 So we're gonna have to really just start it off because can we claim this as the the the West Coast? Premier of your graphic novel off a 10 of Tavia butler's Kendrick. I think you just did so yeah Absolutely, I mean That's probably the book that most people who are new to Octavia That's that their first approach. That's the first entry point. Yeah about that. What did you or any? If this could be some people's first, you know, mostly we'll go to the graphic version probably than the text version So did you feel any responsibility or any type of extra pressure around creating this book? Yes Just a little bit just I mean we just felt pressure from like Doing justice to Octavia butler's legacy and doing justice to the story and Producing something that her fans would like and producing something that new readers would like but besides all that no pressure at all Yeah, very little pressure The other thing too is Stylistically, how do you get across the drama and the honestly horror of the story? Right? I mean because it is a horror story And also, how do you make something that is abstract enough and empathetic enough that actually like Damien was saying draws new readers in but also definitely does justice to the story and in reverence to such a wonderful Writer as Octavia butler. So that's yeah, it's it was daunting to say the least You know very very daunting and there's something to say that I'm gonna pick up on you know It's a horror story essentially. Yeah, and I was talking to friends of mine and we're like what could possibly be scary to black people After all the stuff we've been through Wills to hear what possibly could be scary, but you think about This I mean how many of you are familiar with Kendrick Okay, so spoiler Just so you know I mean The the very idea of you being responsible of Saving your life because you have to save the life of people who owned your ancestors, right? And we're your ancestors, right? What I mean like for you drawing that and you for writing it. I mean like what came up. Oh You can start okay What came I mean So kindred it's hard like we talked about it like a horror story because I mean clearly it is but it's Part of the horror is that it's pretty much historical fiction outside of the one fantastical element of time travel I mean everything is fairly accurate to the time periods it portrays. So I mean Being doing something that's horrific in the right way. I think was was something that came up for both of us that was a challenge just in terms of You know like the visual elements of the violence of showing violence that is Impactful in the way it's supposed to be in the way it is in the story and gendered and racialized and gendered and racialized exactly and and Doing it in such a way that it's not somehow exploitative or or lessening the impact of the what it was in the pros So just that that aspect of the adaptation was definitely Something we thought a lot about and we're really really careful with But also just sort of Because the main thing about kindred Butler said she wanted to make the reader feel history, right? So that was like we took that as our mission statement for if you don't feel like you're Dana going through this We're not doing our job, right, right a friend of ours who's a critic as well said Did she read read the graphic novelization of the book and she said that it gave her a nightmare and I was like, okay Good, okay, that's great Then we did our job Because the notion of you know someone of someone who's African-American being Teleported back through time into slavery Wow, that is It's instantaneously, right Which does mimic how slaves were pretty much taken from Africa, right? I mean, it was like hey, I'm free and I'm in a box and I'm animal, you know that kind of thing And so how do you get across? that visually without Pushing people away too much too It's a very visceral aspect to it that I think that we tried to like I said use the The affordances of comics Effectively, so there's a lot of things that we abstract Butler refers to that to the piece as a As a grim fantasy and so there we wanted to feel like that like a fantasy piece someone compared someone compared it to like a like a dark story book Like you know kind of like a fairy tale like a fairy tale. Yeah, which are almost always grim, right? Yes, exactly. And so that made that that nature of it I think definitely comes across. There's also the physical nature of actually drawing it over and over again That is extremely heavy that you don't really take into account into account It's not like drawing Superman jumping over, you know a building or stopping a locomotive it's it it's not escapist in that particular way and It's not the bed. It doesn't have like those those types of resolutions either because there's no there's no real catharsis No, I mean, but and there shouldn't be of course, but yeah by the end Writing it and then I know John drawing it to like we're getting to the point of like Dana. Just kill these slaveholders I'm sick of these people, you know, right because you know, you're used to that from from more kind of simplistic narratives of The revenge fantasy or something like that and can you go affect the Django effect? And you know butler never lets you off the hook like everyone is complicit in some way Everyone has to deal with this in some way. Mm-hmm. I think there's something about it being in graphic form now that made it It's kind of like in Indian mythology the Ramayana Every piece of every every critique every add-on is actually a part of the