Hey, this is Michael Avon -Oming, the combo creator of titles like Powers, Blue Book, and William of Newberry, and you are listening to the Oblivion Bar podcast. Welcome to the Oblivion Bar podcast with your host, Chris Hacker and Aaron Knowles. Hello everyone, welcome to episode 158 of the Oblivion Bar podcast. I'm your anthropomorphic trash panda on a valiant crusade to rid the world of evil Chris Hacker.
And joining me this week is my looting mouse companion, my co -host and BFF Aaron Knowles. What is up my friend? Welcome everybody back to the Oblivion Bar podcast. This week on the show, we are joined by legendary comic book creator, Michael Avon Oming. I need to apologize right off the top, Aaron. No, you don't. I have no voice. There is absolutely. I don't know what's going on with my voice. post my second session of chemo, but I just, for some reason, cannot get over this. So I apologize.
Firstly, the second apology I have to issue, Aaron, we talked about this a little bit, you know, off air is that there, there is a lag, a terrible lag in this conversation that Michael valiantly, you know, re you know, sort of alludes throughout the conversation. Both of us, I think did a decent job of sort of, we definitely roll with the punches. That's for sure. Yeah. You bobbed and weaved you zigged and zagged. And you rolled with the punches, man.
And I, and I told you this when we were discussing it, the first thing I said to you was that you guys, you in general, and this is something that you, you deal with in the, in the podcasting world, you deal with technical difficulties. The fact that we're not in the room ever together means that we deal with the same difficulties all the time and you get used to it. We still make a great product. We make a great show. Sometimes it's not, it's, it's more difficult than others.
I remind you, I remind you. of the great saga debacle of 2022 of yesteryear. the legend, the legend there, the debacle of saga. Free people don't know if you go back and listen to our comic spotlight of saga. It took me four times editing that hour and a half long episode where every time I got to the end of the edit, the current it would crash. Freaking audition would crash and I had to go all the way back to the beginning. Edit it again. I'm sorry for laughing, but it's fucking horrible.
It is so bad. I was almost that that episode was almost lost to the ether of time. But yeah, anyway, Michael Avon Oming is on the show today. He's here to talk about William of Newberry, his brand new fantasy series over at Dark Horse Comics. It is an incredible first issue. A lot of people you already know who Michael Avon Oming is. He is a frequent collaborator with Brian Michael Bendis on titles like Takeo, the United States of Murder, Inc. Of course, Powers.
That's an Eisner award winning series. But Michael is here doing everything. Aaron, we talked about it. In the conversation with Michael, he is writing, he is drawing, he is inking, he is coloring, he is lettering this entire series. And it is, like I said, is an incredible first issue. We bring it up so many times that it's, it's well, at least I know I do. I know you talk about it as well, but it's like the fact that creator owned and individually created books are happening.
I feel like more often or more and more now. And it's amazing. Not just the ability to start to finish, create these things, but the massive amount of talent. Artists with a capital A is correct because the massive amount of talent that goes into these books. I can't even draw a stick figure. Well, I couldn't do it. I couldn't. I could not do this. And some of these guys are able, they're like triple threats. They can write, they can draw, they can color.
You know, you talk about it in this conversation. We'll get to that, you know, in a few minutes. I don't want to spoil the conversation, but there's a part in there where you discuss with him about like something that he had to cut. Like he still is working on, he know, and you don't hear that very often from the artists.
You don't hear about, well, there's just this one thing that I'm not that great at and I'm still learning and I got to learn because there's a whole industry of people out there that are amazing at it. And I don't want to do them a disservice. He literally said that I don't want to do them a disservice. And to me that is, he is a true gentleman and scholar. for the massive amount of concern and consideration that he gives and that he learned in creating this book.
And I'm so pleased with this conversation. You did a phenomenal job, my friend. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. I will say, and to kind of build off what you're saying there, Michael is extremely humble, but he's a legend in the medium, like definitively and bonafide legend in the medium. So to have him here on the show, to talk about all his entire career as a whole, but specifically, his new book again over at Dark Horse William of Newberry is an absolute pleasure.
So excited for people to listen to this conversation before we get over there to that conversation with Michael Aaron, tell the people how they can support us over on Patreon. We have so much in store for you. If you do want to support us over on patreon .com, patreon .com forward slash oblivion bar pod. Okay. For the support over there, you get access to the grid grid, which is our weekly episode. It's it's the oblivion bar podcast unfiltered. unrestrained, unlimited. It's so much fun.
It's literally Chris and I just going back and forth. It's kind of like the show, but it goes off the rails even more so. And we just talk about whatever. We've talked about Chris's relationships. We've talked about my job. Which is often failing. We talked about the movies and the things that we watch, see or do or play or mess around with. that we don't talk about on the main show. We talk about a lot on there. So it's so much fun. We invite you guys to come.
You can even get a free seven day trial on Patreon to come and check that out and see if you like it. Give it a little taster, a little app a teaser, a little dip your toe in the, in the, in the pool, the hot tub. It's a hot tub for us. Cause you know, we don't, we don't need a lot. Get in the water's warm. You also get early access to transcripts, episodes.
normal episodes, you get a special shout out at the end of each episode, like you'll hear coming up in a little bit that I do, which is really fun for me. You get, was it the trans, did I miss anything? Transcripts. you sometimes you get free stuff. We just give free stuff away. T -shirts, nicknames, stickers, comics. It's a blast. And we invite you, we invite you in. Be our guest over on Patreon. Be our guest. You know what? Nevermind, I was about to go on a tangent.
Were you about to go into a full on singing? I might have. But I was going to tell you. I might have done that. I was going to tell you my favorite song from Beauty and the Beast. This is what happens on the Oblivion. Quickly tell me what your favorite song is in Beauty and the Beast. Okay. Bonjour. Good day. How is your family? I knew it was that one. Good day. How is your wife? I need six eggs. Sorry. Okay. I'll stop. Patreon .com forward slash Oblivion bar pot.
