 Welcome everybody, happy weekend. Happy Sunday. It is Sunday. Is it so? It's actually Friday today. We're recording it and it's with... What? The show's not live? It's not live, it's as live. We've got the dogs with us today. We do. We thought we'd introduce you to Buddy and Meg. They're always kind of pattering at our feet when we do the show because they love cuddles and we thought this time we might as well bring them on board. Bring them, get some value out of them. They can start giving us some return on investment. It's not biting me. Oh, bless him. What do we have on the show today? We've got loads of interesting stuff as usual. We don't have Bob's B-Cave this week because he's very busily putting together a very exciting edit that we're going to be announcing soon. So watch this space, Buddy will be back soon and he's coming back with something very exciting. We have the competition winner and we have another competition. Everybody loves the competition and we've always got great prizes so make sure you stay, hang around and see who's won and see what you can win. We have a great interview on the show today. Very excited that this fabulous person said yes. Mark Miller. Very, very cool. We were very lucky to meet him when we did Life After Flash to head up and film him up in Scotland. We also had a lovely breakfast with him and Sam and Melody and everybody in the way. It was really nice to get to know him. Incredibly talented person. To lead into the interview I thought it would be fun to do five fun facts about Mark Miller. Yes I pulled them off the internet so no they might not all be correct but Mark, if you're watching, let me know if the internet is not telling the truth. And we'll try and resolve it somehow. So five fun facts of Mark Miller. Fact one. The Ultimates written at Marvel was selected by Time Magazine as comic book of the decade. Many stories that he wrote have inspired big screen blockbusters including Wolverine Old Man Logan which of course inspired Logan as well as Civil War where the crossover storyline was the inspiration for Captain America Civil War. Although Mark has said he thought the film was ultimately bleak. Civil War was published in 2007 and was the US industry's biggest selling comic book of the decade. He was awarded the MBE which is the member of the Order of the British Empire in the 2013 Queen's Birthday Honours List for his services to literature and drama. According to IMDb, Empress, one to two and untitled Kingsman Project TV series have been announced and the Magic Order TV series is currently in pre-production. So Meg, Buddy and us are very excited for Mark Miller. The fabulous Mark Miller, thank you so much for joining me on the web show. We met obviously during life after Flash. That of course was one of the films that you grew up with. Were there any other films that you grew up with that have made such an impact in your life today? Yeah I think I was so lucky that my mum got pregnant exactly when she did you know because it meant that I had such a brilliant run of movies in my childhood. Like if I'd been born five years earlier or later it might have been different. It could be a different person you're sitting talking to here but I was so lucky that I was seven when Star Wars came out. I was eight when I saw Sinbad and I the Tiger, you know Superman came out when I was just about to turn nine and Flash Gordon when I was ten, you know so it was just such a brilliant run. Just maybe when I was about to grow up and knock the end of this stuff and get into football or something like that then another great geek maybe came along and just pulled me back in and it was actually a great run. I mean all the way from about 77 till about 85 you know up to Ghostbusters back to the future gremlins all that stuff. I mean it was such a fantastic childhood. I've read some articles about you that you from a really early age loved comics and got into comics but do you remember ever wanting to do anything else you know like kids grew up wanting to be Feynman or astronauts or presidents or did you ever have any dreams even ridiculous or fantastical when you were growing up of anything else or has it always been comic books for you? I was sort of nudged towards real life and occasionally you know when I was at school and because I was reasonably smart at school I would I would be encouraged towards more academic subjects you know so I was doing sciences and you know that my plan was to go and become a GP you know like a position in a small town kind of thing and but really I mean every time I was sitting when I should have been you know doing four sequels mass times acceleration I was drawing a picture of Green Lantern kind of on the side of the page so like everything I lived and breathed from I was like four or so you know I was comic books I remember getting my early comic books I can't quite remember which ones came first because I still have them you know but like but I remember just being mesmerized instantly and there was a Superman cartoon on TV and everything so I was I was in there was no way I was going to do anything else and and what was really hard though is I lived in a small town in Scotland miles away from Hollywood miles away from New York where publishing happens so I didn't know how it was going to happen so I must have seemed like insane like you know these people you see on Popeye Dill or something you know say no yeah I'm I'm gonna be Beyonce's partner you know for the her next song you know it's like I must have seemed like that because I would go into the careers officer at school and say I want to write Batman or I want to write Superman and I wanted an artist at the time so what was the I guess the opinions of other people in the town that you grew up in when you would say things like when you made the decision that you wanted to be writing comics was it kind of welcoming idea or was it