you Welcome to the Oblivion Bar podcast with your host, Chris Hacker and Aaron Knowles. Hello everyone and welcome back to the Oblivion Bar podcast. Joining me on the show is the greatest couple in comics. Now, I know a lot of you don't need me to continue on. You automatically know who that is, but I will just because they're some of my best friends in the podcasting world. Some of my best friends just in general.
I don't know if that's weird to say virtually here, but I feel like I can often, I just have the best time when I'm around them. Brad and Lisa Gullickson of the comic book couples counseling is joining us here today on the Oblivion Bar podcast. Welcome. Thank you. give you full permission to say we're super duper close. I'm into it. Actual real life friends in person and online. Isn't that how this all started, right? We all just became mutuals via social media or otherwise.
I wonder if I have any friends that I didn't initially meet online. Same, same. All the people that I talk to are all podcasters now. Not just podcasters, too. They're comic book podcasters. So we're all just talking about either our, we're complaining about our show. or we're complaining about comics or bragging about our show or bragging about a comic we love. It's like those four things usually. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, who you got coming on your show?
Well, you know, everybody that's listening right now, everyone already knows you guys have been on the show before. We've done panels, you know, at New York Comic Con. Every time we're together at a show, we do something together. So they're very familiar with you guys, I'm sure. But Chris, I'm going tell you right now, that is not true. I was just at Baltimore Comic Con. Unfortunately, Lisa wasn't able to attend.
Bob Harrison of the Pop Culture Squad invited me on to a panel about comics journalism. We do a whole hour talking about the state of the industry, the state of the medium, like tips and tricks, like our best days, our worst days, that kind of thing. And at the end, we open up Q &A and the first question is like, Hey, I don't know who any of you people are, but I'm curious what you think about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, yeah, we're going to fight between Spider-Man and Spawn.
But that tracks that tracks like I often think that the comic book fandom is pretty small. Like we're a tight, tiny community. But you forget when you look at the numbers of Absolute Batman number one selling over 200,000 that actually it's pretty, pretty large community. And guess what? We don't get 200,000 listens a week. Not yet. Not yet.
Well, yeah, I would say in terms of our listeners, which is, you I don't know how many that would even be, but people that listen to the Oblivion Bar know who you guys are because again, You guys are on the show. We've done things together. So I think they're at least familiar, but I will say just for the layman, could you please just give an overview of the comic book couples counseling? We are Brad and Lisa Gullickson of Comic Book Couples Counseling.
And the original concept of our show, though we have meandered over the years, is that we take a comic book couple like Scott Summers and Jean Grey, and we take a self-help book like The Five Love Languages. and we apply that self-help book to the comic book couple and we apply both books to our relationships to make our lives better.
And now we're like lately we've just been slamming interviews and in interviews we generally try to glean life lessons either about being a creative or just about life in general. or something thematically related to the story. I think generally we dig into the story. think that's mostly what the focus of our conversations are. And I think that also does end up separating us from a lot of other interview shows. But our main tenet is that we read books to talk about human existence.
That's what stories are for and that's what comics are for. And you know, I will say, and I'm not just saying this because you guys are my friends, you guys put on some of the best interviews in our, you know, not just in podcasting, but comic podcasting across the board. I definitely will lean on you guys on bottom Milligan of the short box. Of course, David Harper over at off panel as some of the folks who just have great conversations with these creators that we love.
And, you know, like Lisa, you had said a moment ago, you guys are an absolute heater when it comes to interviews. I haven't seen you guys do a counseling session in a bit because. You've just been having some of the greatest creators in the medium on just back to back to back to back. Yeah, we had an episode back in March that was celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And then, of course, we started the year talking about Scott Summers and Emma Frost.
And we do owe our listeners the conclusion to that counseling session. There's definitely a pin in it. We are going to go back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I will say selfishly as a Patreon member, I love when you guys are getting together and you just like press record after a movie and just talk through it. That's some of my favorite episodes for you guys because it's just a fun dynamic where obviously Brad, you're a big, I don't know if the term cinephile is evil or if it isn't. You love movies.
I like movies. Yeah, love movies. Lisa loves movies. I love movies. And I love hearing people talk about movies. I'd say outside of comic book podcasting, movie podcasting is maybe a very close second, if not sometimes the first. So I really love those little segments that you guys put on for your Patreon members.
Yeah, we were going to do one for Joker 2, but unfortunately Lisa couldn't join me to the press screening and then I saw it by myself and then I was like, I don't want to talk about this. Seems like a movie you just don't really want to talk about that For those of you who like it or not. was super looking forward to it. It's a person who loves musicals. Yeah, and I do want to watch it again with you. I just don't know if the world needs us to contribute to the discourse of Joker 2.
There's a lot of that right now. Yeah. Well, you guys are on today, not just to hang and talk, which we're going to do, but I do want to get into a little bit of why you guys are actually here, which is extremely exciting. You guys are contributing to a Pots and Panels Kickstarter, which is a food inspired anthology, from what I understand. Am I explaining that correctly? Yeah. It's a comic cookbook.
You know, it has comics and it has recipes and one of those recipes belongs to us and one of those comics belongs to us. It's an incredible anthology. It's over 400 pages. The Table of Contents has everyone from Hillary Barta to Steve Niles to Tim Seeley to Phil Hester and Andy Parks, Neil Clyde, and somehow Brad and Lisa Gullickson are in there too. Can we ask? how that came about. see that it was Chuck Shatterly who...
Shatterly, ...sat... excuse me, Shatterly that's sort of campaigning and putting this all together. How did you guys get in contact to get involved in this? Well, Pots and Panels reached out to both of us and asked if we might have an idea for this anthology. And I actually really haven't had a conversation with them properly saying why they thought comic book couples counseling would have. an interesting food related comic to contribute. I'm just glad that they asked.
And of course, when someone asks you to contribute to something that has a table of contents that's so rich already, and it was rich already, they were like, well, Phil Hester's on board and Neil Clyde's on board. Neil had been on the show. So the first thing I did is I reached out to Neil. was like, is this a legit thing? And Neil's like, no, yeah, no, this is legit. And I was like, really? And then I said, Lisa, do you have a food related idea?
Because I don't know if I do, but we have to come up with one. And I said, I have an idea. You're going to hate it, but this is what it should be. And Brad's response was, no, could not possibly be that. Yeah, I did. And that's what it is. Lisa had the idea, like within minutes of us contemplating joining Pots and Panels. And then it took me like 24 to 48 hours before I agreed with Lisa that that was the idea to pursue.
Now, let me before we get really into this, because I do want to talk about you guys have seven pages within this Pots and Panels Kickstarter. So it's not like, you know, it's seven pages. We're super proud. That's still cool. That's still really cool. Honestly, I'm not that's not me trying to downplay it. I'm just I'm wondering how much I want to get into it. I know you guys have talked to a couple of other podcasts about this.
I don't know if they've come out yet, but I just see it sort of seen through social media that. around the time that this conversation will be coming out. I'm sure you guys will be visiting other shows. And I'm wondering, do you guys want to get into it or do you want to sort of play around, like around the story? I feel like, and Lisa, feel free to tell me if you don't feel this way. I feel like we can talk about it. Chris, you're the only person who has read the comic besides my mom and dad.