And this is why people ask, like, why don't you record your intros and outros? We don't fucking want to. We've heard people say, what do you pre -record your intro outros? This is why everybody. Alrighty, well enough of our shenanigans. Let's get in this conversation with Michael Avon -Oming. Hey Aaron, how do you like to read your comic books digitally? Chris, it's funny that you should say that. I just started buying and reading my comics on Omnibus. Ooh, interesting.
I actually heard from a little birdie, it's actually backed by some of the top publishers in the medium. It also hosts an extensive back catalog from Image Comics, Boom Studios, Dark Horse, Ahoy Comics, Titan, Vault, and many more. And most importantly, Omnibus supports in -app purchases. That little birdie is called X now, but also Omnibus has officially been made reading and buying comics digitally the easiest it's ever been. Wow, that's incredible. And you know what I'm going to do, Aaron?
I'm actually going to go right now to my iPad iOS device and download Omnibus. And also right after that, I'm going to go follow them over on social media at the Omnibus app. Omnibus for fans, by fans. And now, this week's special guest. Joining us this week on the show is the Eisner and Harvey award -winning comic book creator of titles like The Mice Templar with Brian Glass over at Image Comics, Thor Blood Oath with artist Scott Collins over at Marvel.
He is also the sole creator of The Victories and is currently working on Blue Book with James Tynan over at Dark Horse Comics. And he has frequently collaborated with writer Brian Michael Bendis on titles like Takeo. United States of Murder, Inc. and the award winning series, Powers. More recently, he has been working on a brand new Dark Horse fantasy series called William of Newberry, which follows an anthropomorphic raccoon monk who seeks to rid the world of the undead and evil spirits.
It is my honor to welcome Michael Avan Oming onto the Oblivion Bar podcast. Hey Chris, thanks so much for having me, man. Thanks so much for being here, Michael. And I think kind of to start off the conversation, I just have to ask, do you prefer Michael Avan Oming or just Michael Oming? I prefer my full title. It's Sir Michael Avon -Oming. Sir? No, Mike is fine. Okay. Mike, all right.
Because I know you're again, as we said there in the intro, your frequent collaborator, Brian Michael Bendis, it's always Brian Michael Bendis, not Brian Bendis. I very rarely ever hear it's Brian Bendis. That's funny. That's probably why sometimes we've gotten confused in the past with the two Michaels in there. Three names. But I win because mine is first. So it's Michael Avon -Oming. He's Brian Michael Bendis. So I got the most Michaels. That's right. Well, thank you so much for being here.
And you've obviously already accomplished so much in your career thus far. My first question kind of centers around starting at the beginning. And my understanding is your love of comics as an adolescent is pretty closely tied to your love of mythology, specifically Greek mythology. And as we mentioned there in the intro, you've previously worked on Thor and Beta Ray Bill over at Marvel and even Ares over at DC Comics.
not to mention other series that you've worked on that sort of root themselves in the power of myth. So my first question for you is, why do you think you instantly gravitated to mythology as a young person and why has it remained such an important part of your storytelling today? I think there's a couple of reasons. One was because I hadn't discovered comic books in my younger years.
So like my first sort of exposure to fantasy was through mythology, through like a few television shows and some movies. Clash of Titans would have been a big one. I was born in 73. So that came out in like 82 or 80 or something like that. So I was like just the perfect age for that. And then whenever I'd go to the library at school, the library books I was interested in were stuff like dinosaurs and the Greek myth stuff.
And one of the reasons for that was because I was just always what I call an escapist. Like even from a young childhood mind, my brain was just always daydreaming and taking me elsewhere. You know, one of my favorite activities in math was to break my pencil in half and then look at the broken pencil and imagine myself climbing up it or that it was castle spires or something like that. Right. So so those combination things always drew me towards mythology.
When I discovered comics, one of the first comics I read was X -Men annual nine, which was the Art Adams X -Men in Asgard stuff. So like suddenly that those two. things fused in my head. I was, you can have superheroes and mythology at the same time. And at that point too, I didn't even, I only knew of mythology in this most abstract way. I hadn't even separated that the Romans and the Greeks were different and you know, what exactly was going on with mythology.
I hadn't read any of the Joseph Campbell stuff. Years later, I was introduced to Here with a Thousand Faces and a bunch of Joseph Campbell's work and other people's work. We talk about how mythology isn't just these old stories, but that they, there's stories that, that reflect our humanity and society and how we've grown or haven't grown. And since those times, I just really locked into the whole thing and was studying it.
Luckily, and this is a good thing, I think, when I was writing Ares and Thor. Well, at that point with Thor, I had a lot of studies of the Norse mythology in mind. The Greek mythology stuff I wasn't as deeply entrenched in, which in a way was good because it didn't allow any of that stuff to get in the way of telling a Marvel -style comic book.
If I was to do it now, I'd have a lot of conflicts of like, well, you know, this thing that happened in this story meant this thing and it doesn't translate well. You know, like I had Achilles showing up in Olympia, like he wouldn't be in Ascended to Godhood and stuff like that. And, you know, like I kind of want to stay true to I grew in a way that I wanted to stay true to the source materials that the older I get.
In fact, I have Greek mythology stuff that I want to get to next after I finished about two or three other graphic novels ahead of me. And those are very much sticking to the sources, to the source material. So that's kind of my journey with mythology stuff. And it still deeply affects what I write now. Mythology ties deeply into history as well. So I've become kind of an armchair history nerd, very much into archeology. into when and where the culture has developed.
Fascinating thing recently was learning about the Bronze Age collapse in the Mediterranean area and really finding out that it wasn't a collapse in the way that we were taught that it was. It was basically rich people's society fell apart, but the rest of society was going on just fine. People were still farming and all of this stuff. There were wars and there were some ecological disasters and stuff, but like...
You know, what's really interesting is learning about how history is read and how we're told these stories and sort of the context in which they're told. And then finding out to dig deeper and find out more of the truth is fascinating. With William of Newberry, one of my favorite things was just learning more about the monasteries, learning about medieval time periods and the stories that aren't written down.
