EPISODE 10: DWELLINGS

Welcome back to Morgan Talks Comics, a podcast about comics old and new.

This week, I'm looking at one of my favourite comics of all time, DWELLINGS, by Jay STEPHENS, published by BLACK EYE BOOKS. It's really beautiful slice of 'cute' horror, intended for an older audience. Jay draws in a wonderful cartoon style with a very dark edge to it... these aren't kids comics!

I love Jay's work, as he is a very big influence on my drawing and storytelling, using traditional cartoon style with a darker tone to the stories. His attention to detail in storytelling and how it is presented is incredible and meticulously done.

Enjoy this one, I really did!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Morgan Talks Comics, a podcast that is a deep dive into comics from the past and the present. I started collecting comics and really started making them in the 1980s and still collect and make them now. Each week I'll be picking out a new or old comic and taking an in-depth look at what makes them special. I'm Morgan Gleave, a professional cartoonist and comic and cartoon fan. I was lucky to have had some really cool comics and graphic novels bought for me when I was young, which grew into a real love of comics and cartoons of all shapes and sizes. I hope you enjoy listening to the show and have as much fun listening to it as I have making it. There we go, we are going, we are live. Hello everyone. Welcome back to Morgan Talks Comics. This week we are looking at uh Dwellings, which is I probably say this quite a lot, but this is very much one of my favourite comics ever, partly because of the way it's put together and the packaging. We'll get discuss that as we go along. But it's by the great Canadian cartoonist Jay Stevens. Um these were crowdfunded and published uh in 2020. I think they went on for about two years because there's six of these all together, they're individual stories, but they kind of link together because it's set in the same town. Um but as as is obvious from the from the cover, there's a very much a 19 early 60s uh animation and cart and comic aesthetic, um, which is Jay's sort of default style.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

Are you going to introduce sorry?

SPEAKER_00 1:28

Alongside me today, as at as all as on previous issues, is Eliza Moray Chamberlain.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Thank you. Hello.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Sorry, I was Ruby for getting my introductions later. I got a bit got a bit carried away there. Um so before we dive in, Jay is a Canadian cartoonist. Uh he's had some of his work turned into animated cartoons in America. Um, he's worked quite a lot in animation and on licensed characters. Um we'll talk a little bit more about that later on because there's some more developments of what he's doing next. As I say, so Dwellings was a crowd was crowdfunded by Black Eye Books. Um and the getting the whole comic is is is a real treat because there's lots of extras with it, which we will go through as as we go as we uh correct. Well, see, it's made to look like it's old, it's made to look like it's an old comic. Um as we dive into it, you'll see. So when if you remember when we're when we started looking started our episodes, we were looking at comics from the 80s, which were printed, and I'll I'll turn over here, printed on newsprint paper. Now, modern comics are generally on much better on sort of higher quality paper, a different kind of paper. But Jay really wants to keep the aesthetic of it being an old comic, so it's actually on more like newsprint paper, even though it's it'd be better quality than the stuff from the from the 80s, but it's so all the colours and everything pick up you pick up that that feel of it being an older comic.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Yeah, I don't find that appealing. That's the very thing.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

I looked at that and I thought they can make that look really dreary, and that's see, I love I love it because he's you know he's he's worked in that older style. As I say, Jay's uh is quite a big influence on my storytelling and my my art style.

SPEAKER_01 3:33

But you don't publish things on paper like that, no, you publish it on good paper.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

I generally print on on a on a on a different stock which has got a different finish to it and is a bit different quality, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

Yeah, I prefer yours.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Thank you. Um anyway, so this is the first issue with Dwellings and it's sort of it, it's uh it's a scene setter. Whilst the artwork might look very cute and sort of uh um kiddy kiddy, yeah, it's got a very dark tone to it. Dwellings is is is is a horror comic. Um I know because I again because I'm a I'm a big fan of Jay and how he works, I've I've seen behind the scenes he shared a lot of information about how he actually drew these, and these pages were drawn at about twice the actual size you see here printed, and he draws half and half.

SPEAKER_01 4:30

So draw Yeah, I've seen you do that too to reduce the size of something. Yeah, it's so you get all the detail in there.

SPEAKER_00 4:37

Exactly. So even though even though Jay draws in a very simple style, it's drawing it effectively twice the size that you see here gives you more scope to put more detail into it and to keep the lines really nice. If the lines are like beautifully even and everything, I think he he draws with brushing ink.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

Um that's still called drawing or not painted. No, it's definitely drawing.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

Um people some people choose to ink with with pens, some people choose to do do brush, some people actually do a mixture of both, um, especially like for heavy blacks, like here on the crows. That would be you know cut paint done with a brush as opposed to a pen, because it yes you gives you better coverage.

SPEAKER_01 5:22

Well, I'm keen to see next page, really.

SPEAKER_00 5:24

Okay, so we'll flick over, and you can see here how it's broken into two kind of two lots of eights as this allows Jay to draw it at at twice twice the size and give the character space to move and to fit the dialogue in.

