 You've both worked on various kinds of comics. You've done both Superhero and the kind of crime to our base. Can you talk a little bit about how your approach to them maybe differ or what are the challenges each of the modes involves? Do you want to go first? That's up to you. Well, I did 10 years of writing and drawing crime graphic novels, heavily researched, first taking place in Cleveland where I grew up, and then in Portland where I live now. And I just really liked the genre. I really liked the visual. Also, there's something. It's a weird thing, but I have a weird eye thing called Kara DeConis. So I actually see in film noir. I actually see very heavy shadows. So I think that's why I was so attracted to the style of cinematography of film noir. The hard lights and the very key light, just the little information as possible on screen. And it just really got to me that also for someone with limited artistic ability who went to art school for five years, it's a very good genre to draw in. Because when in doubt, you can just black it all in. You're just not the shadows. But I did. I studied the rules of that genre for years and years. And then when mainstream comics called me, it was amazing how many of the rules of crime fiction apply to superhero genre or how you can marry them in a way that seemed honest. And in crime fiction, the rule is you take a character, you throw them down the stairs, and you see what they'll do. You throw them against the wall to see what they'll do. You've ruined their lives to see what they'll do. And that's how is that different than writing Spider-Man? Every day, his life gets ruined. And what's he going to do? And so that plus the rule of the city being an equal character, an equal main character in the story, this is a very important part of the visual of comics. Like New York is as important character in Marvel Comics as any of the superheroes. And so I found that I had accidentally trained myself to write for Marvel Comics, even though I wanted to do my whole life, that I spent the 90s doing crime fiction that got me ready to write Daredevil and Spider-Man. And then, yes, cut to where I'm writing a book starring a talking raccoon and a tree god. And still, the rules apply. Interesting left, so there you go. And for me, it was interesting because I grew up reading comics that I literally learned how to read with comics. And I always wanted to write comics as a kid. I wanted to draw them first, but wasn't a very good artist and then got distracted as a writer. And I left the medium. I stopped reading comics for nearly 10 years. And I got pulled back into it by a couple of indie books. And I hadn't met the creators yet. And what was interesting was one of those books was Wied Out by Greg Ruckin and Steve Lieber, which is a crime fiction book. And then the other was Powers, which was by Brian and Michael Ava and Oming. And I hadn't met either of them yet. And that was a crime fiction book that was couched within the world of superheroes, but it wasn't really about the traditional superhero story. And it brought me back into comics. And it was like, wow, this whole medium is sort of reinvented for me and reinvigorated. And I was a journalist at the time. And it made me want to get back into writing comics. And now as I'm writing comics, I'm like an old man now. And I find conversation more interesting than watching two people beat each other up. And so writing superhero books, my editors are constantly like, OK, yeah, yeah, these eight pages of conversation. Can you cut that down to three and give us five pages of action? And I'm like, action's boring. We don't need to see the Spider-Man and Hulk fight. Let's have them have a conversation about their existential crisis over or whatever. But I do. I watch a lot of crime fiction films, old noir films, and big fan of like the Long Goodbye, Robert Altman's Long Goodbye is one of my favorite movies of all time. And I'm constantly going back and rewatching that stuff and studying it for just how stories unfold and how they're unpacked, watching movies like The Maltese Falcon and a lot of stuff. A lot of the noir films from the 40s and 50s. And because all that is about this process of unpacking the story as opposed to front loading it and giving everything away within the comics, you give it away in the first issue. And there's this sort of this immediacy. I think a lot of readers want to know what's going on. And it's funny because they send you these questions on Twitter or wherever. And they're like, so what happens next? And it's like, that's so you come back next month. I'm not going to tell you what's going to happen next. I will give you a hint. The hero probably isn't going to be dead by the end of this. Spoilers. Yeah, exactly. Although I try to kill the heroes every issue when my editors are like, you can't do this. OK, now both of you have worked independently and have created your own characters. And you've also worked with really visible, iconic characters. So when you agree to work for one of the major publishers to take on one of those characters, how do you wrestle with trying to change it to your own? I mean, how much of that can you do in terms of changing it to where you think this character needs to go versus trying to