Okay. Awesome. then of course, rarefied air. Our patrons did get the script. The first people to read it after Gerald von Stoddard, our illustrator, and Chuck and Jason, they read that script and patrons, being lovely patrons, said nice things about it. But you're the first person who's actually had the letter layout. And so we're actually a little nervous to talk I don't believe in spoilers.
So I don't think that there's anything that you could ask where it would be like, that would ruin the ending of the story. So I say, ask whatever you want to ask, unless you don't want to ask us any questions, then we'll just talk about whatever you want to talk about. We will see ourselves out. I want to talk about preacher. That's why I'm here today. We're going to about preacher. And I tried it once. It was not for me. Sad, sad for our marriage. No, no, I do want to talk about it.
I just didn't know how much you guys wanted to get into it. And I think, you know, a good spot I think would be to start. Brad, you were talking a little bit about how you've got Gerald von Stoddard is the artist on this. I looked up some of his work. I looked up his Instagram. Obviously, like you said, I'm hashtag blessed because I've gotten to read these seven issues. So I feel very honored. Thank you both for allowing me to see this early.
But I will say my first sort of thought going through this was Gerald has this. And tell me if I'm off base here. It feels very EC. It's almost like a very, it's almost horror inherently. it's absolutely horrific. Gerald has an aesthetic that does harken a little bit back to EC, I think he does grotesque really, really well. And when we were talking about our idea, we actually pitched the idea before we wrote the script as an EC-like story.
But then as we broke the story down, it became less of an easy story. But because it deals with panic attacks and phobias and terror, we still wanted somebody like Gerald who could land all those emotions. And we thought he knocked it out of the park. It's a story about being scared and having fear and how everybody has it. And it's not always rational, but we still have to kind of like make space for it.
And I feel like particularly in the pages that deal specifically with our phobias, I really feel like Gerald really brought it. Yeah. I also love the page that deals with other people's phobias. Yeah, that one too. Yeah, we've got. So again, if we're to go spoilers, I'll just sort of say here, I think it's really interesting. You know, we got a little bit of a so Nicole Kidman and Kylie Jenner apparently are afraid of butterflies. I didn't know that.
That's interesting. We got Matthew McConaughey, was afraid of revolving doors. Yeah. So that was interesting. Oprah Winfrey is afraid of balloons. Now, this is and I think this is probably the most common one. We have Justin Turmalake is, of course, afraid of spiders. He's arachnophobic. Yeah. Yeah. And then we get into two, know, Brad's here, which, you know, I don't want to get into the story quite yet. I want to talk about the setup here. So, OK, as.
you know, podcasters in the comic world, we are always trying to find out the process, right? Like that's some of the most interesting things about talking to creators. And now you guys are currently in the seat. You guys are the creators. I'm the interviewer. So you have to expose your belly to me and the listener right now. And that my first question when we turned that belly over is what was the process? Did you guys go full Stan Jack and just, you know, do the Marvel method?
Or did you open up Words for Pictures by Brian Michael Bendez or you do a little Scott McCloud? What was the process here? Our process really started with a lot of fantasy, a lot of just like thinking, a lot of going on long walks and kind of like talking it out. Yeah. And then when we felt that red hot heat of the deadline, it happened to align with our 15 year wedding anniversary. That's right, Lisa. And we had, I'm horrible. Like I'm horrible. I don't know the date of our anniversary.
I don't know how long we've been together. June 27th, we've been together for 17 years. We've known each other for 18. It's so lucky that we celebrate anything. You need to invest it in one of those Google calendars. Just put everything in that, that way it notifies you. She's got one. I've got one. Have I ever looked at it? Debatable.
But it lined up perfectly with our 15th wedding anniversary and we had already planned to go on a bit of a pilgrimage to Dover, New Hampshire, which is the land of Eastman and Laird. We went to go see the site where the Ninja Turtles were conceived of and were delivered.
so- And they recently, know, the town of Dover had erected You know a ceremonial plaque at the end of the street and then at the location where the house used to be it's no longer there There is a manhole cover that is decorative with the four brothers on it.
that's cool And yeah, and then there's a really nice comic book store in Dover And we wanted to make sure that we bought a Ninja Turtle comic if they had one and they had a lot So yeah, we bought comics we slept in Dover and we wrote in Dover. Yeah, so When it was time to finally write, we were sharing a hotel room, very romantic. Can we go back just a little bit?
Before we even got to Dover and we were talking about the concept of the story, the thing that really sealed the deal, like at the end of the two days of when I was contemplating it, is a page appeared in my head and it's the origin of my fear page. You know, this fear that I have, I've had since, you know, since I was a young, young, young, young child. I don't really remember life without this fear. But my parents believe that this fear was born from a specific moment.
And they've I don't remember this moment, but they've told me this moment in graphic detail many times over the years. And I imagined that image or that moment. as a nine panel grid homage to a page from Darwin Cook's The Hunter. And there's a moment in Darwin Cook's The Hunter where Parker is strangling a man to death. And in the top three panels, we see the strangulation occurring. In the fourth panel, he does it or he's almost strangled the guy.
And then the fifth panel, the center panel, the nine panel grid is we change up the scene. to a close up of the man expiring. And I thought, that's how we do Myphobia's birth with that central panel being the bullseye of the violent act that started Myphobia. Yeah. And that revelation is what sold the idea to yourself. I got excited. I said, I want to see that page. I want to pay tribute to Darwin Cook, one of the best to ever do it. Let's do this story.
So when it was finally time to put a Word document together, We decided to do like we do for the podcast is kind of divide and conquer. So the story is from my perspective about where I was coming from when I recognized that Brad had a phobia. So you're sort of the narrator of this of this story. That's right. I'm the narrator. So it's all first person from Lisa. Yeah. And so I wrote all of that stuff. That was all me.
And then Brad wrote a lot of the page description and he wrote the description of the incident. And we did Pomodoro Method. So Pomodoro Method comes from those like little egg timers that are shaped like tomatoes. And it's for people who cannot focus their thoughts for long periods of time. So we took the timers on our Apple iPhones, not sponsored, whoa. Not a sponsor of show, everybody. And we set it for 30 minutes. And for 30 minutes, Brad would write in the room.
I would go out to the hotel lobby and I would write. We found early on that we couldn't be in the same room and write. Because Brad writes on the outside of his body. Like he likes to talk things out. Panel three, sentence one. mean, SFX, boom. You're being silly. That's actually what happens. Brad does read his writing out loud as he does it. And he asks for a lot of feedback. If you are there, he's like, what do you think about this? I'm like, I'm trying to think of my own thing.
And I write on the inside. I'm like the kind of person who you see writing at a coffee shop where the coffee shop is just like a din of noise and there's like one focused person. That person is me. So I went out to the lobby and I did my assignment while he did his assignment. Then when the timer would go off, we would check in with each other going like, okay, are you ready? And if we had completed our assignment, we would come back together, share what we had wrote, give each other notes.
And like, we actually really shocked ourselves. that we could do it. Because a lot of times, especially like, a lot of times when we collaborate, we butt heads actually a lot. There was one other element that you missed. Ooh, see what I'm talking about? We're like not getting along right now. Before we broke off to write in our separate corners. we did write an outline. Is that what you're gonna say? We created an outline visually.
