Hey, this is Ryan Otley. And this is Robert Kirkman. and we are the creative force behind Invincible. And you are listening to the Oblivion Bar Podcast. Welcome to the Oblivion Bar podcast with your host, Chris Hacker and Aaron Knowles. Hello everybody and welcome to the Oblivion Bar podcast. I am Chris Hacker, one of your co-hosts here and joining me this week is my BFF, Aaron Knowles. No, do they I don't know the walking dead they ain't ever say don't say things. I don't think they do.
I don't know. Everybody this week on the show, we are talking to, you know, casually to legends in the comic book world. Casually, NBD, Aaron, it's not a big deal. We're really cool about it, too. We don't even make a big deal about it. don't even know any good acronyms. NBD is the only one you know? about LOL? R.B.? uh T.G.I.F. oh, P and the V. That counts? I think that's it. Okay. That's the one. This week, everybody, Robert Kirkman and Ryan Ottley.
Now let's just talk about these two gentlemen really quickly. Really, there's no introduction needed, but I think it's important to realize that like these two gentlemen, they have done something incredible with the Invincible Universe.
And we talked about in this conversation with both Robert and Ryan that when The Walking Dead first started to take off, I thought to myself, you know, this is like an incredible moment in comic book, in comic book history because the success of The Walking Dead was everywhere. mean, people that had never picked up a comic in their life were glued to their television every Sunday night on AMC to tune in for the next episode of The Walking Dead.
It was like, I think maybe between this, between The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones as like the last water cooler TV shows ever, right? Where you had to catch, you had to watch that episode because the next day everybody was going to be talking about it at work or at school or what have you. So. When I say that like invincible in 2025 has, if not like surpass the walking dead, but is like on the same level as walking dead in terms of popularity, that is a huge feat.
And that is all thanks to again, Robert Kirkman and Ryan Olley. Yeah, I'm just looking out. uh did Invincible actually came out the same time that The Walking Dead did, comic wise? Yeah, they were running. I mean, relatively congruent with each other. I want to say the walking dead is slightly older, but yeah, I mean, they're basically the same, you know, around the same timeframe. How in the world do you come up with both the walking dead and invincible at the same time?
Now again, here's the thing I really respect about Robert Kirkman is that both of these things, both invincible and walking dead are these like total isolated moments in comic book history that just fucking work. You know, like the walking dead, it's famously said that like Robert Kirkman pitched the walking dead as this alien story by issue six.
I want to say he was going to reveal that the universe, this universe that the walking dead was in this virus that was brought to earth and made zombies was from aliens and Kirkman. We don't get into it in this conversation, but like he has always said that like that was always a fib. He was never going to bring aliens. It was just the fact that like at this time in history, in 2003, the zombie genre was waning. popularity of it.
Like he had like the Resident Evil and a lot of the like Night of Living Dead was big in the eight seventies and eighties. And like that whole zombie trope was just sort of a, a very popular product at the time, but Kirkman was obviously very, very influenced by this. Uh, you know, he said often that like Night of the Living Dead and Resident Evil were big influences for this story, but like he always wanted to tell a story.
And then again, invincible, another classic example of like the coming of age superhero story that at that time, around 2003. If you think about like what Marvel and DC were doing at the time, Marvel had their Marvel Knights books, know, Kirkman plays in that universe a little bit with like Marvel zombies and such. It was all dark and gritty and rated for mature type of comics. And of course that's what invincible kind of is.
It is very mature and bloody and you know, over the top in certain instances, but like at its heart, I feel like it's very much like a coming of age, learning who you are going to become, not who you were supposed to be type of story. Yeah. Nature versus nurture, leaning on your morals and not giving into whatever influences that don't align with your own. I think that that's, I find it so interesting that The Walking Dead became such a massive hit at the same time.
And like, well, I mean, obviously it took like seven years because it took seven years for The Walking Dead, the television show to come out, but it was probably developed for a while.
like really 2007, 2008 really is when like a lot of zombie movies and lot of like vampire a lot of horror like stuff based on that was like really coming out so I mean really I mean it's it's hard to say that like the show or the I mean the comic itself defined zombies or at least anything in Yeah, the walking dead comic was wildly popular wise, but but like the most popular comic in the world is not really doing much in terms of influence.
So, but, then you got to see like in 2010 when the show came out, obviously it was insanely influential. mean, it's already spawned multiple spin-offs already still going to this day and it's almost what 15 years later. So, I mean, it's insane. I mean, it's insanely popular, but you know, we only got about 30 minutes, 35 minutes to chat with, with Robert and Ryan. And it was a fun conversation. Definitely wish we could have gotten them for a little bit longer.