Most, like anything that you study, a lot of times you'll run into sort of the same themes and the same stories over and over again. And just like comic books, if you want to learn more about the B, the C, and D characters, you have to dig a little deeper. So what was really interesting to me was finding about the details of the monasteries and the people that were in the monasteries.
And there was some shocking stuff that was fascinating I couldn't wait to put into the stories and to just sort of learn about how different a lot of that was from what we assumed from the many sort of cliches and conventions, most of which are actually true. But there's more to it than that. So it's been a real joy learning more about medieval history and then working that into the stories where I find it appropriate and discarding it where the narrative has to take precedent.
What I find really hilarious and sort of embarrassing is that in my question, I said Greek mythology and what I meant was Norse mythology. So I appreciate you maneuvering that question appropriately. I mean, there was both. Yeah, the Aries series was Greek mythology. And then the Thor stuff obviously was Norse. Yeah. And I just looked it up as you were talking about that X -Men annual number nine. So it looks like it came out in December of 1985.
And is that an homage to the What If Jane Foster cover? The Art Adams cover. I think it's an homage to Jack Kirby's Thor number one. you're right. That's what it is. See, I had like an homage in my head, but I wasn't... I couldn't remember exactly what it was. And I think that cover also is homaging Jack Kirby's, you know, iconic Thor cover. Yeah. I mean, that book had so much going on in it and it was really the thing.
It wasn't just a mythology, but Art Adams' art is why I wanted to become a comic book artist. Up till then, I was just kind of like tracing some comics and really interested in it and stuff. But like seeing Art Adams work just hit me like this sort of lightning rod, you know. And it really, really, that's the moments when I really realized what I wanted to do. Like this was it.
And then ironically in that issue is, you know, while you don't see, you won't see much Art Adams influence my work today. It was for many, many years. But also in that issue was the person's work who's influenced me the most, which is Mike Mignola. He inked some of that issue.
So I had been a fan of basically anybody in those early medieval, medieval mid 80s time period at Marvel whose art stood out because at that point the Marvel house style sort of was eating itself where it was like an imitation of Jack Kirby being imitated by John Buscema being imitated by six other people and like it all got kind of watered down, right?
And there was this handful of dudes like Rick Leonardo, Art Adams, Mike Mignola, Michael Golden, just a few people who were standing out style wise. And so Mike's stuff, I was a fan of. The moment I saw his name in that book and I found his other work, and this is long before it turned into what it's turned into today, I was hooked into his work and just paying attention to it and learning lessons. It's funny you say that because I was just reading some amazing Spider -Man.
I want to say it was around the hundred issues. And it's Lin Wen and Marv Wolfman on the book. And what you're saying about how everyone's sort of trying to emulate that house style. And that is so it's pre. the Marv Wolfman that we know to eventually become Marv Wolfman, the legendary, you know, comic creator. Yeah. And as I'm reading it, I'm like, is he trying to just do, you know, that classic Silver Age look? It just doesn't look like his style.
So it's funny to hear you kind of speak on that now. Yeah. And that happens all the time. People are going to look back. Well, we look back at the nineties, right? And the Jim Lee thing became like the house style for everything, right? Some variation. And it's really odd looking back, there are artists who weren't working that style who, to no fault of their own, if they wanted to continue to be employed, they had to start doing the cross -hatching and stuff.
So it's interesting, you can look at these different time periods and you can see these different movements happening. And they're going to look back now and they're going to look at whether it's my work that's been influenced by Mike and a handful of other artists who have, or they'll look at the way digital inking.
has affected a lot of the books and a lot of the looks and color holds and all the tools that we have at our hands right now are creating a scene that we won't even be aware of until much later and we'll look back and we'll go like, yeah, I remember when everybody was painting noses red. Okay, yeah, that was like from 2010 to 2017. And then the red noses disappeared for some reason and they moved on to this other thing. Yeah, it's really interesting.
Like comic book history is full of these kind of these moments of like, whether it's style, the way people were approaching their stories, the way decompression when powers came about, but the storytelling of decompression really grew and became a thing. And then there's been a pushback against it. And then there were times where, you know, thought balloons were everywhere and thought balloons disappeared.
And now I think they're starting to, people are starting to see a good balance of it now, you know, like when to use the thought balloon and when to use captions. I find all that fascinating because you never see it when it's happening. You always see it afterwards. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, speaking on mythology, we're kind of circling this idea and I want to get into your latest endeavor, which is of course, like we had just already talked about over at Dark Horse, William of Newberry.
And at the time of this recording, the first issue is already available at your local comic book shop and issue two is set to be released on June 26th. This series is currently being built and we kind of already alluded to it. He said, yeah, Mike is holding up right now into the camera and go pick it up if you haven't already that first issue. Just picked it up.
Yeah. How does it real quick before I go into the rest of my question, how does it feel to hold that in your, like when you get one of the series that you've been working on for a while to get that physical copy in your hand, how does that feel? Well, here's a really disappointing answer, but I think it's pretty common. I immediately am just looking for what's wrong. sure. Now, first I am super proud of this book. Like I really am. And it's.
Such an exciting feeling to have it out, because this is different for me on a lot of levels. One that I did everything. I wrote, I colored, even lettered it. I worked really close with my editor, Daniel Chabon. People at Dark Horse were great on it. I want to point out the work of Hannah Noble. She did all the design work inside of the book. When you pick this up and you see what, like I didn't give them any direction. It's one of my favorite things about working with Dark Horse.