remain true to the way audiences may view that character? How do you approach that? Don't worry about the audience too much. The audience doesn't know what they want. And also, if you're a comic book fan, you know that there's no audience decision that this is a good idea. This is a bad idea. It's all everywhere. And every opinion is said about every single story and every single character. And that's great. And it also frees you from trying to chase that invisible audience of trying to make them happy, which is a bad way to write anyhow. So it's good to be free of it. It really does. And in fact, I kind of like annoying the people who want to be annoyed more than I like making happy the people who are looking to be happy. And that's fun too, to get someone to buy your book every month. And they think they hate it. They think they hate it. I mean, they bought it every month. They don't hate it. But if you get them to buy like 12 issues in a row, and then they're still yelling at you about it, and then you go, well, why don't you just not buy it? And then they don't say anything back to it. Why am I buying this? Because they like it. But so audience aside, but your original question. And Marvel, it's interesting. You learn we get to go to retreats and stuff and meet the editors and get to know them. And you get to learn that they want you to tell a story. So if you have a change, if something you want to do, the biggest, obviously, is replacing Peter Parker with Miles Morales, right? Well, the question is, well, what do we get out of it? Like, what kind of stories do we get? And if you have an answer, you now have no reason not to do it. If you have a pile of stories to do, then do it. If it's changed just for change, it's not going to work. It's not going to work for you. It's not going to work for the audience. And if you legitimately, the character is pushing you into different kinds of stories that are exciting and new and fresh, and they have that regurgitation of old stuff, it gets really exciting for the editors. It gets exciting for the publisher. You're excited. So I mean, it's a mountain of climb. But if you can get there, it's pretty special. And then, yeah, you get to a place where no one was asking for Miles Morales. No one was, as an example, nobody was screaming at us, do this. And then we did it, and they were like, what are you doing? And then when it wasn't terrible, people now it feels like they have many opinions, and they have to have it. And this is what you should do, and it's exciting. It's the best part, actually, of putting something out there that people didn't think they know they wanted until you showed it to them. And I've also done that thing where I showed them something I thought they wanted, and they didn't want it. So both have happened, but it doesn't take away from how genuinely exciting it is to put that out there. And what I do is I tend to look at the main characters that I'm working with and try to find something that I can latch on to narratively and then work that into the story. So as an example, I'm writing Occupy Vendors right now. Hawkeye is the co-lead, I guess. And so I was like, OK, so who is Hawkeye? How am I going to present him? And I came up with this concept that in the Marvel Universe, Hawkeye is the one person who everyone either owes him a favor or he owes them a favor. And everyone is mad that they're involved with him for some reason. And it's kind of based on my cousin Jimmy, who he gets through life. I just got back from New York. I was hanging out at his place. I walk into his apartment in his kitchen. He's got a bed in his kitchen. And it's like, dude, why do you have a bed in your kitchen? He's like, yo, man, this is a $4,000 bed. I got it for $100. And I'm like, why? He's like, because I'm trading it for a $2,000 car. And I'm like, and that's Clint Barton, right? And there's aspects of Hawkeye that other writers have done that way, but I'm really pushing forward with that. And like Brian just said, when I started writing Power Man and Iron Fist, there was a lot of pushback on how I was writing Iron Fist, because I was writing him as sort of this goofy character. And he seemed sort of like a doofus. And there was a lot of negative pushback, which I knew was going to happen. And I was like, just wait. And they were like, well, there's something off about him. And I was like, just wait. And then we got to about issue four or five. And then his dark side came out. And they were like, well, what'd you do? And I said, I was writing him this way so that we see a character who's living a life of force, forced optimism. Like he's really, truly a pessimistic person, but he's trying to live as optimistically as possible. And we see that starting to break down around issue five, issue six, and people are like, oh my god, this is genius. But it's like, they want the main meal. It's like the people who want dessert before they have the main meal or the appetizers or the salad. And it doesn't make the dessert better. It sort of ruins the meal if you have dessert first. Yeah, every single question I get on Tumblr is asking for a spoiler. What happens? Literally, they flat out, hey, what happens next issue? I'm not telling you. I would get fired if I told you, yeah. But