INTERVIEW: Aubrey Sitterson

Oblivionauts, Aubrey Sitterson here, writer of Free Planet, No One Left to Fight, the comic book story of professional wrestling, and much, much more. And you are listening to the Oblivion Bar podcast. you Welcome to the Oblivion Bar podcast with your host, Chris Hacker and Aaron Knowles. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 189 of the Oblivion Bar podcast. I am Chris Hacker, one of your co-hosts here and joining me this week is my BFF, Aaron Knowles. I'm on the grid right now.

I'm too busy watching the Tron Ares trailer over and over. my gosh, Aaron, you just opened up a whole nugget of things I wanted to say about the grid and Tron Aries. Everyone, we got a trailer for Tron Aries, but we can't talk about it here today. For episode one eighty nine of the Oblivion Bar podcast, we were talking to Aubrey Sisserson, the comic book writer of the upcoming Image Comics Free Planet. He also wrote Savage Hearts.

No one left to fight the comic book story of professional wrestling. So many things we get into in this conversation. And Aaron, will say sort of the. So great, right? But the hallmark, I think, of this conversation that you'll see almost immediately as we go into this interview with Aubrey is we didn't have enough time. I got this could have easily have been like a two to three hour conversation. This is like, and he is a, he is a guy who you just, you want to talk to.

And we're so excited to release this, this interview because you guys will hear it. As soon as you start listening, he is so passionate about the industry. It really spent like 20 something minutes talking about the one thing he usually doesn't talk about. And then we go into the actual comic. We opened up with the one question he's been asked more than anything.

that, know, Aaron, you're so right to when you say in this conversation that we go into, we put a lot of effort into asking questions that a lot of times these creators aren't being asked. That's something that we truly pride ourselves in here on the oblivion bar. And I found it interesting because he doesn't promote anywhere. He says in the conversation here in just a moment that he doesn't promote that he was once an editor over at Marvel and then eventually at Skybound eventually.

But I found that interesting and I wanted to ask him about it. And then the first thing he says, when we get in this conversation is like, I used to never want to talk about this. But it does provide a pretty interesting and funny response. So, He was, he is just a genuine down to earth. He's the person in the comic industry that you hope that every creator is. Right. We need more of this. We need more Aubrey's in the comic space who are willing to just open up and like it's so refreshing.

Like this is okay. I hate to say this, but there are some conversations where you just like exhausted. Is that now? No. Okay. feel so like energized because it was so refreshing to talk to him. Sure. Yeah. And I totally agree with you, but also I love the fact that he's someone that not only knows a ton about the medium of comics and loves it dearly, as you can tell, but he also is willing to like take risks. Like this is his career. And a lot of people are nervous.

Like I can tell you from someone, you know, both Aaron and I talked to many creators here on the show and we don't fault them at all for this, of course, but like some people kind of play it a little safe because they want to be successful and they will, they'll do. All of these titles, they'll do spinoffs, they'll do IP, they'll do all these things to sort of get their footprint in comics. That way people know that they can do comics.

And then they sort of get trapped in that and that's all they can do anymore. Or they get jaded by the industry and sort of leave it for a bit. Aubrey, can tell almost immediately that he just wants to go immediately, like he says Gonzo many times in this conversation. And I think it's a great sort of, I think apt way to describe his approach to comics. I don't think it's and not to knock anybody for going the safe route, the IP route or whatever.

There are some people like that's where you thrive. That's where you are good at. You have the passion. Like, you know, I'm not saying any like, like not to name names, but like David Peppos, like he is killing it. He's killing it with with Captain Planet, with Speed Racer, with all the yeah, Space Ghost, all these guys. And like, that's not saying that he's playing it safe because he's taking what he loves and he's going and he's just running with it.

like, you know, thrive where you can thrive, but, it's, it's, you'll hear in this conversation, Aubrey Sitterson is a guy who thrives in his own element and it is so awesome to talk, but talk to him about Yeah. And as we said a moment ago, it's, there's no time to talk about this book. Everybody. Like if you've read free planet number one, I hope you have. By the time that we put this conversation out of many people haven't because we want to get this book out before FOC, which is April 14th.

Everybody, if you're listening right now, before we even get into this conversation, please as a personal favor to Aaron and I, because we've read this first issue, call your local comic book shop and pre-order this first issue. need to, it's important for the, I don't want to make this too big, but it's important to the development of comics. for this book to be successful, I think.

I have a strong feeling that this is going to be like one of those ones that people sleep on and And it and it disappears like it just off the shelf right now like in a bad way mean like it's just like you don't like like was it beneath the trees normally sees no where they don't pre-order enough of them and people. Like there's just not enough on the shelf. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just going to go fucking nuts, you know. I could totally see that. we talk about it here.

We discuss the, the Ashcan that he put out, he and Jed put out at comics pro a couple of weeks ago and how it's already insanely expensive because people are getting their hands on it. $300. I've seen a couple that recently they were going for like 150 wild stuff for a book that, and I say this respectfully, Aubrey, who, you know, he even says that like, this is not, they're not coming off Batman, you know, they're not coming off a Spiderman.

They, these two are sort of a, you know, up and coming creators in the space. And the fact that Free Planet is getting all this incredible press immediately before the books even came out is I think a good testament and a good gauge for how excited people are for this book already. And it's a dense book. There's a lot to take in, but gosh, is it better for it? And that's all I'll say before we get in this conversation.

So Aaron, before we do that, please, can you tell the folks at home how they can support the Oblivion Bar podcast? Absolutely. Absolutely. Go over to patreon.com forward slash oblivion bar pod. You can support us by checking out the Patreon and with that support, you gain access to bonus episodes each week called the grid. Uh, behind the scenes look at each episode with our transcripts, patron polls, giveaways, just goodies, like care packages.

Uh, we sent a care package all the way to New Zealand and, you know what? That shit was expensive. A shout out to Matt because we fucking love him. Yeah. You know, like this is we, we do this all extra because you know, we, we, we love what we do and it's our, our under bridge, unabashed, unafraid, naked and afraid, the grid. That's what it is.

It's, it's the oblivion bar after dirt, after work, and it's just, it is so much fun and we're going to be talking about some, some shit on there coming up. So, pay attention to that, but also you can give it a free seven day trial. You can give it a shot. Just by going over to patreon.com forward slash oblivion bar pod. Check it out. The link is in our show notes. It's it's in all the places you can find on our website oblivion bar pod dot com and just just go just go. Check it out.

Aaron sort of alluded to it there, everybody. And I just want to do a brief teaser because I don't know why I on the front of my brain immediately. Thank you for reminding me, You're welcome. Big announcement this week. Big announcement, everybody as you're listening to this, which will be on April 7th. Don't press the issue, Chris. At Oblivion Barpot everybody. At Oblivion Barpot. Go follow us now because we're going to be releasing something very crucial midweek, mid to late week. Only once.

It's only going to happen once. Only one time. Only one time. That's enough. Everybody, let's get into this conversation with Aubrey Sizzerson. And now, this week's special guest.

Joining us today is the comic book writer of titles like Savage Hearts, No One Left to Fight, the comic book story of professional wrestling, and the upcoming Image Comics series, Free Planet, a geopolitical space opera that tells the tale of the first completely free planet in human history has won its independence and the group of heroes that defend the planet's unique energy source. It is our pleasure to welcome Aubrey Citerson onto the Oblivion Bar podcast. Hey boys, thank you for having me.

Man, I am, I'm still just blown away that you all got John Carpenter to do that intro music for you. It's amazing. I'm so glad he was able to squeeze it into a schedule. You know, just like the Halloween theme, he did it in 10 seconds. He just got on the piano. He doesn't remember. He was high the whole time. I don't know how, how he got there. But anyway, yeah, no, it's incredible. We, Aaron and I, we recently redid a lot of our, you know, intro music and things.

And we really wanted to go for that, like 80s. It's synthy vibe, right? VHS. You hit it. Yeah. Well, thank you. We appreciate it. And, you know, Aubrey, thank you so much for being here. Gosh. You know, we were talking a little bit before the recording. you mentioned that you're hitting the gauntlet and I'm curious. This wasn't a scripted question, but I have to know being like. Bar is my favorite podcast. There's no contest. Let me get right. I'm not going to make you ask it.

I don't even have to ask it. Thank you so much for validating us. We appreciate it. No, you you've done many shows leading up to even this oblivion bar appearance. Any particular show sort of, can you highlight one that you've been on here recently that we can sort of halfway promote on the side here on the free promotion? Yeah, I actually spoke to the most recent one I did. This past Thursday night, I spoke to Sasha from Casually Comics on YouTube, which was great.

She's really great about sort of digging into comics with, don't know, like it feels academic, way that she approaches comics, which I love because there's been, you know, there used to be a lot more of that when comics had a thriving blogosphere. It's been many years since that's been the case, but I miss that. I really loved the days of having an RSS reader and there's just like two dozen sites where people were just jibber jabbering about whatever comics they were digging those days.