I gave them no direction and it was like Hannah was reading my mind. She knew exactly what was appropriate to design for this book. And it's, I'm really happy with that. But then what I do is I look in and I look, well, what line worked held up well? When did I use a pen here and I should have used a brush? When did I use, you know, my Uniball pen versus using my Micron pen? When did I use a color hole where I didn't go far enough where the color's not strong enough and it's too close up?
to black and stuff. So that's the main thing that I do. And then I see all the tangents that I didn't see when I was like finishing up the line work, you know, where an object is too close to another object. So it looks like it's unnaturally connected. I will say I'm still super happy with it. This is the most happy I've been with a book, probably ever. So I'm just, you know, I'm just really ecstatic with it. But yeah, that's the first thing you do as an artist, is you look to see what's wrong.
Not so much to kick yourself in the teeth, but it's just to learn from, right? Hopefully because other you know, it doesn't do any good now with published so like okay This is good, but it would have been better if and then hopefully you can remember that when you're actually tackling something else I don't think I need to be the first to tell you this.
I'm sure I won't be but this is a great looking book It's a great read just in general great first issue We were kind of talking about this a moment ago in that first question But this is sort of being billed as a mixture between Usagi, Ojimbo and Hellboy, which in my opinion is spot -on I think there are some panels in this first issue that it has that Mignola sort of, you know, flair to it, which I really love. It's kind of a good mixture of both of your guys' styles together.
And I've heard you note that the core of this story is sort of loosely based on the 12th century civil war between England and Normandy called the Anarchy. So what was it about this time period and William specifically being a monk, sort of monk crusade that fascinated you? So this is actually, I think this is a really good story because I have to kind of go backwards through it. So. This actually started with Blue Book, which I'm doing with James Tinian.
In the back of Blue Book, he was doing these series of stories called True Weird, which were just weird stories that are supposedly true. One of my favorite odd stories was always this thing called The Green Children. And this happened during the 12th century. Basically, the short version of these two kids showed up out of nowhere, and their skin is green, and their clothing is green, and they speak a weird language. So the, you know, people are just thinking that they're fairy children.
Somehow they came out of a fairy world. In the 12th century, this wasn't something that was unbelieved and they didn't recognize the food. They're very strange. One of the children dies. The other child grows up and is speaking English and stuff. And as she gets older, she tells a story about how she's from this other place called St. Martin's land, which had a lot of commonalities with the sort of inverted fairy world where there's churches, but there's not.
Christ or stuff and like it's just this weird stories and that was sort of the story now the story comes from actual historic writings One of the writers who wrote this story down was William of Newburgh Also known as William of Newbury.
So then when I was doing this research for the story I learned more and more about this writer William of Newbury or Newburgh But we'll stick with Newbury because it just depended on what part of the country you're in how you pronounce his name So as I'm reading more research on him, not only did he write down this story, he had written England's first histories. It's called the Chronicles of England or something.
I always forget the name of it, but it was England's first official history that he had written down. But in this history, which covers this time period called the Anarchy, which is when Queen Matilda, who was supposed to be the Queen of England, the first Queen of England, she was supposed to inherit the England from her father, I think it was Henry, you know, everything was super patriarchy, even more so than now. And so they're like, a girl? Rolling us? No way.
And then this, so this distant cousin named Stephen was like, well, I'll be the king. And then it was literally like 30 years or something like that of anarchy where nobody was really in charge. And, you know, there were wars back and forth and there were divisions amongst who the landowners were backing and who they weren't. And it was, it was pretty nuts. But in this actual, very real history, he's also recording stuff like the dead coming back to life. and demons and ghosts and stuff.
Not as folklore, but right next to these other accounts. And over in Berkshire, this thing happened and this priest came back to life because they were living in a time period where this stuff was very much real. So why question the stories, right? So I'm reading the stories and then I'm reading that there are three or four different accounts and there's a whole bunch more stories.
But what I discovered was, Like some of them kind of had these same themes and stuff and it all came to me like just it just dropped my head like a brick. I was like like the whole story came together. Take the green children, tie it in with these other very real stories they tell. So all the stories in here like the first issue is what is the title? I think I know this stuff. I have terrible recall. The very first title is called A Serious Nuisance in Buckinghamshire.
That's the name of one of his stories. That's what he called it. So like all of the stories in here are actual historic retellings of things that he recorded, some of which are toned down for various reasons. Like there's a lot more blood and gore and some assault and stuff like that involved with demons and ghosts and it gets pretty nuts. So I felt like the whole story was a gift.
Sometimes when you're doing research, you'll just get the whole thing all at once and you become sort of a story archeologist where... You're just uncovering, you're just taking things away because the story is already there. So that's the long about story. How this came about was through another story. I discovered who William of Newberry was and then discovering the other things that he wrote about other people. Other historians were jokingly calling him like the first vampire hunter. Right.
Like he never left the monastery, but he was recording all these stories. And yeah, it's just it was all fascinating and all felt like a gift just waiting to be retold. And I'm hoping that this series does well enough with the support of everybody out there that we can do more stories. And while they're always involved like the supernatural elements, they'll also involve more historic elements as well.
Like I want to get more into this sort of anarchy period and what was happening between Matilda and Stephen. And there's a bunch of other history that's really interesting to pull in. I find that so interesting. And I really revere that about your work is that you have this sort of curiosity and fascination with these, like, again, to kind of go back to the question I had earlier, like the myth of it all and sort of the text.
And as you're sort of describing all of this right now, all of that from the Anarchy period in that 12th century, it reminded me of Game of Thrones a little bit. Is there any connection there at all between George R. R. Martin and his work too? yeah. I mean, George talks, like he's my friend, George talks about this all the time. First name basis with George. Yeah. He takes a lot of his plots directly from history.
In fact, So House of Dragon, the current House of Dragon is completely based on the Anarchy. Because what happens in the Anarchy is, one of the kings, he passes away, and what does he do? He names his daughter to be the successor. So there's a fight over secession. So this is very much, yeah, so it ties in a lot to, it doesn't tie to Game of Thrones, but it ties into the same source material. Because as you know, like, truth is...
Stranger than fiction, you know, there are just some of the craziest stuff can happen in history that is almost too real to Make sense and you know, these stories are just full of it stuff like the Red Wedding that came right out of history.