So I had a little journal and we laid out what the panels would be, what's on the page. and what the panels would generally look like. And on that initial outline, we had eight pages because Pots and Panels came to us and said, you can have eight pages. We're like, well, we're going to use every page. But then in the process of actually scripting it, we're like, we actually don't need this extra page. I think the ending is the seventh page.
Yeah. OK. Well, yeah, I just want to go back on a couple of things. Number one, the nine panel grid. Tom King, Alan Moore to be so proud of you guys for that one there, including the inclusion of that. Thank you. And I noticed that as soon as I saw that fifth page in the story, I was like nine panels. My King brain starts to ring a little bit because he's, know, he's obviously notorious for that now in today's world.
But and then secondly, again, I don't know why I'm stepping around like tiptoeing around this because I do want to love it. But the middle panel that you were sort of speaking on a moment ago is we see for everyone that. Hopefully everyone gets to read this when it eventually gets funded through Kickstarter. I don't know if you guys will be able to share pages, but I'm going to sort of describe the page, if I may, for the listener.
So basically when Brad was talking about this fear of sort of being born, this moment that his parents had been telling him about, it's basically Brad in this sort of feeding chair that you have, you to a guy chair. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, Brad stands up at one point, there's a counter and he knocks his head in the middle of He's an infant in this, he's a toddler. He's not a grown man in a high chair. I don't know why I had to say that.
He's not a six foot five full grown man in this toddler chair. He is a young boy, he knocks over the tray, he is leaning over to grab something from the counter as kids often do, just getting into shit like they always do. And he slips, he knocks his head. Now, my first thought is, this is why Brad is an obsessive like me. We've had things happen in our lives. This is yours, you knocked your head. when you were a baby and now you just really, really love Stanley Kubrick.
And for me, I really love Silver Surfer because I got hit too hard one time at football or something. I don't know. I don't know where it came from. But anyway, I just really love that that's it's so interesting to hear you highlight and specifically talk about that moment where that was a conscious decision to have the sort of the birth of this phobia in a way, right? According to your parents. I'm going to tell you right now, I've cracked my head. many times.
Brad as a toddler was always getting into, like he was constantly injuring himself. And as a high schooler, I have several scars that if I were to shave my head, you would see all kinds of injuries that have occurred. I've had a brick thrown at my skull that left stitches. I flung myself off of a rock onto another rock that left stitches. I was on a playground wall and I slipped off that and knocked my head. So I've actually knocked my head several times.
most interesting one was he, as a toddler, he ran through... I was a little older. I was like four or five years old. He ran through a glass door. A plate glass door. A plate glass door. so his Was it clean and you just tried to run through it or what? A friend from England was visiting and we were running around our house in Virginia Beach and... I I don't know. I thought the door was open. Door wasn't open. And the two of us, both of us, and I think actually Anthony went through first.
So he hit the glass, he shattered it. And then I came on top of him and we rolled in the glass together. Yeah. So his tiny cuts all over his body. But that was not the incident. Like, Brad's not afraid of windows. No, no. That had no psychological repercussions. Yeah, but my dad did. Pulling all the glass out of my body. tiny, Brad. Lisa, I mean, think that's a great transition into why do you think your parents think that, and we'll get to the fear everyone here in just a moment.
I think it's very interesting. His story is called The Vegetable. So we can infer that this phobia is dealing with the vegetable. Brad, why do you think that your parents attribute this moment to your phobia? Because I think that the vegetable fear that I have that is very serious and when I was younger it was even more so and caused scenes in my parents' lives, they had to make sense of this very irrational thing.
And so they go through this whole process of, well, was there ever a violent moment or was there ever a memorable moment involving this vegetable that would then subconsciously create a fear in our son? And they go, well, there was this one time where he was eating this vegetable and he cracked his skull. And then there's another element where I was getting all the x-rays done.
And when they had me strapped into this little baby papoose, as they unwrapped me, then the vegetable, all the vegetables rolled all over my body. So gross. I don't even like talking about it. my gosh. the image of that, of the vegetable post accident, with all the vegetable mixed in with the blood plus the crying baby screams and all the stress that my parents were experiencing in that moment. I think just creates a really memorable parenting moment.
And if you suddenly have a son who's afraid of this thing and you have this story to attach to this fear, it just makes sense. Whether that's actually true or not, I don't know. I feel like the question of life is why am I the way that I am? And I think a lot of it goes to like, when we enter this world, the time where we're seeing everything for the first time, we are so dumb. Like as kids, are just so, like as babies, there is no one dumber than a freshly born baby.
And it's just like, and that's when you learn like, this is what your life is going to be like. know? Like it's gonna be like, you're just gonna be sitting, eating a vegetable. And then all of a sudden you're going to experience horror and that's life, baby Brad. Welcome to the world. Yeah. Yeah. Now, okay. I don't want to name drop here, but this is interesting.
I feel like we we're treading onto a conversation in our Latin, our episode that we had before we went on our hiatus over here at the oblivion bar. We sat down with Brian K von. We talked about how Hazel has little pieces of not only Alana, but also Marco, right? And we sort of, we both came to the conclusion and I'm sure Brian already had this cause he's a genius, but He sort of thought that as babies, as young people, as freshly born people, we sort of come into the world half-baked, right?
Like, of course we pick up certain things from not only our parents, but people around us. But some of the things about us, some of the most important things about us are just sort of ingrained in us for whatever reason. And I bring all that up to bring up this. Brad, you said something a moment ago that I found really interesting as well, which is you said it was an irrational fear. This fear that we're talking about in this story is irrational. And it made me think for a quick moment.
I remember thinking, well, what's my fear? What am I afraid of? Because as a Midwestern, relatively athletic man, I don't feel fear on a regular, even semi-regular basis. Like it's- gonna be great. Right. Yeah. Like as a woman, I'm a dream. You walk out of your apartment, it's fear, just a big pink balloon letters in front of your face. For me, it's not like that. I can go to the bar by myself. I can go to the movies by myself. I can go on a run by myself. I can do all these things.
So it made me think, what am I afraid of? And for me, it's heights. And heights is one of those common fears, right? Like it's one of those things that a lot of people get because it's sort of fight or flight. We're up high. We think if we fall, we're dead, right? That's a rational fear. Well, okay. That is more rational than that's fear. Well, here's the thing though. I make all that point to make this point is that I think all fear is sort of irrational, right?
Fear is a reaction that we have to save ourselves. Like, it's almost like our fight or flight is taking over. And we think if we do this thing or if we experience this thing, something bad is going to happen. So I just stay away. But like, I do think that fear does serve a function, you know, especially, you in our Cro-Magnum days. But, you know, and to this day, right? Like, you know, I'm afraid of fire.
So when I'm cooking on the stove, I know to be careful and cautious because I've... I have touched flame before and it hurts. You know, when you're chopping things up, I'm afraid of cutting myself because once upon a time I cut myself and I had to go to the emergency room. You know, I think there's degrees of rationality when we're discussing fear. And when you have a fear that few people share, you feel very othered. And, you know, my fear became very embarrassing.
