Stephen Bissette is back! The co-creator of John Constantine talks Tyrant, Swamp Thing, and Indie publishing Indie. The Short Box Podcast Ep. 490
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In this episode of The Short Box. I think right now we're in a true, true golden age. The best comics and graphic novels I've ever read in my life are happening right now. And anything goes. Like, it's no longer controlled by this little small group of gatekeepers the way it was in the mid-70s when I was trying to get into the field.
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There is some great work being done because with crowdfunding, with Patreon, with all these platforms and venues, creators are doing some of the best work I've ever seen in the field.
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intro music plays
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Yo, Short Box Nation. Hello again. Welcome back and thanks for pressing play today. If you're brand new, welcome to the show. I'm your host, Badr Milligan, and this is the Short Box Podcast, the comic book talk show that brings you the best conversations about your favorite comics with the people who put their blood, sweat, and tears into making them. This is episode 490. And today we have a certified comic legend on the podcast. I'm talking about Steven Bissette.
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He's here with us today. He's best known as the artist on Alan Moore's inaugural saga of the swamp thing run as well as the horror comic anthology series Taboo. Maset is also the co-creator of the character of John Constantine who some of you might remember was played by Keanu Reeves in the feature film Constantine back in 2005. Now, if all the awards and accolades to his name it might come as a surprise to some of you that Steven Bissette actually retired from comics or at least self-publishing back in 1999.
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after working in the industry full-time for 24 years. But I've had air quotes around retirement because retirement didn't stop him from working on the occasional short story or anthology comic in the subsequent years. He also went into academia in 2005 and started teaching at the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont, where he's from. So the man has kept plenty busy since so-called retirement. And today, Steven Bissette is on the podcast to talk about a new Kickstarter campaign launching next month that will bring back his underground comic
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Tyrant, which was a four-issue series originally published in 1994 to 1996. tells a story about a T-Rex's struggle for survival in the late Cretaceous period. Many fans consider Tyrant the set's masterpiece and for good reason. As someone who has just read the first issue of this new Kickstarter campaign, I gotta say breathtaking and we'll get into a lot of Tyrant talk and all of that here shortly.
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But first I want to thank our amazing sponsors who help us keep the lights on here at Short Box HQ. What would I be without you? That's right. What would we be without our sponsors like IDW Publishing, the award winning publisher of comics, graphic novels, and books like TMNT, Star Trek, Sonic the Hedgehog. And speaking of giant lizards, IDW also publishes Godzilla comics. Go find and read some of these fine books at your local comic shop or check out idwpublishing.com.
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And last but not least, a big shout out to Collective Con, Northeast Florida's premier anime, comic book, and pop culture event. It's taking place again here in Jacksonville, Florida on March 27th through the 29th. It's their 11th year show. It's gonna be a good time. I'll be there and you can get your tickets at collectivecon.com. Now, without further ado, short box nation, let's give it up for our guest of honor today is Steve Vassett. Hey Steve, how you doing? Hey, how are you? Thanks for having me.
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It is my pleasure, man. I got to give a big shout out to Sean Edgar, who once again has set up another great interview. Like I said, the interview hasn't happened yet, but I'm sure it will be great. Because you're Steve Asset. I'll hold up my end. hold up my end. Steve, like I told you before, HitRecord, I've been looking forward to this interview all day. I've been, like I do with all my interviews, I go down deep rabbit holes. I feel like I've got tunnel vision. Now, I have also had...
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dinosaurs on the brain all day. And I was kind of beating myself up because admittedly, I had never read Tyrant until the past couple of days. Well, why would you? It's not like it's been out of print since 1999, you know, since the 90s. Well, it has been. Yeah, really. So. So the irony is that last year I was really in a dinosaur kit because I ended up reading, not even reading it, like devouring.
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the first or the only two Jurassic Park books, Jurassic Park and Lost World by Michael Crickton. And I, you know, I was really big into dinosaurs as a kid, know, that love has always been there, but maybe not fully tapped into. But last year I devoured these Jurassic Park books. I was all about dinosaurs. And now I'm reading Tyrant. Now I'm trying to track down the rest of the issues. I'm definitely going to be back in the Kickstarter. But I want to start off this conversation uh finding out from you what are some of your
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Tyrant excluded. What are some of your favorite comic books about dinosaurs? Oh, that's easy. ah You know, I love a lot of the current uh dino stuff that has been coming out. mean, contemporary to my launching Tyrant was Ricardo Delgado's fantastic Age of Reptiles through Dark Horse. ah But I've also enjoyed more recent works. Tad Galusha did a great uh graphic novel called Cretaceous a few years back.
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um There's been, uh but you know, I go back, I'm old school. I mean, I grew up reading dinosaur comics and luckily during the silver age, there were a lot of them, right? So Turok, of Stone, big time favorite for me. uh Alberto Gialetti was the artist on the series when I was growing up, meaning they were being drawn in Italy at Gialetti Studio, but being published in America by Dell.
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and then later Gold Key after 1962. uh Kona, Monarch of Monster Isle, not Conan, Kona, K-O-N-A, Monarch of Monster Isle, which was drawn by the late great Sam Glansman. And it was Sam's work that made me want to draw comics when I was like four and five years old. And Kona hit when I was uh seven. And it was my absolute favorite comic.
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and it's still one of my all-time favorite adventure fantasy comics. Dell published 21 issues in all, and they're fabulous. Lots of dinosaurs bought her. And the other one that was a favorite was The War of the Time Forgot, which was the cover feature in Star Spangled War stories from these e-comics from about 1960 to about, I would guess, 65 or so.
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Ross Andrew and Mike Esposito were the primary artists, but there were also some great issues by Russ Heath, Joe Qbert, Gene Colin did an issue. Great dinosaur cow. I'm gonna have to look that up. If I may make an honorable mention, one that
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You know, obviously I think Cadillacs and Dinosaurs is absolutely a classic. Oh, Mark Schultz, Zenozoic Tales, yeah, fantastic. Most recently there was a series by Daniel Warren Johnson and artist Juan Gideon called Jurassic League, where they re-imagined the Justice League as dinosaurs. It like a short mini-series, very fun, very graphic, amazing artwork. ah But if I may recommend one that's slightly different, there was a manga.
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Oh, Gon! Yes, you beat me too, Steve! Yeah, I'm a big Gon fan. I'm a big Gon fan. By Masashi Tanaka, I believe is the name. I was familiar with Gon because he was a secret playable character in Tekken 3, and he was one of my favorite characters to pick as a kid. Oh, cool. I didn't know that. Yeah, I learned much later on about the manga, which actually this morning I was looking through some of the pages from there. And I mean, that artwork is so... Oh, it's phenomenal. And just mind boggling.
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So yeah, yeah, and I grew up loving Tex Avery's cartoons, you know uh and if if Tex Avery had done a dinosaur comic it would have been gone because you know every every individual episode just builds and builds and builds to this insane over-the-top climax oh I used to do Chicago con every year uh and uh had uh friends there Stephen Harold
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uh Tim Gagney, they were working with Diamond Comics at the local distribution warehouse in Chicago. And my good friend Larry Marder back in those days, Larry and I were good friends and Larry lived in Chicago with his late wife, Corey. Anyway, when I would go to Chicago, they would take me to uh this amazing shop. I think it was Kodansha and it was in a shopping mall outside of Chicago. And I bring it up because there was a little plastic gone figure.
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that I really wanted to pick up, but it was for display only. It was not for sale. And I still pine for that plastic gong figure, know, the little orange allosaurus with the oversized edge. Steve, I would ask how retirement has treated you, but I know that is not completely accurate. I was looking at your body of work from when you announced retirement in 1999 till now. And I got to say, you might be the busiest retired guy I know.
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Yeah, I do keep busy. I know you retired from doing comics full time and self publishing in 99. I mean, we're talking about a 27, almost a 27 year gap between retirement and now. How have you been keeping busy? What have you been up to? Yeah, I retired from American, the American comic book industry. I mean, I by 1999, I'd had it. And I won't go into all the particulars, but you know, the implosion of the direct sale market, I'd worked for 25 years to get
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out of Work for Hire Comics. And then after the implosion of the direct sale market in 96, by 97, you know, it was all over but the tears. the only work that was really available after that for me to take on was Work for Hire. And I just, I was done with it. So when I retired, I ended up working for until March of 2005 in the video
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retail and rental industry full time. was a shareholder in a video shop called First Run Video in Bradenburg, Vermont. It was one of the few super stores in uh southern Vermont. And uh I loved it because I love movies. uh all the experiences I had had working as a self-publisher in the comics industry and as a publisher from the taboo years served me very well in the video industry because the same thing
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that had just happened in the comics industry began to manifest itself in the video industry. And I became part of the New England buying group as part of my employment with First Run Video and got involved in some pretty amazing closed door meetings with studios like Universal, Warner Brothers, HBO. um And then in...