That was a real thing You read about the story the the planet aginists which were like sort of the the French families who are fighting with the English families and What's interesting this time period the anarchy has been the centerpiece of a bunch of different retellings of history in fiction? So it's not just Game of Thrones and William Newberry, but like there's a series of books called, Cadfile, about Brother Cadfile, which is like this, this was a big influence on me as well.
He's a kind of like name of the Rose. He was a monk who was like a detective character. And those stories are all set and take place during the anarchy. And you can watch some of this like on Amazon right now. I think it's free to watch. It's good quality stuff. And there's a series of other books. The Pillars of Earth, I think, is one which was also a television series and that takes place, I believe, during the anarchy. Yeah, it's all over the place. It's just a gift that keeps on giving.
Yeah, exactly. And you know, the kind of the other central pillar of William Newberry and the kind of the other central theme that I wanted to discuss was the anthropomorphic storytelling that is currently on a hot streak, currently in the medium. You've got... animal pound. You've got the aforementioned Usagi Ujimbo, beneath the trees where nobody sees. Feral. Feral, exactly. Just to name a few, right?
And what I find so fascinating as humans is that we are the only species in existence to share and discuss ideas in the form of storytelling, which sort of in itself is anthropic. So I say all this to ask this, why a raccoon for your central character? Well, it's funny, the raccoon, this goes back to... that a lot of this goes back to my Mignola influences.
One, for some reason, I felt like if I drew this straightforward as a monk, it would just feel too much like a Mignola verse book that should have been, right? And for as much as I'm a fan of Mike's and I like to work with him, we're doing a BPRD thing and some other stuff, I don't wanna step on his toes too much. I'm self -conscious of the amount of influence that I have. So I felt like, all right, if I take the people out of it, that'll be half the battle to make it a little more me.
And then initially it was gonna be a fox, because a fox is often just a fun character to go to. But Mike had also drawn several sort of anthropomorphic fox looking characters, not in stories, but like just these drawings that I so couldn't get out of my head. All I was doing was drawing Mike's fox. And I was like, I don't wanna do that either. Now, even though Mike was known for a raccoon, that was when it was early stuff.
That imagery didn't, it wasn't burned into my eyeballs the way this fox head was. So that was one of the reasons he became a raccoon. But also, as soon as you do anthropomorphic stuff, you ask yourself, why is this anthropomorphic? You don't always need a deep answer. Sometimes I just like cute animals and stuff, right? But as soon as I asked myself that, it started to do my favorite thing in writing, which is to put up barriers and limitations.
I find when you have limitations to your writing or your art, you become laser focused on why you're making the choices you're making. So one of the first things I realized is these are just people. Like all the animals are just people. Like nobody will refer to anybody else's tails or ears or anything. I wanted to create a world where I could say a little something about what I feel about true human equality.
Like often we talk about equality, we're just, we're talking about like opportunity and stuff. but I think it goes deeper than that. We're talking, I wanna show that, and I don't wanna go to spiritual whatever, but like on some spiritual level, like we are all so completely even, no matter who we are or what our backgrounds, what we've done even, like our value as humans equal us out. Like, and I don't wanna use the metaphor that we're animals, right?
But there is this sort of metaphor here that everybody here is animals. And when you see spirit versions of people, when they're dead or they're saints, they're human. You know, so it's sort of my way of saying that everybody here is human and you know, we're at the sort of base level here on earth trying to struggle. There's a, there's a larger part of ourselves that is this larger spiritual thing.
So when you see ghosts and saints, like even in the churches, the churches have human saints on there. Even the demons will show up as in human form. There are angels who show up in human form. And like, I don't want to get into it too deeply because it's not like a hard set set of rules. but it's this loose metaphor that I found while doing the anthropomorphic stuff. And that's part of the gift of working with anthropomorphic animals.
You're asking yourself, why are you using this and not using that? I also, like I loved stuff like Wind in the Willows, Watership Down, Secret and Immoral, Big Influences on Me, and those are full of really cute furry mammals. So there's a cuteness that runs through this, but it's not about being cute, but I don't want to discard that. So like all the main animals here you'll notice are like furry, cute mammals, right? But then that put limitations on like who I can represent as animals.
Also, this is a medieval period where that sheep is such a huge part of medieval time periods. You know, how do I not have sheep and stuff? So you have to get these weird things where there's like, you know, there's no horse animals or horse people, but there are raccoons riding a horse, you know, and that's very purposeful. There are. There are no sheep as characters, but they will own sheep.
I don't know what I'm gonna do about cats, because at one point I realized I need to have cat, dog as people. And with the dogs so far, it's the only one where there's dog people and then there's just dog dogs. And it gets kind of funny, but it all sort of ties into a very loose metaphor that makes the story run deeper, I think. And I find it so interesting whenever creators like yourself can... tell the most human stories with those anthropomorphic animals, right?
I think some of our best sort of humane stories, you know, where we sort of dissect and analyze humanity is told through the lens of, you know, a story that's sitting around animals, right? Like I'm thinking a lot of the Orwellian stories of the world and, you know, back to Georgia or else. Yeah. Yeah. Even like a moss, everyone read it in high school, right? I just find that really interesting.
And I'm, I can't really implore people enough to check out William and Newberry because I think you do an incredible job. of sort of setting up this world without setting, like you had just said a moment ago, setting too many boundaries to where you could still play with a lot of it going forward. And I know this is only set to be four issues, but I would imagine if people are really excited about it and if you're really excited about it, we could see more.
And to set those hardcore boundaries would be sort of limiting it right off the jump. Yeah. And I'm just straight out asking people, just let Dark Horse know that you want more if you're enjoying this. Like I would like to do a mini series a year. Like I would like to just have to keep going. I've got a lot more stories to tell. I've kind of got them.
blocked out at least for like three complete trades would be great, you know, because I can see a sort of progression of the characters in the story. I absolutely love it and I hope people are enjoying it and that yeah, we can do more. And you know, we talked about, you actually, you mentioned this earlier and I want to highlight it very specifically. I think it's important to note that you are doing everything, writing, drawing, lettering, inking, coloring, the whole shebang.