And it's a big deal that I'm putting this out in the world because I am also afraid that then people will then tease me by sending this vegetable to me somehow. And please, I'm begging you, do not do this. Do not do that. Do not do it. It's a legitimate fear. Like it grosses him out. Yeah, it's beyond gross. It's scary. It's scary. It's scary. It shouldn't be. It's kind of dumb that it is. the other thing you hear is like, Well, you just got to grow up.
You know, got to grow up and deal with it because you're going to encounter this vegetable. And guess what? I do. I do encounter this vegetable quite often. And I've become a fan of a lot of food that involves this vegetable. And I've been able over the many decades that I have lived to enjoy food with this vegetable by kind of creating a black hole in my mind as I eat this thing. But like one thing that I think should not be missed. is that Brad is not the only person with this fear.
And we don't really know the origin of so many fears. And we assume that it is because of some kind of traumatic event in our lives. But there is another fear that is very common that is often confused with Brad's fear related to Brad's fear, which is like the trick-a-phobia, the people who scared, who's scared of tiny holes. Or, you know. Well, that's the whole point of that page with Oprah.
and Justin Timberlake and Matthew McConaughey and Nicole Kidman is, you know, when I finally revealed this phobia to Lisa, part of the conversation was, well, you know, these weird fears actually aren't that weird. Many people have weird fears and even your weird fear has a name, which means other people have it. And so there's actually a little community of weird fears. And, know, Matthew McConaughey is so cool.
And like the thing with sharing, the thing with sharing, I sometimes you stupid stuff. When you share a fear, there is the idea that I'm going to be teased. I'm going to be, you know, abuse. I'm going to be people are going to try to cure me against my will. I'm going to be judged and nobody likes to be judged. But when you are in a relationship that is a loving, trusting relationship. by sharing your fears, that person can take care of you and love you better.
Like I'm a person who also has a phobia that goes unnamed, very much- Unnamed in the comic. Unnamed in the comic, but very much alluded to, where I wanted to allude to it in a way where other people who have my phobia would see and recognize it. But like when I- share my fear with friends or whatever, it is so that they can help protect me. So I have a community that protects me. I just, like when I discovered that Brad had a fear, I was just so, like I was sad that he had a fear.
think, you know, wouldn't it be beautiful if we were all just Chris hackers out there in the world, so confident. They're like, hey, I'm afraid of heights, all right. Don't get me up in like some stairs or something. Yeah, no, no, what are they, hot air balloons? for you. You know, like to me, I saw his little weird Z and I saw it as an opportunity to take care of him. And I knew that by taking care of him, I knew that he could take care of me.
Yeah. And that's ultimately what we hope the comic is about. I think that is beautifully illustrated, I think, not just physically, but I think in the story itself, I think it's very apparent from the beginning, whether you know Brad and Lisa or you don't, I think just reading the story, know. immediately Lisa that you are in it with him. And I think just speaking what you're saying here, it does, you know, misery breeds company in a way. Right.
So if you're able to share that with someone and be like, Hey, listen, this is a real thing. This is what's happening. If they can't make it better, they can at least be there for you. And sometimes that's more important, right? Just to understand what the person that you care about is going through in that moment, whether you can make it better or not is really besides the point. It's more so that you just make sure that they know that you're there for them for whatever they need.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and so much about how we've come to understand our weird Z's is that, you know, I think when I first discovered Lisa's phobia and her general anxiety disorder, I was reading things. I remember reading books. I know it was so cute. He would go like, you know, I was diagnosed with OCD. He was he got like an OCD book. We were working at Barnes and at the time. had eight hours in a bookstore. You know, I would go to that.
It's a giant database of anything that you want to learn about. And what is a woman? Let's look it up. you joke. But what is a woman? I've read that book and haven't answered the question yet. Women for dummies. I hear they're from Venus. Terrible book, trash book. Listen to our Saga episodes. shoot, what the heck was I saying? but you know, I would, I would try to read and understand about anxiety as a whole and Lisa's particular anxiety disorder.
And then I would go like, okay, well, how can, how can I help Lisa just be a hundred percent normal? You know, and you learn quickly on that it's not about fixing anyone. One, you can't fix anybody. You can't even fix yourself. Well, that's, I mean, you can. No, that's not true. You can better yourself, but you're going to be you at the end of day. yeah. Like one of the most important things about this comic that I want people to understand is that neither me nor Brad are cured.
Yes. You know, Brad still has his phobia. I still sometimes have panic attacks in public at Disneyland right after San Diego Comic Con. And security has to be called. It happens. It happens. But the fact of the matter is. We do not find that repellent about each other. We're not, we are not disgusted by each other. We do not judge each other. We just know that that's who the person is.
like, you know, in exploring the weird z's of Lisa, anxiety disorder, inner phobias, you kind of fall more in love with Lisa. I fell more in love with Lisa. Some people did not. Some... There were people who I shared that feel fear with that did not fall in love with Lisa and broke up with Lisa. And that is their right.
But I think that's also an underlining message of our of our very short story as well is that you have to find the person that you can be completely open, that you can drop the performance of and just be you, you and all your weirdsies. Isn't that love? Right. Like you're going to you're we can get along with lot of people. We can be attracted to a lot of people.
We can find common ground with a lot of people, but at the end of the day, and you guys are the love experts, so I'm gonna ask you, I will say what I find really interesting about love is finding that person that is okay with the bad things, right? we all, all of us should be self-aware. And if we can find someone who doesn't judge us at our worst, right? I think that's definitely a building block if nothing else of love. Yeah, I would change the word bad things to weird things.
But like to me, like Brad, when it comes to our relationship have a growth mindset. We don't think that our relationship is perfect. We are trying to make ourselves better all of the time so that we can be better for each other. And we're constantly messing up and we're constantly getting on each other's nerves. You know, it may have happened during a podcast recording session.
But like to me, like it's less about like getting fixed and more about growing a growing and adapting like you look at a tree. Yeah, you look at a tree that grows through a sidewalk. You know what I mean? Or you you see like, I don't know. Are you the tree or are you the sidewalk? My anxiety is the sidewalk and I'm the tree. And I'm just like, nobody's walking here. That's the point. That's a Captain America quote, right? You got to you got to. Like an oak tree, you got to stand there tall.
yeah. That's right. But like oak trees, you know, they're not perfect. Right. That's my message today is fuck oak trees. you take nothing else from this episode, fuck oak trees. All right. It's all we like birch over here. That's it. Nothing else. I don't know if our list of our listeners. I've claimed your show is mine. I don't know. I'm sure a lot of our listeners are the same. I'm sure.
I don't know if our listeners could tell or not, but, know, it's This is the first time that we've ever really talked about this story. It's the first time we've ever really talked about these fears and we're learning how to talk about them. So I feel more vulnerable talking about the seven page short story than I've ever felt on the five years of Comic Book Couples Counseling podcast episodes. It's a hell of a thing to go like, this is who I really am.
Well, we said we were going expose those underbellies here in this episode. unsubscribe. No, no, no, this is good. This is all good stuff. you know, Brad, honestly, if I may, I again, I feel so appreciative that you guys allow me to read this early and I'm obviously going to back this. I hope everybody that's listening this backs this at some point. When does this go live? If they can afford it. Sure. Yeah, of course. So I believe it's live right now to your listeners.