Ramayana, right? So they actually incorporate it. Yeah. And so looking at it seems like reading the the graphic novelization that you've done is Almost another like looking like oh what was around that corner? And so we're looking on the corner and now we have this entire other narrative there And it actually for me enhanced my reading of the books. I read it. I read the graphic novel I was there to read the book and I was like wait a minute There's things because in the graphic form your mind is forced to create connections between panels in between pages Yeah, and so you I mean for me it was just like them two together. It was just I mean, yes I did have a nightmare as well. I mean But I think there's something about Being able to own that and like as you're saying sit without resolution without catharsis in that and understand that these I mean This is what how old is Kendrick 79? Yeah, I mean so and it's still today. Yes matters It's probably even more relevant in some way today, you know, especially when you talk about like Some of the body horror aspects to help to the the black body and if you look at like what's going on in Society recently like as you were stating, you know You can definitely use speculative fiction to Talk about those those issues really readily and and Butler I think more than most is actually extremely was extremely adept at that So and then we were trying to just mirror that as much as possible, but again also utilize the The comics medium to do things the comics do well, right? We definitely talked a lot about using visual composition to express some of the complexities of the characters that she gets across in prose so for example, we'll have Different characters and like the same sort of pose or the same kind of silhouette mirroring each other to sort of highlight the Connections the comparing contrast between different characters and also to kind of amplify the gothic nature of the story because The 19th century setting of the plantation is very much a part of sort of gothic American gothic literature, right? and there's all these aspects of like twinning and The physical world mimicking the emotional world and stuff like that So we definitely wanted to make sure we were using comics to get across some of those themes that I think are a bit more Kind of under the surface in the book in the novel. Yes, I definitely think that it's You know, even though I can see why people were related to science fiction You know a particular type of science fiction I guess because of this time travel aspects, but it's not like Dana jumps in a TARDIS, you know There's this like inexplicable. I think also they want to shove all butler's books together So they didn't want to like read too deeply into what she was actually I can I can I can agree with that But it's it's a masterpiece because it effected defies all of those. Yeah conventions, right? So that's Yeah, there's a big part of it as Damien was saying the gothic nature of it is something that really attracted me to it as Well, you have a term for that right that you utilize. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I call it called the ethnographic Break the knowledge well, basically when I was when I was um And my friend stamp is Stanford in the audience. Yeah, my friend Stanford carpenter. We're talking about At length did some of the limitations of Afrofuturism or how we think about Afrofuturism because a lot of times is Damien saying We tend to couch Different types of speculative fiction under one umbrella for whatever reason, right? So for instance if anything is magical happening in a black person what it was about a black person Then it happens Afrofuturism, you know, and of course you couldn't say that Afrofuturism is going against those conventions like butler's fiction But there's also genre conventions that are connected to the gothic that are connected to horror that connected to science fiction that kind of thing and so when I start looking at stuff like, you know, kindred or beloved or even stuff like the film st. Kofa even You're using the gothic tendencies of the other tropes to kind of unpack some of those issues around You know racial tensions or unresolved Narratives around slavery in our country or even even like the you know the tensions between like what is whiteness? What is blackness and how do those things like overlap, you know in a narrative? So it's interesting to me that a Lot of times when people talk about slavery to call a specter The specter of slavery, you know, even Orlando Patterson's book You know the slavery and social death, you know We're talking about like the undead and these types of like tropes that are more connected to the gothic and to horror than they are to say You know traditional science fiction and fantasy, you know, so that's why I was thinking about it So it's using those narratives to unpack those things. I think you think it's always in whatever genre convention I think when it comes to portraying black folks in stories, it always focuses on the body Body becomes the locus of narrative. That's right most all the time. I think that's another aspect. Yeah, definitely Yeah, I was wondering. I mean, there's there's also a danger there of Adopting societal Intention to address the body. Yeah, right because the body especially if you're writing about black women black women's bodies are always commodified Yeah, they're separated. They're commodified there whatever and so in your work I mean ethnographic in other words that you've done. How do you? Block out the overarching, you