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uh 2005, I made the leap into teaching. I was approached by my friend James Sturm and Michelle Olley, who were about to launch a brand new cartooning college, two-year program, college level, uh much like the Joe Keubard School, where I was a member of the first ever class, in 76 to 78. And they invited me in to teach. I didn't have a teaching degree, which I thought meant
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I couldn't do this, but James said, you've got the work experience, we need you. um It only took a little bit of arm bending. And by that summer, the summer of 2005, when we opened our doors for summer workshops, I was there from day one, and I stuck with it for 15 years. um In a way, it allowed me to do for the next generation of cartoonists what Joe and Muriel Qbert had done.
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for me and my classmates, know, Rick Beach, Tom Yates, Kara Sherman Torino, Ron Zalmi, Tom Mandrake, Jan Dursama, mean, Ron Randall, all the classmates I had at Cubart School, uh prominent among them for me, John Toddleman, who I ended up doing Swamp Thing with. And it was really, I really felt like, okay, know, Joe and Muriel did this for us. uh I now have, you know, the universe has put me in a unique position of being able to do something
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similar by joining the faculty at the Center for Cartoon Studies. And it was the best thing I could have done with my life for those 15 years. I retired from that in 2020, not because of the pandemic, but because I was 65 years old. And whatever time I got left on this planet, I wanted to do other stuff. And as my wife Marjorie often says, ever since I retired from teaching, I've been working harder than I did when I was teaching. I'm still at it.
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The way you speak about your time teaching at the center for cartoon studies, I think in one interview you said that it was the best 15 years of your life, the experience that you got there and what you got to do with the students. I am curious, what did you teach exactly? uh What were some of the courses you taught? Okay, well, academia always uh names classes in a manner that is not the way I would have named them. I was teaching comics history for 15 years, but it was called
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Survey of the drawn story. That was the name of the class. That's fancy when I started it was a one semester class It quickly grew into a two semester class. So uh You know full full first year class and it was very intensive. They were three hour sessions I prepared three hour lectures and I would hit my students with up to 200 images per lecture Wow And I was trying to I mean even in a full year
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academic year, you cannot cover the history of uh comics, cartooning and graphic novels. It's, you know, you're like skipping a stone over an ocean. But I gave it my all. uh I would revamp the program every single year. I had amazing I the students never believed me when I said I learned more from them than they did from me. But it was true. And I would get challenged every year by a couple of students, something I hadn't covered. And I would always try to up my game by
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folding in new material in the subsequent year. uh Manny Murphy, uh a fantastic cartoonist, Manny Murphy, they're out there on Facebook and doing graphic novels that are incredibly important. And Manny really challenged me. I think Manny was part of our third class that came through CCS. And uh I stepped up my game because Manny called me on, you know, where are the female cartoonists? You know, that's got to be more prominent. uh
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And also, I began by teaching, well, co-teaching with James Kaczalka, a drawing workshop. And that was a co-teaching gig for a number of years. uh I also worked with the novelist Sarah Stewart Taylor and the poet Peter Money, teaching the senior class. It's a two-year program, but the second year, the students entirely are focused on their own thesis project or projects, depending on what the student's doing.
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um And it was my job, you know, as a co-teacher of the senior workshop class to get them through their second year and graduate. you know, hurting cats is easier than hurting cartoonists, let me tell you. I also got to teach with Alec Longstreth. And Alec Longstreth, he's doing a terrific graphic novel series called Isle of Elsie.
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It's a crowdfunded project. just put out, I think his third or fourth volume is about the ship. And uh Alec and I have remained good friends. In fact, I'm talking to him on Zoom tomorrow. Alec and I, think, my best years with the students were when Alec and I were co-teaching. uh And uh as you just quoted, I could not, it is the best 15 years of my
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professional life. I couldn't have done anything better. I was fortunate in that my two kids, my daughter, Maya and son, Danny, uh were out of the household, you know, by 2005. And uh so I could really dedicate myself to the process of teaching. was always be their father and parent, but it wasn't the kind of intensive parenting when you're trying to get your teenager through graduation. ah Instead, that I was responsible for
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getting students from age 18 to 63 through their graduation. Wow, that sounds inspiring. That's great. On the topic of academia, you briefly brought it up, but I want to emphasize that you were a member of the pioneer class of the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, first graduating class in 1978. When you think back at your time at the Kubert School, and I guess really take a step back for anyone that might not know, the Joe Kubert School alumni is
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stacked when it comes to talent and professionals and cartoonists and artists. I mean, you've got the likes of Amanda Conner, Lee Weeks, Rick Veach, colorist Matt Hollingsworth, Dave Dorman, Scott Collins. I mean, the list really does go on when you look at the Joe Kubert School alumni. When you think back to your experience being the first graduating class, could you describe your experience at the Kubert School? Like, what was a normal day or is there a?
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I guess what's the most vivid memory you have of that experience at the Kubert School? You know, it was a cartooning monastery for us. mean, a lot of us, I was single at the time. uh Like many of my classmates, there were married classmates, Elaine Heinl, Rick Beach, uh Betsy Swardly, you know, a number of my classmates, uh including the late great Ben Ruiz, who ended up staying on and teaching at the Kubert School after graduating. uh They were married. They had
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fuller lives than those of us who were there as single budding cartoonists. you know, it was you ate, slept, eat and craft comics. It was just focused on comics. And it was a very monastic experience in that Joe and Muriel, thanks to one of the Golden Age publishers of comic books, Harry A. Chesler,
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Harry Chesler became sort of the godfather of the school and Harry Steered Joe and Muriel who were living in Dover, New Jersey. That's where they raised their family Harry steered them to a place called the Baker Mansion, which was in uh The bedroom community of Dover, but it was this, you know late 19th century early 20th century a state with grounds a swimming pool
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you know gigantic uh conifer trees in the back that Tom Yates and I and our classmates would go out and climb. uh Tom was the only one I know who made it to the top of those trees. um It was amazing and uh we were kind of an apprenticeship program some of us. It was set up as a school, an academic setting with classrooms and so on but the mansion became the be all and end all for us.
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And during the first year, the reason I referred to an apprentice program, during the first year, Joe relocated his drawing studio to the main floor of the Baker Mansion. So our classrooms were across the hall from Joe's studio. And by the time we went to our second year, our main classroom was on the second floor above Joe's studio. um And this gave us uh something I never would have gotten.
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in any other educational experience, which was we experienced, we not just witnessed, but occasionally Joe would let us actually sit in if you were quiet and didn't distract him and you could watch him work. And this gave us a, you know, a one-on-one uh witness experience of what a working professional in the mid 1970s, what their life was like, their professional life. We often got glimpses of the personal life because Muriel
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his wife, I mean, Muriel ran the school, her office was right on the back end of the school. And uh we got to know their kids as well. uh And uh it was it was incredible. It was a class setup where there were specific classes, drawing workshop, life drawing, storytelling, lettering and production. uh You know, we were Joe's
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program was set up to try to teach us every discipline necessary to the way comics were made in the 1970s. And this is all pre-digital era, okay? No internet, no email. But this also means that all the production work of how comics were put together was old school. You were doing physical artwork, you know, there were no Wacom tablets or any of that stuff. It was all physical artwork. And you were going to be delivering
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finished physical pages to your teacher in the school and via the work program that Joe set up for after hours, you would be delivering finished paste ups or finished drawn pages to your professional client, which usually was Joe Kubrick himself. uh It was amazing. It was amazing and it was very intensive. uh I had saved enough money working for the family grocery store, Bissett's Market, growing up.
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that I was able to pay for three years of college. The two years I spent at Johnson State College in Johnson, Vermont before the Cubit school opened. And I still had enough money in my savings to pay for my first year at Cubit school. My dad was old school military. You know, he was in four branches of the service. He agreed to pay my last year of school because I was already going out for job interviews my first year. Right. We were living in Dover, New Jersey. It was a short bus ride to New York City.