Like we normally do with a lot of our guests. But I think overall it was just a great conversation getting to peek behind the curtain into, know, Battle Beast, which is part of the, you know, the Invincible universe and honestly one of my favorite characters in that entire like sandbox. Yeah. mean, I think people have been clamoring for not only more invincible comic book material, but specifically Thok and his story throughout invincible. Something fresh. yeah.
mean, and like no one does this universe quite like Robert and Ryan. Obviously it's third universe. I Corey Walker, no disrespect to Corey Walker who did the first, I want to say 12 issues of invincible. Invincible is its best when it's Robert Kirkman and Ryan Otley. The book takes a definite hike in quality and energy and all the things that you want. once Ryan Otley gets on with the book.
you know, it's no secret that like the majority of the best parts of the invincible universe come from Ryan Otley and his artwork. We say it during or will you say it during the interview? We discuss it with both of them that once Ryan Lottley came on board, some of the most defining moments in the entire series are really flushed out. And I don't think that any other team combination could have done it. Exactly, exactly.
I think this whole story with Battle Beast, Thok and and and a little bit of his origin, a little bit of his understanding, a little bit of the depth into who his character is, is what a lot of fans, know, myself included. have been like hoping would be done for a very long time. And you know what's interesting about this interview, everybody, before we get into, know we're doing a lot of prefacing before this conversation with two legends. I know you're like, Aaron, Chris shut the hell up.
I want to hear Kirkman and Ottley and I get it. like what Aaron and I, think we, put on a good, we put on a nice clean show here. Everybody. We do it. We got a nice back and forth. We Epson flows, all the superlatives things like that, but like 30 minutes is a good amount of time to get with Kirkman and Olly. But like we had questions we wanted to ask them.
And I think where Aaron and I do a lot of our best work is when we have a little bit of freedom to sort of go off on a trail, do a side quest, as we like to say here, segue into something like when we can joke around and sort of be a couple of dipshits, like that's when we're our best, but like, there's just like no time for that in this conversation.
And I think you're going to see that you're going to hear it pretty clearly that like, we want to, we want to get all the questions out to these two people. they're like, you know, as you're listening to this, just know that like we tried to make the most of it. And we might've gotten in our heads a tiny bit when it came to the structure of the conversation here with Robert and Ryan. Well, I'm not going to put it down. I'm going to say this is a great conversation.
We had a great time with them and they think they had a good time. Yeah. I guarantee they had a great time. We've already gotten word back that they had a great time. And when we get good feedback, you know, it means the world to us. And they're always welcome back on the show. You know, even though we'll see Ryan Otley in a couple of weeks or in a couple of days, like we see we see him all week.
But no, like again, we just they were they were awesome to come onto the show and it was a great discussion and we hope you guys really enjoy it. Absolutely. We're to get into that conversation with Robert Kirkman and Ryan Otley here. And again, as we said, Battle Beast, number one, the official spinoff of the Invincible Universe, you know, starring everyone's favorite white, super aggressive, kind of horny sometimes, Tiger there in the Invincible Universe.
That first issue comes out on May 14th. So the Wednesday that you're listening to this conversation, this comes out on the 12th, you will be able to go to your local comic book shop and pick up that first issue on the 14th, that Wednesday. So. Aaron, before we get in that conversation, will you please let the listeners know? Because I hope we bring in lot of new listeners.
People see Kirkman and Ottley like, hey, let me listen to these two idiots for, you know, 11 minutes and then eventually I'll hear Robert Kirkman's voice. Tell them how they can support the Oblivion Bar Pop. to just fast forward it through all this. But thanks for being here. If you've listened for 11 minutes and 30 seconds so far. But if you want to support the Oblivion Bar podcast, consider checking out our Patreon for your support over there.
You gain access to special bonus episodes each week called The Grid, which is basically the Oblivion Bar pod, unformatted, unfiltered. It is our place to just play around as it's called The Grid from, you know, the Tron series. You know, it's just our own creation, our own sandbox. You also get a behind the scenes look at how we prepare each episode with episode transcripts. Patreon polls, giveaways, prizes, just all types of stuff.
And you can get all that over on patreon.com forward slash oblivion bar pod. You can even try it out with a seven day free trial. again, that link is in the show notes, but just one more time, patreon.com forward slash oblivion bar pod. That's right. Go check it out in the show notes. All right. We're going to do a couple of quick ads and then we will get in this conversation with Robert Kirkman and Ryan Ollis. This episode is brought to you by Oni Press.
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One is the Eisner Award winning writer and co-creator of a small indie titles you've probably never heard of like The Walking Dead, Firepower, Outkast, Oblivion Song, Void Rivals, and of course Invincible. The other is the co-creator for the majority of the Invincible Universe and the primary artist for the series penciling 127 of the 144 issue run. You may also know him from his recent stint over at Marvel Comics with both The Amazing Spider-Man and The Hulk.
It is our pleasure to welcome both Robert Kirkman and Ryan Ottley onto the Oblivion Bar podcast. Yeah. Welcome. you, fellows. So great to see you both here. Wow. This is an incredible moment here in the pantheons of Oblivion Bar history. So great. We were talking a little bit before the conversation. Robert, this is our first time meeting. Thank you so much for being here. Ryan, you're an old friend. I'll see you. I see you like every other week. you know, good to see you, I guess.
