 My first professional comics job. Well, my first professional comics job was for Archie. And what happened was I was going to the Joe Kuber School in Dover, New Jersey, which, for people that don't know, it's a school for aspiring cartoonists. And Victor Gorellek, who was the editor at the time at Archie, was looking for artists for Archie. And being an Archie fan myself, I had already done some portfolio samples. So he came to the school and checked it out. And like what he saw, I started working for Archie while I was at Kuber School. And that was how my career really started. That would have been in 1987, 1987. The first issue that I had something appear in, it was like a one-page Sabrina gag, I remember. And it was in Archie's Christmas Talking, which was part of the Archie's Giant series. So it would have been Archie's Giant series, whatever Christmas of 87 was, was when my first work appeared. And yeah, and then that was it. That was how it all started. And it hasn't stopped since then? It hasn't. I know, it's crazy, it's crazy. It's not supposed to work like that, but I've been lucky. So yeah, so then I just started working in the office as up at Archie and started doing, working on staff, doing licensing and production work. And then I went freelance in, I think it was in 97. 96 or 97, I went totally freelance. And yep, that kept me busy ever since. And then I have also done some stints. I've worked, I've done other freelance work for Felix the Cap Productions. I've worked there for a long time, in addition to Archie. I've done some other stuff for like, you know, Disney Adventures and Mattel. But Archie's been mainly my main focus. Couple of one or two books a month, I guess is how it averages out. And then there's also like loose stories that go and digest books, things like that. So it's sort of hard to gauge exactly, but if you had to add it up, it'd be a book or two a month. You're working on now, any other else? I'm working on a new Kevin Keller series, which will be coming out later this year. I'm working on the last issue of Archie. And I'm working on Betty and Veronica still. And another big project, which is gonna be announced in the next week or two. It's another Archie team up with another very interesting character, I guess you could call it. So I can't say what it is right now, but it's gonna be out. It'll be announced in the next couple of weeks. Yeah, they're actually in the issue, the regular Archie series, and they're going to reboot the book and start it over at number one. What's that last number gonna be? 666. Oh. I don't know if that's good or bad. No, no. So yeah, 666 is the last issue and then the reboot starts with a new team, Mark, William, and Fiona Staples. You're the regular artist and writer on the book. What a time being. I did. Talk about him. All right, well Kevin was, he's the first gay character at Archie, openly gay. And he came around a few years ago when we decided that we wanted to add more characters, we had more diversity to Riverdale. And we just come up with the idea for Kevin to come into Riverdale and for Veronica to have a crush on him and all these things to happen and we're sort of testing it out to see how the character would take off. And for whatever reason, the character just clicked. It became very popular. There really wasn't much backlash. There was some backlash when we created Kevin, but for the most part, the character reaction was really good. And now Kevin's part of the Archie universe now. Yeah, I mean, there were some minor, minor things that you would expect from, you know, some of the religious groups, things like that. But for the most part, for the Archie fans, it was fine. The Archie fans were right on board with it. And yeah, it's been really, really well received and it's been, you know, really, it's good to see the reaction that we've had from fans for it. A lot of fans really liked Kevin and thought it was time to, you know, diversify a little bit. Archie together with Valerie? Yes. Talk about that. Okay, yeah, that was another one where, you know, you're always trying to figure out different combinations of things. And originally we had talked about Archie with Josie. But I don't know, it seemed, it just didn't seem right to me. Like, they just seemed like they were too, maybe too similar or they're both redheads. I don't know what it was, but so we just sort of were like, well, what about Valerie? She's like an untapped character and she's always been a really good character. And wrote a story and then the story just took off. Just like, you know, for whatever reason, they had a, the connection between the new characters was just great. So we continue on, we still continue doing Archie and Valerie stories to, you know, to this day. How about your artistic influences? My artistic influences, well, probably the biggest one was Dan DeCarlo, biggest influence. You know, I always, I grew up reading superhero comics. So I always liked like Neil Adams and those like a lot of 70s artists. You know, that was at my time, you know, when I was collecting comics. Jim Appara was really big, great artist. Marshall Rogers and just Dayton I always liked. I still like him a lot. And yeah, then, but you know, DeCarlo is sort of the one I kind of held up on a pedestal as far as I have being a really great artist. How could he be an artist not? Exactly. I mean, how do you not hold him up on a pedestal? I just, you know. Do you have anything else you wanna talk about? Um, I would just say just, just keep a lot of new things coming up and just keep following what we're doing. We've got some great new projects lined up that are really exciting. So stay tuned. Any non-Archie stuff? Non-Archie stuff, yes. I have a couple of non-Archie things coming up. Well, again, I can't mention one of them. I can't really mention it, but, um, yeah, I'm gonna be doing some variant covers for like DC, but I haven't panned those out yet. So I gotta see how those work out. Can you say how many years have you been coming to Megacons? Um, I think this is my, this is my seventh or eighth year. I'm not exactly sure, but it's, I've come every year in a row since then. And it's always been a good show. What are your favorite conventions? What's do you enjoy them? This one's really good. Toronto is always my favorite. Toronto Fan Expo is a big favorite. Calgary is really good. A lot of the Canadian shows I really like. I really like those. New York Comic Con is good. Cool, thank you very much. You're welcome, thanks.