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And on days that weren't classes weekdays and during the summer, I was going into New York, hitting up art directors, carrying my portfolio. And so was Rick Beach and Tommy Yates and Ron Zalome and our classmates. uh So my dad knew I was serious. Like this is what I'm going to do with my life. And uh so I got to attend the full two years. I had just as dedicated and serious classmates who
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were not able to return for the second year because of cost factors or family or home factors. It was very intimate. There were 21 of us year one and there were 17 of us year two. Oh wow. So it was a very small class. And that also is why I refer to it in part as an apprenticeship program. We had very close relations with a lot of our instructors. And the instructors with the
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uh... exception of kelly harris with that time was married to dc editor writer jack harris kelly harris who taught us production paste up and design was a little older than we've been i was at the time she i would guess was mid twenties late twenties all the other instructors were joe's generation of of cartoonist so leo lyas dick giordano teaching inking uh... high eisman who taught lettering and humor
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uh Hi, I's man is who I have the fondest memories of uh Joe, of course It was amazing. It was incredible. Rick Estrada was also one of our instructors Rick Estrada approached teaching He was a Church of Latter-day Saints of Jesus Christ a Mormon uh by uh by devotion so he approached his teaching as we were getting life lessons along with drawing lessons and uh Rick Beach
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who did work in underground comics prior to coming to Cuberts School. He and his brother Tom Beach did Two-Fisted Zombies for Last Gas. And I, in particular, would try to take Rick Estrada's lessons and turn them on their head. We were the subversion experts, if you will, in the class. But Rick respected that. Rick Estrada respected that. It didn't piss him off. He ran with it and pushed us harder. ah It was amazing. It was amazing.
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I can tell just, you know, we're not saying in person, but I can tell the you have such fond memories and it sounds like an incredible experience. I can only imagine what the experience is like now. I'm sure they fine tuned in. I'm sure they have a great staff, but it really sounds like you were part of a kind of once in a lifetime, you know, experience being the inaugural class. Yeah, it was really unique. There was also, you know, Bill Kelly was a reporter at one of the local newspapers and he was a friend of Joe's. became friends with Bill Kelly.
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But Bill uh did a movie review column for one of the local New Jersey papers. And Bill would come in, uh I'd say maybe once a month, and show a feature film on 16 millimeter out of his collection. So even our extracurricular hours were filled with storytelling lesson. There's some nights I will never forget watching King Kong with Joe Qbert in the room, watching The Conqueror Worm with Vincent Price, better known
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in England under its release title, The Witchfinder General, one of the most intense late 1960s horror films. And Joe came because Bill had recommended it. And watching Joe so wound up by the movie that his hands were fist, you know, and his knuckles were white. um It was a really amazing time to be looking to get our toe into comics because all around us, the comic industry was falling apart.
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But it didn't discourage us. I remember the metaphor I described, which some of my classmates embraced, was I grew up reading those dinosaur books, kids' books. And many of them ended with the painting of a dinosaur egg being eaten by a little opossum-like mammal. And I felt like, we're the mammals, right? And yeah, the comic industry is imploding, but at the same time, new publications like Heavy Metal were coming out for the first time.
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So we really believed we would make our way in the world. know, discouraging as it was what was happening at Marvel in DC, uh we were also seeing new forms spring up. uh one of my fondest memories is two of our classmates, Rick Taylor and Kara Sherman Torino, showing us excited that these self-published comics were coming out, that they could buy in the local comic shop.
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uh Heroes World uh in New Jersey. This new comic called Seribus by this Canadian named Dave Sim and this new comic called ElfQuest by Wendy and Richard Peany that was beginning in a strange little black and white anthology called Fantasy Quarterly. uh Before we were done at Cupid School, ElfQuest was coming out as its own title and Dave Sim was well into the first year to two years of Seribus. So you know that
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Heavy metal hitting the newsstands. We had hope. We had reason to hope and we weren't irrational and crazy for hoping. It turned out it was a new world opening up and we got to be part of it. Well said. I am curious, do you keep up with comics now or the direct market at all? Is there any new creators that you're fond of? Oh God. Well, I'm a Junji Ito addict. I follow every English language publication of Junji Ito's work.
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uh I do canvas crowdfunding and so I do kick in on, uh pun intended, on certain graphic novel projects. uh There are certain cartoonists whose work I still follow, including people who are friends of mine like Eddie Campbell. uh Rick Veach certainly uh with the self-publishing that Rick's doing using Print On Demand on Amazon with his Sun Comics imprint, which is carrying on.
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where he began with King Hell Publishing. uh So yeah, I don't follow what's happening at Marvel in DC. Those have become fringe. That's no longer the mainstream. The mainstream is what's happening at Scholastic. uh The mainstream is what's happening at Abram Books. uh The mainstream is imprints like my friend John Jennings has his own uh black cartoonist imprint at Abrams, and they're putting out phenomenal work. uh
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some of which John has an active hand in as a creator or co-creator, but he's also shepherded a whole new generation of creators who have come in. um So there's a lot, but you know, a reader, I mean, we could spend thousands of dollars a month just on the reprint volumes of the comics we love. I just got in the mail today, the hardcover Lone Wolf and Cub, volume one, you know, so. Steve, you have...
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phenomenal taste. everything you're meant to do, G, Eto, Gone, Lone Wolf and Cubs are some of my favorites. And you mentioned something earlier about, you know, uh one of the reasons why you retired from American comics was the implosion of the direct market. And I guess since we're on the topic of self-publishing and some of the direct market, I am curious to hear your thoughts on the state of the industry, considering that, you know, 1999, 96, you know, uh Diamond becomes kind of the sole distributor.
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Fast forward to now, it's bankrupt, it's not really a player anymore. You've got Penguin Random House, you've got a flurry of distributors, Lunar, there's one called Alliance. mean, the list goes on. mean, what are your thoughts on the state of the industry now versus like then? Like, you think if you were, if there was still a variety of distributors then that you would have continued doing American comics, would we have seen more of Tyrant Pass for issues?
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Oh yeah, my plan with Tyrant was 15 to 20 years. I was going to spend the rest of my life doing my dinosaur comic. I mean, that was my plan, right? And it was viable financially. When I started on Tyrant, there were uh at least a dozen distributors. Like we were able to sell our product around the world. Thanks to Titan Books, they had Titan Distribution in the UK and they would, I mean, when I met
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filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky at the Boston Film Festival and I got to have lunch with Alejandro and his producer, Claudio Argento, brother of Dario Argento. And the reason we were getting together is I was gonna publish one of his stories, of the Cat, which was drawn by John Giro, aka Mobius. We were gonna publish it in Taboo. uh I was blown away when I go to meet them at lunch and Alejandro uh has already bought issues of Taboo because Titan was distributing
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the books into France and Belgium, right? So, and there were two or three, Andromeda, Neptune up in Canada. I we were able to sell our books around the world, seriously. um When it all imploded and came down to one distributor, you know, that was the end of it. When I was doing Tyrant, my plan was to just do Tyrant. And the way it worked, I won't get into the uh nuts and bolts of the bookkeeper, but shorthand, my diamond check.
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from an issue of Tyrant paid the entire printing bill. My capital check was pure profit and I was supporting two households at the time. My first wife and I had separated. I was able to pay the entire rent for my home and my wife's home in January of every year. Wow. The whole year I could just pay it. Right. That's insane. Yeah. And that's because Tyrant cumulatively was selling about 30 to 32,000 copies per issue.
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When I say cumulatively, uh this means that when I listed Tyrant number two coming out, I was allowed to relist Tyrant number one. And I ended up doing three printings of Tyrant number one, two printings of Tyrant two and three, uh because I would relist the book and my readership was growing incrementally. And uh when Diamond took over, you couldn't relist your book anymore if you were an independent. Why? Because...
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The exclusives were with DC, Dark Horse, Image, and then Marvel had to jump ship from Heroes World to go with Diamond. And the larger publishers said, we only get to relist. Wow. Some sharky shit right there. Yeah. Right. And at the time, Larry Marder, who was doing Bean World, um and I mentioned Larry earlier in the context of visiting uh him in Chicago when I would do ChicagoCon, Larry
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and Dave Sim were the two people who really were educating all of us who were self-publishing, Rick Beach, myself. ah I remember Larry calling me when Marvel went direct with Heroesworld and he described it as, this is Pearl Harbor for independent publishing. Like this is the beginning of the war. And later in a different conversation, Larry said, uh they're killing off the buffalo. You know, we as self-publishers are essentially the
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Native American tribal publishers and they are going to kill off what we need to live on and get us on reservations. And that indeed is a metaphor for what happened. And that's part of why I pulled the plug on Tyrant. I had two households to keep going. oh My first wife, Marlene and I are still best friends. It was not an acrimonious separation and divorce, but I had to get our teenage kids through high school and into their adult years. And oh it was a no-brainer that
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Okay, I can't sell publish anymore. So I'll redirect my energies to a day job working in the video industry. That was hard. And it was also hard because a lot of my peers in comics acted like I had betrayed comics by stepping away. And for me, I was just being pragmatic. I'm a father. I got to get through this and I can't count on the direct sale market any longer. And working for publishers was not working out. So
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switching from freelancing as I had been doing for 20 something years to a day job, felt good to get a paycheck every Friday, let me tell you. But I was still creative. I still illustrated at least one novel or short story book per year for boutique horror publishers like Cemetery Dance. They do high and hard covers, slip cases and all that.