I never really successfully made the pivot to video in terms of my consumption habits. So I know it's out there, but yeah, no. Sasha was amazing. yeah, that one down, please. Absolutely. Aaron, are familiar with Casually Comics? not, but I love, I love his description of it. And the only thing is, I think that we have a very unique approach to our interviews and the way that we discuss comics here.

And that's one thing that I love about the podcasting sphere is there's, there's all these people that want to ask the same questions where it's like, Oh, who's your favorite superhero? Who do you want to draw? Who would you, who's your favorite team up? And over here, we, we like to focus. getting into like, I did not prepare properly if we're not getting into those. We will ask you when the last time you cried. was, that's the only thing we have ready for you. That's really not it.

but yeah, we, we like to approach things like almost philosophically here, almost, you know, like what's, you know, we go a little bit deeper and we liked if we, don't know, somehow it just naturally brings up these, these. We're idiots that ask better questions. That's what it comes down to. We're self-aware idiots that know that you don't want to be asked, who do you like more, Spider-Man or Batman? That's kind of our approach. That's a decent question. That's not bad question.

could discuss that question pretty in depth, right? But I feel like you've been asked that maybe too much, Aubrey, I'm sure. It's Yeah, not that one specifically, but I mean, there are things that come up a lot on these types of shows when you're doing them. I've been talking a lot about my editorial background. People have been asking questions about it. It's funny, for many, many years, I would, before I did a podcast, I would straight up say, listen, I don't want to talk about editing comics.

I don't want to answer any questions about it. Not because I'm embarrassed or I don't want people to know, but... or like it's shameful to me or anything, but so many former editors attempt to make the transition to being writers and very few of them are able to actually swing it, right? mean, except for historic, know, I'm not talking about Roy Thomas or whatever, right?

Like, it's aside from putting aside historical, like once Marvel and DC got a little bit stricter about allowing editors to write while they're working there. it became a much rarer thing. And I always was wary of being perceived as someone trying to trade on past success. I never wanted to be one of these people who was primarily known for the job they used to have. So I don't mention it. It's not in my bios. I don't mention it anywhere.

And I used to tell podcasts, I don't want to talk about it. I want to my focus on the work right now. And I thought, know, this time out, like doing the podcast gauntlet for Free Planet, I thought, you know what, it's been so long and I've done so much stuff since then. The very first podcast I went on, was Rosenberg, was Ideas Don't Bleed, and he just launched immediately into questions about back when I edited comics at Marvel.

So it's fine, you know, but yeah, it is, I've since covered it in almost every podcast I've done since then, including this one now. I brought it up. I'm the one. we're going to go ahead and just exclude our editor question here that we had we had ready. We actually do. We have a question about. you do. It's interesting stuff, you know, and it is part of my background. It's part of my journey in comics.

Sure. Yeah. I just I used to be very worried about getting nothing but questions about, know, what was it like working on Civil War? Can you tell us what how you felt when the Steve McNiffin pages came in? Which one is what do you have? That's a cool one. Yeah, sure. Sure. So and you know what, honestly, let's just go and knock it out real quick because I don't want to like take too much time out of this, especially since you've been asked this a lot, I'm sure.

And it totally backtracks and steps on the head of our earlier assertion that we asked really interesting, amazing questions that no one else asked. But that's hilarious. I love that. That we went straight into the question that you've already asked a ton. But I do want to know a little bit about that and sort of that that time era. And Aaron, I love I can't remember if I had you asking this question. It was you. go ahead because I have editing adjacent.

has nothing to do with what you've worked on. Well, ask me one of these things. Talking about which obliquely about which question you're gonna ask. on. Let's go. I even asked the first question. We're already getting yelled at. Okay. You were, you were an associate editor at Marvel and I think it was skybound as well. At one point, I'm just curious. pre-Skybound. I was only an assistant. So listen, I'm going to keep you honest. I was only ever an assistant editor at Marvel.

was, you know, the way, I don't know how they work things now, but at the time, even if you were an assistant, you were editing as primary editor, like three or four books a month, right? So I was only ever an assistant in terms of rank, but I edited my own books. And then after I left Marvel, I edited freelance for Kirkman, like prior to like pre-Skybound on Invincible, Walking Dead and Assounding Wolfman.

When I edited for Mark Miller and John Mayer Jr. as well, edited Kick Ass 2 and I did some stuff for Mark Guggenheim. He had a few image books around that time too. Sure. Okay. so what is like, obviously a lot of us know what the editor role is, but was that a rewarding role being an editor? Obviously that's not something that you always wanted to do. You always want to make that transition into writing. sounds like, but like, did you have a good time doing that?

And what, you know, what, what's like an interesting, you know, memory or sort of anecdote from that time as an editor. You know, like as you alluded to, I became an editor because I wanted to learn to be a better writer, right? That was my f**king. So, you know, I enjoyed my time in editorial in so much as that I got to learn on the job for three years, right? From people who had been doing this for decades and, you know, getting a look at John Amater Jr. right?

You can learn quite a bit that way, right? Like working with the top. tier creators in the industry, reading Ed Brubaker scripts and looking at colors that Dean White just turned in. I learned an immense amount and made some great connections. And my relationship with Kirkman came about because I was his editor at Marvel, for instance. Howard Chakin, too. I edited him there. And we're still very, very close. And so I got a lot out of it. But I kind of realized.

while I was at Marvel that I was a bad editor and I was never going to be a good editor because I wanted too much control. when scripts would come in and they weren't how I would do it, I had a hard time separating it. well, my job isn't to make what I would want. My job is to facilitate the team that has been selected making their version of this thing. And the problem with that is oftentimes I didn't particularly like their version. I'm picky, I have very specific tastes.

I was, I was very young, was my early 20s. And I was kind of a bull in the china shop. And I because I wanted things to be good. I wanted things to be great. And I wanted them to match up to my high expectations for the medium. And, you know, when you're when your work is part of a larger publishing plan for a big company that has higher level concerns, do or die, it's gotta be great no matter what, by any means necessary approach, isn't really best placed.

That's not really the best way to go about doing things. So yeah, no, like I mean, I'm proud of the work I did there and I learned a lot, but I learned very early on that, the biggest impact. So, I mean, a, the moment I realized that I needed to leave, um, because I'm still having fun and I loved all the people I was working with and you know, you get to work on comics all day, you know, it's, it's a dream come true.

The moment I realized I needed to leave, I'm not going to say what book it was, but I was, cause it's just too mean, but I realized that, you know, I was never going to make a good I was never going to turn a good book into a great book. A great book's a great book. And it has to do not with editorial shoving people in like towards the marginal changes that they can incentivize people to do, right? That's not where it comes from.

It comes from an actual team working holistically together with a single, a single unified vision. And they make this thing. And I was never going to be able to facilitate that. Likewise, I was never going to be able to make a bad book good, right? Because it's mean, it's just bad, right? And like some, mean, that's, and that's the thing when you're working at a publisher, when you're an editor, publisher, you're going to work on bad books.

like whoever you think like is like the Mount Rushmore of comic book editors, I guarantee they have edited more horrible books than you even realize, right? Just cause it's a publishing schedule and they're periodicals and they gotta keep coming out, right? And you're never going to make a bad book good. I realized, and I was working on one of these, the most impact I could ever have as an editor was to make an unreadable book passable.

To make a book that is absolutely dreadful and irredeemably bad, and that's not a joke on irredeemable Ant-Man, irredeemable Ant-Man was a- joy to work on. That's not the book I'm talking about. But yeah, no, there's this random terrible book that I was working on and it was so much work. It was so much effort because every stage of it was just dreadful. Just the work being done was absolutely horrific.

And it was backbreaking labor just to get everything up to snuff, to not be like visibly and self-evidently atrocious. And it still wasn't a good book. It was still a bad book. just wasn't an embarrassment. to the company, right? And that, and I realized that was the most impact that I was ever gonna have on a book. And I had to find another job. had to leave. had to get out of there. You know, comics beat, know you're listening right now confirmed. We have it here live on the oblivion bar.

Aubrey Sidderson says books of doom by Ed Brubaker is horrifically bad and irredeemable. ahead and print that, put it in a quote. I love that one. Was that the Pablo Ramundi? Hell yeah, see? No, remember. it's great. It's great. right. Well, you know, and you have, mentioned recently on your sub stack, Mark Guggenheim saying don't care as much. And I love, I won't spoil anything in that post because I want people to go back and read that on your sub stack. Atlas still sunk.

And I want people to read that because I think it's really incredible, especially for creatives that want to, cause Aaron, can you please just verbalize this? I also am a neurotic overthinker over care. And it can be to a detriment, correct? It absolutely is. Cause it's funny cause I constantly get these texts where he's like, fuck this, I'm not doing it anymore. And then like an hour later, there he is.