It launched on October 7th, October 8th, October 8th. October 8th. Okay, cool. Yeah. So it will already be live everyone. I will have a link in the show notes just for everybody, just in case, but of course, pots and panels over on Kickstarter. But my exposing goes a little further here, Brad.
And you can tell me no, if you want, but I'm just curious because I was talking to this about my girlfriend, talking to this about the way I was talking to my girlfriend about this the other day, about my fear. Again, the heights is one thing. I also, I sort of view this in horror films as well, right? Like that's why some of us love horror films. We are in October after all, this is the spoopy season. So we like to sort of trick ourselves into fear.
I love whenever I get swept up in a horror film, it makes me feel. It happens less and less as I get old and old and old and old. Exactly same. And I want to peel back a layer here, Brad, if you don't mind. We talk about you, you get, we get looks at this fear throughout the book and these seven pages that we have here. And of course, Lisa is narrating this whole thing. I'm curious from your perspective. What does this feel like for you when you see this food, which is again, it's a vegetable.
Can I say what the vegetable is? Yeah, sure. OK, I don't know if that bothers you or not. It's peas, everybody. It's peas or it's small circular things. It's polsophobia. Yeah. And it and mostly it's peas, but it can be anything. It can be blueberries. It can be. Can you do a bubble? No. Well, he can, but he has to really disassociate. I like boba tea, but it's like, you know, like. You know, the thing I love the most that involves this vegetable or samosas.
I mean, you know, I love eating food and, you know, you'll you'll bite into a samosa. You like this tastes so good. And then I'll catch it in the corner of my eye and then I will get a shudder. Yeah. A shiver that ripples across my whole body. And I have this thing and I don't know if this is imaginary, but I call it the wavy eyeball. sure. Yeah. Where I feel like a ripple, like a whirlpool go through my eyes.
In my imagination, if you're looking at me when I see one of these things, like my eyes roll all the way back into my head. It does get pretty close. He does look pretty disgusted. like... Do get the sweats? Yeah. I am super sweating right now, actually. And I get really, really hot. I get really, really hot. And depending on my mood on the day, you know, it can be worse or not as bad. There are days where I'll encounter it and it'll be like no big deal, you know.
But even if I'm walking down the frozen vegetable aisle and we walk past this wall of frozen versions of those goddamn things, that'll bother me. I was with the grocery at the grocery store with my dad not too long ago. And he wanted to go down to the vegetables because he wanted to go to the Brussels sprouts. But the Brussels sprouts right next to that thing. And I didn't like it. And I just turned my back to him. Yeah. It was like, I'm going to the magazine section, Dad. I'll see you in a bit.
But it's not like the fun fear. So like we both love horror, horror movies. And we do like that kind of like we watch true crime. We we really horror movies, roller coasters. I love heights. You know, when we were in Chicago, of course, we went up. to the top of the Sears Tower. I know it's not called that anymore, but come on, it's the Sears Tower. And I loved going into that glass box and just floating above the city. Yeah, that would be me sweaty and squiggly eyes.
If we were up there, if I was up there with you guys, we flirt with the darkness, right? But we would not. We would not watch a movie that centers around any of our phobias. And it will happen occasionally, right? I can think of a movie right now, Frailty, a great film with Bill Paxton, but there's a dinner table sequence and there's a big bowl of peas on the dinner table. I can't remember which, I think it's the first dinner. And you know, I think about that dinner table to this day.
That movie's old. Does it feel like peas are sort of exiting our culture a little bit? Like don't see peas as much as I used to. Yeah. Yeah. For Brad's sake, I hope it really is exiting. Luckily there like there is spring vegetables, so we are entering fall. So we're entering a safe zone. Yeah. But, but, but, but, but I have gotten so much better, everyone. I promise you. I can eat samosas. I can have boba tea, but it's one of those things where I just have to tell myself.
I like boba tea as I'm drinking it. This is great. I love this. It really is a love tank thing. Like if he is low anxiety, happy, go lucky, you know, like he can deal with whatever. But, know, we all know when we are on the edge, you know, just like stress wise, self-esteem wise, you know, maybe love tank wise, we're feeling hurt and we don't want to be messing with the things that make us feel the it.
well, like I said, I I found it really admirable that you were able to do this, you know, like, yeah. Sorry, I'm interrupting you. No, no, no. I'm excited. I'm so excited. I'm so nervous. I'm so squig squig down. That was the thing when Lisa pitched me the idea is like, you know, the story we should really write. It should be a memoir and it should be about your phobia.
And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. But as I was thinking about it and as that Darwin cook page came into my mind, I think because it was so scary to me or so, not scary, but like such a ridiculous idea because I rejected it so quickly. I was like, well, maybe I should run toward that rejection because it is pretty weird. And maybe that is interesting. And I don't know what other types of stories are going to be in this Pots and Panels anthology. I've seen them now.
There's lots of good stuff, a lot of different genres, a lot of different styles. There are other horror stories in there, but there's only one story about the vegetable. I think it fit the assignment so well. It just made sense after I thought about it for a couple of days. What was the recipe that you guys provided for this book? Are you able to say that yet? Yeah, yeah. It's a casserole version of vegetable pot pie. And early in our relationship, after I found out Brad's phobia.
I had diagnosed Brad's phobia from my armchair. Dr. Lisa is here and ready. I was like, well, what are all of the foods that you feel like you love but can't eat because of the vegetable? And chicken pot pie was one of the first things he mentioned. And I was like, that's what I should make for you. I should make chicken pot pie. You can never trust the chicken pot pie. Now here's the problem. I'm afraid of raw chicken and most cooked chicken.
So it took me a long time to get around to even this iteration of a casserole version of a pot pie. So it is a highly adaptable recipe. If you're afraid of any of the vegetables or any of the ingredients, they're easily swapped out. And I'm really proud of the recipe. took some testing. I'd never really had to create a recipe before. Yeah. That was the thing. Like I told Lisa's like, we don't need to create a whole new recipe. We can just like lightly adapt a classic. Overachiever over here.
I didn't start from scratch. I did a lot of research and I came up with something. We tested it. It's yummy. Yeah, we're going to test it again. It's squick free for us, which is very good. No wiggly eyes included. Yeah. And it's a sneaky vegan recipe. So if you're vegan, is very like it's vegan forward. And if you want it to be not vegan, you can use whatever you want. Well, and I will say sort of all encompassing. I think you guys are some of the more wonderful people I've known.
And I think the story not only highlights what's so great about you guys, but it's It also sort of highlights how we should all react to stuff like this. You know, we talked about it multiple times throughout this conversation that, you know, when people present their fears, if they do expose their own, belly for whatever reason, I catch myself. And I want to tie this all together is that my reaction often is to laugh. You know, I'm so that's how I rationalize things.
And I asked you Brad about how you handle things when you're afraid. That's how I handle things when I'm afraid. If I am freaked out, I sweat and I laugh. I don't know why that's my reaction, but it is. And you know, I think. What this story does so well is that you guys are there for each other.
That's what I'm trying to say here is that like the whole point of this whole thing is that like regardless of what you're afraid of or whatever your thing is, if you've got someone there, someone there to lean on, none of this is weird. Actually, in my opinion, I think it all is fine because eventually you're going to have someone there that you can lean on.