It's great to see you. It is. I'm totally joking there. And I think happy to see you. oh Aaron. I know you're always a smiley face at these conventions. Good to see you again. I think it's important to just sort of kick this whole thing off. Let's just talk about Battle Beast. I think it's probably the best thing, the best way to start this conversation.
That first issue hit shelves on May 14th and the story picks up moments after the events of 2004's Invincible 19 where Battle Beast main handles Mark, Bulletproof and Black Samson and then promptly teleports away. And now there's a quote from the Skybound press release that I want us to sort of explore here. No longer a mindless avatar of death, Thok begins to awaken from a haze of his bloodlust.
So Robert, with all the continued success of the comic series and now the mega success of the animated series over on Prime, what was it specifically about Battle Beast that made you guys feel like this is the right time for you guys to reunite, you and Ryan, to reunite and tell more stories about him? mean, the short honest answer is Ryan was available. you uh know. Battle Beast became one of our favorite characters from Invincible, if not our favorite character from Invincible.
You I've always wanted to tell more stories with Battle Beast. You know, you can see how he kind of started showing up in the book more and more as the series progressed until he stopped showing up in the book, unfortunately. But yeah, mean, it was just, uh you know, something that I thought would be really fun. And when Ryan's dalliance with Marvel finally came to an end, you know, I was trying to find something cool that we could do together and Battle Beast ended up becoming that thing.
Thank you for rescuing him. Yeah, thank you for getting back over at Skybound. Ryan, how was it for you when you finally got the call and you guys finally figured out this is the time to get back to the events of the universe? What were your thoughts there? I mean, I definitely look at it as a dream project. mean, Invincible is definitely the thing I'm most proud of in my whole career. The biggest project I've done and the biggest project I'll ever do, to be honest.
mean, I don't think I can do that long of a run ever again. you'll He'll come against me somehow. But, uh, no, it was awesome because I mean, Marvel was fun, but, uh, I did miss working with Robert and being in the invincible universe where there's pure freedom. So yeah, it was great. This is your playground, right? Like this is your guy. You guys, you guys have done all the, mean, you know, Robert, of course you just sort of came from your brain.
Then Ryan, I, know, I think it's safe to say that the majority of our favorite moments in invincible history came, you know, directly from your hands. So it's, cool to see you guys back together. And uh I like that Spider-Man realm with you and Nick Spencer and you know, you're in Donnie's work on the Hulk and then the one that you eventually finished there at the Hulk was great too. But you know, maybe I'm selfish here. I'm happy that you guys are both doing invincible again as well.
Same. was somehow able to pull some cool moments out of those lesser writers' works. you Let's go ahead and get this is a good time to bring in Donny Cates and Spencer into the chat. I'm kidding. got to say, like I same sentiment that you guys have about Battle Beast. is he quickly became my favorite character of the entire Invincible series. So I'm glad to hear that he's yours as well.
So I'm just super excited to see where you go with him and potentially we're going to say potentially other family members that he might have. But, you know, Ryan, you've been pretty vocal in the past about how Battle Beast is the one character you've always wanted to explore more of. but were hesitant to overuse during the original run of Invincible.
uh At his core and outside of him having a killer design and just being one of the biggest badasses of the series, is there an element of Battle Beast's character you and Robert really want to explore here? I that's more of a Robert question, I mean, visually, just, yeah, I just want to make him the most badass as I possibly can, make him look, you know, and yeah.
I mean, for me, think that putting him through his paces and really having this be like an action-oriented series where Ryan can strut his stuff is really important. But I think there's an emotional aspect to the character that we're exploring that's a lot of fun. And I think if you look at who he is in issue 19 and who he is in issue 55 and who he becomes over the run of those issues, you know, there's a big difference there.
And I think that exploring what caused that difference and what maybe made him grow into oh a more well-rounded character is gonna be fun to explore. And so we have this really cool gap in time that we can kind of get into the nooks and crannies of finding as many interesting aspects as possible about the character. And that's something that's really exciting to me. It's telling a story where... You know, we're doing cool action and we're doing great stuff.
But when you read this series and then go back and read those old issues of Invincible, you'll have a different understanding of Battle Beast. And those stories will have a different sort of feel to them because of what Ryan and I were able to accomplish with this series. I'm excited to hear that as well. ah just I already know that even because listeners don't know this, but we've already got to read Battle Beast number one and even just in that one.
No spoilers, but there's there's a significant change even within the first few pages in Battle Beast character. So I'm excited to see you how you guys are going to continue to explore just that that mentality change that he has, you know, going forward because it's I mean, it's already significant just in issue one. Yeah, and again, we pick up moments after that issue 19 where we first meet Battle Beast.
Aaron and I were talking before the recording and I love that in the pantheons of Invincible's history, the first words that Battle Beast says is, Roar. It's roar with two exclamation points, which, he's known for being this sort of like poetic, just like monster, you know, but just the fact that his like his first words were roar, it just really tickles me. But let's say that, you know, someone has only seen the invincible series. You know, they haven't read up to, you know, the 144 issues.