He's like doing the thing all over again, but even harder, even more, even like with more detail. like Chris, it's one of those things that's ingrained in both of us. think it's a military thing, but I think it's also just a caring, there's the creative industry. There's a care that you have for the things that you put out into the world. that you just cannot let something shitty go out there. Like to you, it's gotta be, to you, it has to be the cream of the crop. yeah.

You know, cream of the crop. Well, and speaking of cream of the crop, Aubrey, our real first question had to do with wrestling. Okay. Cause naturally it had to, right? Cause you, of course you, you wrote the, the, the comic book story or sorry, the comic book story of professional wrestling. And, this is something and you know, we have a mutual friend, Jim Viscardi also self-proclaimed huge wrestling fan. We talked about this during our conversation.

Daniel Johnson, also a huge wrestling fan as well. We've talked to him about it. So I have to ask you, and this is like, I want this to sort of like be a reoccurring thing. And I know as a wrestling fan, you're probably gonna find this really annoying, what's your favorite or who is your favorite obscure attitude error wrestler and why? mean, like how obscure do we have to get? mean, like obscure for like wrestling fans or obscure for normal people?

I would say normies, know, like Aaron and I would consider us normies. Like we liked the attitude era, like, you know, stone cold, the rock, you know, I like white Chris Jericho is my favorite wrestler from that era. that means anything. probably attitude error, by the way. So I people that might I tell so I'm answering a different question first. I tell people that my favorite rest of all time is Rick Flair. I academically do believe that he is the greatest professional wrestler of all time.

Right? No contest. However, if I'm being honest, my favorite wrestler is Chris Jericho. favorite. He's a validation. Chris Jericho is not obscure. That doesn't answer your question. I think like for This is not obscure for wrestling fans, but I think for normies, this is pretty obscure. It's hard to, in 2025, it's really hard to convey to people how outrageously over valvenous was during the attitude. Monstrously over. And for people who aren't familiar, had a porn star gimmick. And that's it.

He had a porn star gimmick. had long wet hair and he came out in a towel and he would take it off and he would swing it around. he was just very, everything was over sexed and ridiculous. the attitude era crowd ate it up, man. They went absolutely nutso for it. He was so over and a better, and also I think a better worker than he got credit for too, because it was kind of subsumed into the gimmick and all anybody thought about. Did he have a diva with him at one point as well during the shows?

I can't remember exactly. I a few. bad. I read a whole book about professional wrestling. was like, perfect. I can forget all this stuff now. All the dates and the specifics went immediately out my ears once that book came out. Yeah, there he is. Look at him. look how yeah, just luscious and oiled up and in a towel like that. audience can't see this, but Chris has pulled up a picture of a man in knee pads and a towel wrapped around his waist. He trunks on. You just can't see them.

Me personally, I just imagine they're not there. And he's just, and he's got, know, he's just like doing like hip thrusts, I'm assuming. Yeah. weird gyration in the middle of the, in the middle of the rink, right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I gotta always say like one of my favorites like at least probably more obscure these days because he's just faded into into you know The darkness Dustin Rhodes as gold dust. Okay And he's also multiple different versions of that too, Yes.

Yes. I mean, what wrestler did not have multiple versions of either there's themselves or their character, like Mick Foley, you know, that guy is a first off, Mick Foley is a total sweetheart, sweetheart. Yeah. met him a couple of months, a couple of months ago in New Jersey. Great guy. but yeah, most wrestlers have like multiple iterations of their character, even, like the undertaker he went through, He was limp, mascara. He was badass.

I remember that WrestleMania when he came out in the motorcycle. Right. That's right. Well, I don't want to digress too much, but I do want to ask one question slightly and it's not your I don't think it's your typical editing question, but like it's more mostly about as somebody who I don't have much of a desire to write comics, but I do want to edit them. So like I don't have like the usual track path in my brain where it's like I want to write comics to get to the next thing.

My goal would be to edit comics. Yeah. How does how does that Like how does somebody really like work their way into that industry? Cause I mean, have a, I have a background in editing as I'm sure a lot of people, you know, obviously really care about their work, go back and edit it. But professionally, how would somebody just like kind of branch into that? You know, it's hard for me to say. The way I came into Marvel, was an intern. I was an intern, and then I got a part-time job working there.

I was an editorial assistant while I was still in college. And then when I graduated, I lucked out and a spot was opening up. And I was able to slide right into it. So was really a timing thing as well. You know, it's different now because comic book editing used to be a New York-based profession. Marvel and DC were there. you and depending on what year you're looking at some other publishers bouncing around too. now it's all over the place.

And a lot of it, a lot of folks work, work remotely too. You know, I'm in LA now and there's a ton of, I think there's probably more comics editorial in LA than there is in New York at this point. You've got DC and boom and some of the stuff that I'm not remembering too. But yeah, You know, of has like a comic footprint. Seattle as well kind of has a comic footprint as well, right? Yeah, maybe see in Portland has a bunch of people.

Yeah. So but yeah, like folks are spread out all over the place now. So yeah, I don't know, you know, I couldn't really give any practical advice on how to break into it. You know, it's a difficult field in that it's a necessary role, but it is a underappreciated role. And margins in comics are so slim, regardless that there's not a whole lot of money in it either, you know.

What I can say is from the perspective of, you know, I can't tell you how to how to get a job as a comic book editor, but I can tell you some things that I think would make you stand out as a comic book editor as a as a candidate, right? Most almost all comic book editors, right, like the vast, vast majority come to comics from a writing slash English slash liberal arts background. And there's nothing wrong with that in and of itself. That's how I came to comics too.

But you're only getting part of the equation. And if you're a good comic book editor, you're capable of giving notes on everything. You're capable of casting every part of a book, not just based on who has... the most social media followers and is up in your DMs or who is like trending right now or whatever other spurious reasons people use for to make casting decisions. But you know, good comic book editors think are able to extrapolate out what the book is going to look like.

You know, it's like it's like being a baseball manager or something, right? Put your team together and then you need to help them play. Right. That sports analogies. That's right. I'm impressed by myself right now. So, you know, I think that the piece that a lot of comic book editors and this included me as well, and folks I worked with and folks who I just interact with throughout the industry is they don't have that art background.

They don't have a design background and anything that you can do to get your reps in and build capability. in those areas would be a massive differentiator for a person trying to break into editorial because it's just not something with, you know, and I think this is, it's born out in the types of work, broadly speaking, the type of work that gets published, you know, most comics are primarily a narrative.

And that's, and that's because most editors, that's, that's the extent to which they can engage with comics.

So if you're an editor who only really has writing and liberal arts and English type background, and you want to have an impact on the book, which everybody does, because we like to think that the ways we spend our day are valuable and useful, you're going to be spending time giving notes on, the... the three act structure and the character arcs and this is a static character and what about the themes here and the metaphor and like that's all fine and good and stories need that stuff too.

But in my opinion, focusing solely on that and then once and then settling on that and then deciding, okay, well now who's going to draw it? That's backwards. You know, I think that this is not a controversial opinion. It's just a factual thing. Comics are a visual medium and approaching it as strictly the format through which you're going to tell a story is wrong. And it makes for it makes for bad assembly line comics is what it makes for.

And yeah, I think comics desperately needs more editors with backgrounds in art. And they don't have to be accomplished artists of themselves, but they need to at least understand and how to discuss art and differentiate between different types of artists. And I think design too. editors, editors should have a good design sense. And that's going to help them be in on things like page layout and page design and lettering placements.

I think editors should have rudimentary understandings of color theory, which I think is exceedingly rare. I to look at most books on the rack, most colors don't have a rudimentary. No, I mean, it's true. I mean, like, you know, a lot of colors in the environment. learned from YouTube videos.

And you can tell not because there's something wrong with learning from YouTube videos, but because YouTube videos are generally geared toward teaching people how to color for things that will be on a screen, which is to say depicted with illuminated light instead of reflected light. And if you're coloring for RGB and not considering CMYK, which is how everything is printed, you end up with a muddy mess. Things don't look good.

You know, and so I think these are things that like an editor should be able to get colors in and open it up in Photoshop or their equivalent and poke around in it, be able to determine whether it's going to print well or not. And I think it's a distressingly few amount of editors who can actually do that. That is the single best answer and description and definition. My is you just need to learn like eight other jobs. That was the advice I gave you, Aaron.

But honestly, honestly, like that's if that's the answer, that's the answer. And honestly, it fits the bill. And I appreciate that because it's, it's candid and it makes so much sense because I think you're absolutely right. When you go into anything as, as an editor with a background in writing, whether it's editing somebody else's article or somebody else's book or something like you have to have an idea of what the bigger picture is.