Yeah, I like because of my anxiety disorder and my just being a generally anxious person like I did face a lot of rejection and judgment and teasing. and those types of things. But I never stopped putting my anxiety out there because I just wanted people to know why I was crying. So I think that by putting your real self out there and going like, these are the things that trigger me, in a tight spot, I'm gonna be a mess and that's just who I am.
by just wearing yourself on your sleeve, you're going to find the people who are like people who are like you. If you're out in the universe trying to be not like yourself, the people who like you are not going to like you. And I think the thing that I have learned through loving Lisa is that life outside of your skull is very different than what's inside your skull.
You know, so often you'll approach something It could be an idea, it could be a comic book, a piece of art, and you're gonna judge it based on your being, your experiences, what has made you. And sometimes you get caught in the trap of, well, that's how anybody would judge this thing, right? But the people around you are living entirely different experiences, and we're all on so many different types of spectrums.
that the best thing that we can do is be curious about what actually is going on in somebody else's skull and not assume what's going on in somebody else's skull. Yeah, we're all unreliable narrators in a way, right? Well, that's true too. You know, Lisa, you sort of alluded to this earlier. I am so unabashedly Chris at all times.
And I think it's just because I ceased caring what anyone thought and sort of what you guys were saying in terms of like You sort of just have to be yourself and the folks that like you do and the folks that don't don't. And that's not, you know, there's nothing you can help. People are going to not like you for no reason. People are going to love you for no reason.
But I think it's really important that when we find someone like you guys have found each other and like people in our lives who accept us for who we are and, fully embrace that and also cater to certain things in that other person's life, we got, we got to hold onto that. We got to grasp at that. We need to keep that close. And I think that's very, I almost it's sweetly. That's not a word. It's very charming and perfectly illustrated in this seven page story.
I think just with peas, which Brad doesn't love. So I think we got about maybe about 10 minutes here and we continue. I don't care. But I want to talk about just podcasting comics because when we're together, every time that us three are together or us three with other people are together, we're often just talking about all types of things that the cons and such. We're to be at New York here in about two weeks. Everyone that's listening to this right now, we're probably already there.
The third week of October. What are you guys doing to get prepared? You guys often have these incredible schedules of not only creator interviews, but panels and what have you. What's some things that you guys are getting prepared for if you can divulge? Well, this is going to be one of the most unique convention experiences of our lives. Like October is nuts for comic book couples counseling. I don't know how all this happened.
but we were invited by Readpop to host the Harvey Awards on Friday night. Yay, I'm so excited. Yeah, that's amazing. That is surreal. Making a comic is surreal and being asked to host the Harvey Awards on the centennial of Harvey Kurtzman, a cartoonist that we consider to be one of the founding fathers of comics. You put him up there with Jack Kirby and Will Eisner and Bill Gaines and... Siegel and Schuster and Charles Schultz.
like, know, Kurtzman means so much to this community and whether people know they are being influenced by Harvey Kurtzman or not, they are being influenced by Harvey Kurtzman. So to lead the Harvey Awards this year is an immense honor, an immense honor. And we are crazy nervous about it. Yeah. So a lot of our energy is going towards preparing for that. But we also have a ton of like episodes coming out.
Like, you know, when we came out of San Diego Comic Con, we had got so much, so many interviews that were like, OK, well, we're going to have to put out two interviews a week to get all of this stuff out. And then it turned out to be three interviews a week. And we're like, we are never doing this again. That was like way too much. But now as we're preparing for New York Comic Con and everything happening with.
DC and the All In Initiative and then also like, you know, getting opportunities connecting through the Harvey board and all that stuff. We're doing three episodes a week, these two weeks leading up to New York Comic Con. And we are we are so excited and we are also overwhelmed. We don't do well at saying no. We're pretty excitable people. So when opportunities present themselves, we grab at them and We're learning to manage our schedules a little bit better.
you know, we're really exercising like how much can we do? How much can we do and in two weeks without completely losing our minds? the Harvey's is a situation we've never done before and it requires a lot more prep, a lot more conversations. different type of prep. Yeah, with people that manage the Harvey's every year. And yeah, like, you know, it's exciting. It's exciting. We're nervous about it, but we're also confident about it. It's going to be a good time.
Yeah. You guys working on your ratatat? Little jokes and all the We haven't even started scripting yet. we're still just yesterday, we just got the outline for how the whole thing is going to go. But it's a lot like writing our comics script where we're just kind of, you know, as we go throughout our day, we just kind of throw our like... In the ideal circumstance, I would love to say this or I would love to highlight that.
So I think like the first part of our creative process is always like, OK, I'm going to set this on my inner vision board and I'm just going to walk around with my heart and mind open and see what comes to us. actually, we have been going to like one of our like activities is, of course, going to use bookstores and going through the comics and stuff. And. Literally, there hasn't been a place we've gone where something of Harvey Kurtzman hasn't fallen into our lap.
So like right now we're very much in the capturing the spirit. Like, you know, yeah, yeah. You know, we're reading a biography of course, like we were we were already huge Kurtzman fans going into this. But as we are approaching the big day, we want to make sure that we're like living in the life of Harvey Kurtzman. And so, like Lisa said, these books are just jumping off of bookshelves for us. And it's like, we got to get that. We got to read this. We got to read that.
And I think if we can just accomplish one thing, it's just be reverent to Harvey Kurtzman while we're up there. Of course, like the thing that makes the Harvey Awards different from, the Eisners is it's a closed audience, right? It's really just the industry that's in attendance. observing the awards and the presentations and the speeches. And so with that, it's got a very different vibe, but also the industry is there, Like Marie Javids is there looking at you.
You're just like, She's got Heidi MacDonald looking at you. But Upside, it's like not three hours long. like 90 minutes. It's 90 minutes. And their categories are very like. Volume focus like they don't have like best writer best letterer, you know, like that kind of thing It's more like the broader categories. Yeah, they like to celebrate the entire work of the comic the entire work Yeah, I didn't realize it was only 90 minutes you guys how many jokes can you guys fit in 90 minutes?
That's not gonna be many jokes No election jokes. What what's going on? No jokes. No musical numbers utterly sincere like honestly the only guy Guidelines they gave us is like, hey, we would love it to end early. If you guys can knock this out in a solid 80 minutes, we are good to go. man. Well, you guys are nothing if not studied. I'll say that anytime you guys do anything, it feels like you guys are prepared and ready to go. Whether you guys really are or not, it comes across that way.
So I have no doubt that you guys will absolutely kill it. Now I just need to figure out a way to get there. I want to see this thing happen in real time. So I'll be your guys's trailer. Anytime you guys bumble or doing I'm like, whoa, yeah.
But. And I've said this, at least I've told you this, I'm going to tell everyone here, know, and I've brought, even told you this when we went to go see, or when we went to a third eye comics earlier this year, Lisa, you have been absolutely killing it with the color commentary commentary, Terry Jesus on the show. You are like the ultimate funny guy. that's so funny. Like you are legitimately, unironically hilarious in every episode of the combo couples counseling. That is so kind.
