galactic Bounty Hunters, his hand was so compromised, it was in a sling, and he couldn't even use it. So, he taught himself how to draw again, using his left hand. So, he drew Galactic Bounty Hunters with his left hand. What a feat. Pretty impressive, and I know he had some really good inkers on him. Scott Hanna’s is no joke. Karl Kesel's no joke, but there's clearly a lot of Michael Thibodeaux in the work, and some Kirby, infused through Kirby, but there's clearly a lot of Michael Thibodeaux in there, and it's pretty impressive that the guy basically did it with his non-drawing hand.

The good news is, it seems like he eventually was able to recover his ability to draw with his right hand, at least partially. I don't know anything about the guy beyond this project. So, I hope he's okay, but anyway, that was another interesting piece about that. So, it was a good fun, weekend read. I rounded that out with a giant chunk of Invincible Volume 1. I've got the three giant compendiums of Invincible, and I'm going through them again. Invincible's boring in the late teens. It slows down, man. It slows way down. The big scene where--spoiler everybody--Invincible's dad reveals that he's the villain. I don't know what issue that is. I want to say it's #13 or #12, or whatever it is. That's this huge, exciting event, and then it's just 6 issues of dealing with the repercussions of that, and everybody being depressed. It's just really depressing. Nothing's happening, and everybody's bummed out, and I'm really feeling it, John. After 6 issues, I'm like, “okay, I am bummed out and depressed. I get it. Let's get to the next thing, because I'm feeling like I don't want to read this anymore. It's bumming me out.”


[14:23] John: Oh, man, that's a big weekend. I don't mean to compare this to Invincible, but when I was working on Transformers, James Roberts and I used to talk about how it was funny that we both got our first ongoings and then we had really long runs. I think that might be something that happens sometimes. You don't know that Invincible is going to go past Issue #6 when you start it. Maybe you're like, “okay, no, it's going to go to the big reveal. This is the story I'm going to tell,” and then I imagine even if you have stuff planned, there's a little bit of “well, now it's the story, because this is what I was planning it to, even though 300 issues later, or whatever, however long Invincible ran--it was a lot. 20 issues isn't that much of it, but at that time, it was a whole paradigm shift you had to work through. So, that's interesting. I mean, […] to read that whole thing.


[15:13] David: Clearly, some stuff that he was going to do, he pivoted away from, because he introduces a Rorschach character who's at the murder scene. Tons of spoilers, everybody. In the story, nobody knows that Invincible's dad killed his version of the Justice League. No one knows that. So, Kirkman introduces this Rorschach character, who's a detective, who comes in to solve the mystery of who killed the Justice League. Then right after that, it becomes clear and apparent that Invincible's dad is the one that did it, and the whole world knows it. So, that happens very quickly, and right after the Invincible dad leaves the planet, it's revealed pretty quickly. So, five or six issues later, Kirkman brings back the Rorschach character for one panel, and the Rorschach character goes to the government guys, and he's like, “I need to talk to you guys. I think I know who killed the Justice League,” and they're like, “it was Omni-Man. We all know that. The whole world knows that. It was broadcast on TV,” and he does that grunt thing that Rorschach did, and then that's it. So, I'm like, “clearly he was going to go a different direction with that for a minute, and he just dropped the ball.”

Also with that Invincible stuff, dude, you've said this to me before. I got it, but I didn't fully get it, but after reading the first 20 issues of this book, or so, it is 100% just a more commercial version of Savage Dragon. Holy moly is it that. Wow, Kirkman is clearly just wearing his love on his sleeve with that book. I know it probably is going to go somewhere else. Well, clearly it does, but man, those first couple dozen issues, it's like I'm just reading a different version of Savage Dragon.


[16:56] John: Yeah. I don't even remember why I was thinking about this, but I was thinking about the early Image stuff. Oh, no, it's because I think I was reading Youngblood. We were talking about Youngblood, or whatever. We were talking about how much I don't care about the idea of the WildStorm stuff in the DC Universe, but I love the idea of the WildStorm stuff. I think the first issue of WildC.A.T.S is a really good first issue. It's a solid series in the beginning, and it has these great heights as it goes on, in different times. That was maybe a lateral move, or an improvement over X-Men. Cyber Force was maybe a lateral move, maybe even a little bit of a downgrade from Wolverine that Silvestri was doing. You know what it was? It was because we were talking about Liefeld doing a run of a comic, a long run, which he'd done on X-Force. You're expecting that to be the next thing.