SPEAKER_01 5:42

All I see is just logically set out.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

Yeah, and it is it's quite I mean, and again, this is something that I've picked up on. I I tend to draw in a much clearer page layout now. Um this again, this is something that I really like the way about the way Jay actually uh does his storytelling. It's it's a very clear, step-by-step sort of process.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

This one goes over the side, yeah, but it doesn't interfere with anything else. It's still perfectly clear that that's all parts of the panel.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

Yeah, when the sound effects were allowed to break out of the panel slightly. But you can see that um we can see that all of the bubbles actually fit inside the panel, so that the dialogue doesn't come out, it's just the effects that come out.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

Oh, you know what I've noticed again.

SPEAKER_00 6:30

Uh Elijah Murray has noticed capital letters.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

Yep, uppercase used all the time, not so good for poor readers. I bang on long bang on about that.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

One of these days the comic industry might listen and actually change. Yes, it should do.

SPEAKER_01 6:44

Could get bumped meters, obviously.

SPEAKER_00 6:47

Yeah. See, and there's little nice little touches here, like the actual colours are slightly out of register. You can see here on the edge of the panel, there's like the background colour is slightly dropped and it's it's slightly out of register. So when co when comics were made were more like mass produced in earlier times.

SPEAKER_01 7:06

But what do you mean by out of register?

SPEAKER_00 7:08

So you can you can kind of see here on this panel that the the actual colour is dropping into the balloons here. There's a like a bit of the pink background. It looks amateurish.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

He makes it look like he doesn't know what he's doing.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

Yeah, kind of, but it's because that's how the old comics were made. They were made in in much in in a much more um. Amateurish way, yeah, but uh there wasn't so much worry about the quality of the artwork and get they just wanted to get them printed quickly and get them out onto the newsstands where they were selling.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

So yes, I can see what he's doing, but the question I have to ask is why? Why not make it nice?

SPEAKER_00 7:53

Because it it's it's reflecting that era of comics. Yeah, but why? Because it's that's what that's how comics of that era looked.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Yeah, but why? I mean it might look like it at that time, well right, that's fine. But why do one now that looks like that? Why?

SPEAKER_00 8:10

Well, it's obviously he's chosen aesthetic for the uh for his comics.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

Why?

SPEAKER_00 8:15

That's the era he likes the most.

SPEAKER_01 8:19

I want to ask why again. Well I'll have to ask him.

SPEAKER_00 8:25

I'll have to ask him, yeah. You know, it's very clear from the style of his drawing that he really likes that that era of comics of that sort of like Jay Stevens.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Jay Stevens. Yeah. We keep on calling him him.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

Yes, right. Okay, I can see. He understands putting things logically, yeah. He doesn't overlap too much, and but he uses uppercase letters and goes over the edges. He crayons over the edges. Yeah. Are you going to knock that if you're not? No. Right, we'll see. What's that say? Thud.

SPEAKER_00 9:10

So there's a big big panel of the of uh the younger character here who's seen it seen earlier, taking out an older character, uh, you know, an older as in age character, older age character, and actually clobbs him with a big rock that he's picked up.

SPEAKER_01 9:25

Right, he says he's found an OAP and decided to beat him up. He's got classes.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Well the IA the OAP had actually turned around and start had started bothering him, saying that he'd testified against his brother and stuff like that. And that's an excuse for violence? No. You're being a bit you're being a bit argumentative today, aren't you?

SPEAKER_01 9:46

No, I'm not.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

You are. So we see the character fall to the ground, he's bashed out, uh, possibly dead, definitely unconscious, and the younger character throws the rock into the into the river that's next to them, tries to get rid of the evidence, pops his ear, buds back in, and wanders off.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Oh he's a little child now, isn't he?

SPEAKER_00 10:13

Yeah. So then we see the crows coming in and uh starting to pick at the what can now assume is a corpse.

SPEAKER_01 10:23

Yes. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

So it's setting the scene.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

What's this going on here?

SPEAKER_00 10:29

So there's a kite that as we we kind of like using cinematic uh techniques here, we we're coming zooming out of the of the of the mainframe where the character's body is, and we're coming out into the woodland and coming out and zooming out of the woodland to the sky, and there's a kite flying in the sky.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

The reason it all links together is because you've got these core core core crow calls of the of the crows.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

Right, I don't think I would have realised that was happening, but there you go.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

But then you're more of a uh a words than pictures kind of person. Yes. You know, but you read when you read stories, you actually read stories in with words, not not with pictures.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

I don't need it spelt out there, not just indicated.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Yeah. So then the th so on the following page we start off with just seeing speech balloons above the background of the trees, and the way that that Jay has framed the page that it actually flows down. So from the you see the top of the trees here, and it flows down over a whole page, even though it's broken up into panels. The whole scene the whole scene flows down. Uh he's and to to sort of emphasize that the two characters talking to each other, he uses two different colours, so he uses um the the main character, the first character's talking in is is just black and white, and then he's used a pet uh a toe tint of yellow to different differentiate.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

You've got down here you can see the tree that's going all the way down.