It's not like you haven't always been, but I feel like within the last year, you have you have like totally embraced the role of just like funny guy. I don't know if I'm like embracing a role as much as I'm just like like interviews are so so uncomfortable for me. And so when I do them like so even when I'm doing the intros and outros, I'm thinking about how uncomfortable I am talking to strangers. And I think like The silly billiness is kind of like how I cut tension, I guess. yeah.
I don't know. I grew up in a funny family. All of my siblings are hilarious. I think it's just, I don't know. I would love to take the compliment, but it's fully a defense mechanism. have no control no, I can't take this. apologize. Here are all the excuses of why I'm like this. Here's why I'm like this. I'm uncomfortable in my skin. Is that good podcasting? It's true. Yeah, that's how you, everyone, if you want to be funny, you just have to be really self-conscious.
That's how you do it everybody. Yeah. Well, you know, I want to, of course, yeah. And I want to quickly just go through some of the guests you guys have had on recently. And then maybe we can talk about maybe some people you'll be talking about. at New York. we've got Gail Simone was on recently talking about Misty, Jason Aaron talking about TMNT, Wes Craig talking about Kaia. We've got Joey and Sean over at the pedestrian, the pedestrian crew, Joshua Williamson, Tom King and Daniel Sampear.
That was a good one. I like how Tom just like kept budding in and you guys' conversation that time. was so funny. Judy Ba on for the third time. Yeah. Been on a couple of times. Yeah, three times. We're huge fans. Rom V that's, you know, Brad and I, talked about this conversation far in advance. We had Ram on the show here talking about, well, actually we had, we had both Ram and, why am I spacing his name now? The artist. no, no. artist. thank you. Evan Cagle.
We had them both on and that was a tough interview. And I think you guys absolutely killed it with that talking about Jack Kirby and the new God's book that's coming out here soon. we got Mark Wade and, Mark Mariko Tamaki. Jesus. I couldn't say her name. talking about Batman, Superman, all the things James Tynan talking about tiny onion.
my gosh. There's I mean, Heather Antos, Ryan North, Daniel Warren Johnson, Riley Rossimo on again, Alex Ross and Brad I text you this as I was listening to the conversation with you guys with Alex Ross and Steve Darnell talking about Uncle Sam. mean, honestly might be my new favorite CBCC conversation. It was so great. That was really special. That was a great conversation. They were wonderful.
Yeah. And you know, you guys often put on a good conversation, but it was so great to hear those just true geniuses talking about this book, a book that was Pretty unsung for a long time. think this election edition, if you want to call it, I guess that's what it's called, hopefully exposed a little bit more. It was just a great conversation. was if I were to present what you guys do so well on the Humble Couples Counseling, I would hand them this conversation with with Alex and Steve.
I think like the special sauce for that one is that they are such old friends. And, you know, a lot of that conversation was just Brad and Lisa, like giving permission and getting out of the way. Yeah. Aren't those the best interviews though? Just like, let them talk. Exactly. Yeah. Really proud of that. I mean, I think the last three months have been three of the best months of Comic Book Couples Counseling's career, lifespan, history, whatever you want to call it.
And, you know, I also just want to highlight our conversation with Patrick McDonald about Muts, which just celebrated his 30th anniversary. And he put out a beautiful book. called Breaking the Chain, the guard dog story that I would encourage Wednesday warriors to seek out. know, Mutts is not Superman, know, Mutts is not the X-Men. It's something very different.
But this guard dog story, which was a serialized story told over seven weeks in the pages of, you know, your syndicated newspapers, I found it to be an extremely beautiful book. that has lodged its way into my heart and into my brain and has me thinking about things differently. I think it is a book that is going to be very helpful going into the election for me. And Patrick McDonald as a human being and a cartoonist is somebody that I am folding into my titans of comics. Yeah, sure.
Yeah, I will say that. that interview with Patrick, which I haven't had a chance to listen to yet, but it's it's interviews like this because of course you talked to Scott Snyder and Christian Ward here recently as well, but it's conversations like those that again, I think and I apologize for butting you guys up continuously here, but I like it. You guys are some of the biggest cheerleaders in the medium, whether the masses see this or not. And I think they are.
like it, regardless of whether people were listening to the show or not, I think you guys would continue to still be just these giant cheerleaders for the medium and It's nice to see that you guys are able to finally write a comic. It's nice to see that you guys are hosting the Harvey Awards because it is people like you that we should be putting up on these pedestals on the stage and going, hey, this is why comics are cool.
Like if there was a poster child for, hey, comics are cool, dude, and here's why, it would be you guys holding up both sides of that sign. Well, it was really sweet when the Harvey board was laying out their qualifications for who is suitable for hosting or whatever. And it really came down to we want people who really love comics and know their stuff. you know, like, and I think that we would check and check. We would be those people regardless of whether we had a podcast.
have a podcast or not. And like just like you said, like we know that there's going to be a day when the interviews dry up. You know what I mean? But Brad. Lisa will still be having those conversations that we love to have. And maybe we'll have some time for some couple sessions. I don't know. You know, like it's like it seems like like we found a cheat code to talk to all of these really cool people.
And we really don't think we don't we really don't see it as anything that we've earned or deserved. We just see it as something like it is happening and we're just trying to embrace it as much as we can. Well, I love that and I love that for you guys. I'm so excited for this possum panels thing to go live. As you guys are listening to this conversation once again, it should already be live.
It'll be all over the socials, of course, and we'll go over that here in just a moment, but also check the show notes. If you guys want to just an easy access to support this awesome Kickstarter, if we want this thing to become real now is the time to do it. And I think supporting things on Kickstarter has become sort of a new thing for me. I've that's I've been doing it a lot more recently than I used to. It's addictive. It's a rewarding feeling, man.
It's it's really cool to support people that want to get things done. And, you know, sometimes the publishers don't believe in it or they can't for whatever reason. And Kickstarter is really valuable for that reason, that and Zoop and the, the other crowdfunding sites. So it's just really cool to see something like this exist. I want it to exist. And I think regardless of whether it funds, which let's be honest, this is going to fund.
think there's no way in my eyes, I'm going to knock on wood here live on the show just in case not, but I think. just based on the names involved and the support that you guys are gonna have. It feels like a sure fire thing and I hope it is. Yeah, mean the table of contents is so stacked.
The best thing about Kickstarter, we found we love to back Kickstarters and the best thing is like it's like giving a gift, a surprise gift to yourself in the future where we love to like as we approach our home like. doing like looking to see if there's like a flat package on our welcome mat is like when we see that like a little like, something, something's come in the mail. Like, is there a better feeling? I think not. I backed this thing a year ago. Exactly.
I do the same thing with pre-ordering because I'm a big physical media collector when it comes to movies and obviously comics and everything. And I do the pre-ordering of movies sometimes and I'll be like, I will actually delete confirmed emails. I just wanted to show up one day and be like, holy shit, there it is. Like I have it. And then some, I'm sure at some point I'm going to lose something and that's going to be a bad, bad deal.
But, but for now we, you know, it's fun that like I just show up and there's, you know, the 30th anniversary of a South by Southwest on my doorstep. I'm like, awesome. I can, I'm not South by Southwest Jesus. That's the film festival talking about North by Northwest. Everybody. are good. Yeah. But yeah, that's, that's sort of my approach to it. But I think we're sort of nearing the end here, everybody.