I have the companions right next to me and they're like thick babies. You could be a burglar with these things and it would probably knock them out. Kudos to the fans that carry the hardcover Omnibuy around, the multiple ones to the conventions to get you guys to sign them. Like kudos. Those guys are like, they rock more than some of us like while we were in the military did. It's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. building muscle mass with this book. We're accomplishing great things.
I think it's safe to say that like nothing is spoiled in what eventually happens to talk at you know in this first issue of this new series But Ryan Robert whoever wants to sort of take this one How would you suggest fans approach this new comic series going forward if they haven't read anything past issue 19 of a visible? Well, they've probably already seen season one, two and three, right? Sure. And that's all you need?
Yeah, I mean, I think that, uh you know, we've carefully crafted this series. So if you've read every issue of Invincible and you've watched every episode of the show, this book will make sense. You'll totally dig it. If you've not read any of Invincible and not watched the show at all, but you're like, I don't know, I want to try this stuff. uh This series will make complete sense. There's nothing dependent of Invincible for you to understand. If you've only watched the show, totally works.
You know, nothing is going to be spoiled. There's not any kind of like callbacks to things that have happened uh in the series. If you have seen everything, there's going to be Easter eggs. And when certain characters reappear or are introduced, you'll go, I know that character. It's exciting to see them again. ah But if you are unfamiliar with Invincible, they'll just seem like cool new characters being introduced. And it'll work in that context as well.
ah So, yeah, we're going to great lengths to make sure that there isn't any kind of, you know, well, if you don't know what eventually happens in Invincible 102, you know, this issue of Battle Beast doesn't make sense. Like, we don't want to do anything like that. uh know, and we want Battle Beast to feel like its own self-contained story. So you will get a complete experience from reading Battle Beast.
It has a beginning, middle, and an end and will exist as its own piece and is not necessarily dependent on invincible. So, you know, we're trying to make sure it's a satisfying read for anybody that's coming at it from any angle. Sure. You know what I think most listeners already probably know by this point, Robert, is that like, you know, you used to work at a comic shop. You really value that brick and mortar inclusiveness when it comes to these events.
You know, I I don't think it even would be a Robert Kirkman release if you didn't have some kind of, you know, surprise planned for the launch of a new book. You know, most fans. I'll tell you from the fan's perspective, we really appreciate it. It's nice to know that, like, you know, at least a couple of the creators, you know, Ryan included in this, you guys really go to the extra lengths. to make this launch really special.
And you know, I think very specifically of like the die, die, die surprise drop, the unannounced last issue of the walking dead, even jet fire showing up again in void rivals. Number one from a couple of years ago with the energon universe. So Forgetting that comic that was discovered in a warehouse that was apparently from another dimension, Solid Blood 17, that an alternate reality Robert Kirkman and Ryan Otley did that was sent out.
Because we just found printed copies at a warehouse, so we just distributed those for free as well. I just wanted to make sure you didn't forget the alternate reality Ryan was involved in. Are we talking about the Rick the Rick Grimes uh story? Is this what we're talking about here? Ryan, these guys don't even know what solid blood is. I don't know who these guys are. We're not real fans. Damn it. You were. thought we were. What was your excuse, Aaron? He's not.
oh Blood 17, very, very, very unique and somewhat rare artifact. Okay. Can you give us a little bit of back just because I want Sign copy right here. But can watch Robert's uh video on YouTube talking about how Diamond has the palette. I'm a nerd. I'm not being coy, but the printer, it was during the pandemic in like 2021, the printer called us, called Eric Stevenson and was like, we've got some image comics here. We don't have like a distribution order.
I don't know what, like what is going on here. And they did some digging and it was, you know, like a shipment ready to go of a fully printed comic that was credited to myself and Ryan Ottley. And they, you know, sent samples to us and showed it to us and... It was characters that Ryan and I had vaguely talked about doing things with, you know, like years ago, but we had never really gotten around to doing it. And so it's super weird. It looks like I wrote it.
It looks like Ryan drew it, but it's a comic that kind of came out of nowhere. And if you read the comic, there's like all kinds of like weird like things that don't quite make sense. The letters column talks about how I did a comic called Walking Dead, but it got canceled, but that didn't actually happen. So I don't really understand. But uh I think it's some kind of prank that somebody that's able to ape our work, you know, had done.
You know, I decided to just distribute it because I was like, if you're going to play a prank on me like that, I'm going to call your bluff. So we just sent it out to retailers for free. And, you know, people seem to enjoy it, but now no one remembers it. I'm looking at the cover right now and it absolutely does look like your artwork, Ryan. oh That's wild. Like we got some Skynet like back in time, like stuff, you know, changing the timeline. We're in the darkest timeline right now anyway.
So this totally makes sense. I don't buy into all that stuff, but it's definitely somewhat bizarre. Yeah, well, let's talk about what you guys are doing here with battle beasts and and ryan again This probably has a lot to do with what you're going to provide for this whole We should spend the rest of this podcast talking about solid blood. I scrap the transcript. Delete the transcript. Talk about solid blood the rest of the time. Now, uh the blind bag program. Tell us a little bit about this.