SPEAKER_00 12:11

Yeah, exactly. It flows all the way through the panels.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

And that one comes there. It's not terribly obvious, but it's there.

SPEAKER_00 12:19

Yeah, but it if you stand back from it, you can actually see that it's a whole it's a whole scene, even though it's been broken up into panels.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

Yes, that's quite clever, isn't it? Yeah, I really like it. Is that common?

SPEAKER_00 12:31

It is I mean, it is something that that artists do do. Um we talked about I think we talked about Watchmen a while ago um in one of the earlier shows, and we were talking about the way that the artist Dave Gibbons broke the page into nine equal panels to tell the story, but he did allow objects to break through and be in more than one panel and stuff like that. So he he used Was I in this conversation?

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Yeah, you were. Oh dear.

SPEAKER_00 12:59

Yeah, you can't remember. No, no, anyway. Well, but it's quite common for artists to break objects up using panels or to you know, rather than using a full page. It's just a nice way of storytelling.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

I can't remember seeing you do that. Have you done it?

SPEAKER_00 13:17

Uh I have done it. I don't tend to do it at the moment because my my work is is in less panels. I use less panels on my page. Sorry, fewer panels on my page. Just teaching it English. Yeah. So we've flow down the page having there's a conversation going on, and it's um it when by the time we get to the bottom of the page, we we're gonna we see that it's between a police officer and what appears to be a detective, because they're in uh civil more in civilian clothes rather than uniform. They're looking over the body of the the man that's been clobbered with the rock.

SPEAKER_01 13:57

What's the name of the characters who did the clobbering?

SPEAKER_00 14:01

Um, I don't think we find out until a bit later on, actually. Oh well. They're not introduced, they you know, we go straight into the story, it doesn't have like a lot of um I can't remember if the if the right word is exposition panels, where you would have like a bit of text in there to tell you this give you an idea of the setting and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

Right. So this is the bit you have before the um writing comes up in the film.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

Yeah, the the first sort of scene where the where the the older guy gets clobbled with the rock is like the prologue. That's the word I wanted. The prologue, and then you you would have like yeah, the credits roll, and then you would move into the next scene. So we're back to our main character here, and he's talking to his mum on his or his mum on the phone and going back into his apartment. Uh he's having a conversation with his mother. Um how old is he supposed to be? He says that he's 19. Not mature for his age, then. He's not mature for his age, no.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

I like his hair colour, very punk.

SPEAKER_00 15:08

Yeah. Yeah, he's got blue hair. It's nice. Yeah, it works, isn't it? And then on the following page we see the crows start to appear outside the apartment, and at the bottom path, bottom half of the page is a large panel where we see the lots of crows gathering together and the sack the sound of their cries are well they're accusatory, aren't they? Yeah, they're distracting they're distracting the character from his from his phone call. He says, Mom, I'm gonna need to call you back.

SPEAKER_01 15:42

Does he say mum? He says mum.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

He says mum, because he's obviously you know sort of Canadian American. And we cut to another scene. What's Trump doing in there? With that hair, yeah, not orange enough though. No, you're right. Not orange enough. Obviously supposed to be a different ethnicity. But um, yeah, not Trump, it's not orange enough. So there's going on. We've got the detective talking to I'm he's talking to the chief of police here. He's asking how the crime, how this case is going, how it's how the investigation is going. And they're they're talking about how.

SPEAKER_01 16:31

I'm just tired. It's not because I'm bored, I'm tired.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

Good. But they they're saying that the the other this older character who we now know is called Rufus was killed randomly and not by the uh I think they say the Piccolo crime family. Yeah, the Piccolo crime family are in the Mafia. Yeah, kind of like the mafia. And um, so from there we cut back to the apartment where we see the we see the the um our our young murderer and their partner's come back in.

SPEAKER_01 17:08

What what who's partner?

SPEAKER_00 17:10

So the cat the our our main character with the blue hair here on the sofa and his partner has come in.

SPEAKER_01 17:16

Oh right. So he doesn't live with his mum?

SPEAKER_00 17:19

No.

SPEAKER_01 17:20

Right. Okay, I'll get it.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

Yeah, but uh the then they're ask he's asking what uh what's going on with all the crows and um has he confessed? No, no. He's getting the the other characters getting really um quite dis quite upset by it and made being made angry by the what as he calls it, fucking Halloween eagles.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

Language, Morgan.

SPEAKER_00 17:45

I do apologize, but that's what's in the comic.