know memes of of society for the black body, especially genderized bodies and being able to present the horror minus the exploitation Yeah, I don't think you can block out the social kind of dehumanization of bodies so much as Recognize that it's there and use the work to contrast it Um, that's an antivirus. Yes. Yeah, like an antivirus almost, but yeah, like I think That's something that kindred does really well. I mean as a first-person narration from Dana's perspective as Getting very in-depth into you like the emotional lives of the characters both the slaves and the slave owners And that baby knows what I'm talking about That baby is woke But yeah, no, I think you can't really divorce the two because the the Systemic racism the social dehumanization of the black body is Always prevalent and the only way to really deal with that is to first recognize it And I think that's true of a lot of the political undertones of kindred is first You have to recognize they're there and deal with them in all their complexity instead of reducing them to you know Very simple ideas and deal with our demons in relation to it. Well. Yeah. Yeah, definitely and and and also You know, there are different ways that you can take the image to fight against those particular types of watching pieces You have like recontextualization of the image reappropriation and of course inversion right where you're taking the stereotype and you kind of flipping it inside itself but but you definitely have to do some research on as far as like the the kind of like Continuum of those types of images. I mean because you're right I mean the black body is read as a type of text Constantly and you know, it's been edited, you know, by media, you know, throughout history But if you know those particular types of antecedents and your understanding where the author is coming from with those with those subjects Then you can actually do some really interesting parody insight and satire and you know really really Critique, you know of those types of negative stereotypes and and push them further. I think you know I mean even the term Afrofuturism if you think about the original futurism, I mean that was sort of an antecedent to fascism, right? so Afrofuturism just sort of Entomologically like it it does that sort of inversion, right? It takes this like notion of the future as this unstoppable fascist force and recontextualize it as a way for oppressed people to Imagine a future where there is justice where they are empowered. Yeah and equity. Definitely. Yeah Yeah, it almost becomes like almost like a Dyson sphere of Possibility. Yeah, they're like, oh so Afrofuturism is this thing, but in this thing there's tributaries Mm-hmm. Yeah, we have the Afro-surreal I mean Surreal you have all these other things that are happening on that But I don't want because you guys have done more than just, you know This this new wonderful graphic novel, but this is not the first time you work together, right? No, so what's the highlight outside of this beautiful book, which is on sale in the other room, right? What has been your pinnacle work together? Do you think? First about the preface things and we've been working together for 12 years. Yeah And we've done we've published comics and graphic novels. We've also curated art shows and put out Well one art book and we have a second one coming out that collected the work of Black comics creators from all across the country and I guess all across the world. That's right. Yeah, technically So we've done a lot of different sorts of things around these topics of like identity and representation in comics But in terms of the pinnacle Have we actually got I don't know yeah I was gonna be like see I was gonna be nice and be like we haven't reached it yet because we're awesome But John's all I'm sick of you fine Yeah, I mean, I hope we haven't reached the pinnacle yet. I think that's a wrong word So what has been I mean what best outside of Octavia Butler the Kendrick graphic novel what best exemplifies your collaboration I'm kind of torn between the whole and like out of sequence. Yeah, I to see it kind of both Okay, so the whole consumer culture is our first published graphic novel and it's a It was from 2008. Let me see if I can remember the whole it's good. No, all right. It was What's my name again? It's a science fiction horror satire about the buying and selling of race and gender in America and the bloody horror of Stereotypes being broken down. That's pretty good. It's close to that. It's almost like the back blur I used to have that memorized but um, it's this a really crazy horror science fiction black and white comic We did and we did specifically to be taught so there's contextualizing essays and Like exercise classroom exercises in the back of the book. Yeah, but yeah, so Anyway, it was this kind of horror story comparing Like Haitian Vodun as a religion to the way voodoo is represented in like Hollywood film and stuff like that And using that as kind of a metaphor or like a small example of the way Race and gender sexuality identities get like sort of commodified and simplified and sold back to you Yeah, through the through mediation, right? So we so we could we the main I guess you say like the probe tagging This is probably pop it like but right. Yeah. Yeah, it's highly influenced by like narratives like Ishmael Reed's mumbo jumbo and so it's uh, I Don't know. It's it's like hyper post-modern. I guess Yeah, there's like different narrators sometimes they talk to the reader sometimes they talk to each other like yeah There's things where we make you turn the book sideways to make a crossroads, you know stuff like that So we actually like, you know because the book is horizontal like a screen. So is there a spell in that book? Possibly I'm thinking of the invisibles is one long siege. I'm like what's y'all cooking? I think the book is a spell Yeah, I mean a lot of the invisibles he was wrong on some similar work like Maya Darin's Divine Horsemen. Divine Horsemen, Deon Fortune. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and you Thompson's book. I don't know if it was a spell, but it was definitely We made it to be problematic on purpose because like it's a horror story about racism and sexism So the sort of comment I often get is like it's so dark and I'm like, but it's a horror story About racism and sex. The main character has a mouth in their stomach that eats It's a representation of the Marasa, you know from Vodun. So yeah, that's the twins who are three dihopies. So There's that aspect to it as well. It's definitely this role and it definitely plays into a lot of issues around body horror and other Ways to talk about, you know, race and sexuality in that particular genre So we put it out in 2008 and then about seven years later We got to visit Vassar College and they had a couple of classes that were actually teaching the book Which was like what we made it for so that was kind of surreal to walk in and all these kids had this like crazy It's really kind of wow. Yeah, that's the freaks who made. Yeah, I know. So, okay No, it's really they were really into it. Yeah, it was really it was really well And we actually got a chance to do a public lecture about it And that's when we discovered that we're working together ten years because as Damien was putting together flies for our talk He was like, wait a minute. Yeah, I had to like check with my wife because she keeps my like memory I'm like, wait Is it still available? Yeah, unlike Amazon online. It's still available even though unfortunately front 40 press has But it was the first graphic novel to be distributed by the University of Chicago So that was pretty cool where there's a bunch of books there that we have to move now But yeah, but it will but I'm hoping to get them in hand and and get them But I mean, I think the public so I think that particular book is kind of representative of our work because it is really a crossroads of artistic creation and scholarly work And that's kind of where we've sort of lived as creators is doing both sort of critical academic work and creative work in the same space and I think there's something I don't want to say it legitimizes the work because I think the work is legitimate because it's been produced but I think there's something about being able to look at non superhero comics work through a critical lens of an academic lens that gives it a different type of weight Right because you have, you know Billions of pages on Superman as this billions of pages on Batman as you know fascist rich boy You know all these all these things but something that you guys I think what's great is that you? The work you've done Really gives us like the stuff matters Not just for the people in the comic shops not just but it matters for us in the classroom there as an educator I've definitely been able to bring stuff out your collaborator. We're gonna study this today. We're gonna study it from art We're gonna study it from from just creation We're gonna study it from you know what it talks about what it doesn't talk about from the omissions I mean you guys are kind of like you know your literary But it's still in the comic form. So how do you reconcile those two or is there any reconciliation to be had? I don't know. I don't know if we need to yeah, I don't know I mean I love I love that would you know to borrow from the the crossroads You know analogy. I mean everything I think The answer to the most things are probably in the middle somewhere, you know like in that liminal space, you know No, I don't I don't know we necessarily have to be in one or the other You know we can be critical makers and scholars and you know fanboys and what have you I think is Well, I mean I think that book taught us that is simultaneity is the nature of I mean, I think you know, I think maybe There's definitely that perception among Other people maybe that those things need to be reconciled. I think that's still exist and it's still prevalent You know, especially like academic circles like is this those are the arguments I have yeah Oh, yeah, I have a recipe all the time. Yeah, yeah, and I mean my answer for that is they're wrong and we're right Yeah, of course, yeah, okay talk over I was always saying I know right I would always say that you know if you want to go to a really segregated space go to a university Right because we're like we're like in these silos and he's like, you know and a lot of times You know when you're studying a particular thing you definitely know the depth in the the width of your naval That's okay. Oh you say something. I'm sorry, you know Yeah, I mean, so I mean but that's the nice thing about using comics for this work Is that it's flexible enough it can kind of transcend or go between the silos if you're using the academic talk and you know because it's not Historically commonly used as a medium for teaching these various sort of like weighty topics And I think that's why we like it it kind of drills through those boundaries Well, you guys don't really do superheroes so much There's something about that