I don't think Youngblood, especially out of the gate, was nearly as good as X-Force was, when it had full steam, but Spawn was unconditionally a step up from Spider-Man, in my opinion. McFarlane's writing was so much better. The art was beautiful. Spawn was such a goofy, cool character, but Dragon was the one where Larsen's stuff that he was doing before then was great. Revenge of the Sinister Six is, I still think, an all-time great Spider-Man story.


[18:08] David: Yeah, I agree.


[18:09] John: But Savage Dragon was a lot better. That's not to denigrate that stuff. You can see where that really would have caught on with a young Kirkman, because he was fully enmeshed in comics at that era. Early Image was his thing.


[18:21] David: He said 100 times, I think, when he was fully getting into comics, Image was exploding and that. So, it was 100% his jam. He grew up on Spider-Man. He grew up on Savage Dragon, which is a wild thing to think, and really cool. Zoe Thorogood--remember when we talked to Tim Seeley about that? Zoe Thorogood was like, “well, the thing that I grew up on was Hack/Slash. I didn't grow up on Spider-Man. I grew up on Hack/Slash. Of course, I want to draw that book and do a story in that book. That's what got me into comics.” I love that. I think that's cool. So, that's what I did this weekend, John. The end.


[18:59] John: I cannot recall if we ever talked about this, the Kirby Galactic Bounty Hunters--So, that came out during one of the good relations between the Kirby estate and Marvel. It fluctuates. That was a really positive one. I remember Tom Brevoort being really excited to be working with the Kirby family. Obviously, everybody that works at Marvel always has a tremendous respect for Kirby and all of those guys, and then the business stuff just gets in the way. I don't mean to be dismissive of that, but the people working there on the ground all super care about this stuff, but at that point, I convinced everybody that what we ought to do is, since we're doing the Kirby book, we should call Steve Ditko and offer him an Icon book, just carte blanche, do an Icon book, and we did. Ralph Macchio called him. There's no story here. Ditko wanted nothing to do with it, and it didn't happen, but that offer was made.


[19:51] David: Yeah. Okay. Ditko did do work, though, for Marvel. Clearly, he was working for Marvel well into the late 80s, because Speedball and Squirrel Girl, and all that stuff, he was still working for them.


[20:03] John: Well, that's where Ralph knew him from. Ralph was Assistant Editor on Indiana Jones, and Ditko would come in with Indiana Jones pages. Remember, we live in a world where Steve Ditko did Indiana Jones comics. Also, where Nicolas Roeg, the director of Man Who Fell to Earth and Performance--I don't know if you've ever thought you were disappointed that he never directed Indiana Jones. Oh, he did. He directed an episode of the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. So, Steve Ditko and Nick Roeg have both worked on Indiana Jones.


[20:32] David: Fantastic.


[20:33] David: Ralph told me about how Ditko would come up and just walk through the storytelling of why he made these choices, and Ralph never had any notes at Steve Ditko, but there were other offers and other chances. I know they really wanted him to come back and do an anniversary Amazing Fantasy issue, or something. Didn't want anything to do with that, at that point. He had his own stuff going on.


[20:51] David: I totally get it. At a certain point, if you don't have to, don't do that, because in a lot of ways, Steve Ditko and his family should be multi-multi-multi-millionaires, end of story, and because they're not, Steve has every right to be bitter, to not be happy about it, and for whatever reason, he chose not to press the subject. I think, famously, he said, “I signed the contract I signed, and I'll stand by it,” but that doesn’t mean that he has to it. So, I don't know. I guess, I get that. That's not necessarily curmudgeonly. That's standing up for yourself, in a way, at a certain point.


[21:21] John: I feel like, whenever you're getting to Steve Ditko making a decision about something, or you can simulate this yourself by reading any Ayn Rand novel, and whenever an event happens, trying to do the math ahead of the protagonist, as to whether or not this thing was a good thing or a bad thing, or how the protagonist will react to it, because there is a formula that's going on, but it only ever makes sense in retrospect. The character, or Ditko, will react a certain way, and then you can go back and find the math that got you to that place, because there is a direct formula. It isn't like, “then I felt like this.” No. Here's A, B, C, D. Here are the steps, but if you're not that person, you're not going to be able to figure out those steps ahead of time. You never know that stuff. “Here's a check.” Is it good or bad? “Oh, okay. I see why.”