And if you can't use your visually like visually creative portion of your brain, to adapt that in real time to what you're editing. All you're doing is editing words and basic content. You're not creating the, the, you're not helping create this universe. And, and it's so funny when you talk about like the colors and things like that, cause I immediately think back to, no one left to fight. And I'm just thinking about how much of an amazing color scheme, all of that are all of those books were.

So like, I'm just excited to continue this, this conversation into more of what you've created because it, I see where your thoughts go into your work and I appreciate your answer even more so. Thank you. I appreciate that. And I think that that's the big thing that I bring with me from my time in Marvel editorial specifically, because I think not all editorial jobs are the same.

If you're working at Marvel or DC editorial, you typically have a much larger role in whatever book you're working on than if you were working as, especially if you got hired by some, like when I was working for Kirkman and Mark Miller and John Ray Jr. and Mark Guggenheim, they didn't want me giving notes on anything. They wanted me to help them get the pages in and make sure there were no problems and get things off to the publisher and all that stuff.

So yeah, not every editorial job is the same degree of both these things, but every comic book job consists of both traffic cop and making sure things get in on time and quality control, making sure that's good when it gets there. If you don't, if you're not a generalist, if you're not capable of weighing in on all that stuff, think it's exceedingly difficult to do that. I do work with Archie Comics sometimes, and I love working with Archie Comics.

And one of the coolest things about working with Archie Comics is that they have an editor and they have an art director on every book. Every book. they work very closely. Jamie Rotante is the editor and then Vin Lovallo is the art director on everything. they work extremely closely together, but then as an artist himself is able to give notes efficiently and with a clarity and confidence that, you know, someone who doesn't have an art background can struggle to hit, I think.

Before we get into what, know, what we kind of brought you here for was, you know, discussing free planet as well as some other stuff that we're very excited to talk about. Can you please tell the listeners about your 2021 Kickstarter campaigns for both stoned master and beef bros? Yeah, man. So pandemic hit and I was already speaking with Tyrell Cannon, artist of The Shlub at Image Comics and Ares, which by time this goes live, his latest Ares campaign will be running on Kickstarter.

Go find it. E-R-I-S. I've read the third issue. It's amazing. But I was already talking to him about doing Beef Bros. Beef Bros. Tyrell and I love superheroes. We love 90s image excess. We love 80s, like big muscly manga, not, Seinen, Seinen manga specifically. had to search for the term.

And. we kind of stirred all those things up into the mix with the idea of making throwback superheroes, superheroes as they were originally ideated in the 1940s, which is to say populist and looking out for the little guy. you know, the result was beef bros, right? So it's drenched in neon. It is body. It's 80 late 80s, early 90s, bodybuilder pro wrestler aesthetics. They unit are unitards. They are not terribly bright young men. Ajax and Huey beef. They are brothers. And they love each other.

And they live their life by a really simple but powerful idea, which is that if you can help somebody out, you do it. And also they're the strongest dudes, they are just so incredibly strong. They're just the strongest guys around. And that mindset dropped into something approaching the real world gets the trouble. And that's the story of Beef Bros, the first campaign. And it did gangbusters, man. Yeah, so we were already working on it when the pandemic hit.

And when everything went pencils down, Tyrell had run Kickstarters before. I had always been scared of doing it just because it's so much to keep track of and so many different variables. And I wouldn't have been able to do it without Tyrell's experience and wisdom guiding us on it. But yeah, no, it did gangbusters. And so I followed it up with stoned master, which is a it's exactly what it sounds like. It's drunken master, but set in a Los Angeles dispensary.

So it's kind of like a it's like a stoner kung fu comedy. Like, I don't think like pineapple express meets Cheech and Chong. Right. And or that's the bad pipe express meets meets drunken master. Right. That's better. But yeah, no, there it is. And that was with Chris Moreno, who I'd previously worked with on the comic book story of professional wrestling. And Chris and I are big fans of Kung Fu movies and Chi-Chin Chong movies. And so it was a really fun project for us to work on.

then within like 18 months, I think I did my third Kickstarter, which was Beef Bros Behind Bars. And it was Huey and Ajax. They were back. But this time they were tossed into a massive multi-story prison. owned and operated by the world's biggest media conglomerate. So it's all branded with their iconic character, Gilby Gopher. yeah, you know, that stuff was a blast to work on and really fun to do.

stuff in a little bit longer format, but also just kind of one-and-done in a way that the normal comic book shop market isn't really conducive to war just because of the way it's structured. But no, was a blast and really, really gratifying too, because know, Beef Bros and Stone Master for different reasons are books that would not work in the direct market.

Beef Bros, despite the fact that superheroes are massively popular in the direct market, generally speaking outliers like invincible aside, which also has its own TV show now. If people want superheroes, they're generally going to be getting Spider-Man or Batman, right? Like they're going be getting the ones that they can see on TV and they know of already. So beef bros would be a tough sell there and stone master would have been a tough sell.

You know, I live in California, so I forget that, just huge cannabis leafs on the cover of comic books are like kind of a non-starter for a big swaths of the country. I forget about that from the privileged position of Southern California that I currently sit in. So yeah, that would have been a difficult thing to really make a go of in the direct market. So being able to go directly to consumers with those was a treat.

Yeah, Aubrey, one of the things I really appreciate about your work and just the things I know about your career thus far, and I'm assuming you're going to continue to sort of, you know, continue on going forward is like, you're, you're very interested in just telling your story and also sort of like, and I mean this sort you know, very respectfully as you're interested in pressing the boundaries, you want to, you want to almost like find the boundary and maybe take a toe over it.

Or even in the case of free planet planet, which we'll talk about here in just a moment. just taking a full leap over that boundary and sort of traversing many different elements that are off, like these essential rules that have been put in place since like the forties. Yeah, well, you know, I think that I appreciate that.

And I do take it as a compliment, man, because I think the fact of the matter is there is a lot of received wisdom in comics about how comics should work and how they need to work. a lot of that stuff, it's one of two things, right? It's either fashion, which is to say it can shift with the dot with the drop of a hat, you know, like just the style of which we we do comics and It's either fashion, right? Which is to say, you know, it's not really a rule.

It's just what's been popular for the past two decades. Or it's a very limited, blinkered, I would even say, approach and view of what comics can accomplish. Right. And I think it's tied up in what I was talking about before, which is the fact that for almost the entirety of comics existence, almost the entirety of comics publishing, has been treated like an assembly line.

And when you're doing books like that, when you're viewing writing and penciling and inking and coloring and lettering as all distinct tasks, right? It's just like an assembly line. When you're looking at it that way, you're really limited in the approach that you can do, especially if you want things to move smoothly and come out on time.

That's why writers breakdown, like they come up with a story and then they break into five issues and then they break that into pages and then they say, okay, well, each page can have four and a half panels and you know, and they break it into that. And that is a really good way to make sure that scripts can be easily passed off to an artist and drawn to a reliable minimum level of quality. It's not how you make interesting work, I don't think.

It's it's not how it's not how you push the boundaries of what comics can do. It's not how you utilize the form to its utmost is what I've always wanted to do. because I think that comics is such a special, fantastic medium.

But what's most fascinating to me about it is I think we've barely scratched the surface of what comics can do because the unfortunate publishing realities like of the industry that's around comics and its requirements there and also you know, comics since it's since since the inception of film, right?

Comics has been trying to keep up comics has been trying to be film for as long as film has been an issue as long as since since film supplanted comics as like the primary mass entertainment medium. And comics has been trying to catch up and trying to and has been always thought about, you know, it's things are always in terms of like, well, it's like a film with a unlimited special effects budget, it's, you know, it's like all these films that are all connected.

But, you know, that's not comics true strength. Showing how comics can do things slightly better than another visual medium isn't the strength of comics. The strength of comics is page design, is layout, is thinking about all of these disciplines that we were just talking about holistically and together and not treating it just like, you know, cogs in an assembly. And I forgot what the question was. I'm just babbling about comics now. It happens. It's a salient risk of having me on your podcast.

No, we love it. love a long winter response for sure. Yeah. No, I love the fact that, mean, you're right. Cause like, again, I, of everybody in this group, which is constant, the constant same thing. And Chris, we make a bit of this, is like, I'm the newest one in almost in every room, to, the two reading comics. And so I like that approach because I like the philosophy because not every comic needs to be a cog in the eventual, like storyline.

It's the convergence, the, the crossover, the big story arc, like every comic. issue has an opportunity to be a swing in a storyline. It has an opportunity to be something immense and another door that opens into something greater. And I get really tired of like filler issues of comics that don't really get you anywhere just because they want to put out another, another issue or they want to fulfill a, like a 10, 10 issue story arc. Which I get tired of Aaron. I get tired of filler pages.

Right. And I'm not talking about like pages where nothing happens because that's a hard thing to qualify. Like what that means. People are like, oh, nothing happened this issue. It's like, well, I mean, obviously something happened. But what I'm talking about are connective tissue pages that are unavoidable when you take the approach that, you know, I was just running down, which is to say you come up with your story. Right.