that there's something like that people almost always Ascribe the comic form of superheroes like that's what they know. Well, it's because of the mainstream media. Yeah in America Remember, I mean back in the day you had those illustrated classics, you know The civil rights comics back in the day you had all these things I'm just wondering what do you think the shift happened where it came from being almost used as lightweight textbooks for a lot of people or Community storytelling to being kind of this almost specialized niche of adolescent white boy power fantasy. Yeah. Well, I mean I think it's Well, first, I would like to say it's not like that other stuff went away like educational comics have always been around I So I've done research on this and there's this one Educational comic scholar named Leonard Griffiths and he talks about how Educational comics are seen as a perennial novelty, right? So a small group or an organization a library a school whatever We're like, what if we made a comic that talked about XYZ and they're like, that's Nobody had that idea Evergreen. Exactly. Yeah, but I mean I think that's kind of good in a way because it allows people who are Outside of that one set mentality of like comic book shop Marvel DC direct-market superhero comics Yeah, and they approach the medium from a much different standpoint as a means of outreach and teaching But I think the way like those sort of became more marginalized it was To a certain extent the rise of the direct market where Corporate comic creators or I'm sorry comics publishers just sold directly to comic shops and also, I mean and that was probably coming off of the 50s with the comics code authority and censorship of comics and So many different You know mitigating factors that kind of made a perfect storm of the comic being looked at as a juvenile medium I mean and then also what again with the with the ubiquitous superhero you get this this kind of confusion between Genre and medium, right? You know, so comics equals super. I'm a clue in paradox Exactly. Yeah, and it's hard to break through those things. There's also this notion of image meaning juvenile Yes, for some reason in as an illustrated piece and then also You see what I'd say this this lack of Ideation I guess ideation about what about different types of literacy to this is another aspect, you know as far as like, you know Visual literacy and multi-modal literacy and social literacy. It's not just reading and writing is all these different other things Yeah, so and it's funny has come to this Because if comics were talked about, you know in a positive way in an educational sense It was always to like get kids to do real reading like Rose reading Way to or to warn you away from something there Yeah, I'm warning you away from something and now it's more like it's a it's a way to get kids to be critical Of like online media digital media, right? Because oh, it's kind of visual like this But it's close to reading so that's okay But nobody not nobody but it's less common to look at comics as its own form of literacy Rather than trying to you know, legitimize it by connecting it to either like the sort of canonical prose Or the new media new media. Yeah, it's really a comic is hard I mean if you've never done it's kind of like reading a screenplay or a stage play It's a different language, right and it does take a certain skill Yeah, or certain level of literacy as you're saying to be able to actually like decode And I think it's completely fair to say that it is a helpful way to learn other forms of literacy Yeah, but I don't think it's it's like you still need to remember that comics is its own thing, too I think we're also any kind of reading, you know the You read best what you read most to you know, it comes to practice and we're talking about like issues around how The comic becomes part of direct market. I mean we've lost comics literacy, right because where were comics sold before? everywhere Station Newsstands things like that and so so when you take the comics medium You move it into like these really kind of cloistered spaces only certain people have access to You know, you kind of lose that social literacy around how comics function in digital now I think is also maybe it's becoming the new filling stations and new pharmacies because as you're showing me earlier today You have comic solids. You have a thousand comic books on my iPad right now. You're saying, you know, yeah Yeah, yeah, I have like several thousand comments. Yeah to do that now Have it and they can carry around and walk it and being able to you know get that that hit wherever they are And now I mean you can find web comics about any topic you're interested in like if you go online now American comics have come a lot closer to what manga has been for since like the 70s, right? having multiple genres multiple topics Something for everybody. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and so I mean there's a couple people who talked to me beforehand Who are creators and so I just want to make sure I address their their pre-question was be able to How do you how does an artist and their writer collaborate? Well, first you get your boxing on his kid Yeah, it's like in kickboxer where they put Well first John has to understand that I'm right and he's right now Don't touch me No, I mean we've been fortunate that we've always From the beginning been pretty good about collaborating and you know calling each other on our mistakes and you know Bouncing things out and things I can't front because he has the he has the lion's share of the work Any artist has the lion's share so for those creators what they asked me if you're working with a writer The artist has the most work to do just so If you were mean to him draw some rains like damn rain Six hours later My favorite is like the overhead shot of the giant crowd of people if you want to like kill Let's get him sketch up No, it's it's much more labor-intensive and time-intensive to Physically taxing yeah, but I hurt myself literally on kindred, you know saying like I had a You know I had like a ice pack and like a heating pad and I jacked my shoulder up, you know just from like just drawing It's 700 it's 760 illustrations, you know, so it's like it's it's that I mean So script comes out. Yes, you shoot the script. Do you do it? It depends on a project Yeah, like with the whole because we were Emmy was mainly just doing it ourselves We had a publisher but not really any kind of editorial input So we just like we spent well first we came up the idea for the story and we spent a lot of time Just kind of talking out the plot mostly over beer mostly over beer because that helps and it just does and Once we came up with the the concept of sort of comparing voodoo as a religion to voodoo as pop culture thing We realized we knew nothing about Yeah, yeah, that was like 11 months of research right there like both of us doing research in various states like I would I would read like a lot of the critical aspects of books about or stories of use vote, you know voting and then I was reading a lot of the fiction. Yeah, I was reading like Ishmael Reed and I think we both kind of went for the my Darren stuff Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know we kind of like traded traded off research But with kindred it was a much different process because we had you know very strong editorial input And there were a number of people who had to kind of sign off on each step of the process so my Original first drafts. I keep saying this but I'll say it again. It was really bad. It was like it was a really bad It wasn't really. Oh, okay. I'm hard I wasn't it wasn't it wasn't appropriate for what was needed. Yeah It was I kind of wrote a book where it would have made you read the novel because I'm like everybody needs to read this novel Because by this point I've read it like ten times. Okay, so maybe okay, never mind Don't make a book that forces you to read another book But anyway, like it did help me get through the adaptation process and then we were fortunate to have Sheila Keenan as our editor and she was like very felt very strongly about the book She was very connected to it and she did an amazing job of just kind of cutting away the fad of that draft and helping just get to the core Details and images and story of kindred But so I went back and forth with the editor for a while just in the script and then once that was Completed and signed off on John got that. Yeah, and I started working on breakdowns So so even before we actually started making the book and through the editorial process I had to go through and make Breakdowns of every sketches like of an entire story So so so that the publisher could see everything and then they and I shot that over to Damian and he actually is also our letterer Yeah, so I lettered the first I lettered the Thumbnail sketches so those are like very loose kind of sketchy like stick figure means this person goes here Yeah, I'm just so at each step the editor and the publisher and Octavia Butler's estate to see where we're going and you know Make sure everybody was cool with it because it's a lot easier to fix like a rough pencil sketch than it is like I think it's like a full-blown drawing So of a whipping scene. Yeah, so I let But yeah, so I lettered those and those went out and those got signed off on and then John went through and did the Finished inks pencils and inks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and that was that was trippy because I was traveling a lot still I was forced to go on vacation by my wife in the middle of the biggest deadline Thank you Yeah freaking out, you know on a boat I don't remember what we went to for the vacation because I was so freaked out Back in time to We actually did go to a couple of plantations for research to actually, you know in Florida and in New Orleans but anyway so ends up happening is I Had a couple of had a wedding and that I had to go to and I had like a couple of speaking engagements I had to do so a lot of the drawings were done in my lap With Stacy Robinson and my wife You didn't hear he's right there he doesn't care. He's like whatever Nobody's talking about Stacy Robinson. Hi Stacy. Shout out to Stacy Robinson. What's up, fam? Okay, I'm sorry You're forgiven. Yeah, we're actually running out a little bit. Yeah. Oh, no. No, I just want to make sure I don't we don't go over No, I'm gonna make two things Both of you. What do you write on? What do I write? Do you have a special word process program or do you just use word? I just use word. I mean I draw a lot of times I'll draw out my own little sketches just to figure out where stuff goes on the page But word yeah, I write in whatever is on the computer like I used to use text edit on my old computer And now I use whatever that think pages is whatever on this new computer that I'm still learning to love You know, what is your what are you used for your drawings? Pencil and I use Sharpies now a lot too because I really like their Gritty quality to them and you can to carry around with you and just make