And again, I'm very curious because you guys again are just like with, you know, all of this seem very coy about about it. Oh, the blind bag program, mean, you blind bag is not a new concept. You know, there's blind box figurines and things like that. It's kind of a fun thing. And like I say, we're always trying to, you know, make the experience of going into the comic book store as special and unique and memorable as possible. And so we thought it'd be neat.
You you do all these variant covers for these comics now and some of them are very rare. And so without messing up the rarity, you know, we're able to put all of these comics in the blind bag. So again, it's very rare, but you could get a one in 1000 Battle Beast cover in this blind bag. You could get the one in 500, you could get the one in 50, you could get the one in 10. I think those are all covers that we did. I don't know the exact ratios of everything, but you get what I'm saying.
So anyway, you know, but there's also, so every variant cover of Battle Beast, you could possibly get at random in this blind bag, but there are three. very special, very unique, very exciting comics that are also available in these blind bags that I don't think I can talk about because I don't know exactly when this podcast is going to go up. uh let me just say they are all very special and very unexpected.
And one of them is absolutely insane to the point where if I told you what it was right now, you possibly wouldn't even believe me. OK, I mean, I don't think you can hype that up anymore. I guess let me kick it over to Ryan here. What has been your sort of preparation for this blind bag program? Because, you know, if I know anything about Ryan Otley is that you come with the goods when it comes to invincible covers, original art, all the things, trading cards even.
Yeah. I mean, again, we can't say exactly what's going in there, but eh you shall see. I mean, you know, I did the one in 1000 cover and so, you know, that's the one that, that's going to be the rare one to get in there. Is it going to be like a like a battle beast drape like what Thragg wears? You know, it's just like the the entire head and cape looking thing. Can you get one of those in this blind bag like? I don't know. Yeah. It's just a coupon.
You have to go to Robert Kirkman's house and get it. Oh, that's a good idea. We'll have to do that. There's this one blind bag that's like super soft and squishy. I don't know what's in that one. I'm sure it's a comic. I will say one of the cool things is that if you, I don't remember exactly what the quantity was, but if a retailer ordered a certain high number of books, they actually got an original sketch cover drawn uh by Ryan Otley.
So, you know, we expected that to be very few stores and it ended up being. quite a few stores. So there's a lot of stores out there that have like an original uh Battle Bee sketch cover drawn by Ryan Otley. So, you know, definitely, you know, inquire at your store if that's available, if you're listening to this. And that's not going to be part of the blind bag, but that is the one in 2,000 variants.
Yeah. One of my favorite things about, know, again, Ryan, we've worked together at some of these cons before. And one of my favorite things is when something sells for a lot of money that deals with Ryan's art invincible, his response is almost always the same. And you guys listening to this can't see my face, so I'm just going to try to describe it. It's like eyes open, eyebrows up and like surprise like it hasn't happened a hundred times before today.
Up drop conquest, ripping apart, I'm like yes. Yeah, let's do it right now. I'll do it. What do you it's the funniest thing.
I love the fact that Ryan is genuinely surprised when people come up and like every single time so appreciative of people like appreciating your art and what you've done for Invisible for these other runs and same with you Robert like this is the first time I'm actually getting to see you like what you look like in person because honestly like I've seen your pictures but every time I try and see you at a convention like you're you're Swamp. It's never the opportunity. it's awesome. ghost.
Yeah, it's so awesome. like Ryan makes himself available to table and like people come up and show him their cosplays, their art, their, you know, their pops. And you're like, you're just like sitting there, bells on, smiling, just happy as hell because you just genuinely love that people appreciate it. And it's so like, awesome to see as a fan. I just want to say before I get to the final question, thank you for being just like that genuine. And I'm not saying that you're not like that, Robert.
I just haven't interacted with you. I'm not saying- I was like, we know. offend Mr. Kirkman in such a manner. I have a lot of his stuff and I will one day get it signed because I will meet you in person and say, hello, sir. Great job. But I've seen Ryan plenty of times and I'm like, I tell his wife, great job for supporting this amazing guy in his art. you know, Ryan's just a genuine sweet dude. He's a sweet man. You don't know the things Ryan says to me behind the scenes.
If you only knew the sour, hateful, spite-filled rants he goes on about the fans and about you guys in particular. Every night at conventions, my gosh, just the bile that comes out of this guy. oh Evans from the deleted scene in Deadpool and Wolverine right now. ah But Robert, we'll get with Ryan for the follow up on this. But Robert, you've mentioned an early goal for you in your career was to be like Eric Larson and writing and drawing one long running comic forever.
Again, this question's for both of you, but is it safe to say that the Invincible universe might be that series that you just write about until you can't anymore? Possibly. We're certainly having a lot of fun. And I think, you know, Create Our Own is, you know, to have the freedom to decide that, you know, we get to come back to this whenever we want to, we get to put it on a shelf and have it available to us whenever we want to.