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And I also began writing a weekly column for our local newspapers in New England oh called Video Views. I would review all the new videos that were out that week. So I still kept active writing and drawing. I just wasn't doing it in the comic book industry anymore. Well, you know, your story, I think, puts a spotlight, for better or worse, about the aspect of comics that really intrigues me, where I feel like comic books, especially when we're talking like direct market, comic shops, et cetera,
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this Venn diagram between like art and commerce. think, you your story is right there in the middle. It spotlights, you know, the business side that I think sometimes like casual fans don't really think of. I think it also puts a spotlight on the livelihood and the reality of the people, of the artists and creators who are putting their, like I say in the intro every time, their blood, sweat and tears into making them and how sometimes unjust it can be in terms of like compensation and, you know, opportunity.
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Page rates are lower now than they were in the 1980s. I get approached all the time by different publishers asking me to do a cover or a story, and it's really easy to say no when I get more for a sketch that I still own the copyright to than to do a Work for Hire Godzilla cover, for instance. And on the other hand, though, I mean, we had students who came into CCS already making excellent livings.
37:25
by using Patreon, by doing crowdfunding, by having built a huge following online with online comics, digital comics, and doing print collections of their work. a number of the, a lot of our alum from CCS are working professionally in the industry, including people who are working now as editors uh at some of these big houses, uh and many who are graphic novelists.
37:52
But the industry has really shifted, We're in an era now where the contracts being offered for graphic novels do not pay much more than the page rates we used to get at DC when I was getting 64 bucks a page doing Swamp Thing pencils, you know? Which fans sort of don't believe. I really bristle when I see fans, so-called fans, posting.
38:19
uh... if there's any kind of controversy revolving around a reprint or a new movie adaptation uh... if anyone speaks up saying what about the creators and when there's a there's this corporate adept aspect of fandom where they're like what they got paid well you know the guy who wrote ghostwriter got seventeen dollars a page in the in the seventies when he created ghostwriter for marvel comics that's not getting paid for your time
38:48
And I also approach that with not just attitude, but the fact that John Toddlbin, Rick Beach and myself, we still get quarterly royalties from John Constantine, hell blazing. We still get quarterly royalties from the reprints of our swamp thing work. And that has allowed us to continue having creative lives. Social security isn't going to cut it when you're a cartoonist. Let me tell you, you still have to pay in all your life with your taxes.
39:17
You do get social security, but, um, you know, DC has honored the contracts that they had with us. In fact, during Paul Levitt's and Jeanette cons regime at DC, they improved our royalty plan. And, uh, anytime John Constantine pops up in a video game or an animated film, we get a little piece of that. And a little piece of that adds up when you're your seventies and every quarter, mana from heaven shows up because of work we did.
39:46
back in the 1980s when we were younger and able to do that kind of uh carry that kind of workload. Interesting stuff. think grim, but also inspiring in some cases. think the inspiring part being that we're highlighting the state of the industry now and how there's so many uh avenues for creators to go direct to fans, which brings us to this, uh the new Kickstarter campaign that is bringing Tyrant back.
40:13
And all of its glory and actually even like maybe even extra glory because if I'm to understand correctly, the Kickstarter, which launches sometime in March is what I'm told early March, uh will see uh you guys are reproducing Tyrant. There's two versions being offered, uh bonus content, et cetera. But I want to start from take a step back and talk about the origin. So Lighthouse Press is the company that is bringing this project to life that has worked with you. uh
40:40
Chris Stevens is the founder and publisher of Said Lighthouse Press. What do you remember from your first meeting with him about bringing Tyrant back in this, through this campaign, through this prestige format? I knew Chris already before he called me because I had contributed, uh oddly enough, a Tyrant one-pager to one of Chris Stevens' early crowdfunding projects, Dream a Little Dream, which was uh Winsor McKay's Little Nemo.
41:08
New one-pagers in the Sunday comics format by contemporary cartoonists doing their homage or honoring Winsor McCay's Little Nemo. And I did a piece called Tyrant in Slumberland. uh it was actually a reprint. It was a piece I had done for one of the CCS student anthologies called Sundays. There was a class one year and an anthology called Sundays where all the students that contributed
41:37
did their piece as a full-size Sunday page, that giant format from the early 1900s. And uh so I did the Tyrant piece for them. And when Chris Stevens uh heard from Jim Rugg, who's the designer on this Tyrant project that's about to be crowdfunded, ah I didn't know this at the time. Jim Rugg is the one who said to Chris Stevens, know, Steve Bassett did a little Nemo riff with his character Tyrant. And uh Chris invited me in on Dream a Little Dream and
42:06
ah It was a single phone call, but Chris honored everything he told me. Everything he told me was going to happen, happened. There was no mucking about. The pay is what he said it was. The book came out the way he said it would. Everything was on the up and up. And then years later, he approached me again when he was um involved in packaging a project that was crowdfunded called The Golem of Venice Beach. There were two volumes in all, and I contributed to the first volume. um
42:33
And again, know, Chris approached me, there was a push me pull you because I wasn't sure I wanted to be involved. But um I ended up doing two pages for it, fully painted black and white pages. And everything Chris said was going to happen happened. They honored everything. So when Chris approached me about collecting Tyrant, um and he told me he was approaching another one of my peers whose name I won't mention because I don't think they've announced the project as yet. So I shouldn't spill any beans on that. um
43:04
I was interested. family and I were going through a real health crisis at the time. our S our son, Michael, um, at age 45, father of five had his own business, happily married, um, suffered from brain cancer and it took his life. And it was a really hard year, year and a half. So I kind of, you know, not kind of, I had to put Chris off. I said, you know, I'm interested, but I, I can't focus on anything right now, except my family.
43:33
and what's happening with my family. um During that time, though, I started the process of going through my flat files and stacks of artwork. I have over 50 years of artwork here in my studio. And I collated almost all the pages of Tyrant. I had never sold any. I had never thrown anything out. I had everything. And after our son Mike died, it took a few months to even want to wake up in the morning.
44:03
But I reached out to Chris and said, okay, we can start scanning now. If we can figure out the nuts and bolts of this, I've got almost all the original art. There's three pages that haven't turned up yet, but everything else is here. And that includes all the back pages in Tyrant as well, all the text pages and everything. And we pulled the project together and my wish list, Chris asked me, you know, was there anyone I wanted to have involved? And my wish was to have Jim Marag-
44:31
designed the book because I'm a big fan of Jim's work as that he's done as a self publisher and cartoonist. He's a angel. not only buy street angel for myself, whenever there's a new street angel, I buy a second copy that Jim personalizes to our daughter, Maya, because Maya loves street angel too. And she's in her forties now, right? Yeah, that's awesome. And Jim was on board with it. And uh Sean Michael Robinson jumped on to work with the production. Sean Michael uh is one of the experts in
45:01
working with the digital format, how to get the most out of scanned artwork and how it should be prepared for the best printing and so on and so forth. So we're doing it. Now I had, mentioned to you earlier in our conversation to CCS students, uh I watched every year as one to five students were crowdfunding. So I learned by watching, right? And by conversations with them, how crowdfunding work and the beauty of crowdfunding, we only touched on
45:30
I think right now we're in a true, true golden age. The best comics and graphic novels I've ever read in my life are happening right now, right? And anything goes, like it's no longer controlled by this little small group of gatekeepers, the way it was in the mid seventies when I was trying to get into the field. You have to clear it with an art director, an editor. There is some great work being done because with crowdfunding, with Patreon, with all these platforms and venues,
46:00
creators are doing some of the best work I've ever seen in the field. So I understood enough about crowdfunding that and also having contributed to Dream a Little Dream and then the Golem of Venice, uh I saw a bit more how it worked. this is gonna be a steep learning curve for me, Bob, or going through the experience of what we're gonna be doing with Tyrant, but it consolidates into
46:28
a single period of time, this case 30 days, everything we used to have to do over months, right? When I did Tyrant number one, I had to write and draw it, I had to advertise and promote it, I had to get it listed in the Diamond and Capital and the other distributor catalogs. Those catalogs went to the consumer base, who then had to decide, a customer like you or I going into comic shop, oh, four months from now,
46:57
I think I want to read this comic, right? And place my pre-order and then wait four months. And for someone who's self-publishing, that creates a dilemma too. Like who am I advertising my work to when? Like when do I promote Tyrant number one? Am I promoting it to the retailers? Which we could do back then at the distributor trade shows. Am I promoting it to the end buyer? And in that case, am I promoting it when it's in the catalogs so that they'll pre-order it? Or am I advertising it?