it's so funny. They come around, they were the question like a lawyer. I'm going to be tricked into giving a spoiler. I've been doing this. I know this works, but yeah. But yeah, there's one audience that loves the journey and one audience that just wants the, how is this going to end? Tell us instant gratification on story, which is never going to be the job we do. It's, you know, and I could tell you story in a sentence. It's not going to be a very entertaining sentence. They're going to move you, you know. So I live sort of in the belly of the beast, right? I live right near Hollywood. And one of the things that's been happening lately is there's been a lot of discussion about the problems with fans and their expectations and whether they're going to drive the film industry, right? In terms of what we want else to have a girlfriend and a remake or whatever, the sequel to Frozen, all this kind of stuff. Now, given that, you know, there's a discussion about whether fans are actually ruining pop culture. But this question about how much influence they have versus also the tension that comes from working in a commercial industry. Do you feel those kind of the pressures from, you know, how many to sell, you got to sell, you know what? You know what? Here's the thing, you do, you know, you can't help it. I mean, we're online, you know. So art, you can get ahold of us and we're not invisible. There's some. I'm about to go invisible. I get, I do get the need to want to be invisible. I certainly get that, but you can get ahold of us and people do, they get ahold of us all the time with, you know, and they do as you get online. You hear someone say, never do that again. That's the worst thing you've ever done, followed by someone saying that was the best thing I've ever read about the same story. So you're like, what am I supposed to do with this? Right? So you just go about your day and write something that matters to you. But as far as with the, it's funny thing with the fans ruining Hollywood thing. That's, it's not the case at all. Fans have made Hollywood, I think fans keep us honest. Cause even if I don't agree with someone who's barking at me about something, you know, and it's never what you would call important social stuff that I get the most, you know, you know, you know, anger about, but knowing that I'm there and they're there makes me like whatever slight thing that would make me take the easy road or the hard road, you know, it keeps me on the hard road. It keeps me honest as a writer because I know Captain Sensation is gonna come on Twitter and yell at me about something. So I would like to, I would like to at least on my end know that I wrote something very honest. So even if they didn't like it, I know they got the best out of me. So that's probably the number one reason I'm online is because I know subconsciously beyond the desire that my name's on the book and my kids might see them one day that I would like to not suck today. And you know what, Captain Sensation is gonna keep me honest whether he knows it or not. Or she, I don't know who he is. You know, I go back and forth. There's, you know, I'm trying to live my life a little bit more positive, not trying to deal with the negativity as much. But like this event this weekend or where a group of us just flew in, John's one of them. We got in from New York City at 1.30 this morning. So we could be here after an event in Harlem. And it's like the interaction with the, especially the young people and young people asking me for advice and or meeting me when you're a writer. And it's like, yeah, and you can be a writer too. You know, and this look on their face, you see like a eight-year-old or a nine-year-old kid, that realization that they can do this someday. That's sort of what keeps me going. And the hate that comes at me, it's like, I mean, I'm weird because I mean, no one's ever gonna be able to hate me more than I hate myself, right? I mean, I'm the king of self-loathing. But, you know, and we talk about this a lot. You know, John Jennings and I've talked about it and Stacey and I have talked about it. You know, when you're a person of color in this country, like you're born hated, right? Like that's just part of what it's all about. And you take that and it twists you up inside and you learn to live with it. But it's like my philosophy at this point in life, I mean, I've now outlived two generations of men in my family. I'm like, I'm old by my family's standards, right? And I'm sort of at a point where it's like, like I'm cool with all the reasons you hate me because you've been hating me for these reasons for my entire life. Now I'm gonna really give you some reasons to hate me. I'm going to write things and say things in public and do things that are going to be maybe provocative or maybe be inflammatory, but are also gonna be really honest to a lot of people and speak to help people heal the wounds because we're, as a people, we're wounded, you know? I mean, I don't know how many of you, you know, really get into the study of epigenetics or post-traumatic slave syndrome, but it's all real and we're all suffering from it, you know? And as a nation, we're suffering from it too. It's not just black folks. The entire nation is suffering from it. And so