And so, you know, I think that that's uh a, you know, a very like Eric Larson-esque tradition. you know, him being part of the founding of Image Comics, you know, puts us in the position to be able to do that. So, you know. tremendous amount of gratitude to him and the rest of the Image Founders for that opportunity that they've given us and many other creators. But yeah, I don't know.
I Invincible is unique in that I wrote it for 16 some odd years and then immediately started writing the pilot for the show. And I've been working on the show constantly uh nonstop since then. And so I really haven't, you know, there's been a gap between Invincible and Battle Beast. But for me, it's all Invincible all the time for Going on 20 I will soon be dust going on 20 some odd years now So yeah, I could see writing this stuff for the rest of my life.
It's definitely a universe that I Love telling stories in and and I think that there's room within the universe to do absolutely anything Which could not be on more display than it is in Battle Beast the things that we do in this series and the different Directions the story goes I think are really going to take people by surprise and now that I've said far too many words, Ryan.
Yeah, I mean, even when I was at Marvel for five years doing that stint, was like, was very, I was very excited to get more because I kept doing covers. You we kept doing covers of new editions and that kind of thing of the library editions and all that. So always fun to jump back on that. And then, of course, at the conventions, you know, I do quite a quite a few shows a year. So the majority of commissions I do, you know, it's mostly invincible stuff.
So. It's like I've never stopped drawing these people, you know? it's, to me it's very exciting and it's always fun. to jump back into it and have it be my full-time job again is quite exhilarating. So, and I, again, can't wait for everyone to see what we got. You know, speak on that again with us working together at cons. I think one of the cooler moments, you know, throughout these experiences is watching how quickly Ryan can knock out these incredible invincible sketches, right?
It's what the blood splatter and everything. Ryan, you knock it out. seems like in like 10 minutes, but it's you could put it into a comic. You can put it on a page. It's how good it is. ah So it's really cool to see that. And, you know, again, as we said at the beginning, this is sort of my close out here is it.
What a pleasure it was to get both you guys here on the show together to talk about not only Battle Beast, which again, that comes out on May 14th, that first issue comes out on May 14th, but to also just like talk about invincible as a whole, because Aaron and I are both huge fans, not only again of the comic, but the show is incredible. It's it's there's a reason why it's equally as big of a hit. And Robert, and actually small side question before we get out of here.
Sure. This mega hit that invincible has become through prime. I never thought that I would see another mega hit like The Walking Dead, but does it kind of feel like Invincible is in that same playground as The Walking Dead in terms of just like sheer scope of people really enjoying it? I mean, it does to me, uh you know, and the show is definitely doing very well. It's pretty shocking to, you know, kind of be in that place again.
I went with uh Gillian Jacobs and Sandra Oh to Brazil to promote Invincible at CCXP and, you know, it's massive panels and, you know. Thousands of people cheering and you know freaking out and you know We were kind of going from interview to panel to interview to panel promoting the show and and it was fun because uh Gillian and Sandra were like, my god, this is crazy. This is crazy.
Yeah, this is so crazy and And I had to be like, yeah crazy Never seen anything like this before Crazy and inside I was like, it's kind of neat to you know be doing this again I haven't done this since you know the heyday of Walking Dead But yeah, was, it's pretty cool having Invincible finally get this kind of attention. It's also especially nice because I had like 15 years of Ryan Olley being like, oh, he walking dead gets so much attention. Invincible, no one wants to talk about Invincible.
Walking dead, walking dead, everything's walking dead. Like, come on, man. Yeah, that's what he sounded like. And now you and now you got invincible in Fortnight. It's an immortal combat, my God. Yeah. I'm in an immortal combat. Best thing ever. Yes. No. I love also the fact that like, you know, what's interesting is I live in, I live in New York.
like the list, like last few days, they've had a bunch of zombies walking around, like walking dead zombies in the city, uh, in Manhattan, just walking around, handing out flyers and stuff. It's pretty crazy. because we're promoting Dead City or something. Yeah, Ryan Walking Dead still out there. I that. Go there. Well, like I said, what a pleasure it was to get both of you on here today. Thank you guys so much. So great talking to you both.
One last thing before I let you go is I'm going hand it off to Ryan. I'm going to start with you here. Is there anything that you want to sort of plug or highlight besides Battle Beast to the listener before we let you go? Man, I'm only working on Battle Beast right now, so yeah, mean, just get that Battle Beast May 14th. Yeah. Robert, how about you? There's a new book called Blood and Thunder. you're not reading that, you need check that out. It's by Benito Serino, E.J. Su and myself.
It's a great sci-fi book. It's a buddy cop adventure with a space bounty hunter and her best friend, a talking sentient gun. It's a lot of fun. And then I got Void Rivals out there, part of the larger Inderjuan universe. If you're not reading any of the Inderjuan universe books, you're missing out. There's a lot of cool stuff going on. We're building a cool universe using G.I. Joe and Hasbro character, or G.I.