47:26
when it's actually in the shops. Will it even be in the shops if I haven't pre promoted it to both the retail community and the read potential reader community. All of that now happens in 30 days. Crowdfunding allows you to package, promote, distribute because you're selling to the end user. So you're distributing your work as well. And the printing is subsidized by what you take in with the crowdfunding or you pull the plug because
47:55
you didn't raise enough money and that's educational as well and reduces your risk. Yep. But I mean, look, definitely a significant risk to take to keep in mind, but you named so many positives when it comes to something like this is like, right. I'm, I am so positive about this current era we're in. didn't mean to be no, no, I actually was going to compliment you, Steve, that I find your
48:20
perspective and outlook on comics with it being so positive, very refreshing. And I say this with full respect that I don't think that's always the case for veteran comic creators. know, sometimes it feels just a little more negative versus- Well, they're looking at Marvel and DC still as mainstream. And let's face it, when I saw the New Yorker magazine have Robert Crumb's Genesis on the cover and it was previewed in New Yorker, if I needed a landmark, that was it. It's like, okay.
48:50
That's the new mainstream, right? The mainstream has shifted. And also, you know, having grandkids, they get their graphic novels via the Scholastic Book Fairs in the schools. Scholastic is the largest publisher of graphic novels in North America right now. And they're bestselling creators, and they are doing great graphic novels, right? uh Those are, that's the mainstream. Manga is the mainstream.
49:19
If I go into, you if I'm fortunate enough to be in a community where there's still a chain bookstore, they're few and far between up here in New England, the manga section is larger than the graphic novel section, right? and, you know, manga began in the United States with, you know, Leonard Riefus with the underground comic scene putting out with his edgy comic reprint, Barefoot Gen, the Hiroshima uh autobiography. And, you know, that was when
49:49
americans didn't know what manga man if you were if you said the word manga they had no idea what you were talking about was that one of godzilla's. monsters in the now manga is huge that's the mainstream dc and marvel are now the fridge that's the fringe of comic publishing and again the misperception of me for people my age about to turn seventy one most of the craters my generation.
50:14
are still looking at that is the mainstream and of course you feel bleak about comics if you're looking at i mean i get the world reports i see what constantine cells you know as a digital comic and any print it aint much right. uh The mainstream is going great guns and crowdfunding is part of that new mainstream because a lot of people are only reading their comics online with digital comics on this screen or.
50:44
getting their print comics via their favorite digital comics coming out in print edition or via crowdfunding. This is how the marketplace has changed and shift. Well, it's a fair assessment. I guess I want to hear, like, what was the genesis for your love of dinosaurs? Because you brought up wanting to keep uh wanting to make tyrants scientifically accurate. And I mean, it's been what over 20 years since since then. And I can only imagine how much the science has changed.
51:14
Oh, it's changed tremendously. Yeah. But reading, like I said, the first issue last night, not only was I blown away by your pencil work, but the hand drawn lettering is incredible. I think the pacing, but then also the way you characterize these different dinosaurs from like the egg sucker to the elder to the T-Rex that's giving birth. It's like, man, this guy, like your passion for dinosaurs and paleontology really shines through to this. And I guess I want to know, like, where did your love of dinosaurs come from?
51:43
most specifically, and what was the catalyst to write an epic comic book about the life of a T-Rex? Like, how do you go from writing the premier acclaimed run that is Saga of the Swamp Thing to writing yet another masterpiece about dinosaurs? Where did the idea for Tyrant come from? You know, you're going to laugh and I'm not blowing sunshine up anybody's butt here, but it was... Well, I never outgrew love for dinosaurs. Like all little kids, I fell in love with dinosaurs.
52:13
uh I remember sitting in my mom's lap and you know the little golden book of dinosaurs Mom couldn't pronounce the dinosaur names I could she would read everything around the dinosaurs name and then I would say the dinosaurs name so I learned to read on my mother's lap with dinosaur books and I never outgrew it and uh And I always wanted to do a dinosaur comic the uh
52:41
When I was four years old, there was a comic book that came out from Classics Illustrated. They had a 25 cent square bound, you know, comic book floppy format, but with a square binding because it was 100 pages or more. And they had a series called The World Around Us. And every issue was dedicated to a different subject. World Around Us Horses, World Around Us The Civil War, World Around Us Jesus, The Story of Jesus, right? They did one on prehistoric animals and it came out in 1959. I was four years old.
53:10
I was with my mom, we went into Towns Market, this little tobacco and convenience store in Essex Junction, Vermont where we lived at the time. And there it was on the spinner rack with a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a Triceratops fighting on the front cover. And of course, little Stevie wanted it. My mom bought it for me. And I wore the comic out, copying the pages. Okay? I like the pages were falling apart because I was drawing from them. From that point in time, uh
53:39
but I wanted to read a comic that was just a story of a dinosaur and nobody ever did it, right? Every dinosaur comic I named to you is an adventure comic with human beings in it. They're traveling to a lost world. They're in a time machine, RIP Hunter Time Master. They're traveling to another planet where there's, you know, there was always this science fictional construct. And I always thought like that was in the way. Like I just wanna, I just wanna.
54:08
read a comic about a dinosaur that's the equivalent of the books I loved as a kid that were about dogs, right? uh Big Red, the Disney movie, Disney always had a dog movie every year. Big Red, Savage Sam, Old Yeller, uh books like Black Beauty, books like Wild Animals I Have Known by Ernest Thomas Seton, which were collections of short stories just about animals, a rabbit, a wolf, a moose.
54:35
That's what I wanted to do with comics. And as I got older and I entered the comic book field, anytime I pitched that I wanted to do dinosaur comics, it always was thrown back to me that there had to be this construct, right? And I'll one, for instance, I'll give you is after Swamp Thing, I got approached by a number of publishers. Like they wanted John Tollivan. They wanted Steve Bissette. They wanted Rick Beach. We all suddenly had opportunities that were closed doors to us before we did our run on Swamp Thing.
55:05
And I would always say, I'd like to do a dinosaur comic and I would be given sometimes full scripts. And let's say it's a 22 page issue. would be 15 pages of drawing shit. hate, okay. Boats, tanks, you know, whatever. And people in draw in rooms talking and five pages of dinosaur. That was not my idea. And the real impetus for me and hearing you describe it the way you did from reading time at one.
55:36
I wanted to put you, the reader, in the head of a dinosaur. I wanted you to experience the world they lived in the way they lived it. As best I could, I was not going to anthropomorphize these creatures. And one of the reasons I did it in comics instead of as a novel or a series of short stories is in a short story or novel, I have to name that dinosaur. And if it's the scientific name, it's a Latin name, and your eye is going to stop dead.
56:05
right there or I have to describe it or I have to give it a name like the land before time where there's Sarah the Ceratops and Terry the Pterodactyl. I didn't want to do that. In comics, I can show you these creatures. So I was intent on to the best of my ability doing that. And I got to work with some of the best writers in comics during my career. know, Bob Kanager, when I was doing backup stories for Sergeant Rock, Archie Goodwin was an editor I got to work with a couple of times at Epic Illustrated.
56:35
Alan Moore on the Saga of the Swamp Thing. I learned so much from the first Alan Moore script I ever read. And then to get to work with Alan's scripts issue after issue and to become friends with Alan for a decade, I learned so much. And I learned a great deal from all the animal books I read as a kid, you know, even Bambi and Perry, the little squirrel. I mean, there were all these books. It was a genre when we were kids of animal books. And when I was a kid, there were animal comics.
57:04
butter, you on the newsstand, there was high o silver about the Lone Ranger's horse. And Black Beauty um trigger, you know, Roy Rogers horse had his own comic. So I grew up with with, you know, Lassie comics and stuff. I grew up with these dog and horse comics. And it's like, well, this is great. But there should be a dinosaur comic like this. So I ended up having to make it myself. know, I just think
57:31
This is a documentary or a movie waiting to happen. You know, like you, you, you retire from the comic industry because of all of the bullshit with direct market and diamond, et cetera. Now you're coming back, you know, with this Kickstarter. I, I can only hope that good things continue, that we get more tyrant out of this. Well, we'll see what happens. If nothing else, you will have the collected tyrant of what existed in the mid nineties. uh Steve, I want to get into the short box friends and family segment.