[22:12] David: Right. Oh, man. Art as commerce. Welcome to comic books, once again.


[22:18] John: Yeah.


[22:24] David: And welcome, everybody, to this episode of The Corner Box. We weren't going to talk about any of this stuff, John. We are totally off the rails already.


[22:30] John: I thought it was what we were talking about.


[22:32] David: No, we were talking about totally different stuff today.


[22:34] John: Okay. What are we talking about?


[22:35] David: I had a whole list of stuff.


[22:36] John: Well, go for it.


[22:37] David: For the listeners, John just looked at the clock. John’s like, “wait a minute, I have to keep going? I don't know if I signed on for this.” Maybe we'll do these rapid fire. I don't know how interested you're going to be in any of these. Hopefully, everybody listened to the Chris Butera Savage Sword of Conan interview that we did with him a couple weeks ago. He was very good, very informative. I think Chris is a really thoughtful editor and writer, and creator, and very talented. He's my kind of nerd, but Chris is the editor for all things Conan, any new material. The old material, that's me and my buddy, Chase, but the new stuff is all Chris. I just want to give props to this guy again. It's not because we just had him on an interview, or because I work with him. I am very lucky in that we get advanced copies of the books that are coming out, here in the office. So, I get to read things like Savage Sword of Conan Issue #12 before the public gets to read it, and I just want to give flowers to the entire team over there at Heroic Signatures. I think Savage Sword of Conan is my favorite comic book right now. I am loving it so much, and this latest Issue #12 is a showcase, man.

So, the opening story, it's a big chunky story. It's probably 48 pages. It is by, for the show, Chris Ryall and Gabe Rodríguez, who is famously known as the artist and co-creator of Locke & Key. He's had TV shows behind it, and tons of comic books. I think Locke & Key has won Eisner's, right? Gabe is an incredible artist. You don't see a lot of Gabe, outside of Locke & Key. I think that's changing, over the last couple of years. I think he's doing more outside of that now, but this Conan story that he drew, holy moly, it is incredible. If you want to just see an artist at the height of his powers, able to draw anything, immaculately and perfectly--not only that, but he does this amazing digital ink wash over everything. It's like, “did he do that too?” And I'm just like, “how does this guy know how to do everything?” It's incredible. Everybody needs to read this book.

The first two or three issues of Savage Sword of Conan were a little rough for me. I was like, “I don't know about this,” but since then, man, it has just been hit after hit, after hit. Every single book is better than the last. Fabian Nicieza has a four-page prose piece in there. Usually, man, I'm not reading stuff unless there's pictures. We all know that, but it's a fun little story. It's a Bran Mak Morn story. We just lost all our Conan listeners, because I couldn't remember that. He does a short story in there that's really great. Patch Zircher follows it up with a fine piece. It's not a home run, but not everything has to be a home run, especially when the first 48 pages are a grand slam. So, I'm just really enjoying that series, and Issue #12, holy moly, man, just fantastic. Gabe Rodríguez, whew, man, that guy can draw, John.


[25:29] John: I've seen the art on screen. Gabe just had, there's a Kickstarter from Humanoids.


[25:35] David: Oh, yeah, I did that one.


[25:36] John: I think if you got that and the Jodorowsky book, you got a one-of-a-kind one-time printing of a collaboration of theirs, which I think was a thing they were going to do more of, and then didn't, but I'm not sure what it is, because they don't really say what it is.


[25:50] David: I went all-in on that. I wanted that collaboration piece, too. So, yeah, I'm excited for that one, too. I'm even more excited for it now, after seeing what he did on Conan. I mean, just incredible work. I just don't know how he does it.


[26:03] John: I feel like we haven't seen him for a while, but when you total up all the pages that we're talking about, between Savage Sword and the Humanoids project, it's like,
“where'd David Finch go? Oh, I see.” So, I'm really looking forward to that. It'd be nice to see--I don't know what the right word for--a reevaluation, people taking a better look at some of the other stuff that he did, creator-owned book he did at IDW, whose name I can't remember, or Onyx that he did with Ryall, which is also creator-owned, but between the two of them. Savage Sword, what a great comic. I thoroughly enjoy it. I actually have two issues that I haven't read yet, because I missed a couple, and then went back and bought them all, but the Jason Aaron two-parter, I haven't read it yet. Not out of anything. I just wound up with one issue of it. I'm like, “well, I'll wait till I get the other one now and read them both.” I haven't sat down and read the whole thing yet. Looking forward to it. I agree with you completely. It's a little rough in the beginning, and then just so many home runs in that.