And I think, If we haven't articulated how important and how awesome this whole deal is, just reward the, I never reward rewind. can't talk to everybody. I am still, I guess I should just say here at the end of this conversation, this is the third interview that I've done. Everybody, the oblivion bar has obviously been on a hiatus for the last three, four months. I would say four months technically, because we interviewed Brian K Vaughan a month before we put out that conversation.
So it's really, it's been about four months as we've been interviewing. So I got to get back in and everybody, but I'm glad that it could be. you two that could help me sort of fine tune this whole process again. So before I let you go, firstly, can we get a tease of some folks you're gonna be talking to at New York if you have that yet? Yeah, like, you know, we're always nervous when we discuss interviews that actually- are not in the can. Yeah, so they might not happen.
They get a little superstitious about it. But, we should have a conversation out right now with Michael Allred. The artist extraordinaire. We should have a conversation coming out real soon with Cliff Chang talking about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Jason Aaron is coming back. Jason Aaron and then some people that will be involved with announcements that are happening at New York Comic Con. okay. Yeah, yeah, we're pretty excited about that. You guys teased something. It was like the biggest.
creator you were going to ever have on the show? it Claremont? that the one? No, no, no. The thing we were teasing, we never actually teased the biggest creator. What we were teasing was the Harvey Awards. So when you texted me like, who's the big creator you're coming on? I mean, I can't remember how you phrased it. You phrased it something like that. Something like that.
Anyway. And I was like, Brian Lee O'Malley, because at the time we were hopefully going to have a conversation with Brian Lee O'Malley. But guess what? It didn't happen. I asked and you put it in the universe and made it real and it just floated away. universe has been so freaking generous with us. if we're like, what? No Brian Lee O'Malley. can seriously go fuck ourselves. desperately want to hear your opinion of our next episode, which for your listeners will be out already.
Our conversation with Chris Claremont. We've had that chat. The title of the episode is 17 minutes and 43 seconds with Chris Claremont. That's all the time we had. That's all you get. Very high stakes interview situation. Not fun to do. That's like one question, right? And, you know, it's like, you know, he was very generous to do the conversation. It was a busy day for him. It was a favor for the Harvey Awards. He was coming back from the uncanny experience. Our friends put that con on.
It's an amazing con. We haven't experienced it yet, but it looks crazy every time I look at their Instagram account. And then he was going to London and he had a deadline with Marvel and he's like, look, I've got 10 to 15 minutes, maybe with you two. And then he was late. Which happens, which happens. Not a big deal. Not a big deal. But in being late, it like discombobulated us. And so. We like, he was like, here I am, sorry I'm late. I'm in the Zoom room. You jump into the Zoom room.
We were actively recording something else. We had to stop what we were doing. And then it's like, go, go, go, go, go, go. And the interview that we got is so fascinating. I freaking love this conversation with Chris Claremont, but it is absolutely not the conversation we thought we were going to have. It's kind of like our Todd McFarlane interview. Where he was talking about nothing but atheism. Yeah. You just described every interaction with Chris Claremont I've ever had.
And I've met him 20 times. And we were prepared for that. every time. Yeah. We thought we were prepared for that. And again, we're super grateful that he had this conversation and he is actually pretty darn vulnerable in this conversation and very honest. you know, it's cool. And I'm just really curious to hear what you think of it. Well, you know, I'm to be listening. I can't wait to hear it. If I, before we head out, everybody, want to, if I may.
share this brief memory I have with Chris Claremont. Claremont was the second big creator I ever met. The first was Stanley. I met him in 2016 at Cincinnati. And then a couple of months later, I met Claremont at Kansas City Planet Comic Con, obviously in Kansas City. And when I met him in front of me was, know, Claremont's line is always packed to the brim with old school X-Men fans, folks that have been reading his books for a long time.
He's very important to not only X-Men, but just comics in general. And He told this story. He captivated these people at our line about this story about how Gambit was going to be the secret clone of Wolverine. it was this, it comes up in this conversation. It does. It's referenced. He references it. Okay. Yeah. All right. So anyway, he caps it like, and you know, Claremont it's 30 minutes. If you're, either get 30 seconds or 30 minutes with him. It's one of those two.
It's neither it's nowhere in between. I'm listening to this, this, you know, description of the story that never ended up happening because Claremont's quick to sort of blame Marvel for all these interesting ideas that he wasn't able to do. And my friend who I worked at the comic shop with in St. Louis, he's a huge X-Men fan. I go, hey, when you meet Claremont, he's super nervous. He's not even sure he wants to meet Claremont. He's just that nervous. But I go, hey, I'll be there with you.
But here's the cool thing. Ask him about the secret origin of Gambit. You're going to love this. I didn't tease him. I didn't say anything. And we get up there, and Claremont just sat down. He looks a little disheveled. But there's no one in his line, weirdly enough, which is very rare for a Claremont line at a con. And I go, okay, this is going be awesome. There's nobody around. can, I can't wait. I'm like, I'm ready to revel in this moment with my friend who is so into X-Men, it's insane.
And he gets up there goes, hey, he's signing this book. He's signing Wolverine number one, the Frank Miller cover. And he goes, hey, what's the secret origin of Gambit? heard this legend of this secret, this secret origin. And Claremont looks up from signing, looks him dead in the eye and goes, what? What are you talking about? What is, what do you, I don't know what you're talking about. What he looks at his son, cause the son is like his handler most of the time.
Cause what have I told this story? And his son's like, I don't know, dude, I hear you tell 19 million stories a day. But me who heard this story, the 30 minute secret origin, I'm like, I can't call Claremont out on his shit in this moment. I got to just be like, I don't know either. I heard this story. I heard it. Anyway, that's my, that's my fun Claremont story. leave you through your friend and Chris Claremont under the same bus. I don't know to do.
I don't know what this I didn't know what to do because I wanted to tell him things where it's just like, let's just unzip my skin and I'm just going to walk out as a skeleton for I am dead. All right. What anybody anyway, thank you guys so much for coming on again. Give a quick pitch. Whatever you guys want to highlight for the listener.
Again, most folks that are listening, I'm sure already listened to CBCC, but for whatever reason, if they're not Here's your chance to sort of bring them on in. You know, right now we're talking to some of the best people making comics today. Obviously, we're talking to Chris Claremont. We just also spoke with Nick Dragata. We went full spoilers about Absolute Batman number one.
And we also have a conversation with Tiffany Babb, the comics journalist who is doing great work bringing comics journalism back to a physical form with the comics courier. That is also up now on Kickstarter. Please go seek that out. Lisa and I have a short, a very short 500 word review that you can read in that as well. But it's got all these incredible people contributing. Douglas Wolk. Douglas Wolk. Cool people. Tiffany Bann. Well, thank you both so much.
Again, I'm going to buddy up one more time. I cherish the friendship we all have. I am so excited. You're always two of the people I'm most excited to see at these conventions. I'm very excited to hang out with you guys in New York. Hopefully we can get together for an evening or even if it's just a quick conversation on the con floor. That's always, it's always something I look forward to very much. Us too. Us too. We're going to make, we're going to make time. All right. Good deal.
Well, thank you both so much. And I guess hopefully everybody click off of this conversation and go over to whatever CBCC is currently doing this week. Thank you both so much and we'll talk to you soon.