SPEAKER_01 17:48

Yeah, well that's that's good. Just because somebody else does it doesn't mean you have to I'm trying to say that seriously. Like it's not big and it's not clever.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

So they're they're they're having a conversation and it's a barney, I think. It's a bit of yeah, it's a bit of an argument. And then he so the other character's gone to the gone to the fridge to get a drink and they're talking about what's uh what a friend of theirs has said about crows, you know, how they know about um death and stuff like that, roadside killings, and they they hang out with predators because they're guaranteed to kill again, so they go and pick up the carrion from it.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

Oh, I see that's that. They just claim give me dinner.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:38

What have we got any names for carrying?

SPEAKER_00 18:40

So here, so here, as we've walked out, um the partner turns round and s and and says John, so we now know that the character with the blue hair is called John. That's boring, isn't it? Yeah. But he's just supposed to be an ordinary person, he's not like sort of special in any way, just a just an ordinary person.

SPEAKER_01 18:57

Yeah, just an ordinary killer, just like everybody else.

SPEAKER_00 19:00

Just like everybody else. And then we switch into night time, because we can tell by the the fact that the palette's become darker, it's sort of like got a darker feel all over it. And he's saying he's not nuts because of they said the crows are f the crows are following him. And then at the bottom he says they want me to kill again.

SPEAKER_01 19:20

Oh so you get the idea.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

I thought the the crows might be um showing that he's a murderer and and bringing point bringing attention to him. But it's not like that, they just want dinner.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

So he's making up, he's making and that's so the following pages, he's making up some um some pastries, some like cakes, but the the at the the end of the we see simple shots of the ingredients, each ingredient, but then we see a packet of rat poison.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

So he's a murderer's going to be able to murder the blooming crows.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

So he's going to get the get rid of the crows, and then he and then you see him tipping out the the this feed onto the onto the ground and going and then peacefully going to sleep, and then we have a big kind of apparition with a big single panel page, a full page. He's dreaming. He's kind of yeah, he's dreaming, and there's a there's this sort of mythical kind of bird-like creature standing above him with a large sword and then the stone that's dripping rock.

SPEAKER_01 20:22

Another face there.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

Yeah, but this is supposed to be the skull of the of the character the the of the character that was killed.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

I don't know, it's a bit strange because it got his hair on it still.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Yeah, you can see like the hairlines here, and then just got it's like the sort of like the the grey through his temples.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

And what's going on here?

SPEAKER_00 20:41

So I think this is this is the this is a sword of some description, and then in the other hand it's holding a stone which is dripping blood.

SPEAKER_01 20:51

Oh, I see. I did wonder whether it was he was um putting seeds on his head or something, but I see. Is it the same shape as the spaz the stone from the previous place?

SPEAKER_00 21:04

Yeah. So then we we come around to the following morning and John wakes up and um Oh, his dog's dead. His dog's dead.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

And the crows are eat the crows are are picking at the dog's corpse. Oh no. He's going he'cause he's go calling out neon because his dog's called Neon. I think what's happened is Neon must have eaten some of these pellets that he made with the poisoning. So the dog's eaten some food and po died from poisoning, and the crows are then coming and picking at his dog's corpse.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

Oh, that's a shame. It's a bit like that television series we were watching, they murdered the cat and that was it, we didn't watch it anymore, did we? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:48

And then on um so obviously uh the the the neon's owner is very distressed because they see their dogs.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Not um it's not his dog.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

John John looks out of the window and you can there's a close up on his face and he's really sort of staring. He's more like some about the dog dying than about the man dying. Oh that's so sad.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

Please don't pick up anything and eat it from the floor. Okay, just include John's been there before, yeah. Right, this is just advertising.

SPEAKER_00 22:34

Yeah, but this is this is part of part of what I wanted to talk about about how Jay actually puts these comments together. He creates everything that goes into it. Yeah. So these adverts are like old adverts from the 50s and 60s. Or they just pretend. They pretend, but they are linked to cleverly, they are linked to the story. So you can see here that it talks about the common crow, so we know we've got crows in the stories. So even though it's talking about real life dinosaurs, but it's talk but it there's links to what's actually going on in the stories.

SPEAKER_01 23:10

That could somebody could be very, very disappointed thinking that they can buy a real life dinosaur and find it's nonsense.

SPEAKER_00 23:20

It could be. But it it's actually part it's actually adding a bit of more depth to the actual s story itself. What does this say in general? I don't wonder. Um so it's talking about how uh common crows resemble uh ancient dinosaurs and um it's it's talking about top uh about them being atop of the avian IQ scale.

SPEAKER_01 23:47

So presumably that's facts. Yeah. That is good.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

Yeah. And then we we cut to another scene and we've got John looking at a book about raptors raptors and ravens in the in the murder. And he he re he says, I'm a murder of crows.

SPEAKER_01 24:08

Oh yes, they are called a murderer of crows, aren't they?

SPEAKER_00 24:12

He's saying it's all true.

SPEAKER_01 24:14

Yeah. Who wrote that? Oh, it's what's the Agatha I won't start that again. Agatha Christie. She wrote a book about the murder of crows, didn't she?

SPEAKER_00 24:26

She did, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:29

I wish I hadn't started down the worth, was it? What's going on here?