And like you might have specific, you know, so you have your story, your plot. for your 20 page comic and you you've got splash pages and a spread here and then everything else, you just need to move the pieces into place. Which means that sometimes you've just got a six or seven or eight or nine panel grid just moving things around so that you can get to the spread in a page or two. That my friends is fucking boring. That sucks, Comics are expensive. $4. $4 for 20 pages, right?

Every single one of those needs to have value and not just value in terms of narrative value. Again, that shit's boring. if what people want, if people want a compelling visual story, watch a movie. If people want a rich, complex plot, read a novel, right? Comics gives you something different, right? And what comics can give you that these other mediums cannot is the presentation of a page that is so magnificent that you as a reader choose to spend additional time with it, right?

You're watching a movie, like unless you're a crazy person, you don't pause it every time there's a nice shot. So just stare at it. And maybe you do because you're like a cinematography person, which I clearly find very strange, maybe you do do that. But like, there's only so much you're going to get out of it. You can look at the composition and then you got it, you're there.

But with comics with a well constructed spread, I mean, think about like, don't know, working on free planet, I thought a lot about the way I felt about dyna topia books when I was a kid. Yeah. still have mine. They're amazing. They're so cool. got some from the library when I was working on a free planet just because I wanted to go through them all. like Wayne Barlow does these like like guides of like this made up planet and it's just like all this like data and charts and drawings.

They're really neat. But yeah, like I thought a lot about that in terms of like, why aren't more comics like that? Why? And it's, you know, it's a trend, right? Because for the past 20 years, we've leaned into teleplay pacing. Right. Everything is written like it's an episode of a streaming TV show. And we've leaned into decompression, right. Which works really great if you're reading big chunky manga volumes and you've got 200 pages of it, you can just burn through.

But again, paying $4 for 20 pages of comics where the degree, like the amount of hours, especially in a book like Free Planet, the work that Jed is doing is enormous, right. With an outrageous amount of detail. You know, why aren't more comics structured in such a way that readers want to slow down and want to spend some time just taking a page in? And yeah, man, I think that that's.

That was a big inspiration on how we approached free planet and how we did things differently is making sure that there are there is no connective tissue. There are no there are no filler pages. There's certainly no filler issues. It is. packed to the gills with stuff, with stuff for readers to enjoy and take their time with and reread and maybe like come back to again later if they need to brush up on something. It's a different type of book in a very real way, I think. Absolutely agree.

And I think that's a wonderful transition into our next question, which is let's talk about free planet, which comes out on May 7th. When's F.O.C. for free plan? couldn't find that online. April April 14th. OK, so as everyone is listening to this conversation, this episode will already be out. So make sure you guys call your little comic shop and order that first issue.

But let's talk about the book itself, which is both sort of this research driven space opera about the days following the end of a revolutionary war of the first free planet, but also more as like a reader, a pretty challenging and somewhat confrontational restructuring, I think, as we talked about earlier of the medium. So a lot of questions here I had when reading this first issue. I love having my work described as confrontational. I'm going to own that. course, I'm confrontational.

Yeah, work is too. Confrontational in the way that like when someone asks you how you look before you all go out, you go, I go with the green shirt instead of the blue shirt. You know, like you're helping them in the end, but it's it's going to cause a fight eventually somewhere. Exactly. Yeah. You're asking just that, Aaron. You know, that's, what we say here. But it's what I like. It's what I like about him. Yeah, it's my second favorite thing. green. You're just going to him wonder on that.

sorry. I never look. I'm always looking at your ass. Anyway, being is that a lot of questions came up when reading this first issue. know, obviously there's a lot of questions about the story, but also the process, which I kind of want to key in on in this conversation. Then maybe down the road, we can get you back on to have like a spoiler conversation about maybe the first trade, maybe even have, you know, jet on the show as well. But, know, the process, the research or design.

everything that went into this project, it's on the page. We can see it evidently. So let's start with a very simple broad question. How did it feel, you know, in terms of like getting with Jed, your artist, Jed Daughtry, your artist on the series, how did it, like, why did you guys feel compelled to tell this story the way that you did? As we said earlier, again, a lot of research, lot, like a lot of design, very dense, this first issue.

Why did you guys feel compelled to tell it in this particular way? You know, you mentioned earlier, I had that big year in 2020, 2021 with all the Kickstarter stuff. And then right after, or even in the midst of some of that too, I had three different Dark Horse limited series out that year. was Savage Hearts with Jed. It was the worst dudes with Tony Gregori. And it was No One Left to Fight 2 with Fico Lassio. And I had a ton of work out there. And I had big aspirations.

I've been at this for a minute, man. And I had big expectations. know, it felt like everything was paying off. Everything was finally hitting, right? And I've been slogging at stuff for a really long time with some very like notable and some of them very public setbacks. And I had gotten to a point where I had this slate of books from a major publisher and I had this Kickstarter kind of enterprise that was up and running. you know, I really thought I was on my way, but nothing came of it.

some of that is timing, just in terms of those books came out when every publisher was dumping books into the market because they had had that pencils down period. around COVID.

you know, I, I think that there are, there's likely some, you know, my failure to get pick up kind of like institutional, larger institutional buy in, probably has something to do with stuff I was alluding to earlier, kind of my approach as an editor previously, or like perceptions of me as a former editor, or a number of other things. And like, and this is kind of the key part, man. I can't control any of that. All of that's outside of my control.

But I realized that what is their mind control is the type of work that I'm doing. And I have like a real, you know, real come to Jesus meeting with myself about it, right. And the type of work I was doing and I'm proud of the work, all the work that we mentioned and all the co-curators I worked with. think it's great stuff and I adore it. And I don't think there's anything wrong with it.

I'm not ashamed of it to be sure, but I was still making work with an eye toward making the type of work that the industry rewards and seems to focus on. Right. wanted to be a working comic book creator. And I thought that in order to do that, I need to make these types of books and I need to make them fast. And I needed to, and that's why I did so many of them, right. Just cause like, this you have to do, right. You have to have three or four books out. You have to write three or four books.

at least more if you're trying to get your creator own stuff up and running, which you, you should if you're, you're smart, right. And I realized that, you know, I wasn't able to do my best work that way. And I don't think anybody is quite frankly, I think that you can find modes to work in that do work and people, people like, you know, people like the work I did. It's not that people hated this stuff. But I didn't think it was the best work that I could be doing.

And that is something under my control. And that is something that I could change. I made a conscious effort to slow down and to rethink how I was approaching the page. quite frankly, boys, you know, I've been at this for long enough. I've worked really hard to get to the point where I can have an ongoing image series launching, right? And like, this is a big, this was always the dream for me. Right. Having an image series and hopefully a long running one knock on wood.

Like that was always the goal for me. That's what I wanted to build to. But if this thing doesn't hit, I don't realistically speak, this is not being me being sad sack. This is me being realistic. I don't know how many other chances I get. Right. If this doesn't hit, I don't think Eric Stevenson is going to be like, all right, so let's give it a go. What else? What else you got? What else you got the bag over there? Right. and because it's just not how comics work. not how any business works.

Right. and I wanted to make sure that. if nothing else, free planet was unadulterated fire hose blast Aubrey, right? I want it to be everything. I want it to be everything Jed and I are interested in. Jed's a co-creator on this. we talked about it extensively about doing something new, doing something more rigorous, doing something more complex.

I met Jed when he was working as an assistant for Howard Chakin and that Chakinian approach to the page, you know, really centering design as the, you know, as, and the layout of the page as the foundational storytelling unit of comics, that's a chicken thing. And that's something that both Jed and I buy into. you know, aspiration was there already, right? I had, I had a conversation, you know, and this is another thing that I could control too.

You know, I, During the pandemic, talked with Kirkman and he had a, he asked me, he was just talking to me about stuff I had coming out, coming up. this was prior to Savage, Savage Hearts and Worst Dudes were in some progress of completion, but they weren't out yet. And he was asking me what I had coming out and I was telling him about those. was like, well, I've got a sword and sorcery romantic comedy with a big buff lady and the weird little beast man.

And then I have this very strange vulgar, Chandler esque detective story in space with like a big pink cat man, and he was like man Just do a story about a guy Who has a horse and then the horse dies and I said hmm. How many legs does the horse have? But like I made a joke but like, you know, his point was well taken, you know, my work is Trey right like it's gonzo. It's weird and like big part of that is because it's comics. And I feel like let's use that.

And I want everything to be visually and like I want everything on the page to be visually compelling. Right. And it's part and parcel of that approach I was talking about earlier in terms of giving people something to chew on and incentivize them to spend time with the page. And I think one of the ways you do that is make everything interesting.

And if everybody's if if the coloring is dull and monochromatic, and all the characters look the same, and they're all dressed like it's the real world. that's less interesting to me to look at on like just a very like objective level. And I've always wanted to lean into that. But the downside of that is I think that there has been a perception of me and my work that it is slight and it is, you there's a y'all like this as wrestling fans, there's a wrestling fans, funny ain't money.