that kind of small town of oh you know that's just kind of in your head that doesn't happen in this kind of town combination like my mom I think was really worried about she was kind of like can you really stop and I remember when I was about 12 or 13 or something you know and like showing her like that portfolio and then she was always super encouraging and so was my dad and my brother's my sister and but I think by the time other kids were really starting to grow up and think about shaving and stuff like this I think she was just a little bit worried and I kept saying to her I'm gonna work in comic books and and she I think she was scared I was gonna be like you know penniless I think that was like saying I'm gonna be a meme artist you know and she would always gently encourage me towards something a bit more conventional and but I just I just had no interest in anything else in my hometown and everybody was kind of eccentric in their own way like there's an awful lot of people at my old school went off into music careers and film careers and all this kind of thing which is quite unusual for a small working class town in Scotland but we had a really unusual headmaster our headmaster back in the 1960s had won the brain of Britain so he was like the smartest man in Britain kind of thing you know and he he also was a former well-known goalkeeper and the television commentator and everything so so we almost had these kind of weirdly lofty ideas you know like I think my class that was about 30 or 31 of us when I started S1 in high school and all of that almost everyone has done something quite interesting which is odd you know way more than a private skill like people just ended up with the weirdest really interesting jobs at one point there was two guys from my school playing for Scotland against Brazil in the 1998 World Cup and I saw them on screen at the same time two guys in my school you know so it is weird you know so our school we always knew we were going to do something something fun no as much as Stan Lee's skills the most amazing one there's the wet the wet Clinton high school in the in New York the most amazing school like Calvin Klein Stan Lee Bob Kane who created Batman you had Bert Lancaster it's insane you look up for that school and it's got us beat but these guys were all there at the same time back in the 1920s so what was the moment that you made that transition from this is what I want to do to this is me actually doing it it was actually poverty and quite often you talk to musicians everything and having no money is sometimes the best catalyst you know for making what you really want to do happen because there's no alternatives now I dropped out university when I was 19 I had no cash at all no parents like living in a tiny squalid flat and I thought I've got to make some money and I didn't want to do a regular job you know because most writers are lazy and I tried to a regular job but then unfortunately it was at the time when there was just no jobs in the UK especially in the north and we there was deindustrialization going on so there was like 50 people applying for every one jobs and there's just no chance so what little money I had my my unemployment benefit for those few weeks I spent on stamps and my sister used to steal me a for paper out of her work and I went to the local library and started typing submissions to comic book companies and I was really lucky like really quickly the market was kind of exploding in comics and they just needed people and any idea would do and I was I was that idea did you when you started out have a goal of where you wanted to end up or did you really just kind of take it one step at a time with your career absolute goal yeah my goal was to work at DC comics and it's funny because sometimes it's like a parable or something you know you go off on your your huge destination and then you realize when you get there this isn't really what I want to be and I then wanted to be somewhere else but growing up all I ever wanted to do was work at DC comics and do Superman Batman Justice League all that stuff and then when I got there it was really quite corporate it was not what I expected I you know there's a certain illusion I guess sold to readers that this is tremendous fun and when you get there it's like a hardcore bullying environment really unpleasant so I was kind of like I'm not into this at all you know so I stayed on the periphery of it and I didn't really have much success nobody really read anything I did at the time it was always just staying above cancellation I did a little run on a Superman book for kids that I really enjoyed ran for 19 issues but even that every month I used to call the editor and say are we cancelled yet because I was always just floating at break even and every month it looked like we could get cans and it would mean no cash so I was terrified for like the whole 19 months but then then I just lucked out and and then my career took off when I stopped thinking about plans and destinations and everything I I just took each gay guys just something that looks fun and nice people to work with and everything so I went off to Wildstorm and did a book called the Authority which was a hot book and that kind of started my career really and and there's a huge lesson in that I think to not have a plan and just do what you really want to be doing is the secret of any creative endeavour. Was it a quite an easy decision for you then to go off on your own and start your own company? There was a period in between where what happened was I had a hit book my first hit came when I was starting so I'd been doing this since I was 19 then when I was starting I had a hit book and that got me poached by Marvel and I'd never really been that interested in Marvel and it's weird because I ended up becoming like you know really pivotal within that company for 10 years I was there for a long time