SPEAKER_00 24:35

So here this the we've got another another uh there's a girl coming up to coming up to John and saying that she knows what he's done and she's making a citizen's arrest because she said I saw you kill by the river.

SPEAKER_01 24:47

Oh right.

SPEAKER_00 24:48

And he shoves her over and kills her.

SPEAKER_01 24:50

Oh well, yes. Yeah, he's a serious thing of there.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

And then the crows come in and start picking at her corpse. But we've noticed that John has started making this started calling like the crows.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

Why? Take Mick.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

No. He's because he's getting he's getting drawn into what's going on.

SPEAKER_01 25:13

Right. Who's that with the cat? What's these cats about?

SPEAKER_00 25:21

So the the and um we see John come back into his apartment block and he's talking to the uh caretaker.

SPEAKER_01 25:30

Oh, is that the caretaker?

SPEAKER_00 25:32

No, no, on this page. Oh, I haven't got he jumped ahead a page.

SPEAKER_01 25:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

Um he clearly takes out the caretaker because he doesn't like the way he's questioning him about feeding the crows. And then on the following page, we cut back to ple the police investigating the ne the murder of of the young girl at the hull at the library. Right. But they're talking about uh the detective here.

SPEAKER_01 26:01

What detective?

SPEAKER_00 26:03

The detective that we've been introduced to before. The one that you said look like Donald Trump.

SPEAKER_01 26:08

Yeah, he does. It's the hair, isn't he?

SPEAKER_00 26:10

Yeah. But they they're saying that she's like losing it and back on the job too soon. Oh, is that a woman? Yeah, so here, yeah, down at the end there's a w the woman.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

I don't know if both of the police No, this person is a woman, yeah. Oh, I didn't get that.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:30

What's going on there?

SPEAKER_00 26:32

So here he's uh we're seeing John outside the apartment and he's the crows are starting to cr uh uh shouting at him again, and he's coming back to feed the crows and he's throwing throwing some eyeballs at them. Somewhat.

SPEAKER_01 26:48

Eyeballs, where'd he get those?

SPEAKER_00 26:50

He got that from the uh the caretaker.

SPEAKER_01 26:55

He's getting worse and worse.

SPEAKER_00 26:57

Slippery slope. Yeah, very slippery slope, and then we cut to night time again, darker colours, showing that it's it's it's at night, yeah. And John has decided that he can't carry on anymore. He's standing on top of a bridge and he's gonna clearly jump and end his life.

SPEAKER_01 27:15

Right, probably just as well, save a few others.

SPEAKER_00 27:18

But the crows actually swoop across and stop him from doing it.

SPEAKER_01 27:22

Because they get in dinner all the time.

SPEAKER_00 27:24

Exactly. Um, what's this scissors? So John's actually got a pair of scissors in his in his pocket, and he's and he's saying, No, I'm not part of your murder, murder of crows, and he says, I quit.

SPEAKER_01 27:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:40

He goes to slit his wrist, but the crows stop him and fly off with the scissors.

SPEAKER_01 27:45

Aye. That's a very strong crow, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 27:49

Very strong crow. And then on the following page, we're back with the detective and the chief, and they the detective is clearly going down a bit of a line of inquiry because of the crows. And the chief is sort of like, I think you're getting a bit fixated here, you need to back off a bit. Me? No, the the detective, not you.

SPEAKER_01 28:13

No, what am I doing wrong?

SPEAKER_00 28:16

You haven't done anything wrong. I mean, then down at the bottom of the page, um, because she's getting all fixated about the crow aspect of these murders, thinking that they're all linked together. So you see the one of the other police officers going out like a crow. Oh, some bottom hole being mean, is that right? Yeah. And we see John's partner coming back in, we cut back, and we see John's partner coming into the apartment, and John is his appearance is changing now, he's actually dressing differently, he's wear dressing in black, and he's allowed the crows into his apartment.

SPEAKER_01 28:53

Well, do you think his partner's gonna be for the chop or something?

SPEAKER_00 28:57

I think he might be.

SPEAKER_02 29:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

And uh he goes the the partner goes to get a drink out of the fridge, and as he goes into the fridge, he finds that there's actually lots of ri human remains in the fridge. Whose? The ones that John has been killing.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

Oh, so there's been a lottery but I haven't seen.

SPEAKER_00 29:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:21

Oh dear.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

And then there's a there's a fight between the two characters.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

He's held his scissors again.

SPEAKER_00 29:28

He got his scissors again, and he's I think he's using it like a crow's beak.

SPEAKER_01 29:32

Oh right.

SPEAKER_00 29:34

And he's going right comes running towards his partner, and then we see a panel of just in uh John in silhouette holding up the scissors with lots of like blood, blood coming up, so it's fairly obvious that he's chopping up his partner with scissors.

SPEAKER_01 29:48

Oh dear. I thought John was punching above his wire, actually.