part of it's like, if my talking about it is gonna make you hate me, that's fine, you know? And it's weird. Especially in this coming political climate that's not coming, it's been here, right? But you know, I sat down with my family. I actually sat down with them and said, you know, I'm working on some creator-owned stuff that's like people are really gonna hate me and there's gonna be people that are gonna be coming after me and my mom sees some of the stuff on Twitter and she gets all worked up and a lot of people don't see it because I make sure it comes down really quick and I have my dogs of war that take it, you know, go into attack mode. But it's like, if I was younger, this stuff would destroy me. But I'm old enough now. It's like some guy was like, took these pictures of black folks and then photoshopped them with like half monkey faces and spent a whole day of like, David Walker, you're nothing but a nigger all day long. And I was just like, and people were attacking him and I was like, who cares? Like, because for one thing, he could come into my face and say it and I'll, you know. Yeah, exactly. Because we all know I'm a big guy. I can throw a punch and I'll get John will hold him and Stacey will hold him down and I will cut his tongue out. And I'll sue him. Yes. Well, you got the good lawyer. Yeah, I do have a good lawyer. But here's the thing, we both learned this, that you can't make everybody happy. It's impossible. There's no, you know, Google the Beatles. The third thing Google offers you is overrated as someone, you know, people don't like chocolate bars and Scorsese and like, so that frees you. It just frees you. I don't like chocolate. I was like, they announced like, Martin Scorsese and Leonardo Capri are gonna make another movie together. And are there kids in the audience? I can't, I can't see. Yeah, there's a couple of people. But literally like, it was like, hey, great, the greatest living director and his best muse are gonna make another one. And then the third comment underneath the big announcement was, screw them. I'm like, okay, sure, okay, you know, that's good commentary. But what happens is the knowledge of being, you're freed of it. You're like, I'm not trying to make everybody happy. I'm just trying to get enough people to buy this book where I can make another one. So that freedom is phenomenal. And then you realize, well, if not everyone's gonna like me, then maybe the right people hating me is okay too. And I recently had a bad run-in. I have always a good din of noise, but when we announced Riri Williams as the new Iron Man person, thank you. I wasn't fishing, but thank you. You'll know when I'm fishing. But I, like two nights later, I'm working about three in the morning. I was getting beamed by real Nazis, like real down home, old school Nazis really coming at me hard. And I was like, what's going on? It was like, it was only like 30 of them. But it always, you know, when you're online and 30 people are yelling at you, it feels like whole worlds crashing down at you, you know? And then I found out I was the lead story on the top rated number one white supremacist website. And they photoshopped Holocaust stuff all over me. And literally the headline was, Jew writer creates negrous hero. And I was like, and it was like, yeah. And it was like really bad photoshopped on me. And I was like, and it also was like three in the morning. So you feel very vulnerable. Like, oh, you know, the house is surrounded. And I was, I don't get like angry, like I, you know, I work it out in my work, you know? But I was like, I'm confused by this. And I'm jittery. And a very good friend of both of ours is Greg Rucka, who's a writer and the angriest person. The angriest Jew I know, as a fellow Jew, I needed an angry Jew to really, really get riled up for me. And I literally, before I showed my wife or anybody else, I just forwarded him the link and he wrote me back. He was everything I needed him to do. He gave me, he was just screaming at me. He goes, and remember, everyone's gonna hate something. And if the Nazis hate you, you're on the right side. I'm like, that's all I needed. Thank you. You're right. That's right. But yeah, because you could be in a lot of trouble if the Nazis were like really excited about what you were doing, like they are about our president. So, or elect. So that's the world we live in. So, you know. Do you have any questions from the audience? He was jumping, he was jumping, yeah. I wanna say something. Well, to answer your biggest question, when I find myself in, and we tell our students this all the time, if you find yourself where you're at, the answer is almost always honesty. What's the most honest thing I could write? What's the most honest thing I could draw? Right, and truly honest, right? And by the way, it doesn't mean you have to like bleed all over the paper. It can be hilarious, it could be cute, it could be adorable, it could be ninjas, it could be a talking raccoon. Just what's the most honest choices that you can make as an artist and for the characters? And if you follow that path, so many other parts of it just start to illuminate themselves. It really, it just, you know, and it does, it sounds simple to say, but it actually takes a lot to get really honest