and but I didn't grow up a Marvel fan I liked Marvel you know I read the stuff when I was really little but I was always DC was always the kind of cooler company through the 80s but what I and Marvel wasn't really well distributed in Scotland either so what I did was I ended up at Marvel almost by default and then the first book I did was the number one the number one book and then the second book I did was like the number one or number two book for the next five years you know so I was like this is crazy you know and everything yet even though I wasn't really mass at the end to Marvel I somehow seem to be finding this audience now I really enjoyed what I was doing and I was working with great people and but then I had a big conversation with Stan Lee and Stan said to me listen you've you've got to strike out your own do your own thing he said all these books you're doing at Marvel's going great you know they're very cinematic I feel as if these things could be movies I feel you'd be great creating your own characters and he talked me into it he said go off and do your own thing I start a mellow world next day knowing Stan Lee like you do what is one thing that people may not know about him how wise Stan is I mean that's the one thing cuz you have to remember he was an amazing operator you know like Stan's career runs from the 1940s really up until the day died I mean Stan was active the whole time and most people are lucky if they have a five or ten year career really you know in the pop medium because it's very fickle and people want to see something new and something a little bit fresh and then Stan Stan is an amazing survivor and the weird thing was as most people start to slow down in the mid-40s Stan began they just kicked into high gear and just got even bigger so I mean it's always massively inspirational to any middle-aged creators you know it's cool and and I just loved him growing up you know so like I wasn't disappointed when I when I finally got to speak to him and he was just very sage because he'd seen it all before and if you think about it you know there's been a lot of us doing this job over the last three generations that comic books have been around for generations almost and that Stan is the one that almost everybody in the world knows like there's Alan Moore and Frank Miller and but Stan is so far above them in terms of public consciousness that people just know who Stan is Stan would charge $150,000 just for appearing at a show and everything you know it's like he's the biggest star in comics and he was very because he was a he was in charge of the business side of things as well as the creative side of things he had an amazing rounded look at the whole industry and so he was very smart he said to me if I had the opportunities you have which is creating my own stuff and owning my own stuff that's what I'd be doing now I wouldn't be writing Marvel stuff you know he said don't do what I did 15 years ago he says go and do go and do your own thing now and it was really really smart so when your project you went off on your own and your project started to become big screen adaptations your very first one how did that happen did you were you seeking that were you sought after what was that process I did what Stan said I went off and I bought a pants from W. Smith's in a pen and I sat in a train station and I wrote wanted I wrote the plan while I was waiting on a train in Glasgow and I thought this is pretty good there's something here you know and I put it together and I'd written issue one and sent it off to the publisher who was quite keen to do something because I thought a lot of Marvel hit books I was getting good offers from other publishers where I could own the material and I thought we'll give this a try see what happens I'll keep doing the Ultimates next men and all that kind of stuff will remain in the meantime but then weirdly before this book even came out but it was just in the catalogue and a company called Mark Platt Productions who'd made legally blonde right the most unlikely action movie producer but this guy is very smart he used to run Universal Studios you know he's amazing and his second in command and called me up and and I thought it was a prank I didn't believe it he came through an agent that I was using for that particular project and and he called me up and he says that we'd like to make a movie and I was like seriously but you haven't even you know isn't it out yet you know there's there's no buzz on this and he said I saw it in previews which is the comic book industry catalogue where you can see what's coming up that retailers can can buy in a few months time when they're on the shelves and he said it just was really interesting I really like it so we did a deal and and it was insane and I was just thinking one Stan is so right he's so clever he's this was the absolute right thing to do and I was thinking well this ever happened again you know it's like and then I found out Angelina Jolie's gonna be in it. Markie Boy wasn't a big deal at the time it's obviously since we come enormous you know Morgan Freeman's gonna be in it everything and it was gonna be directed by a guy I'd never heard of but he was the biggest director in the Southern Hemisphere like it was crazy like his night watch movie I think had made more money than Lord of the Rings in Russia in various countries in the Southern Hemisphere you know and so he you know he was he was such an amazing producer to have on this he he took a comic book property nobody had ever heard of and spent 70 million dollars on it and made 342 million back and then it did gangbusters on DVD and Blu-ray as well so it was crazy you know and that what an introduction to Hollywood I mean one of my friends David Goyer the guy who wrote the Batman films and everything he said to me on the set of once it actually he was shooting Batman around the same time that night