And here at the Oblivion Bar, when we talk to folks like you, we like to call you guys. an artist with a capital A. Collaboration is so important in the medium. I know you know this because you've worked with Brian Bendez many, many, many, many times, you know, right? And seeing, you know, more singular voices in comics is it's becoming more and more apparent as time has gone on with notable works like the victories and Dick Tracy forever.
This obviously is not your first stint tackling a series alone, but what have you found is the most challenging part of working on a series solo? I mean, this is actually the first time I'm doing a full series alone. Okay. So I wrote and drew the victories, but I did have Nick Filarga was coloring it. My wife Takisoma was coloring Dick Tracy and you know, other people were lettering and stuff. This being the first time was great. Like these are all little skills that I built up over time.
Being able to do it all together, I learned so much more about the other steps, especially, and what's funny is those steps go back to the writing and to the art. So, In coloring, there's storytelling in coloring. So when you change a scene, it should feel different. If the scene is something that's scary versus something that's lighthearted versus something that's dreary, like you can tell that story in the colors. Not just by using nice colors, but by using colors that are specific to a mood.
Learning how to do that on a deeper level with this was a big lesson. But the really big, big lesson was lettering. I had always just done lettering in a sort of functional way before when I had to do it on. wanted to my own sort of stories. but I learned much more about writing through lettering than ever before. I hope, I wish that every writer would learn to letter. even if it's not for publication, because once you do, you learn a rhythm to the writing.
You learn how much space that there really is in a panel. You can start to instinctively feel it after a while. Like I'd start writing scripts after lettering the first issue going, I can tell there's not enough space in here for this.
Even though like I will always leave space almost like somebody once called my storytelling like a puppet show once where there's like the head is always mid level and there's all this space above because I just leave it there all the time like a puppet show and a lot of my photos to it. Usually there's a bunch of space over my head that I leave for the lettering. But even with space like that sometimes there's just not enough space. I learned pacing wise as lettering it myself.
There's no hard rule about this, right? And I've been in like Brian Bendis' teaching class and his master class where he talks about, people ask the question like, how much lettering can go on a page? How many words can fit in? And there's no magic thing. But if you start lettering, you will learn your own sort of pacing for this. And one of the little tricks that I learned was every panel basically comes in two and three.
That's either one person has two lines and then the other person has three lines. you know, that's kind of as much as you can get, you know, or goes back and forth a little bit. The more you stretch it out, the harder it's going to get. So like each panel at most has five sentences in it. That's a thick panel too, with a lot of words. So I learned to rewrite, so I'm rewriting as I'm lettering.
So it's like as I'm lettering, not only lettering for space, but now I can also see beats and timing that I had in the art that I wasn't thinking about when I was writing it. So now I'm reverse engineering it so that I'm fitting, not just fitting for space, but like, it would be better if this sentence was cut in half now because of the expression on this character's face. It's going to carry a different subtext than before.
That was just the best lesson out of all this was in the lettering, it really changed my writing a lot. And I'm gonna try and just letter everything I do in the future. I might get a professional letter to do the sound effects at very least though. Cause if you notice all my sound effects, I'm just using the exact same. font for everything. And one of the reasons for that wasn't out of laziness, but it was, again, setting boundaries on myself.
So it helped laser focus what I was doing, using the limited tools I had in lettering to just do that one thing correctly, instead of trying a whole bunch of different stuff where it didn't, you know, I could fumble, right? So lettering, it was just the best blessing and doing everything in this process. Like it taught me so much about my own writing and... Whenever I do teach classes or talk to other creators about this stuff, I'm going to say, learn to letter your own stuff.
Even if you're not a professional letterer, it will change how you write. You actually provide a foom in that first issue, which I really appreciate. I loved that sound effect that you had in that first issue. Of all those steps that we've talked about, the writing, lettering, coloring, everything, which did you find your least favorite, I would say? It started with the lettering, but - I don't have a least favorite thing in the process anymore.
I think maybe it's just in the lettering that the sound effects thing. Like I know I'm doing a disservice to real letterers out there who understand there's like deeper levels of lettering than I can accomplish with myself. Right? Like there's a whole school of thought about like, when does a word balloon bump up against a panel? Right? So that it like has that like right hand corner to it. You know, when does it overlap a panel? How long should the tails be? When is it too long?
When are you cheating in this sort of stuff? So there's another level of professionalisms that letterers like Aditya Bhattacharya on Blue Book understands that I don't. So I feel bad in that way that I'm not doing the service that a professional letterer would really do, but I'm hoping with time I'll get better. So that's the only thing that feels bad in a way. It's like, I know that there are people who could do this better. but doing this also serves me as the writer.
So it's a weird balance of stuff. You have Taki come up behind you and critique you as you're doing everything. With everything, but like in a good way, like this is our language. This is our love language is writing, storytelling, clarity. The other thing besides lettering that changed my writing, that really changed it to the point where it's like the 9 -11 in my writing where like there are things that happened before and there are things that happened after, right? I'm Gen X, I can say that.
And that was when she wrote her book, Sleeping While Standing. So she's telling her life story in her biography called Sleeping While Standing, and she chose to do it. And each chapter is four pages or less. Now you can imagine the stories that she went through. You know, some of these stories could be a graphic novel in themselves. So she had to figure out like what to leave out. What was the story really about? Who are the main characters? Who are they mean? Who are really the main characters?
What is the story about? You ask a writer what their story is about, they'll tell you often that they're about these several different things. I was a person like that. But when you've got four pages to tell a story, it becomes like an onion with no layers.
Like she's just peeled off every layer until she'd be like laser focused on what the point of the story is so that like every sentence ties into that larger point, taking characters out who are there in real life but aren't additional to the point of the story, right? So that kind of laser -like focus editing changed the way that I wrote. And ever since then, like even before that, but especially after that, we really, really break down everything.