[27:00] David: I think Chris even said this when we were interviewing him. They didn't know what they had in those first couple issues, and once they were able to see it in print, they're like, “oh,” which totally makes sense. Nobody's printing on newsprint anymore or doing black and white comics. So, just those two things alone, that's a lot to have to adjust to, but clearly they've figured it out, and they're really doing a great job with it. Really loving it. It's weird about Gabe, that Gabe’s star isn't--I mean, it's weird to say this, because he's won Eisner's for Best Penciller/Inker on Locke & Key--Little Nemo: Return to Slumberland. The weird thing about Gabe is that, the one time you saw him do a Superman cover, it wasn't very good. It's almost like he's not built for American superhero comic book work, really. He's clearly much better suited to the European market.


[27:50] John: Yeah. He's better at interiors than he is in covers.


[27:53] David: Yeah, I think you're right.


[27:54] John: I mean, everything about him is so good. It's actually weird, because he is such a great drawer, but he's such a great storyteller and a great thinker about the physical spaces that the characters occupy.


[28:06] David: I think that's it. It's his ability to create physical spaces around the characters, and he's a former architect. So, it makes sense. That ability really plays well to an interior, and to storytelling, but not so much for a cover. So, I guess, in a way, that makes sense to me, as you're saying it. So, anyway, Savage Sword of Conan, John. Everyone needs to pick up that book and give it a shot. It's $6.95, or something like that, and you get a 64-page book. It's a big chunk of reading. It's really just been really good, just top-notch stuff coming out lately. Even the stuff that's the backup stories, when they're not A-plus, but they're rock-solid B/B-plus stuff, and when you combine that with, like I said, an A-plus 48-page opener, it's just definitely worth your time and money.


[28:49] John: Just to draw a bow on this whole thing, former architect, Gabe Rodriguez, just like Howard Roark, from Ayn Rand.


[29:01] David: All right. The other thing that I wanted to bring up, John--I don't know if you have anything on this, but I thought it was interesting, and I wish I had money. The Will Eisner comic book library is up for sale. The Eisner family is selling The Spirit--all of it. The rights to all of the Will Eisner character catalog is now up for grabs. I'm really curious to find out what that's going to be worth. I mean, there's a movie of The Spirit. Granted, it's not anybody's favorite movie. Anyway, I find that very fascinating. I wish I had some money, because I would totally buy that, because not only are you getting the rights to publish new stuff, but you get the rights to all the old material. There's a huge catalog that can be mined there. A fledgling comic book company could do a really good business just republishing all the existing material that's out there. Kitchen Sink certainly proved that over the years, and in the article announcing that it was for sale--I didn't know--there is a 72-page original graphic novel that's never been published of The Spirit that Will Eisner did and completed before he passed away, and it was supposed to be published sometime in ‘93/’94/’95, somewhere in there, and it was just never published. There's a brand-new Spirit graphic novel by Will Eisner that nobody's ever seen. On top of getting everything else, you get new Will Eisner. You could do some really good business, I would think, with that.


[30:19] John: That's amazing.


[30:19] David: I know that The Spirit's probably a little dated, at this point. It hasn't really been in the public zeitgeist or public eye in any real meaningful way, or even the comic book eye, but I think there's an easy, simple path to creating some momentum around that material, using the back catalog, and then launching into the Will Eisner graphic novel, and then new material off of there. When DC had the rights to do The Spirit a few years back, I mean, that was some of my favorite stuff. Sergio Aragones, I think, was writing a lot of that stuff, at one point. I was just loving it.


[30:52] John: I think that the two hard things for me about The Spirit--I love this stuff. I've got a big stack of old Kitchen Sink Spirit issues that I've been reading that I picked up from SoCal. Somebody must have got rid of a whole run of it, because they had almost all of them in the 10 for $10 section. The two things that I think are tough about it, though, are a lot of the back catalog stuff does not, in any racial sense, hold up today. There's a lot of stuff that's just super--not even problematic, but just like, “that's not okay.” Even when the characters themselves were largely treated respectfully, not all the time, though. It's not like Eisner didn't realize that, as time went on. He did. I don't mean to impugn Eisner on that exactly, but some stuff sidesteps that, but this is front and center on a lot of the great Spirit stories, which is a little tricky. The other thing that I've always thought, though, as much as there have been really good Spirit comics, Kitchen Sink did Spirit: the New Adventures that had Alan Moore and all sorts of people doing these stories. Darwin Cook did that 12-issue run.