me fall in love with ink again Because before then I would just do digital inks But it's difficult to carry like a giant computer with you everywhere So I need to get more mobile with that But yeah, and one thing too for all of you who writers here Well, I will I will promote this product forever Scrivener is the world's greatest writing platform ever and it's less than 60 bucks. So if you are a writer Scrivener, I don't I don't get paid by them It's just it literally it made my writing process I wrote two books in six months using the thing because it made it organized things for me because I have no brain for it So Scrivener all day. So I want to thank both of you. Thank you for being coming I know you're just on you're just on New York yesterday Mm-hmm black comics festival at the Schaumburg. Yeah, long with David Frank I've got David Walker a couple of the people who are in the audience who are there and you're here again So thank you for making that that that that iron man iron John be double across then so Crocodon tubs. Thank you So we have time for three audience questions, so Who who who wants to brave brave the questions? No, yeah, he had that resident voice. Oh, you know microphone nice voice. Yeah, thanks I'm actually scared to read your version of it because I'm so in love with the original book But I have a copy. I'm gonna read it. I was curious to know though With the digital media. Did you have to make concessions about it being viewed digitally versus in print form and Relatedly do you expect to have it in languages other than English or do you already? Well for those are great questions as far as like the the the visual aspects of it Because of of how those digital comics work like for instance comic psychology you can go panel-to-panel that kind of thing It just breaks it down and also go and it and it's also Connected to the text and not the image so it it does have you read the text, you know in order So I'm not so not so much I think I just wanted to make sure that it was illustrated properly and it got across the storytelling properly, so yeah Yeah, I mean comicsology is set up to Transfer print comics to a digital format and like that's what they do. So yeah, that's not digitally native, right? So we didn't really deal with that for this project right but and in terms of other Languages, I think it might depend on how well the book does and it's initial So the book is sailing right across over But I'm sure that if the opportunity arises then it would happen and I hope you enjoy it. Yes Anybody else sir, I don't stand up. Let me probably be very easy to project. I'm not sure the microphone is When you mentioned before the the jangle isation I was it raised the interesting question Of what across the span of your career is what other patterns you've seen in comic book culture Have you seen trends or patterns come and go and how has that affected your work and where do you see it going? Yeah, it's funny. I Was always really into those types of films like those those Exploitation films, you know, most of them are revenge fantasies to a certain degree. I think I was fortunate enough to have a mother that was an avid like horror like action movie comic Fanatic, so I was I was extremely blessed in that way and I don't know I think that there's a an aspect of my work that I think is pushing more towards Some of those darker narratives to kind of like channel some of the things that are happening in Society, I find that science fiction and horror in particular are extremely useful for political statements I definitely think that most of my work these days are going to go towards Exposing and dealing with those with a lot of like, you know, political Aspects of what I see around me, you know, I can just see that happening in the work. So in terms of Trends in like comic culture. I think at this point comics comics culture is such a like Broad and kind of fractured thing. It's hard to say trends exactly like there are trends You can see trends in like the way superhero comics, for example Are starting to be a little more cognizant of like how race and gender and Sexual identity are discussed But if you look at independent comics like they've been working in these kind of areas for a long time Like dealing with underrepresented voices and like that But then if you look at what gets called independent comics or alternative comics, sometimes those kind of like Get a little too like you're saying like navel gazing like Let me just talk about how sad I am because someone broke up with me for like 400 pages Um, I mean, you know how it was too bad The true the true blue hero and then Frank Miller gave us the anti-hero like the basically the the the blueprint of the anti-hero Yeah, then we started moving more into the I Won't say I mean the hyper apologetic hero in a way And now we're kind of getting back to the EC the weird stuff now The weird is coming back in ways that I haven't done before and that's been something I've been digging Yeah, I think that night. I think the weird was always there, but it yeah, it there's been more of a resurgence where there's a more sort of diverse audience and Different audiences are being served by the size just you know straight up superhero fans and an idea the uncanny is something I think we can see indexed in reality quite Very evidently, you know, so I want to thank all of you who have taken your time thank goodness I wasn't raining today. We're coming down today Please give a warm run a pause for Damian Duffy and John Jennings. Thank you both so much