58:01
This segment is where I shut up for a minute and let someone else ask the questions. Oh yeah, bring them on. It is sponsored by my local comic shop, Gotham City Limit Comic Shop. It's not only my local comic shop, but it's also Jacksonville's premier shop for comics, toys, collectibles, and more. It's located in real life on South Side Boulevard, or you can go on gothamcitylimit.com. The first voicemail that we're going to hear comes from the owner of said local comic shop. His name is Ben Kingsbury, and he owns Gotham City Limit. He was excited to send you something. So here's his voicemail.
58:30
uh Okay. your work on Swamp Thing. You basically changed Swamp Thing from a campy monster into a deep spiritual thing. Eco-horror before anyone called it that. But from doing my research, it seems you're a bit of a film nut as well. So if Swamp Thing got a Cronenberg style remake tomorrow,
59:00
Who would you tag to direct it? Thank you so much for everything you do. We literally couldn't do it without you. And remember short box nation, we'll always take it to the limit. Peace. Hey Ben K, more power to you and more power to your shop. Anybody keeping a comic shop going these days is a hero to me. So, well, here's my answer. ah And I'm not gonna Google the name, but one of the best movies I saw in the year 2025.
59:30
and I recommend it to everybody is a movie called Good Boy. And it's a film that was made by a couple who built the film around their dog. And it took them years to make the movie because the dog didn't know it was in a movie. This was not a trained dog working, you know, as a professional in the entertainment industry. And the brilliance of Good Boy is that it tells essentially a haunted house story.
59:58
It's essentially a haunted house story, but it's also a meditation on death. And what is it that we leave behind in a place where we die and the dog sees things that people don't see. Now, anyone who's had a pet knows, right? Whether it's a dog or a cat, man, they look at parts of the room where we don't see anything, you know? And this is a film that puts you in the dog's head.
01:00:26
And so my choice for a director for a Swamping film would be the couple that made Good Boy. I would love to see what they might do with the whole premise of Swamping. But you used the word Cronenberg in, so obviously I'd most like to see Brandon Cronenberg, his son, who's made three very good movies and one great film. uh My second choice would be Brandon Cronenberg. He may not care at all about Swamping, I don't know.
01:00:54
I just looked up a good boy for anyone interested. It was directed by someone by the name of Ben Loewenberg, if you were curious. There you go. And it's a great film. Great I'm going check it out. If I may throw in my, because I got to hear the voicemail and it's just been kind of on my mind as well. But the first name that popped up in my head for someone to play Swamp Thing, uh Michael Shannon. I think my mind went to The Shape of Water. I love The Shape of Water. I mean, Guillermo del Toro would be the filmmaker to do Swamp Thing. Let's face it. Yeah.
01:01:24
I know Doug Jones plays Amphibian Man. I think he'd be a great Swamp Thing. But something about Michael Shannon's intensity. I know this is a stupid joke, but also his eyebrow game is something fierce. think him and Swamp Thing have that in common. Well, I mean, look what Ron Perlman did with Hellboy. Ron Perlman is Hellboy. And I do like the other Hellboy movies. If you haven't seen uh the most recent one, The Crooked Man,
01:01:49
It is a great film. It didn't play theatrically in America, but it's out on Blu-ray. It is a great Hellboy movie and they capture in that the spirit and the look of Mike Mignola and Richard Corbin's collaboration on that Hellboy piece. But yeah, I can see where you're going with Michael Shannon. He's one of my favorite actors. He was a major in Nuremberg, which also was a great film from this fashion year. All right, Steve, got this. So that was Ben Kingsbury. I got one more voicemail from you, for you.
01:02:19
And I think you'll really appreciate this one because we've kind of mentioned his name a few times. Here he is. Hey Steve, this is Jim Rugg. I wanted to ask you about copyright. It's something that you obviously take very seriously. We see it in your interaction with other artists in anthologies like Taboo that you put together. I'm curious when copyright became something you were aware of and if you have a message to students or uh young cartoonists today about its importance and how to protect
01:02:49
their copyrights. Thank you. you, Jim. Oh my God. Great question. uh I became aware of copyrights as a reader of underground comics when I was in uh high school student at Harvard Union High School. uh My art teacher who I'm still friends with Bill Cathy. Thank you, Bill. If you're out there listening or watching, uh Bill put into my hands something in a brown paper bag and said, you can't tell anyone you got this from me.
01:03:16
Now I'm telling the whole world I got it from you Bill. And it was an issue of Zap, Robert Crumb's Zap. And this is when it was just Crumb. It was either Zap Zero or Zap Number One. And it blew my mind. It's what made me decide comics was the media for me to work in, was that issue that Bill gave me of Zap. And so I became an obsessive underground comics reader. Like I just devoured every underground comic. And that's where I learned about copyright because
01:03:46
All the mainstream four color comics I'd been buying and reading since I was a little kid, you know, I was obsessive enough that I read the Indisha and they were all owned by the companies, right? Copyright, Marvel Comics, Copyright, Trademark, DC Comics, uh National Periodicals originally, uh et cetera, et cetera. The Underground Comics had the little C in the circle and the year and the artist's name or the writer artist's team.
01:04:13
And I went, huh, what's this? And I learned about copyright from the underground comics. And I realized from the interviews I read in some of the underground comic fanzines like Promethean Enterprises, which was also published and edited by Bud Plant, uh some of the artists talked very openly there about owning their own work. And that their ownership of the work was very important to their ability to make a living and also the fact that they could control where their work went.
01:04:42
And when you were buying underground comics, was interesting because you would see Robert Crum had characters in comics that he did, but they were all from different publishers. Print Mint didn't own Mr. Natural and Ripoff Press didn't own Mr. Natural. Robert Crum owned Mr. Natural and Fritz the Cat and all his cast of characters. So they could appear in any comic he did for any publisher. And that's where I realized the power of copyright in the comics industry.
01:05:09
I'll also point out here for your listeners who don't know, copyright, the little C in the circle in the year, indicates who owns the expression of that idea, right? You cannot copyright an idea. You can only copyright the expression of that idea, meaning the song you wrote, the sculpture you made, the photograph you took, or in the case of the conversation Bart and I are having, the comics stories that you made, the coverage you draw.
01:05:39
And copyright only protects the expression of the idea, the story or the drawing. And ever since they changed copyright law in 1977, you don't have to register your idea with the Library of Congress to protect your copyright. That copyright is your property the moment your pen leaves the paper and you go, this is a finished drawing or this is a finished story. It's your property. But.
01:06:06
You want to register your copyright with the Library of Congress if you're publishing it because if you ever have to defend your work legally, you only can win money if you registered your copyright. You can protect your copyright and it's still your property, but you'll have to pay your own legal bills and you won't get damages. Got it? Trademark is something different altogether. Trademark, the TM or the R in the circle. I registered the trademark SR besides Tyrone. Trademark is your brand.
01:06:36
Okay. And here's how I'll make it clear to you. DC Comics owns the trademark to Swamp Thing. Nobody else can do Swamp Thing. And that's why they stick with only certain logos, because that's their brand. You're trademarking that brand. It's the same as the trademark that the Bisco has on Oreo, right? They don't own the idea of two chocolate wafers with a white cream in the middle. You all know that. But they own Oreo.
01:07:04
and the name Oreo is their trademark brand. So if you create a comics character, let's say you come up with a character called Lamprey Boy. Well, Lamprey Boy, when you write and draw the story, you will own the copyright on your drawings and on your comic story. But if you want to protect Lamprey Boy so that nobody else can do Lamprey Boy or Lamprey Girl, you want to trademark your logo, Lamprey Boy. And if you're going to do it for
01:07:33
the rest of your life, you may want to pay the money involved and go to the legal process of registering that trademark, which gives you additional protections, but also has a certain onus. You have to renew your trademark regularly and that costs money. Um, when Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman had great success with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, their company, Mirage Studios had to trademark Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles all around the world. Yes. Yeah. Cause so many bootlegs. Yeah.
01:08:04
Right? And that meant a legal cost and a legal process in every country on planet earth because they have to protect the turtles as a property. But anytime they did a turtle drawing, as soon as it left their board and they went, it's done. Copyrighted. They owned the copyright on their drawing, but they couldn't protect their brand unless they did the trademark. I hope this makes sense to everybody. I feel like I need to insert the the more, you know, sound effect right here.