I think that's true in comics too. Anything things that read as self evidently funny. are written off as silly and not serious and deserving of serious engagement and consideration. And that rubbed me the wrong way because I've always thought that there's, I've always brought an intellectual rigor to my work, even when it's, know, blowjob jokes in the worst dudes, right? Like it's still structured, you know, that, that book was structured.

The worst dude was structured like a Chandler-esque detective story. It's complex. It's messy and weird and difficult to keep up with. And that's part of the appeal. It's how these things work. everything I've done has had that degree of thought put into it because of the way we presented it, because of how many jokes there were, because of the outre elements. I think that people have kind of looked down their noses at it a little bit and it started to really stick in my craw.

I to get real resentful about the fact that I would look around and see writers celebrated for being these like smart cerebral writers. And I wanted that. so Free Planet is, it's really a, it's an I'll show you book, If what you people want is smart, challenging. complex work that actually uses the medium. All right, let's go. Let's do it. And it's a dick ton of work. It's an outrageous amount of work. You you mentioned the research that goes into it.

Stacks, I've got one right here that I'm rereading. And like, they're all this thick. They're all like this, right? This is the Spanish Civil War. It's like 1100 or 1200. you know, this, I did Trotsky's history of the Russian Revolution. read another like 1200 one about Cuba. Just I've gone through Plato's Republic a couple times. Yeah, dude, that's the thing. Yeah. Like, I mean, because I wanted all of I wanted this world to feel real and to feel lived in and you know, it's about very real.

topical stuff, I think, not because of I plan it to be topical, because this stuff is always topical, right in a big, big messy interconnected world like the one we live in.

And I wanted the freedom to engage with that and explore it and sit down in it and think about it without, know, if this was a, if this was historical fiction, people would come into it with their ideas already cemented in, but by abstracting it out to sci-fi, we have a lot more freedom to kind of let people discover how they feel about things, but it still needs to feel real.

you know, research on my end, design work on Jed's end, extensive design work from him, just absurd stuff, just making sure that every ethnicity has their own clothing style and every planet and confederation of planets have their own types of weapons and they generate power from different places, which impacts what their ships look like, which impacts how their ships travel and what types of weapons and vehicles and such that they use. then that has impact on the story.

it was working on it was very much a game of one-upsmanship with Jed and I, right? Because I, this is a story I've told other places, but When we were working on Savage Hearts, which is set in a big old jungle full of dinosaurs, Jed called me one day and said, hey, what is the flora like? I said, the flora? He said, like plants. I was like, I know what it means, but like, I don't fucking know, man. I have no idea. And he shamed me. I felt bad. I felt like I was slacking, right?

Because, and to be frank, I was, right? And this is the type of stuff that writers slack on all the time, you know? We just think, the artist will figure that out. The artist will do that, right? And this is like, this is a very filmic approach, right? Because if you're writing screenplays, it doesn't fucking matter what, like, unless it's a plot point, it doesn't matter what types of plants there are in the background.

Let's say, let the production design, like the set design people will figure that out. But in comics, you have the freedom to actually weigh in on this stuff and make it a substantive part of the story. And that's what we do with Free Planet, right? Like there, nothing is incidental. Nothing is random and everything has impact on everything else because it is this big filly fleshed out work.

Well good because I have way more questions for you, but unfortunately we got to get to the next one because like we don't want to take too much of your time Can we make a quick pack, Aaron, before you go on to this next one that like at some point down the road, because we totally we keep you for about an hour. We want to stay somewhat true to that.

We need to get you back because there's so much I feel like just in that response there, I have four or five questions that we could get to eventually. And I'll just pack those away. And let's get you and Jed on the show. yeah. On the road. Once this thing is in like a collected form and we can just dig into that. But yeah, Aaron, go ahead, because I do want to hear this next one.

Yeah. So recently in an Instagram post, this book, you, you, you posted that this book is purposely designed and structured to be dense and use up as much visual space kind of as we've talked about over this conversation to be studied, examined. even mentioned that this approach was purposely hostile towards digital reading, which luckily for Chris and I, is how, and then you also wrote a newsletter. On day 7th, you're going to love it. Yeah, we're gonna love it.

You recently wrote in a newsletter also creating something purely your own beholden to no one is a joyous and triumphant assertion of autonomy, which reminds me of something we had Patrick Horvath on recently. And I, he's a good friend of the show. We love him.

And he said, basically he was like, you know, to, to kind of round up his quote, he was like, you know, do the weird thing, you know, do the weird thing, but, uh, we want you to tell us a little bit about your process with Jed and designer Mark Kaufman in structuring this book, the way you did and why you felt it was so important for this first issue. to be read physically, tangibly in a book in your hands. So I'll answer the part about the designer first. So Mark is brilliant.

Mark designed, he did our cover treat, front and back cover treatment, the inside front cover, like the title page, and also the back matter. The book has back matter in every issue. are essays with brand new. So there are essays, but they're written by the character, Dr. Aldous Foyrushi, who writes all of the big chunky historical captions leading throughout the book, which kind of serve as the through line through all these anecdotal scenes. Mark designed the back matter as well.

And we worked together with Mark to hammer out a approach for the covers before Jed had drawn anything. Right. And I think that that's another example of kind of this holistic approach that I'm talking about. Right. Another one is that Taylor, our letterer, he doesn't get going until the colors are done, which is unusual. Most of the time comics just have the color and letterer working separately and then they smash the files together and fix any problems on the back end.

And that's not good enough for me, right? Cause I want what Taylor's doing to be not just adjusted after the fact to fit in with the colors, but I want him to be making conscious choices in consideration of the color. colors. And the same is true for Jed and his cover design, right. And so we really wanted something distinct, something that read that, you know, Mark is a car. He's a cartoonist. And he's he used to be the designer for the nib run by my buddy, Matt Bors.

And so he's very much of comics, or he knows comics without being of comics, right? He's not he's not like a direct market comics guy. And we wanted something that looks different and distinct and serious, right? And, you know, that's what I went to him with. And he came back with that kind of big chunky planetoid design with the cutout letters and you know, kind of like, oddly spaced on three lines and all. And I adore it.

And then it was off to Jed for him to do a cover that fits in the bottom around that design, right? So that was working, that was working with Mark, in terms of working Jed, the primary difference and it's impacted everything about how I write. And it's something I started doing with my Archie work, both with Jed and with Megan Hutchison on Archie judgment day. And it's doing thumbnails. You mentioned this in your sub stack. Yeah, I do thumbnails now, but crucially, don't do them.

So I used to do thumbnails on kind of an ad hoc basis, right? If there's a page that I wrote and I'm like, I don't know if this is going to work or let me just make sure this is going to fit on the page the way I want it to. I would kind of sketch it out and make sure. but that's only sufficient for addressing problems. Right. it doesn't help you break out of this thing that I was talking about earlier, which was. me fall into the same trap that everybody does.

had, you know, look at any of my books and there are plenty of pages where it's just four or five panels of people moving things around, of us moving the story pieces around. And sometimes there's some good dialogue and you know, they're always drawn really well because I work with really good artists, but it's not fulfilling comics. don't think it's not. I have a pretty intense fighter verse fan in the chat here that might say differently.

He mentioned earlier before the show that he was like, we need to talk about the fighter verse, but based on the free planet conversation, it's hard to it in. it we, you know, that work is wonderful. And I love it. And it's a blast. But it is not approached in the same way that Free Planet is right. No One Left to Fight is primarily a grinding fight soap opera, right. So while there are while we do build to these big moments that you really want to live in.

A lot of the book you move through it at a much brisker pace, there's way less dialogue, like there's, there's no caption, no one left to fight, there's zero captions. And there's not even a whole lot of dialogue, there's a lot of quiet panels, because it is something that you're meant to move through quickly until you get to that big, you know, bambalam blast or whatever, you know, like the big crazy attack that's going on. And there's nothing wrong with that.

And it's not a, it's not anything I'm ashamed of. But it It just simply doesn't use utilize the comics medium to the full degree of what it what it's capable of and doing thumbnails. What I do now is I do them before I script so I know what's going to be an issue. But then I sit down and I thumbnail everything out like these and that prevents me from having filler pages and connective tissue because every time I think about a spread, I think how is this going to be visually overwhelmed?

What can we do different? How can we use this space? How can we pack this in with as much content as humanly possible such that people really want to like curl up with this thing and live in it the way I did with dyna topia books as a kid. that approach doing thumbnails ahead of time, I don't send them to Jed. They are not for him to follow because he's better at this than I am. Right.