Joe and Transformer characters, and uh some new characters that Lorenzo de Felice and I have created for Void Rivals that uh kind of round out the universe in a cool way. And it's a pretty cool book. A lot of fun. I feel like there's other stuff I'm forgetting, but that's all I got. Awesome. And I agree. Everyone should be should be reading the energon universe in some capacity, whether again, it'd be G.I. Joe transformers void rivals, all of it maybe probably should be reading.
So totally agree there. Thank you both again so much. And we would love, love, love to have either both of you on together again at some point or separately. It would be our great pleasure. I will never appear in public with Ryan Otley ever again. All righty, there's that conversation with Robert Kirkman and Ryan Ottley. Thank you both so much for being here on the Abilvy More podcast. Once again, Battle Beast number one comes out on May 14th. Make sure you guys go grab that.
I'm not telling anyone something they don't already know. It's invincible is back in comics. Of course, folks are to be lined up around the block. Aaron, we need to get ourselves some of those blind bags. I was just thinking the same thing. ah know, we've to reach back out to our sponsor of the show, Endless Comics, Cards and Games, and talk to them about getting some of those blind bags.
Because, my God, imagine pulling like a one in one thousand getch cover or whatever like out of one of those bags. Like that is going to be insane. I've, you know, working with CSA at the conventions, we get to be around Ryan and we see a lot of his covers. especially his invincible covers that have Battle Beast on them and they are insane. They're incredible. Some of his sketches are just incredibly well done and he's so good at it because he's been doing it for, you know, 20 years.
So it's, mean, this is just an exciting opportunity to get a piece of history here. So go check out those blind bags at your local comic shop. Hopefully you get some, if you get some, you know, tag us in your social, uh, social posts so that we can, you know, check out what you got. And we'd love to follow you and see what you guys got on those out of those blind bags. And if we can get our hands on some, we'll definitely post ours as well. Yeah, hopefully we can.
And, know, they purposely stay really coy about what you can get. As we talk about in this conversation, Robert Kirkman, this wouldn't be a Robert Kirkman launch if he didn't have something really cool planned for that launch. And, you know, he talks about the covers and, you know, the blind bag is, you know, you can get all types of things, but like, I have a feeling they're going to offer something extremely rare. Like someone's going to pull a golden ticket out of one of these blind bags.
And I can't wait to see what it is because no one plans like a uh surprise for their comic again, like Robert Kirkman. And I have a feeling that it has something to do with Ryan Otley. And one of my favorite moments in this conversation, and it's also maybe one of the more embarrassing moments is when Robert Kirkman starts talking about solid blood number 17, I genuinely had no idea what they were talking about. you like, did you know, were you tracking what they were talking about?
I looked it up as they were talking about it. I've never heard of it before, that's it was an incredibly cool thing to see. I still don't know what it is really like it's solid blood number 17. So the If you understand, like what they said was that it's like, it's literally uh something that somebody found in a warehouse that was, that was printed and it's got their names on it and it looks like they drew it and it sounds like they wrote it, but it's not like they didn't do it.
I think they were joshing us, Aaron. think that they did do it and they just were, they're like acting like they didn't do it. Aaron's Googling away right now. I really think that like they did this as like a fun bit for themselves. Like as a fun inside joke, like, ha ha, we're going to release a comic and not tell anyone.
And it's going to be a random issue from a series that doesn't exist because like the back is an advertisement for Cory Walker's kick fight, which is not a real comic issue nine coming in March. Not a real comic guys. At least I don't think so. could be wrong there too. I genuinely think that this is Kirkman and Ottley doing a gaffe and just like joking in all of our, in all of our faces.
But the thing about what's really funny about when we talked about this is that Kirkman and Ottley were both playing it straight. I can't tell if they're joking or not. You know what I mean? Like it's so hard to tell if they're being serious. That's sort of the fun thing about what we're talking about here. I'm sure there's some story out there that debunks all of this and that like it probably really was Kirkman and Ottley playing a joke on everybody in the comic world.
because he's done it multiple times. Again, as I said in the conversation, the die, die, number one, coming out randomly without solicitation. The last issue of the walking dead being randomly dropped. He does this all the time. Yeah, can, I mean, that sounds, it sounds like a reasonable explanation. It's definitely cool though, to like, to, think about, because even I'm trying to think of like, it's, it's a fun idea because I've seen, oh, you who did it? The Umbrella Academy, show, did it.
Like they had like a, a, a separate timeline. And so like in that, like the last, the final season, they had this group of people that were just like gathering these objects that looked like they, they, basically there's no way they were from that universe. had to have somehow come over from a different universe because they didn't, you know, not the right actors.
It's like, remember the movie, um, last action hero when he's going to the, he goes to the blockbuster and it's Sylvester Stallone playing, you know, the Terminator. Yeah. It's such a cool idea though. It is fun. And again, it's a nice bit because I'm sure Kirkman and Ottley, they're playing into the bit still in 2025 and that's fun. You know what mean?