and he said to me you're supposed to do like five rubbish things first you know your IMDB page should be embarrassing for a little bit and then you get lucky with Angelina Jolie so I was insanely lucky you know just coming in at the top like that and that just opened every door so any any any project I had coming out everybody made an offer for so I I'd never done a picture in my life I've never sat in a meeting and said hey what do you think of this the people are always hovering and saying okay what's your next thing you've got coming out and then I finish it send over and then there's a little bedding goes on between them every person's dream I mean just so nobody hates me you know I didn't have a living tough years before it but so but what that does I mean I would say this to anyone who is having tough years is it makes you really appreciate it when things do work out because I do remember what it was like for every three months my phone to be cut off and then I would get the money together to get it back on again and then a three months later it would be cut off again you know so about four times a year my phone used to get cut off and everything you know so for the first 10 years of my career but you don't realize at the time but that is just part of the process you know like you you're not going to be an instant hit and I remember when I was 19 thinking well I should be writing Batman and X-Men of course but then you realize no you have to start at the bottom let every career you have to start at the bottom and if you rise too soon you'll actually rot too soon as well you know you need to build your legs before you can have any kind of long career so if there were people out there that wanted to do what you have done what would your biggest piece of advice for them be do something to interest you I mean that was the thing it took me 10 years to learn I used to always try and please other people and it was the worst thing you can possibly do as a creator because you never really know that if you don't please yourself you'll please no one so the most important thing is like what would I actually spend $3.99 on if I'm gonna read it you know what would make me turn the page like so never anticipate trends or anything like that just just think what am I interested in right now and there's a reasonable chance a large number of people will also be into it if you into it so I think that's the wisest after been in this game for 30 years as the wisest piece of advice I've given her if you could be any character that you've created who would you be and why well I already am you know because I was a lot of the characters that I did greatly kick ass is so autobiographical you know that there's little bits in Kingsman and everything that's me and I think somebody who had a really easy life like I wouldn't really like to be kick ass you know in the comic books because he was beaten up all the time and he's always covered in blood and everything you know so I think I'd what somebody who got off really attractive people and you know had a you know a nice lifestyle and things like that you know I think I'd go for somebody who's never in fights you know but unfortunately that doesn't really make great drama you know you kind of you want your characters to be having a tough time I had to pick anyone who would it be that's a really hard question I've met during all the years I've done this I've never been asked who I'd actually want to be you know well that good because I was really worried trying to come up with questions for you because I thought the amount of times you've been interviewed and there are people out there that know your work inside out and I just thought there's quite a high bar to be thinking of questions that's a good one like the most normal question you get asked is what super power would you like to have you know and I always try and think up 10 brilliant stop responses for this then I forget them you know but what character of my own I mean Batman would be cool you know I didn't create Batman you know but Batman he's got a nice house good car you know cool costume and everything you know it's a good one oh my own I don't show me I maybe need to create some killer characters well I have I have an important question actually that I because I know that we're coming to an end of our time my birthday is 10th of December and I know that your birthday is very much more a Christmas birthday do you think it's a positive or a negative having a Christmas birthday 100% positive 100% positive and I'll tell you why because when you're really little you always think it's all about you like my family used to pretend to me when I was a kid this is you know I'm the youngest of six I was overly indulged but when I was really little my family used to say to me look all these decorations they have up in the city for your birthday you know and then I was like that's amazing and I totally associate my birthday with Jesus so I think it gives you a certain level of confidence growing up you think this is really nice of the world to get in on my birthday this is this is really good and then by the time you realize they're pretending then the damage is done you're already a narcissist so so that's good and the other thing that works really well is that you also always get present like people assume if you get a Christmas birthday that somebody will say oh listen I'll just give you a Christmas present and that'll be your birthday too never happened in my whole life it's never happened once and people can never forget a Christmas birthday because it's so unusual you know so everybody always can I remember your birthday and there's no excuses I had the opposite I was always the one the person and this is probably how shallow I was as a kid I was always the one that got this is for your birthday and it'll just be for Christmas and so I always associated it with you