The problem is, the only thing good about The Spirit is the stories that are around it. If you excise Bob Kane from Batman, first of all, the art gets better, but secondly, it's a guy that dresses in black and drives a cool car, and fights an amazing roster of villains. The whole thing with The Spirit is just, “what kind of story is Will Eisner and the studio going to put together this week?” and it could be a musical this time. It could be a really quiet story about one guy who's lonely on Christmas. It could be The Spirit dying and trying to find the antidote. It could be a tough crime story. Spirit could be the main character. He could barely appear in it. I think that that's the thing that's tricky about The Spirit. He's a guy in a suit, with a mask. The deals he has about him aren't the relevant part about the character. He's Denny Colt. He works in the graveyard. That stuff doesn't matter. That doesn't appear in most of the stories. So, I think that's maybe a little tricky with The Spirit stuff, but there's nobody that has as historically important a chunk of comics as this thing is in America. Jack Kirby made that important a chunk of comics, but the Kirby estate does not own those.


[33:12] David: Right.


[33:13] John: And a lot of the latter stuff, Kirby's Contract with God, and all of the graphic novel stuff that he did in the 70s and 80s and 90s, that stuff's amazing and so good, and so worthwhile.


[33:24] David: Yeah. You said Kirby, but you meant Eisner.


[33:25] John: I meant Eisner. I'm sorry. If anything, that's the birth of the graphic novel in America. If somebody gets The Spirit and puts it together, like you said, I'll be there. I'm not trying to complain about it, or anything. That's wild.


[33:37] David: Speculate, John. Who do you think's going to step up and buy it?


[33:41] John: Peter Thiel.


[33:44] David: He's too busy buying everything else.


[33:45] John: I don't have a clue what the dollar value on this is.


[33:49] David: That's what I'm fascinated by. How much is this going to go for? It's got to be millions, right?


[33:53] John: I actually don't have any inside knowledge. You might know more about this than I do. I don't know, but my Moebius obsession, I imagine the reason the Moebius stuff isn't in print in America is that one side of that values that catalog more than anyone is willing to pay for it.


[34:09] David: Right.


[34:10] John: You run into those logistical problems. If I want to get a copy of Contract with God, well, that's, I don't know, $6-8 on eBay. It's been in print a number of times. It's easy to find, for the most part. A lot of people have tried Spirit Comics. It's different if you own it and you're really trying to make something out of the character. You're going to have to fight not only the thing that I described, which is the actual material problem or the material issue with The Spirit, but also that The Spirit's always been wrapped around it being Will Eisner's Spirit. The other relaunches of it have never, I think, had the same impact as the Eisner stuff did, but I don't have a clue what that would do. I don't think it'd be a traditional comic book publisher. I think you'd have to be--


[34:52] David: If I was Netflix, I'd just snap it up. I would throw $5/10million at that, and then I’ve just got that catalog, and then I'd just exploit it however I'm going to exploit it. I could see an entertainment company of some sort, snapping that up just to have it, not even really having a plan for it. Maybe it isn't a traditional comic book publisher that's going to do that, but I'll tell you, man, much like a couple years ago, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles license came up, and IDW was able to maintain it and secure it for a little bit longer, and I'll tell you, man, if I was a publisher trying to make a splash and I was trying to actually pull it together, I would have spent whatever amount of money I had to, to get that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles license when it came up. I feel like this isn't to that level, by any stretch, but you're going to own it, and that does, I think, make it valuable. There's enough back catalog, I think, to eventually, over time, make your money back, without a whole lot of trouble, and the possibility of turning this into a Conan-style license, or a Zorro-style license, where it's got legs for another 20/30 years beyond its author's life, I think there's something there. Anyway, I'll be interested to see how that one goes, and who picks it up.

There's two more things I want to talk about, but we don't have enough time for both of them. So, I'm just going to pick the quick and easy one. I just saw another announcement the other day that I thought was fascinating. We're heading into the Business of Comics 101 portion of the episode here, John. Bill Schanes. You know who Bill Schanes is.


[36:25] John: Yeah.