We go through this painful but beautiful thing of like every script I write or she writes, we read it out to each other. You know, the other person who didn't read it writes it. So you get like their first reaction. You can hear them stumbling over words or when they're pausing because something might not have made sense or they get lost and stuff. And all we have to do is throw our ego out the window.
So it's never about, well, you read it wrong or, you know, well, what I meant to say with so -and -so. Cause if you have to explain what you meant to this other person, you've already lost. You've already, you've already screwed up. Right. Now you still have the, the, the, the choice for yourself to go, even though they didn't get it, I still am confident that this was the right blah, blah, blah. Right. but that's our whole life.
Like we, every show we watch, we, we tear it apart in the best possible way. We'll finish shows. that we don't like just talking about why it didn't work, you know, and we have so much fun with it, you know, and then we, it might sound like arguing sometimes, you know, but it's not, it's just, we're just passionate about like the story that we're watching and why it worked and why it didn't work. Commercials, we'll watch a commercial and be like, what was that about?
And then I don't know what that was about. We'll go like, I hate commercials, but that was good. Like I actually, they caught my attention. I know what they're talking about because all of that is about clarity. Right? Storytelling is about clarity, whether it's the images, the coloring, the lettering in this case, or the case comic books, all these things put together working in unison to, you know, clearly tell a story. So yeah, that is, that is, that is the language of our life.
It's just constantly talking about stories. So like, yeah, the lettering, there were times where she was like, yeah, this is just too many words. Like I fit them. I fit them on there, but she, she could be objective enough to go, you know, you're asking a lot of the reader. This is one of those pages where you turn and go, ugh. So how do you say more with less words? Which becomes this great puzzle where you're trying to figure out how to say something with less words.
So you're looking for words that are either adjectives or other exclamers or descriptors that say more about what you're trying to say than the sentence does. And when you can find one or two words that says more than a full sentence, it is so rewarding. It's such hard work, but we're like literally high -fiving each other as we figure it out. you know, how to say more with less. anyway, I could go on and on, but there you go.
I envy your guys's fellowship and your, I would say security as well in the way that you guys approach creativity and everything. And I mean, that is, that sounds like the ideal creative relationship in my, in my opinion. And so to kind of build off that Michael, I kind of have one final question for you here. I wanted to briefly highlight your upcoming Kickstarter, the after realm. It's you're getting it all collected into one edition. and now.
This is a creator -owned series you published through Image Comics with artist Sean Lee and again, Takisoma in 2020 through Image Comics. I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about how this Kickstarter process has been for you and what has it been like for you to return to the story for the upcoming campaign? The Kickstarter process was at first just very intimidating for a lot of reasons. One, you're consciously trading out a smaller audience for a direct connection to the audience.
You can sell more through the direct market. But there are all these sort of trade -offs. Some of them are economic, like the fact that I can do a story through Kickstarter or any other sort of crowdfunding process, and it mitigates my risk. Will the book make money? Well, I can set the budget to make sure that it does. And you can tell it any kind of story that you want.
You can tell a story that wouldn't work in the direct market because it can be too idiosyncratic or this was a story I was sort of exploring as I was doing it. So that was all exciting. And then the other thing is I learned very quickly how much more of an intimate experience it is with your readership. So like your readers are getting the book directly from you. And even though I have a filler who helps me send stuff out because that's a huge part of the process, that's really difficult.
I'm communicating directly with the people. Like, you know, we have a message board and they're telling me, you know, maybe the project didn't get to them. They ordered the book, but didn't show up. And they're either getting it directly from me. And so I could send them something extra. Artwork and stuff is being sold. through the Kickstarter. So it is just much more of an intimate relationship. It is rewarding in ways that the direct market isn't always.
It is a smaller audience, but this is all a positive trade -off. And it's going to be a major part of my future publishing plans. I'm going to be doing both, working with the direct market. I'm also going to be working with more crowdfunding stuff, because some of the stories, they're weird stuff that doesn't have an outlet for it. So. but there's always fans that will find you and find your work. So, so thanks for bringing it up.
Yeah. We're going to launch it a week or two after the first issue of Newberry's out. Awesome. And actually I just offhandedly mentioned today, I was at my local comic book shop that I was speaking to you tonight and they had actually just brought, I had this question already ready to go for our conversation and they had mentioned the after realm and how they got the first three issues and were like, I don't know what happened. I know there were more issues, but you know what's going on.
And I just, I was like, they're doing a Kickstarter and they were so excited by that. So I know there's going to be excitement for this. And I even looked before we got on this conversation, you've already got close to 200 people ready to go, ready to back this thing immediately. So I know this is going to be a successful thing. thanks. Yeah, it's 300 pages long because I did every issue was like double size issue and there were five issues of it.
Then I drew another 20 pages of just additional material. There's three brand new stories in there. And then there's also like 50 pages of material. So, yeah, I'm really excited that people are. are there for it. You know, as I don't, I don't get out very much, we don't get to do too many conventions and stuff. So I have no idea how well or not well this stuff is going to do. And it's social media is so strange anymore. Trying to get your messaging out is easier and harder than ever before.
So, so I really appreciate all of the support and hear from that retailer as well. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I think in the future, once we eventually get that Kickstarter, live and out there for everybody, I will include a link in the show notes. So if you're listening to this sometime in the future, I will either include the link for the Kickstarter or I'll include the link for the direct to buy.
So regardless, you can check the show nuts as you're listening to this conversation with Michael to order that at some point. So Mike, Michael, Michael, Avon, Oming, Mr. Oming, all of all the, sir, Michael, all the things we decided today. it's, it's been an absolute blast having you here on the oblivion bar podcast this, you know, this evening, as a long time fan of yours, after initially being exposed to your work while reading Brian's ultimate Spider -Man as a kid.