01:08:32
Jim Rugg's a very thoughtful guy. You mentioned that he's involved with the project in the sense of he's the editor, he's helping compile this. But I've read somewhere, you were maybe a little hesitant about reproducing Tyrant, but the popularity due to their cartoonist's K-Fabe video where they talked about It was all thanks to Jim and Ed. Yeah, Jim Rugg and Ed Piscore were the two, when they did that comics K-Fabe where they sat down and went through all four issues, page by page. uh
01:09:02
And I watched that. mean, people immediately were emailing me the link saying, Steve, you're going to see this. And it wasn't, it wasn't an ego boo. It was the fact that both Jim and rug went, you know, I'm paraphrasing Steve. We know you didn't finish it the way you wanted to finish it, but this is a complete read. This needs to be in print again. This needs to be presented to a new generation, you know? Um, and, um, I took that to heart. It, you know, Jim and Ed, like you,
01:09:32
uh butter are the new generation and when i was hearing loud and clear from this current generation this needs to be back in print i was listening okay it's like steve it's time to get this back out there in a new form and uh i don't know if i'll continue tyrant you know because i'm i mean i did tyrant back in the mid 90s i was a much younger man i was definitely at the peak of my skill set and i don't mean to sound like i'm bragging but i know
01:10:01
I was drawing the best I had ever drawn in my life and I was totally focused on the project. It was my be all and end all as an artist, as a creator. My family, my budding relationship with Marjorie, who is now my wife, we've been together 31 years this weekend. uh That was my life, but my creative life was entirely tyrant. And I don't know if I can get back in that zone. I don't know, I still have the drawing chops, but I don't draw.
01:10:30
as much as I used to. write all the time. I'm primarily a writer. I write a lot for zines. ah I write books on film. I'm contributing to all these Blu-ray and 4K releases with commentary tracks and video bonus features. I write for the booklets that come with these uh releases. uh I've got new books out, which we can mention before we're done. uh But much as I would love to go back to Tyrant,
01:11:01
I'm about to turn 71. I'm not whining. mean, Will Eisner and Joe Qubart drew until almost their final breath, if not to their final breath. uh And they're heroes of mine. I would love to have that kind of obsessive drive to draw all the time. um I don't know if I could produce anything remotely like what I did with Tyrant in the mid 90s. I was on fire, you know, in terms of
01:11:27
my lifelong dream to do this project and I was getting to do it. And when all the pins got knocked out from under all of us that were self-publishing, uh I made my decision and I live with it. I respect that, man. And as much as I would love the continuation of Tyrant, one, I need to finish reading it myself. You got three issues Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm excited for this Kickstarter. hope it's wildly successful. I have a feeling it will be. um
01:11:53
Steve, this has been great. We've been recording for almost an hour and a half, close to two hours. And I would be remiss if I didn't ask a question about Swamp Thing, seeing as we've brought up uh Alan Moore, you've brought up Rick Veach and Tom Totalbin a few times. You know, it's an acclaimed run. For many, it is the premier Swamp Thing story. is like the defining run and story arc for the character to many people. What memories come to mind for you when you think about that run and working with that team?
01:12:22
Like what do you think it is about that run that resonates with people so much and has garnered all this acclaim and accolades? It was the chemistry. The first time in my life, I really enjoyed the kind of creative chemistry that as a group we got to enjoy with Swamping is when I met Rick Veach. And for a number of years, Rick and I had a really strong creative chemistry. Rick misses it. I miss it too, but Rick talks about it now and again. He misses it.
01:12:50
You know, I am not a workaholic. Rick is definitely a workaholic. And as a result, the creative chemistry was great, but getting Bissette to knuckle down and meet the deadlines became a real hardship for Rick, right? And Rick works every day on his comics without fail. Spacey Steve Bissette, hey, I'm living back in Vermont after four years in New Jersey. I'm gonna take some psilocybin mushrooms and go out in the woods and trip. know, it's like I drove Rick, I drove Rick.
01:13:19
Bug fuck at times, right? But Rick and I had an amazing creative chemistry where we would just sit down and like, you know, brainstorm and it was pure. I tried to teach some of the fundamentals of brainstorming to my students during oh the 15 years at CCS where, you know, and in short form to give it to you, because it's relevant to your question about swamping. You've got to sit down and brainstorm with all filters off. There are no bad ideas. You write down every idea you have.
01:13:48
It's in the next phase where you start to pick and choose, like what are the best ideas that you have? And some of the great moments in comics are because the filters were off, right? The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles only exists because Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird were enjoying a real bond of friendship and chemistry. And they both came up with a stupid idea that made them both laugh their asses off and do a couple of drawings. And then the next morning they woke up and looked at them and went, huh.
01:14:16
This might not be a bad idea, right? And they're like, they came up with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles out of nowhere, out of the blue, because of their chemistry. So I enjoyed that rare chemistry with Rick Beach when we collaborated on a lot of stuff together. uh And then uh grew apart, uh not as friends, we're still good friends, but Rick fell into a wonderful editor, creator relationship with Archie Goodwin.
01:14:43
That I've never seen anything like it in my life when Rick was Rick was in every issue of epic illustrated Every issue of epic illusory. I love that magazine, too It was an incredible magazine and the one issue Rick did not have a story in he colored somebody else's artwork the Silver Surfer story that oh One of the issues right is it the John Byrne? So no, I think it was the John Buse Shema Silver Surfer story and issue one Rick Rick colored that and
01:15:12
And I moved on to other stuff. I got involved with Marvel Comics. I started contributing to Bizarre Adventures when uh Rick Marshall and then later Denny O'Neill were the editors. You know, we but we still were good friends. Then the opportunity to do Swamp Thing arrived and I won't go into all the trappings, but it really came down to one of our Qbert School classmates and very close friend, Tom Yates, was the artist selected to launch this new Swamp Thing series, The Saga of the Swamp Thing.
01:15:42
Now, Tom and I were odd ducks at the Qbert School, right? Not because of our personalities, because Tom's one of the most affable, lovable guys on planet Earth. It was because Tom wanted to do adventure comics, and nobody was publishing adventure comics, right? And Bessette wanted to do horror comics, and nobody was publishing horror comics, right? Especially the extreme horror comics I wanted to get into. So the closest thing Tom had been offered to an adventure comic was Swamp Thing.
01:16:12
His thinking at the time, remember Tom saying, well, know, Swamp Thing's in the swamps and that's kind of like drawing the jungle for a Tarzan comic, you know. Poor Tom, know, issue one, Marty Pasco, the writer, takes Swamp Thing out of the swamp. So Tom never really got to do a swamp issue of Swamp Thing. When Tom decided he'd had it, that he wasn't going to continue on the book, he did like 13 issues, he uh suggested John and I, John Tullabin and I step up to the plate.
01:16:41
And he made that suggestion to the editor as well, Len Wein. And John and I auditioned for Swamp Thing. We did two sets of tryouts. I penciled a couple pages that John inked and John penciled a couple pages that I inked. And we delivered those along with some character sketches. We did full page sketches of some of the characters that appeared in those first 10 issues that Len wrote and Bernie writes and drew. And we got the gig. And so John Tollman and I had
01:17:12
almost as tight a chemistry as Rick Beach and I had. ah But as artists, know, collaborating on artwork, not so much, we weren't writing stories together. We both had ideas. Rick and I would write and draw our own stories, like the Telltale fart. Our Take a Nigra and Pose Telltale heart. With John, it was the artwork that we were jamming on. And John and I were very comfortable working together with my penciling and his inking. John had a much more refined, seductive,
01:17:41
Beautiful line than the spastic shit. I lay down when I ink right with brush and pen my stuff is much more Spastic I'll use that word again Once we got the call from Len Ween that there was a new writer on the book You know Len calls us out of the blue and we knew the book was near cancellation They were about to cancel swamp thing with swamp thing number 19 and we were lucky that Len reached out to a British writer named Alan Moore and
01:18:11
Len was gobsmacked when he called us and both John and I, separate phone calls went, oh, we know Alan's work. We had been buying Warrior magazine, the British anthology magazine, Warrior. uh And Alan had two serials in Warrior that we'd all been reading, John Toledon, myself, Rick Veitch. We'd all been reading Marvel Man, which in America became Miracle Man, and V for Vendetta with artist David Lloyd. um
01:18:41
So we knew Alan's work and we were really excited and we immediately sent, John wrote a long letter to Alan, I wrote a long letter to Alan. This is before email, we couldn't call each other yet, we didn't have that contact info. And Alan at the same time was writing really long letters to John and to me. We all had our letters crossing the mail and here's the thing, we all wanted to go the same place with Swamp Thing.