[36:26] David: Bill Schanes has acquired Bud Plant, comic book retailer, and this is important for a couple of reasons. So, Bill Schanes was one of the lead architects of the successful iteration of Diamond Comics Distribution. I think he's very much a reason why Diamond was able to do what they did, when they secured the rights to Image and DC, and Dark Horse, and essentially put all other comic book distributors out of business with that one move. I think Bill was around for that, and had a pretty meaningful hand in it. He was at Diamond for quite some time. During the heyday of Diamond, Bill was in charge. Really good dude, really smart dude, and retired, I think, 10 years ago, and I think he's literally just traveling the world for the last 10 years, just enjoying retirement. Good for him.

He's back and he has purchased Bud Plant. Now, here's why I found this somewhat fascinating. Bud Plant has been around for 50 years, as a comic book retailer. Very important, very influential retailer in the community. He's been looking to sell, I think, his outfit for quite some time, and I think he finally found the right buyer in Bill Schanes, but here's a couple of things that I didn't know about Bill Schanes that I wanted to share, and then we'll talk about why I think this is important.

Bill Schanes, at the age of 13, started a comic bookstore with his brother. He was on Cass Street in Pacific Beach. Now, for our listeners, Pacific Beach is our hometown. Drove down that street every single day for years and years, and years, when I lived in Pacific Beach. I did not know there was ever a comic bookstore in Pacific Beach, A, much less on Cass Street, but even more importantly, Bill Schanes owned it. That's crazy, and then he went on, from owning this comic bookshop, to form Pacific Comics. Aha. Pacific Comics. Where have we heard that before, John? Yeah, full circle, and I didn't know that he was one of the owners of Pacific Comics. I'm not up on my Bill Schanes history. Pacific Comics was a fantastic publisher. They did Dave Stevens' Rocketeer. Sergio Aragones’ Groo the Wanderer came from there. Jack Kirby's Captain Victory came from there, as I already mentioned. So, some really cool stuff came out of that.

At a certain point, Pacific Comics also had a distribution network that they sold to Bud Plant in 1984. So, Schanes sold his interest in Pacific Comics and the distribution network to Bud Plant before he went to work at Diamond Comics Distribution. So, it's interesting that Bill Schanes is buying back what he sold to Bud in 1984. There's nobody more qualified to run a large comic book retailer than Bill Schanes probably. I think Bill Schanes is going to step back into distribution. I think Bud Plant is the beginning of something, not the thing. Now, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe he really is just semi-retired, and this is just a fun thing he wants to do. The distribution system in comic books right now is rife for somebody to come in and plant a flag. I don't hear too many bad things about the existing distributors right now, Lunar and Penguin Random House, but certainly, there's opportunity there for somebody to go in and grab a nice piece of the pie, if they do it right. I'll be interested to see if this is a first move or if this is just the move for Bill Schanes. I feel like the way this guy operates, this is the beginning, not the thing, but we'll see where it goes.


[39:51] John: It also does make sense as a “you're retired, but you're still wanting to do something, and then running a big art comic company.”


[39:59] David: It's a thing he knows how to do really well. I mean, it's not a thing that's going to tax him. It'll be interesting to see, though, if any other moves get made off of there.


[40:09] John: Funny thing I didn't know about that. I was just looking through stuff while you were talking, trying to follow along. So, I was learning a lot of this, too. So, he founded Pacific Comics. Did that grow out of the store?


[40:20] David: Yeah.


[40:21] John: […] That's why it's named Pacific Comics. Okay, and Steve Schanes and his wife formed Blackthorn Publishing, which is the first place that John Nee, my boss, worked. It's funny how many pieces all spin out of that, because Pacific Comics was, not only was it no joke--I mean, it was really no joke. I mean, it was one of the first successful indie publishers. I was racking my brain trying to think of the Eisner thing, about where are those companies, like Kitchen Sink or Eclipse, that would have bought the Eisner Library? At a time when it wasn't going to be going for the amount of money I'm sure it's going to be going for, but Cat Yronwode was digging through Eisner's garage to find stuff to put into the Kitchen Sink magazines, and then she was, whatever she was, Editor-in-Chief or a position at Eclipse, and Denis Kitchen obviously had a long relationship with Eisner. There's Dark Horse. Image doesn't have a central hub to buy something. […] looking at the different partners.


[41:27] David: Pacific, if it was around, would have bought that.


[41:30] John: That kind of company […].


[41:32] David: The equivalent today would be a Mad Cave, right? I guess.


[41:36] John: Yeah, maybe. I don't know.