And he comes up with better stuff than I do anyways, oftentimes, but it forces me to think about things primarily as a design problem, as opposed to just a plot problem, which is how a lot of writers, myself included, it's easy to fall into that trap when you're just writing a script. Yeah. Okay. Aubrey, as we said a minute ago, I just have so many things just sprouting off right now and I need to hold it in. This is an exercise in restraint here.

Everyone listening right now, we are using this moment to grow and Aubrey, I'm going to ask you one last question in order to avoid that. So final question, and this is something we like to ask everybody because I feel like we have so many things. I know it's tough. I hate doing this, Aubrey, and we talked about this before the recording. I go long-winded. It's on me. I only answered like three questions. We want that. We want you to really dive into it. Honestly, that's why you're here.

But it's us too. We have so many things that we want to discuss. And if anything, it just adds credence to the value of free planet and what it's doing for the medium. I cannot implore people enough to check it out because of how much it's igniting these questions and sort of thoughts on this series just in the first issue. way that you described it about going back and like re-reviewing it and like kind of going panel by panel by panel, cover to cover.

I've, I've found myself doing this since, you know, since I first started reading it. Like, again, I have multiple questions. I'm going to try and hopefully get some answers out of you. once the, interview concludes. You should send them to Dr. Aldous Foyroshi, man. That's what the letters page is going to be for. There is an email for letters in the back, but it's not meant for, Aubrey, you're so great. I I appreciate that, but we're not going to run them.

It's meant for specific granular questions about that world. Because I guarantee you, I have volumes of documents documentation on this thing I could answer all your questions about the world but yes set up to the book All right. So before we let you go though, we just like to ask everybody again, very, very basic question. Is there something that you've really been enjoying recently that you want to sort of showcase here at the end of the show?

Something that either inspired you from free planet or just honestly, anything that you're really, really loving a movie, a comic, a podcast, an album, whatever. So can I say two things? One, how dare you? So one of them is Spectrum by Rick Quinn and Dave Chisholm. It's coming out from, is that Mad Cave? It's Mad Cave. Yeah, it's great. Honestly, I'm not even gonna talk about what it's about, because it doesn't matter what it's about. It's the execution that's so interesting.

It's the execution that's so interesting about it. It's very much a fellow traveler of free play. I've talked to Dave about it actually, in terms of its use of the comics medium and its willingness to shift modes and say, nope, we're going to show you something different now. And we're just going to have this like entirely different narrative drawn and colored completely differently. And it's up to you, the reader, to figure out the thematic connection. I think is beautiful.

And I think that it's a thing that all good literature does, but happens so rarely in comics. And it's really inspiring to see them do it in spectrum. Spectrum is really fantastic. And then the other thing that I'm really excited about, I just got it today. I was at the comic book shop before I came over to you. And I met I met this guy at Comics Pro. His name is Jared Sam's and he does Space Negro, The Last Negro, and there's four of them.

It's it's like this, it's coming out from first comics and it's bonkers. It's absolutely bonkers. Have you read it? Have you guys seen it? I've never heard of it. That's gonna be my next one. Okay, all gotta have Jared on, you would love him. He lives out here.

But yeah, no, it's like this, like, just frenetic, gonzo, Afrofuturist, sci-fi comic, and it's outrageous, and I can't wait to, I've got all four of them now, so I'm really stoked about all a question I know I know we're getting late I'm allowed to run like y'all are not allowed to run late on me Right, right, if you make it happen, that's fine. Yeah, yeah. So wait, are y'all both military? Yes. Yeah. Aaron of 20 years. did four. That's how we met. We met. Yeah. Very cool, man.

that's very exciting. I'm glad that y'all like Free Planet. Yes, I'm glad that anybody likes Free Planet. I'm especially glad that military folks like Free Planet because I did an extensive amount of research. And I mentioned the history of Russian Revolution. I read this big book about Cuba. And any successful revolution of the 20th century, the military has to be involved. Of course they do. It just doesn't work. otherwise, right? You need military buy-in.

one of the things that I found most interesting of both the Russian book and the Cuba book was the complex relationship between enlisted soldiers, NCOs, and officers. that is, for the Russian Revolution, as well as the Cuban Revolution, that's the crux of it. That's really, when you dig down, that was the... you know, the NCOs choosing to throw their weight behind the revolution, that's what makes it work. Right. And that was a really a fascinating thing for me.

And it's something that we kind of touched on a little bit in the first issue some too. And I spoke with a lot of veterans just to get, because I, I'm not. And so it's something I wanted to make sure that I got right. Cause I found it so fascinating. So the fact that y'all love it and made my day. Thank you.

Yeah. And the offer for if you ever needed it to bounce anything off of like for military wise, like any kind of, I was going to say there's, know that in Hollywood, there's a, big call always for like military advisors when it comes to certain films, at least if you're a quality production, you'll reach out to military and get an advisor because some of you guys don't and it shows, was it a law and order SVU? I'm looking at you. so yeah, if you ever have any questions, feel free to reach out.

Absolutely there for you. Also, I should say, as people who were prior military, I feel like we still have a lot of self-awareness when it comes to the sort of the cog of, I'll say the American military system and sort of your role and the purpose of signing up and how we're the only sign up military in the world for reasons, right? Like without getting really into it. Cause again, we're still not, we're trying not to make this thing a two hour long episode, but they're all. military.

Your thoughts on the military field. How do I start here? Yeah, it's a, it's a big one. But yes, I absolutely adore what you've done in terms of the structure of not, not beating over the head, what you're trying to say. And I think I have, I have theories on what you're trying to say here.

What you and Jed are trying to say, should say, but at the same time being like there are certain characters, you have them say certain things and how characters react to what they say, where I'm like, huh, they must have either done something previously in a battle that made them. it exposed them in some very specific way, or it's foreshadowing for how they're going to react to something down the road by something that's happening in this restructuring of this brand new planet.

again, I want to save Aaron, what do you got? I want to say, just want to kind of emphasize, you know, we've been using, we've been throwing around this term of like space opera quite a bit throughout this conversation. And even just from like the first page, like it feels. If there's, there are, there are like movie adaptations of books, there are books that are adaptations of, you know, productions.

And like, this feels like if you were to make a, if you were to make like a space opera, like, like dune. And then adapt it into a, like a straight, like to comic book series. Like that's what this feels like.

It feels, it does feel dense, but it feels dense to the point where there's just so many different leaders that you see immediately these bits and pieces of different parts of the, of this universe that are eventually going to culminate into some amazing, like cataclysmic, you know, story, you just story, story, operatic event. And I'm just, I'm Again, you can keep going back to the throughout the first issue and you're going to see that continue to build even from your own perception.

Thank you. Wild. It's wild because I I keep going back to that first couple. But again, I have again, I there's so much more I'm sure to read and I'm excited for it. I love what this even first iteration. to what you're exactly what you're trying to say there. I'm just, I'm glad that it exists.

I think is the key on that's the way that I want to sort of bookend this conversation is that when I, when I first looked at the first issue of this book, my first thought was before I knew you Aubrey, before I read a word, I'm like, Whoa, this is a lot of words. This feels like, like it feels like a prose novel in comic form. And you sort of alluded that that was like maybe a sideways. inspiration that you wanted to put as much information on the page. And it works, guys.

I don't know how to say without spoiling anything without continuing this conversation longer than it's already been. But like it works. And I just I cannot implore people to support ventures like this. This is what comics needs, right? Thank you. I think so. I really appreciate that. And I think that it is a ton of words on the page. And that's the thing we have to dance around, because dense is a bad word in common. Yeah, sure, can be, yeah.

about big captions that aren't placed appropriately on the page in pages that aren't built around them. Jed, when he does his layouts, draws, balloon placements are in there. He's thinking about it, right? And that's why the pages work, even though they're packed with visual information and text. And then the other thing, you know, I, it's back to that, I don't know, it all just comes down to my seething resentments.

But, you know, where all great art comes from, I'll I'll powerful motivator bed. But I looked around at books that people kind of celebrated as being the smart, cerebral, like real literature, comics, and almost to a one they're just loaded up with text just loaded up with text. And, you know, putting aside whether it's artfully placed in or not, I identified that they typically fall in one of two camps.

It's either inner monologue, the way you would find in a novel, which never really lands as well as it does in a comic, because it just feels divorced from the actual action you're seeing, or it's explanation of what you're already seeing, right? Like, it's a dark and stormy night, the clouds were gathering, but you can look at the panel, it's right there. Yeah, exactly. And so those are not sufficient to me. Like those do not pass muster. And I did not want to do that.

But I knew I needed to find something to both slow people down. and also to show that I'm a smart, I got glasses now. I'm a smart writer too, man. I cut my hair. And what I landed on was the future historian, Dr. Aldous Foyoroshi. the idea is not, you mentioned earlier an idea of what we're trying to say with it. And it's less about us trying to put forth a specific idea. You know, it's not proper like beef bros is propaganda. Free plan is not propaganda. It's not even direct metaphor.