SPEAKER_00 29:53

That farmer should be killed off.

SPEAKER_01 29:55

What's there?

SPEAKER_00 29:56

It's just so on the next page we've got a series of longer single panels looking at the whole block of the apartments. It's starts off at night where John is murdering his play his partner, and then it's the following morning, and then it comes back to night again. So it's a quick way of breaking breaking through the day. And we've got the detective looking at looking at things outside the uh the apartment block.

SPEAKER_01 30:25

Bones is that?

SPEAKER_00 30:26

It says bones and jewellery found you. So they've got this thing about the crow. Oh, right. And now it's all night time, is it? And his his mother, uh uh John's mother turns up. Oh comes, but she's disappointed in him. And the crow the crows are getting really loud and the mother's trying to sort of placate him. And curtains. Curtains. Um we have a large panel of John with wearing a face mask with the scissors poking at, so it look makes it look like he's got a beak almost. And he's got he's clearly got threatening to kill his mother, so the the mother runs off.

SPEAKER_01 31:08

Oh, so she's as a perfect.

SPEAKER_00 31:10

The mut uh that's his mother. Yeah. Yeah. So she runs off and then she comes across the cat the corpse of the caretaker, the corpse of the par the partner, and manages to get outside the apartment block by climbing out of a window.

SPEAKER_01 31:25

She'll need a lot of counseling.

SPEAKER_00 31:28

Yeah. And then John comes running towards them, calling like a crow, and the detective shoots him through the head. Good.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

And there go the crows.

SPEAKER_00 31:40

Straight through the eyeball, and then the last panel of that page, the big panel, is the crows start picking apart John's corpse in this instance.

SPEAKER_01 31:52

Well that was a cheerful little thing, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_00 31:55

And here we've got like just sorry, just before we yeah, and then we've got like an epilogue, so it's it's sort of wrapping up. You we see like pages from the newspaper, uh news on a i on a smartphone, so the detective say you know, congratulating the detective on on on on on the case. Job well done. On a job well done. Yeah. Oh, that's pretty. And then we've got a big five full page as the Happy Crows. There's all the crows at the end. So she said, Yes, I hear you, I hear you.

SPEAKER_01 32:28

Who said that?

SPEAKER_00 32:30

That's the detective saying that.

SPEAKER_01 32:32

Right. Mind you, they're not having any more dinner for me. Well, who knows? Oh, right. Right. Well, I was going to say they didn't have much of uh fights going on in there, but they had little little s little short-lived fights where the other one lost, generally speaking. Yeah. So mother survived, yeah?

SPEAKER_00 32:57

Mother survived, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:00

Good. Right, what's that last bit?

SPEAKER_00 33:03

So the last page, there's like a little incidental strip where you've got a got a drunken character talking to the devil, and he tries to make a deal with the devil.

SPEAKER_01 33:13

Oh, bad idea. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:16

And he actually tricks the devil into changing himself into a penny, and he gets tri and he gets trapped because there's a crucifix in the other guy's pocket, and he walks off.

SPEAKER_01 33:25

Oh right, so the devil a lot.

SPEAKER_00 33:27

So he outwits the character outwits the devil, and then on the back page, there's like two one's one is an effects for a real advert because it's talking about some of Jay's other books. So there's The Land of Nod, which is a great um anthology with Tuttenstein, which got turned into a cartoon. So it's a mixture between King Tut and Frankenstein. It's a wonderful character, it's really the cartoons are brilliant. Um earlier, some of Jay's earlier work, Jet Cat here, which is about a young girl who transforms into a superhero, but again drawn in the same style.

SPEAKER_01 34:05

Well, is she like a cat or is that a name?

SPEAKER_00 34:07

No, she's she's got like cat, she's got the costume is kind of like a mix of a cat and a and a superhero, so a little bit like cat woman.

SPEAKER_01 34:15

Well, sounds like um what's his name? Well the one that put on like a weight round his belt underneath his belt.

SPEAKER_00 34:27

Batman. You mean Batman? Yeah, well he hate his belt get kept coming up further and further up his costume.

SPEAKER_01 34:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 34:36

So I just love the way Jay uses what's quite a a an i innocent style of drawing to tell quite a dark story. So it's very much very much more, you know, it's called here familiar horror from within. You know, so it's more of a mature reader thing here. Well give nightmares to any young child, wouldn't it? Absolutely. So as I was saying about how nicely presented the whole thing was the you know, the aesthetic of it looking like an old comic here. Yes. Um, so when these were originally published, it was by Black Eyed Books, and it was it was on like a crowdfunding platform to get to um crowdfund each issue to get published.

SPEAKER_01 35:20

I'm so sorry, I can't stop yawning.

SPEAKER_00 35:23

Lice Mariah seems a bit sleepy today.

SPEAKER_01 35:26

Yes, I'm really sorry.

SPEAKER_00 35:28

But it's real but what's really lovely when when these came through, um I've big very pleased by this. I think the comic itself is actually signed by Jay himself. There says J2020. I can't see in your hand, he's actually signed it over his name on the cover.