And actually this like this conversation with Kirkman and Ottley really inspired me to go back and not only rewatch season one of invincible over on prime, but also I haven't seen anything past season one. And the first episode of season two is like pretty excellent. Everybody, if you, if for some reason you're not caught up with invincible. like I had some people, I heard some people complaining about it was taking too long to come out.
If you've watched invincible, the quality is insanely good. So like let them do their thing. That's not demand content. Cause there's a ton of it out there. We're giving you some of it to you right now. Like I'm not saying we're on the same level as invincible, but like this is content. There's no shortage for content anywhere. So just excited for more of all this.
And again, I just, cannot talk enough about how much of an honor it was to get Robert Kirkman and Ryan Notley here on the show today. It is truly like a landmark here on the oblivion bar. And you know, I think we played it pretty cool there. And I think it's one of those things where like we often get in our own heads about like these guests because we revere them and there's no one bigger in the industry than Robert Kirkman and Ryan Olly.
But like, I think we almost immediately were like just broing it up with them. And I think that that's the problem sometimes is this was a new set of parameters that we weren't used to. This was like a very much time limited, you know, here your bookends be done. And then we were also running late, so we didn't know how their temperament would be. We weren't. They were running late. uh So like we didn't know if their temperament, how that would be.
And again, yeah, I would just say like for what we had, what we could do and what we did. It was a great conversation. Yeah, agreed. You'd be surprised how many of these publishers just give us an email and say, Hey, go talk to, you know, Joe Schmo. And then they let us do whatever we want. We can talk, we ask them whatever questions we want. Not necessarily the case here, but that's okay. So that'll do it for episode one 93. Once again, thank you, Robert and Ryan for coming on the show.
Battle Beast. Number one again comes out the week. This episode comes out. Make sure you guys go check it out. Aaron and I have already read it and it was awesome. So that'll do it for episode one 83. Episode 194, Aaron, speaking of battles, Battle Royale number six. We've been teasing it. ah It's been in the works. seems like for a little bare naked ladies, someone put, we need to remember this, put one of the people from bare naked ladies into this Battle Royale. ah Ooh, that's a good idea.
bare naked lady versus. They get barely battle beasts. uh Yeah, so, you know, Battle Royale number six, everybody, if you're not familiar with Battle Royale, it is one of Aaron and I's favorite segments around the Oblivion Bar. Basically, we take five random fighters against, you know, all of fiction, comics, movies, television, video games, novels. I've even thrown Aaron into one of these fights before. uh It could even be nonfiction. You put Abraham Lincoln.
whoever it doesn't matter into these fights and then Aaron I have to debate on who we think would win these fights. Yes. Random arenas with different rules, different like changes in them, different environments. And then also once the actual show is released, we then give the option to the listeners to go and vote on like, Oh, that's going to be interesting. Are we going to be able to do that? Cause we're not on, we're not on Twitter anymore.
So we'll have to figure out another way for people to vote, which will be fun on, some of these other other platforms. Oh, no, you can do polls on Instagram, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that. That's honestly what's most important. Like Aaron, can sit the debate on the show is just for a fun giggle. You know, like we will determine a winner between he and I, and we try to be completely unbiased.
I think we do actually a pretty good job of being unbiased and just sort of listen to each other and, you know, give each other grace when it comes to like, we're not going to know everything, but if we make a compelling argument of why Mandalorian would kill Darth Vader, then you know, we'll honor that. But like what really matters is the vote. is good shaking hands at the end as good sportsmanship. That's right. A nice firm grasp of a behind. uh The scene from Bridesmaids when she...
Oblipioteca. This needs to be open because of the civil rights. was I going to say? I forgot. Bad brain. Bad brain strikes again. Oh, I was going to say something about the voting and the voting and the... Is it that I've won three? You've won two. Yeah. Oh, you know what it was? It was a stupid. It was a, was a dick joke. ah Yeah. I was going to say we've got, we've gotten really good at debating. Someone call us masters. Yeah. Thank you. Master debaters. Yep. Thank you.
Never heard that one before, Aaron. Way to go. Anyways, subscribe to our podcast. That's next week on the show everybody. It is a it's a it's a hoot and a holler as we like to say here on the bliffing bar It's a it's a hoot and a half All right, that'll do it for episode 193 hopefully Robert and Ryan aren't listening this episode Aaron take us out of here.
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Don't tip your Qdoba guy. Okay. Let's, let's chill out. The tipping has got out of control. I get it. But like, let's tip the people that need to be tipped. is a little tipping button on everything. bartenders and servers. Yeah. People in the service industry. Valet. Yeah. Taxi drivers. Valet. You're uh you're you're you're lady of the night. Right. Like she did a lot of things for you. I went to like a prostitute. You're like tattoo artist, right? What about a tattoo artist that's a prostitute?
You're getting stuck many ways. You got to tip 30 % for that because they double the work. Oh, no, there's too many ways we goodbye. Goodbye. All right, buddy. Thank you so much for listening to the Believe It or Not podcast. We'll see you next week for episode 194.