I just absolutely love seeing your work on things like Blue Book and of course now with William of Newberry. And I'd love, I'd absolutely love to have you back on the future to discuss anything that you're working on at that time. A hundred percent. I'm always working on several projects at once. So we're going to be PRD thing right now. Brian and I have a new book. We were working together and there's three issues in the can. Got new books coming out next month.
So yeah, I'd be happy to come back anytime. One small question before we go, any more Taki coming soon? I know people are wanting more Taki. Yes, Taki is working on two new projects that she just sold recently. That's all I can say. Okay. All right. All right. Well, Michael, thank you so much. Is there anything that you want to plug or anything, any socials you want to highlight before we let you go?
I mean, you can find me anywhere on social media under just Oming, the YouTube channel that has a lot of like tutorials and sort of art stuff behind it. And Galaxy of Madness is a book coming out through Mad Cave, I think in June or July. Right now I'm just focusing on just what's immediately coming out. And just so people don't think I'm crazy, I'm not working on a billion books at once. It's usually one or two book at a time. And sometimes scheduling wise, they all come out together.
So like the trade paperback for the collection of After Realm and Newberry and Galaxy of Madness and Blue Book and Murder Inc and all that stuff, they're all done separately, but sometimes they come out the same. You need to get into the ear of your collaborator, James Tyneon and tell him to follow your lead because it seems like he's working on like 20 things at once. James is amazing. He's great to work with too. And he's, he's just as great as a person as he is a writer.
So if you're a fan of his, just know that yeah, he's a great person too. Well, Michael, thank you so much and hopefully we'll see you here on the show at some point in the future. Absolutely. Thanks so much. Alrighty. There's that conversation with Michael Avon Oming or Sir Mike Michael, Mr. Oming. Sir, I don't think we ever got a definitive answer. We didn't even ask him if it was like Michael was like short for Michelangelo.
Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Mike, Budweiser was the original Geico. They had all the best commercials in the nineties for sure. man. All right. Well, Michael, thank you so much for joining us here on the Oblivion Bar podcast. Cannot wait for everybody to check out William of Newberry. Again, that first issue is already out. That second issue is out on June 26th. So make sure you add that to your pool.
There's going to be four issues already, but please go out there and tell your LCS that you want more of this. Cause I think this you're going to have, you're going to have a great time with this series.
Especially that first issue i'm excited for everyone to eventually check it out And I know it's going to be on my pull list and as I say in this conversation whatever michael does in the future i'm there, you know this guy again bonafide legend in the medium and Being exposed to his work through brian michael bendez's ultimate spider -man was sort of a one of those like blessings in disguise that I didn't know that was like significant at the time like at that time I was like, okay, bro.
I'm gonna read everything that brian michael bendez does i'm gonna read his ultimate spider -man I'm gonna read his daredevil. And then what's powers? Like what is this thing over here that he did before all of this? Like he did powers first. Let me go back and check this out. And it just blew my mind. So Aaron, next week on the podcast, we're gonna keep this interview train rolling.
Next week on the show, we are joined by David Papos, of course, the rising star in the comic book industry, writer of Moon Knight. He's also doing the current Space Ghost series over at Dynamite. Aaron, I think you're actually gonna be sitting down with him. by yourself. Ooh, singular interviews by yourself. Are you excited? I am very excited. I told you how I first met David, right? Well, share it again. I know. Share it with the audience, please.
So one time I was working with CSA and, you know, like we're doing set up for the show. And at that point, it's just like get into this convention center, start setting up. It doesn't matter. Here's a badge. Here's a badge. Here's a badge. Here's a badge. Going down the line. And I got David's badge. And I had no idea. who David Popose was. No idea, okay? And I just remember he walked up and he goes, like, we're never serving up and he comes up and he goes, you're not David Popose.
I said, how do you know? He goes, how do you know that? I said, how the fuck do you know? He goes, cause I'm David Popose. I was like, I am David. Yeah, I was like, that would make sense. And so obviously gave him his badge. It was fun. He was cool. We're you know, very cool guy very sweet very fun to talk to you.
I kept you know stopping by and I kept walking by hey David Hey, David You love an inside joke, yeah, you know David is you know speaking of extremely humble and extremely nice people in the industry David is one of the nicest creators out right now He he's so I've heard of him in many, you know interviews and just in person again working with CSA He is always just so generous with his time with his fans and he is just a wealth of knowledge on just not only the comic
book medium, but storytelling in general. He's a sweetie pie. 100%. And I think, you know, five years from now, we are going to look back on David Pepos and sort of his rise in the medium and think that, wow, those two Eisners make sense now. Right. Like he is going he is going places in the medium. If you have not read his Punisher run, you are missing out.
I love Frank Castle, but his take on on, you know, even Even with the struggle, I cannot wait to talk to them about creating a whole new Punisher after everything that the Punisher has been through and then giving him a whole new look. Yeah, I cannot. I cannot wait. I'll tell you one of the hardest. We had Jason Aaron on the show when he was writing his Punisher run.
And a similar question was brought up to him, which is that the Punisher is in this very odd sort of arena in the world of comics because what he represents, what some people are trying to.
You know try to steal his identity in a sense There are certain sects of the world that i'll say that some some less desirable folks in the world that are that are Terrible who are trying to sort of usurp the identity of frank and you know the punisher logo So for david to come in and sort of reinvent the character not only in it with a brand new character but with the identity of the the mantle of the punisher is very Interesting and well done.
So very excited to listen in on that conversation between you and david and excited to present that to everybody next week for episode 159 of the Oblivion Bar podcast. That'll do it for episode 158. Aaron, please take us out of here. All righty then. You get that reference. Chicago. Get out of here. Go on. Go on. Get out of here. You're out. Subscribe to our podcast, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, Audible, iRT radio, wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. That's where we are.
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Everybody Aaron is home alone right now so you can be as loud as you want Is that loud no, okay. Yeah screaming directly into the mic. I think that was good All right, buddy, thank you so much for listening episode 158 of the oblivion bar wait to see how much you leave in of that All of it. That's all staying We will see you next week for episode 159.