SPEAKER_01 35:44

Oh yes.

SPEAKER_00 35:45

But then there's all these little extras that come in with the comic. So there's a nice, nice little thank you card. Hang on, has he actually personally signed that?

SPEAKER_01 35:53

Yeah, he has or is that just printed on?

SPEAKER_00 35:55

No, he's he's personally signed that. Alright. And then with each issue, um, because I have to say there were six issues of dwellings in the original run. You also get a really lovely retro poster onto all of it, but it's like an old movie poster, sort of with credits on below it. Yeah, so it's like a really old similar to the um the the really great designer who did the stuff for the Hitchcock films.

SPEAKER_01 36:27

I I know the kind of stuff, but I don't know the number.

SPEAKER_00 36:31

It's all bass, I think. Um who I'm thinking of. The the way that Jay's used a sort of a very simple palette, just black, white, and red here. But again, it's it's printed to make it look like it's old. So there's a lovely poster with it. There's a postcard with a variant cover, so it shows that Jay can draw in a different style as well. Good. So it's it's set it's set up for this story, but it's drawn more like what the the there are there was a comic company called EC Comics, so I think we just we might have discussed earlier. EC printed a lot of horror comics in the 1950s, which led to the comics code being brought in because they the American people thought that kids were getting too used to violence and stuff like that and seeing being in told to kill people because they were reading horror comics when most of the kids were just going, it's comics about horror.

SPEAKER_01 37:26

Yeah, well, just put a gauge on it.

SPEAKER_00 37:30

But for a long time sorry. For a long time, because they brought in this comics code, it basically basically meant the kids EC nearly went out of business because of it and had to diversify into other kinds of storytelling because the horror stories were getting there were public burnings of comets. For goodness sake. Yeah, absolutely. Just don't buy them. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 37:52

The best way to get rid of something is to ignore this. Looks like very 1950s, it reminds me of the covers of Enid Blyton books.

SPEAKER_00 38:03

Yeah, yeah, I can see that. But is this very much the um EC interestingly? Only press who uh have printed who excuse me, published the reprints of dwellings because these were obviously printed to a certain number, but not as big as uh a regular printing would be. Yeah, yeah. But only press did a re did a reprinting, republishing, so they were available through comic shops. These ones you actually had to pledge on to get them.

SPEAKER_01 38:34

Oh, I see. Yeah, so how much did you pay to get that?

SPEAKER_00 38:38

So I think I paid about£20.

SPEAKER_01 38:41

Right, and you're pleased by it evidently?

SPEAKER_00 38:43

Yeah, um and the what and the other even more things the little price, even more things. So every issue came with a Rizzo print. Rizzo is a form of printing, usually two or three colours. Um it's numbered and signed again here by Jay. I I love these. I've I need to get round to framing these because I've got them all tucked away with the comics, me being a bit OCD about protecting them. I've got everything tucked together in a little bag.

SPEAKER_01 39:12

I go. The bag that was over there, near the sleeping dog.

SPEAKER_00 39:17

Yeah. So there we go. Um Dwellings by Jay Stevens. It's I like I love this love this one because it it it's inspired me to do my own stories, uh to work on slightly darker material and it's it's helped me to refine my style to where it is now.

SPEAKER_01 39:38

Well, I don't like the story, but as I said, I don't like the fact that it's on that but not nice paper.

SPEAKER_00 39:44

You're not as p not as o overw um won over by the aesthetic of it.

SPEAKER_01 39:49

No, it's not my idea of something I want to look at. But I liked the story, I liked and it was logical and everything. It loses some points for being on what I think is poly paper, and it loses some points for having uppercase what instead of upper and lowercase. But the story was good, so I think swings and roundabouts, probably I think that might be an eight. Oh, an eight, excellent, yeah. Yeah, that's and they didn't well obviously were the violent bits, but they didn't have big long um fights with big power and the rest of it.

SPEAKER_00 40:28

It's a horror story, so of you know there's gonna be killings and deaths in it, because there usually is in horror films.

SPEAKER_01 40:34

Um but they didn't spend a a long time getting them to it. No, absolutely. He just did it.

SPEAKER_00 40:40

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 40:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 40:43

So I I love these because of the way they're put together the stuff that you got with it when you pledged on it as well. Yes, that's nice. Which which is brilliant. So I've got a full set of the first six. OnlyPress are now pr now publishing them. They've taken over the publishing of them, and they're doing there was a Halloween special last year, and I know Yeah, I've got that. I've got the Halloween special, and I know because I follow uh Jay Stevens online, I know that he's now what he's also uh he's also working on more dwellings stories, so more kind of set within this universe that he's created, the city that he's setting it in. Yeah, somewhere you wouldn't want to live in the polls, but he's also so there's his next I think the next comic of his that's actually coming out is called um Figgy Furthermore, who's a spirit guide dog, and it's a in the same style of artwork, and it's more like a old Casper the Friendly Ghost cartoon.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

Yeah, vaguely remember that.