[41:38] David: Maybe an Ignition Press. I don't know. To really try to get out there in a meaningful way, you buy a catalog like that. I don't think that's what Ignition Press is trying to do, but I feel like that's what they should do.


[41:51] John: I feel like there isn't a lot of the motivation of comic companies, where it's “here's a bunch of artists we really like. We want to make a comic like that, or we want to make a company like that.” […] Pacific Comics. “We want to get Jack Kirby to come and make something, and Steve Ditko to come and make something, and Mike Grell, let's get him off of Warlord and he gets to make his own thing and own it, and Sergio Aragonés and Neal Adams, and everybody that they’ve got.” You can trace that up through the Image stuff, those things in the 90s.


[42:19] David: Then there's Image. If I'm a creator and I want to own my own thing, I just go to Image. There's a system already, for me. I don't need anybody else. I don't have to share with anybody. I don't have to deal with any publisher. I just go to Image, and they handle it. Image is willing to sell my comic book better than any other publisher.


[42:34] John: Yeah. I don't mean to just be disparaging publishers. I mean, the options available to creators are much wider than it was for somebody in 1971.


[42:41] David: And I think publishing, as a thing, was prohibitively hard to do, if you were on your own. Some did it, but you had to shoot film, and it was a much more mechanical process. Getting through all of that, and trying to get a book out, I think you're much better served as a creative talent, like a Sergio Aragones or a Frank Miller. You don't want to be spending your time on that part of the business. Your time is much better spent doing other things. So, anyway, John, that's all I’ve got for you.


[43:08] John: That's interesting.


[43:09] David: I thought it was worth mentioning.


[43:10] John: Bud Plant still continues.


[43:11] David: Yeah, it's in good.


[43:12] John: Stuart Ng’s the other one. There's these two companies that usually have nice booths at conventions. Stuart Ng didn't have a classic one of a lot of weird European art books. You just had artists this past STCC, but those are the two places where you could find more obscure imports--or maybe not obscure, but curated in a way that, if you like some of the stuff, you might go down a road and find some other neat stuff there.


[43:37] David: Yeah.


[43:38] John: I feel like Bill Schanes is probably somebody that would have a real good grasp on that kind of thing. So, yeah. Who knows? Maybe Bud Plant will be publishing new The Further Adventures of the guy from The Dreamer.


[43:48] David: Never know. He's going to take all those earnings he made from the sale of the Bud Plant comic bookstore to Bill Schanes and buy the Eisner. That would be great for this podcast. I'll tell you that right now. We should be pushing for that, because I feel like we'd be the only ones that connected those dots.


[44:01] John: Our next podcast should be all the stuff that Netflix would do to ruin the Will Eisner Library. What if Invisible People was like an X-Men team instead of being about homeless people?


[44:11] David: We should totally do that. We haven't done a “what we would do with specific characters” in a while. We should probably resurrect that, but next time, I actually want to talk about public domain stuff. I have questions, John.


[44:22] John: 2036 is when the early Spirit stuff goes public domain.


[44:26] David: Oh, really? Oh, I didn't know that. I didn't even think about that part of it. Wow. You know what else comes up in 2036?


[44:33] John: No.


[44:33] David: The Joker.


[44:34] John: Oh, okay.


[44:35] David: By 2036, you'll have Batman, the Joker, and Captain America.


[44:40] John: Yeah.


[44:41] David: By 2036, and if you think I'm not going to make a comic book with all three of those in the same comic book, you're crazy.


[44:47] John: I can't wait for them to be in the sex comedy of Savage Dragon's great-grandson.


[44:53] David: Oh, we've got to talk about this next time, but that's part of what I want to talk about.


[44:56] John: All right. Until then, keep dreaming, America and the world. You've just been Corner Boxed.


[45:02] David: No. Second time you've done that.


[45:05] John: I did that before?


[45:07] David: Yeah, you've said that before. It makes me vomit a little in my mouth, every time.


[45:10] John: It's awful. Yeah, sorry. Thank you for joining us here on The Corner Box, in all seriousness, and we will be back next week. We'll talk public domain stuff. I can't wait. Like and subscribe, tell your friends, and keep reading comics. See you here next week. Thanks, everybody.


[45:24] David: Bye.


[45:26] John: You've just been Corner Boxed--Corner Boxed--Corner Boxed--Corner Boxed.


This has been The Corner Box with David and John. Please take a moment and give us a five-star rating. It really helps. Join us again next week for another dive into the wonderful world of comics.