know that kind of the combination present and I you know was the little kids that I liked you know I liked quantity rather than quality because I liked unwrapping things but I love the idea that you would walk around the streets and think that all the decorations are for you that's really sweet here's me as a baby and I crept with three wise men coming to bring me gifts but like surely whenever they combined your present like that did they double up like we're gonna spend a hundred a trillion dollars with spend two hundred a trillion dollars no because I also had a sibling too so then I mean I mean that you had more than one but in my family I was lucky though because all my siblings were so much older I was one of those babies of pops at the end you know and so all my siblings were like 14 years old I'm a 16 years older so they weren't competition like my parents had kind of already moved on from getting them really good presents and we're just buying them jumpers and shirts and things you know whereas with me I then suddenly had it was almost like having loads of parents everybody was working and David all by me really cool stuff so even though we were poor I always had quite good stuff you know I love it well thank you so much I know that you're gonna go make dinner so I really appreciate you spending the time talking to me and it's so it's been a fabulous journey meeting you in all of this and I'm just so impressed of everything that you have achieved and I think you're incredibly talented so thank you very much thanks very much thank you so thank you for staying to the end of the episode that's very kind of you you're in luck because you're just in time for the competition before we announce this week's competition we have a winner from last week's competition who's one the competition was to win a link to in search of darkness we interviewed director David Weiner last week if you missed it there's a card brilliant interview great documentary series and the winner or the competition was the competition was what is the most underrated horror film in your opinion and what was the winner winner was Karloff 87 said Street Trash was released in 1987 it was about homeless people it feels like this is a made-up one homeless people get their hands on ancient booze dropout and join the ranks of the future the filthy trash I've never even heard of it well I think we need to put it on watch this yeah well have a look at that one Street Trash so well done if you email info at lifeaftermovies.com I will get to that link to you now this week's competition oh wow we've got a great one it is a copy of a life after flash which is signed by none other than Sanjay Jones flash Gordon himself and who else is that me oh and you and no other than Lisa down it's a DVD which is signed by both of these fabulous people one sat next to me and while in America Ash thinks it's ancient technology maybe homeless people can find an ancient DVD if anybody's got anything that can play this format then you're welcome to this prize and Lisa tells me lots of people still use DVD I haven't seen a DVD player since circa 2005 I don't think but people still seem to love them but the thing about this one that's so special is it is signed so how do you get your hands on this beauty I can hear you asking again but before we do that the answer the question though Mark Miller's in this oh yes Mark Miller we interviewed him for the DVD hence the connection it's not just a random entry because I had one sitting on my desk there was actually a connection to some thought goes into this stuff people it's not just made up on the spot you know so how do we win it the question the question for next week's show on how to win this beautiful possibly defunct piece of technology is I don't have any sign blu-ray can you come up with an original superhero name and what would their unique superpower be we like funny ones we do like funny ones because it's not going to be a random winner it's going to be chosen by us yeah so make it funny make it good comment down below also tell us what else you like did you enjoy the interview mark who else do you want to speak to talk to us people we want to hear from you don't forget to subscribe press the notification bell and then you will be told every time we upload a new content we have to say that apparently it says it in all the youtube guides tell people we know people don't like to be told what to do but it'd be nice to be subscribed if you can but we're not telling you you have to just if you accidentally click it if you actually click the little bell button as well and if you subscribe and then you maybe you want to watch the episode and go back and watch all the previous episodes that would also be good and also if you wanted to just like tell all of your friends about it share it across social media that would also be cool wouldn't it please tell your friends please it's just you know otherwise it's just us in this green screen right we need to get out of the house we do oh thanks for watching everyone and thanks if you actually watched to the end and you're not one of those people that watched the first apparently 18 seconds yeah the first 18 second arseholes we call them you can see the stats on youtube 18 seconds that's your attention we literally drop like 40 viewing after the first 18 seconds 18 seconds so sorry if we're not as exciting at the beginning i tell you what we're going to focus on for next week is the most bloody exciting first 18 seconds you've ever seen i might dress up as something or do something incredible so make sure you come back for that it's going to be great so thanks for watching please enter the competition it's free if you have a pet if you've got an old dvd player somewhere next to your beta max and your super eight and your eight tracks this could be played on it make everyone and buddy thanks for watching see you next week