You know, it's, it's an exploration and it's a rumination on this really complex stuff. the captions play a really pivotal role in that it's possible for someone to read the book, just looking at the art and reading the dialogue. And you're still gonna have a good time. You're going to get all this big military action. You're going to get all this like Claremontian interpersonal drama with people.

What you're going to miss out on is the geopolitical context, inclusive of politics, war, religion, anthropology, philosophy, that gets covered in the captions. And why that's important is because it provides additional context for added understanding of the scenes that you're reading. It sometimes provides another perspective on them such that if you read the scene without the captions, maybe you'd have a different view on it.

But you read the captions and all of a sudden it's like, wait a minute, the people on this planet are starving to death. That changes how I view this scene that I'm looking at. I'm talking about a specific one in the first issue. Or sometimes what's discussed in the captions actively undercuts and conflicts with what the characters are doing and saying as well.

And it's all with the idea of driving complexity and ambiguity because we set out to make something that works as literature and art object. And for my money, what those two things have in common, literature and art object, is that you need to think on them. You need to ruminate, right? It's not a direct metaphor. It's not something, it's not a puzzle for you to figure out and then you get it and understand. No, it's something worth spending some time reading and rereading and thinking about.

to do that, you need ambiguity. You need to live in these kind of gray spaces. So yeah, man. It's very well known that in a revolution type scenario, it's very ambiguous to who is on the right side of history. Usually the winners tell the story, right? That's sort of history. so, well, my gosh, Aubrey, what a great conversation. What a pleasure having you here on the show. And I'm gonna invite myself back if y'all don't. The third chair is yours whenever you want it, honestly.

It's such a, such a great conversation about this incredible experiment, I'll say in comics that I absolutely love. And I, and I really, really, really want to succeed. And, you know, again, as I said earlier in the conversation, FOC for free planet number one comes out on April 14th and then officially releases on May 7th. So be like Aaron and I go out, call your comic book shop right now as you're listening to this conversation and go ahead and pre-order that first issue.

So Excited to see how people react to this first issue. honestly, I believe that this, you know, this is not going to be like, I don't think like a commercially easily advice. Like you're going to able to advertise this book on a commercial level. I don't think, but I do believe that this is going to be a lot of people's favorite book of 2025 as some, like at the end of the year, a lot of people are going to be making their best comics of 2025 free plan will be on that list.

I honestly firmly believe that. hope so, And I think that, you I feel very optimistic about it because it is, mean, so I showed it to Howard Shake, my uncle Howard, and his first response was, I love it. There's no audience for this. No one will buy this. And like, you know, he's got his own resentments and bitterness, right, from his history in comics as well.

But, you know, I've been really encouraged by the conversations I've been having with not just, you know, like, Y'all are a self-selecting sample, right? People who love comics enough to be doing podcasts about them, you know, that's a very specific thing. I'm not, you're normal. Don't worry. No judge. It's a slight scale. But talking to retailers, talking to retailers. And I think that there is a appetite for something different.

We've been caught up in the same kind of storytelling mode in comics. for 20, for just about 20 years, right? It's decompression, it's teleplay inspired pacing, and you know, lots of ping pong dialogue and you know, like really a primacy of the primacy of the narrative, right? And plot and character and all that stuff's important, but I think there's a lot more to comics and I think people are ready for something different.

I think folks are ready for something that... they can chew on a little bit more. This isn't a book that you read in five or 10 minutes and then file away. This is something I keep talking to people and they say, I started reading it and I realized I wasn't gonna have time to finish it. Or like I read three pages each night over the course of a week or whatever, which is bonkers. That's like a bonkers thing to say in the context of comics as we see them now, but it doesn't have to be.

And I think that like, I know myself as a fan, love something that I get my money's worth. I'm paying $4 for this thing. Let's spend some time with it and let me think on it. So I'm feeling optimistic. think, you know, and I'll tell you what else is inspiring optimism for me. The fact that we did, we did, where are they? Oh, you're going talk about the ash cans because I wanted to bring it up. But yeah, my God, please tell the people about these ash cans.

So did ask, so because of what we're talking about, right? Like it's a book that you have to read in print because it's big spreads. It is, they aren't going to read digitally very well. It's lots of detail. It's graphs and charts and maps and diagrams and just absurd all worked in as interstitials, but like worked into the comic page itself. And I knew that to understand what I mean. you all read the PDF and so you're very generous but I your understandings of this thing.

I knew like showing this to retailers, they need to see it. Before retailers ordered this thing, they needed to actually see what they were ordering because just reading a PDF was not going to be sufficient. We printed up 407 of them. And I gave them out at comics Pro and I've been sending them to retailers that I talked to on the phone. And they're going for like 150 bucks on eBay.

Wild. It's absurd, a guy who, know, Jen and I do not have, you know, I edited it Marvel a lifetime ago, but like, we're not, we're not coming off a big Batman run, right? We didn't, we haven't done X-Men books. Like we don't have the pedigree of stuff that gets that kind of response. And yet people are, people are snatching it up. So no, I'm very encouraged by it, honestly. That's cool to hear. I saw that while doing research for this conversation that they were going for wild numbers on eBay.

I was like, that is very, you know, I believe that people were excited because of that. That's really cool. So. It means something, know, like, I don't know, people, people get really down on the speculator market, but it is a, first of all, it's part of comics and it's always been part of comics and anybody, anybody act in like the current system would still function without speculator plays is fooling themselves. The math just does not check out. It's part of it, right?

Is one and two, I think it's a bellwether, you know, like the fact, the fact that people are that excited about right now, think says something about how they're going to be feeling about it in just about a month from now. It shouldn't be the ultimate determiner for like excitement, but I think it's a decent gauge, right? At least shows that people are excited about it for one reason or another, whatever that reason might be. Right. Well, Aubrey, again, thank you so much.

Before we let you go quickly, can I ask you just like, how can people follow your career? What's the best way to sort of follow everything going forward? And if there's anything else you want to sort of list here at the end, of course. You know, I'm on most of the social media and it's just my name, Aubrey Sidderson. It's really easy. I'm really easy to Google. There's only one of me. I think if you're going to do one thing, I would subscribe to my newsletter.

It's Atlantis, like the sunken city, Atlantis still sunk.com Atlantis still sunk.com. It goes out every week. And I've been doing, I've been doing deep dives into free planets, bibliography, all the books I've read this week. So when this goes live, there will be one up talking about process on a very specific spread from issue one that has not been shown anywhere yet. And we're just going to go, it goes step by step talking about how it came together.

Sure. Okay. Awesome. Well, Aubrey, again, as we've said many times here, I do need to get you back on at some point. So whenever that might be, whether it be for the beginning of hopefully the second arc or maybe just the collection of the trade, that would be, I think a great time. And maybe we can even convince Jed to get on here as well. Love it. I'm on board, Thank you for having me. All right, everybody. There's that conversation with Aubrey Sisserson.

Again, thank you, Aubrey, so much for joining us here on the Oblivion Bar podcast. I genuinely hope that everyone listening to that conversation or that that had just listened to that conversation sees the importance of this book. We said at the beginning of the intro, we needed more time and we will get him and Jed on the show at some point to discuss this book. frustrating ending to a conversation because we had so much to talk about.

It's like we, we, only get so much time with these creators. luckily enough, like I said, he, he is such a cool. Yeah. He's such a cool down to earth dude. he's going to try and get Jed Doherty on here as well. like, let's yeah, like do your best people go out there, preorder this book and that way, you know, we can bring him back and, and, and we can get down deep and dirty into free planet.

Yeah. Again, I'll say, I've said it multiple times during the episode, but FLC April 14th comes out on May 7th. So go support this book. This is the book to support everybody. And again, thank you, Aubrey for coming on, but also we should promote that next week on the show, Aaron, for episode 190 of the Oblivion Bar podcast. Do know what we're doing? No. You have no idea what's going on? Definitely not Minecraft. Battle Royale time, Oh, yeah. six of Battle Royale. Yeah Ruh! yes.

Da el batallarín. That's right. Five fighters from both Aaron and I five random scenarios. It's one of our favorite segments here on the Oblivion Bar podcast. We put them up against each other and we discuss who will win and Aaron, if I'm not mistaken, I'm currently winning three to two. I love to throw that in your face and this is your time. It's always the fucking audience man. Well, I fuck me Sorry guys, but you do I love you, but goddamn you. All right.

of you So make sure you guys check that out next week. Battle Royale number six. Cannot wait to record that with you, Aaron. But that'll do it for episode 189. Please take us out of here. All right. Make sure you go and place your bets on that battle Royale on. We got a free promo code over at a and a fan duel. the over the over under all that. OVP Ball Sack gets you 25 % free credits. Come on guys, like vote for me. It's not that hard. are no collusion. Okay, sorry. on. Hang on.

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Well, everybody, thank you so much for joining us here on the Abiliemore podcast. We will see you next week for episode one.