01:19:07
We all wanted to take the character into the realm of being an elemental to take him out of the realm of oh poor me a man trapped in a monster's body which had been the modus operandi of swamping from his creation that first story in house of secrets number 92 is a tragic love story about a man who not only loses his love he loses his humanity he's a monster and that had been the the core of swamping is a character we wanted to abandon that we wanted swamping to come into his own
01:19:37
as plant being and all three of us, four of us counting Rick Beach because John Talboban, myself and Rick Beach have been talking about Swamp Thing ever since Tom Yates got the art gig on the book. In fact, Rick and John were assisting Tom right from issue one of Saga of the Swamp Thing. And I stepped in later, Tom asked me to lay out Swamp Thing number eight, Saga of the Swamp Thing number eight. I did the layouts on that. And I worked with...
01:20:05
uh... one more issue of the golem issues that marty pascoe later issue eleven or thirteen uh... came down to the fact that we all for wanted to go to the same place with something and complete coincidence right complete coincidence and let me in who rejected these ideas when tom yates had mentioned all john tolbin's done this drawing of something like maybe we should go in that direction
01:20:33
John had done this beautiful drawing of Swamp Thing where he's all overgrown with moss and ferns and has these sad looking eyes. Len thought it was too radical. It didn't look like, you know, the Swamp Thing design that DC was used to. But once Alan was on board and Alan had the idea, right, voiced the idea, Len was all for it. And right from Swamp Thing 21, the chemistry was there. When I got the script to Swamp Thing 21, Rick and I, Rick Beach and I met.
01:21:02
late August of 1976 at the Qbert School and from the moment we met we became friends and from the moment we became friends we were talking about our dream of what was possible in comics, but we didn't have the ability the skill set as writers to do what was in our head. We were always aiming for it, right, but we never got there and when I got the script from Alan
01:21:28
from Len Wein, the editor, but it was Alan Moore's script, A Swamp Thing 21, The Anatomy Lesson. I was blown away. This was everything Rick and I had been talking about since 1976. What was possible in comics? Alan did it in 22, 23 pages. It was right there. It's self-contained. And I still think that issue is one of the best things I've ever been part of, ever, in my life, creatively, was that story, that one issue. And...
01:21:55
The chemistry was on and for about two years we were really cooking. And it was that chemistry and it was luck. This is dumb luck. But it was also the fact that Len Wein put up with the fact that John and I were friends. Len Wein put up with a relationship between a pencil and an inker that DC did not encourage. Right? They didn't want all the creators to be friends and know each other.
01:22:23
They wanted all the jobs handled. They wanted us to be assembling Volkswagen, you will. Or Coriolis, right? You do the body, you do the frame, you're putting the doors on, you're the windshield person, right? It was all designated as separate jobs. And John and I, from the start, man, when I got a script, I would photocopy it and send it to John. And then I said, Len, why don't you just send FedEx the script to John at the same time you're sending it to me? And Len agreed to do that.
01:22:52
John and I would have the same script in our hands same day and we would get on the phone and talk about what we were going to do with the artwork. And then once Alan was on board and we were all exchanging the letters, know, John and I were suggesting story ideas. It was our plot to have Etrigan and the camera, know, Jack Kirby's the demon and the little fear creature in a school for autistic children because my wife, my first wife, Marlene, was working in a school for autistic children.
01:23:20
And I had the idea like that would be the worst place for a fear monster to be. And for the monster, the best place to be because there's a lot of fear there to feed on. So the chemistry is what made it right. And the chemistry was spot on until, and this shows you how tight the chemistry is. Alex Gaylor is the current editor at DC doing the collected editions that we're getting invited to contribute to. uh I've written essays for a number of the DC omnibus editions. uh
01:23:50
Alex Gaylor reached out to me and this was a year and a half ago and he said, he really had to work on me too, because I said no a lot. They're doing a collected omnibus of crisis on infinite earth. And he wanted, because there was a swamp thing issue, he was inviting the living writers and artists who had worked on crossover issues during the whole crisis thing where every DC book had to have a crisis issue that particular month. And I said, Alex,
01:24:18
you don't want what I'm going to write." he said, why not? And I said, that's the book where John Toledon and I decided we were done, right? Like this is it. And this is how close the chemistry is. I'm not exaggerating, ah John was reaching for the phone to call me to say he was going to quit the book. And the phone rang before he got to it. And it was me calling to say, John, I've had it. I'm done. Right. We knew at the same time. And John put it this way at the time. said,
01:24:46
We put this car in the road and now DC wants us in the backseat. And that's how it felt. Like once the editors were meeting and deciding what the next year of books at DC were going to be, we didn't have the creative room that we had enjoyed for the initial run on Swamp Thing, where issue to issue, story arc to story arc, we were organically working with Alan Moore and our editor, Karen Berger, who took over the book as of issue 25. oh
01:25:16
Once DC was saying, oh no, you got to stop what you're doing and do this crisis issue. We knew it was over. Like, okay, we, no longer are the ones able to determine what stories we're going to tell how and where. So. Wow. That was a mini podcast in the zone. was incredible. Sorry. Sorry to take up so much. No, no apologies needed. That was fantastic. I can't wait to reread Swamp Thing with all of this context in my head. Uh, but Steven, I think with that being said.
01:25:45
Ladies and gents, this is the Short Box Podcast. And we just finished talking to Steven Vassett about a lot of things. We talked about dinosaurs. We talked about this new Tyrant Kickstarter that is launching uh early March, which this episode should be up by then. We talked about Saga of the Swamp thing. Clearly, we talked about the direct market. We talked about the power of Kickstarter. We talked about a lot of different things. I'm going have a link to the Kickstarter in the show notes. I'll have a couple of other links in the show notes and episode description. Make sure
01:26:15
that you check those out. Stephen, this has been fantastic. uh Any parting words or shameless plugs before we wrap up? We haven't talked about print on demand, and I'll part by talking about print on demand, right? If you don't want to get involved as a creator with crowdfunding, you don't want to get involved with Patreon and all the different platforms that could bring in income while you're putting your work up online, don't ignore print on demand. I am using print on demand. uh IngramSpark has a print on demand. uh
01:26:42
platform I'm using Amazon's uh Kindle print on demand. I'm doing a new book series called Paleo Pop collecting my articles about dinosaur movies and media and comics and so on. I have used print on demand to do not one, not two, but three sketchbooks so far that are edited and curated by my good friend and graphic novelist and author Mark Mastel. We just put out In the Mood for Monsters. It's available on Amazon.
01:27:11
And we also have the earlier thoughtful creatures and brooding creatures. These are available black and white paperback, color paperback or color hardcover. And this is over 120 pages of just monsters. So if you just want me drawing monsters, you get it. And the film buff in me is doing a series of books using print on demand called Cryptid Cinema, where I am laying out.
01:27:39
the genre of cryptid movies, movies about Bigfoot, Yeti, uh and fictional cryptids, Swamp Thing, King Kong, Godzilla, The Creature from the Black Lagoon. So far, uh my buddy Tim Pax and I have put out two volumes of cryptid cinema using print-on-demand, and we have a uh third and fourth volume in the works right now that'll be out hopefully this year. But more importantly for comics, take a look at what Rick Veach has done with print-on-demand.
01:28:08
I turned Rick onto the better printing on print on demand by showing him some of the zines I was, I write for zines like bare bones. I'm in every issue of bare bones as a writer. uh And I showed Rick what those print on demand volumes look like. And Rick, being Rick, has built a whole new publishing empire doing print on demand comics, brand new comics. He's doing Roaring Ricks, Rare Bit Fiends, his dream comic. And he's also expanded
01:28:37
his King Hell Heroica universe into new Max Immortal series. And this is terrific work. As we're speaking, uh right now, Bodder, Rick only has another hundred pages to go to complete the entire King Hell Heroica that he began with the one with Archie Goodwin editing him for uh Marvel's uh epic imprint back in the 1990s, late 80s. That's impressive. uh
01:29:05
Print on demand, you don't want to go the crowdfunding route, you don't want to go the route of Patreon and other online digital comic platforms, if you're a writer drawing your own comics, look into print on demand. You can do it on your home laptop and Amazon and Ingram distribute around the world. Your work can be out there. There you go. I'll shut up now. No, this has been great. I'll include a link to all of this in the show notes. Best of luck on the Kickstarter. I look forward to it.
01:29:34
Thank you so much. Take care