SPEAKER_00 41:45

So very much that early that late 50s, early 60s aesthetic. That wasn't bought out in the late 50s, early 60s, was it?

SPEAKER_01 41:53

It was much later, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_00 41:54

No, you're thinking of the film, I think.

SPEAKER_01 41:56

That's what I'm thinking of.

SPEAKER_00 41:58

But um no, Casper was a cartoon and a and a comment. A comic and a cartoon before the films. I was just thinking. So he came for originally from I think the early 60s. Ooh. But and I'm I might be wrong, but Casper may have been published uh by Gold Key Comics, who were a publisher who existed from 1962 to 1984, and they did lots of what we would call licensed comics, so they did like Star Trek or Twilight Zone, Casper the Friendly Ghost, and stuff like that, and they were very much this sort of style, the way it's actually put together, designed.

SPEAKER_01 42:36

Have you got the Twilight Um Zone?

SPEAKER_00 42:40

No, no, I haven't got because these were older American comics, so you could probably still get them, there's probably still some in existence, but the Gold Key brand is coming back, and Jay is one of the artists who's who's gonna be part of it with his with his character Figgy Thurball, which I think he's created himself, but it's very much like an old cartoon.

SPEAKER_01 43:01

What's that little card? Did you tell me? And I'll miss it.

SPEAKER_00 43:05

I was like, There's a little thank you card.

SPEAKER_01 43:08

Oh, that's that's sweet, isn't it? Yes.

SPEAKER_00 43:10

Yeah, but yeah, Jay's a really big influence on my on my style of drawing and and and my storytelling as well. I really love the way he puts stuff together. I've got quite a lot of his books, and I love having these ones because they're just so nicely put together, and the the you know, the extra touches of having the prints and stuff as well.

SPEAKER_01 43:29

That's only if you pledged.

SPEAKER_00 43:30

Only if you pledged, yeah. If you bought the only ones, you just get the comic, which they they he I think he did new covers for the only press ones, which were a bit more like the Enid Brighton. EC comic style here. Yeah. So you could actually buy those in comic shops rather than having to pledge for them. Yes. But yeah, I I just absolutely I think as a as a thing, you know, actually having the stuff, it's it's it's a really nice package, it's really nicely put together.

SPEAKER_02 44:00

Mm.

SPEAKER_00 44:02

There you go. So that's Dwellings, number one, from 2020.

SPEAKER_01 44:06

So that's good to see something that was a bit different. That was definitely a bit different. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:10

I was mindful that you wanted to see something different, so I th I wanted to go back through. I do like um as much as I enjoy reading comics from Marvel and DC and the big publishers, I I'm my kind of favourite comics tend to be from smaller publishers. So Black Eye or uh Black Eye Books were a Canadian publishing company.

SPEAKER_01 44:29

It's almost like what's that that television programme, Black Something Books. Oh, it was just called Black Books. Oh, Black Books. Black Books.

SPEAKER_00 44:38

Yeah. Probably fitting quite nicely, actually.

SPEAKER_01 44:41

It would do. And if you're somewhere else, it was a um quite a short series, I think. Of of um sitcom, if you like, in Black Book Shop. Yeah. With some very good people in it.

SPEAKER_00 44:55

Yeah, really good. It was uh there were two ser two seasons of it. Um so I think it was 12 episodes altogether. Two series of it, yeah. We were in the UK, not in America.

SPEAKER_01 45:06

No, I know where I am. Yes, there but uh they they it was good, but I wonder really was it for everybody? It was a bit cult, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_00 45:18

Yeah, a bit of a cult thing. I mean, like these this this to me sort of taps into the cult comic uh market for me. Because it's it's you know it's very much about collecting it and getting all the nice stuff that comes with it and supporting the supporting the scene and the industry and all that kind of stuff. Which I re which I really like. And I I think we've realized over the years that I I tend to go more for smaller independent publishers because they do it's not just straightforward superhero stories or fights all the time, that kind of thing. They it's it's more about telling a story and letting the story build itself rather than you know just like looping from fight to fight like in superhero comics.

SPEAKER_01 46:02

Yes, and like what's it, Supergirl we were watching? She's always having fights with somebody or the other.

SPEAKER_00 46:08

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 46:09

See they're short and sweet. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:12

But there you go. So that's dwellings for you.

SPEAKER_01 46:15

Right, thank you. I like on the whole, I liked that one.

SPEAKER_00 46:18

Good. But you could do better. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Yeah, Jay, if you're listening, upper and lower case.

SPEAKER_01 46:25

Yes, at the very least, and decent, decent paper.

SPEAKER_00 46:32

Yeah, I love it. Like Mariah, not so much. Yes, but there we go. So thanks for watching and listening. And we'll see you on the next show. Bye.

SPEAKER_01 46:45

Oh, we would add it together.