with yourself, you know? And really, I come down to, would I buy this when I'm making, like if I was walking to a store, would I buy this? Like if my name wasn't on it, and I look at the artist, I look at the concept, I look at the characters, and I ask myself, and if I wouldn't buy it, and I have a wide breadth of things I buy, I like a lot of different stuff, right? So I'm an easy sell, but if I'm not an easy sell to me, then who, how could I sell it to anybody else? You know, how could I get to the next page if I can't honestly finish this one? So, and if the answer is no, I wouldn't buy it, then pull up tracks, start over. No one will ever know how badly you screwed up alone in your room. No one will ever know, all right? On many levels, no one will ever know. Yeah, so, but you know, and by the way, here's the good news, if you become published and successful, and it doesn't change. You'll still be sitting there with that page going, what the hell am I doing? What's going on? And then the other thing too is if, you know, if you're not comfortable with your writing, if you feel like you can draw but you can't write, the key is just to begin to get out and build a community and meet other writers and maybe find a collaborator to work with, because I can't draw. So I'm working with other artists, but I know like before this weekend is up, there's gonna be writers that are looking for artists and artists that are looking for writers. Sean Taylor, who is moderating the last panel, is an amazing writer, okay? And Aizay, I don't know if Aizay's here, he's another amazing writer. Like those are two cats that are always looking for artists because they wanna do comics, but they don't draw. You see, so there's always, there's people out there and the key is that we tend to walk around, especially when we're creative, in our own little bubble thinking that we're the only ones who hate ourselves, who, you know, the work isn't good enough and, you know, and does my breath stank and like everybody's thinking this, right? But nobody's, you know, whatever. So the thing is just to get out there and what I love about like this weekend here and where we just came from in New York, it's like I'm always talking about community. Like, not everybody is gonna be part of the community, but there was some stuff that went down in New York yesterday where it was like, there were some people that I was like, oh, I thought we were down and now I have to write you off, but then there was other people who like totally rose to the occasion and it's like, you know, you get hit by a car and there's those people who are gonna rush to come give you first aid and there's gonna be people who just step over you. And nowadays there's the people who are gonna be recording and uploading it to YouTube, so you know. Thanks, you had a question. It's the best. First of all, it's a show, don't tell medium. If ever you can, you should be using the visuals to tell the story. And they say that any great comic book page, if you take the dialogue off it, you should be able to tell what's going on anyhow, you know, so that's one of the rules like of making something really special in comics in any visual medium. But this comes from knowing you're working with artists of such a, that can bring a subtext, you know, that can draw. Some people can draw a spaceship and you just get a nice spaceship. And some people can draw a spaceship and make you feel something about that spaceship. And some people can make you draw a spaceship and then make you think something you didn't even know you would ever think about a spaceship from, you know. And so, and I love, and when I have that with my partner Alex Malieve who I did Daredevil with and we do Iron Man Now and Scarlet and Mark Bagley didn't know he could do it until we pushed a little to see if he could. No one had ever gave him a moment of quietness to really, you know what I mean? And it's such a special quality to an artist that when you find someone who can do it, you're just desperate to write stories for that special strength, so. And it's, and you know, for me, because I love those moments too as a writer, especially when the artist gets what you're trying to do. And then it's, for me, it's about reconciling and hoping that the reader understands it because there's some people who'll be like, there's no words on this page, I got ripped off. You know, I paid $4 for this comic and there's hardly any words. And it's like, but there's so much story there, you know. Or they think we didn't write anything. Yeah, yeah. You got a sign on the page where people are like, so you didn't write anything? Like I probably wrote more on that page just because you're not seeing the words, doesn't mean. I had a page where there was a review of an issue that I wrote where they only reviewed one sequence that had no dialogue, and all they talked about was how genius the artist was with their storytelling. And I was like, yeah, he did an amazing job. But every, you have to write those scenes so specifically, so much more specifically, because if you have a scene where two people are sitting across from each other talking, you can say, okay, Power Man and Iron Fist sitting across from each other. Power Man is mad and Iron Fist is laughing, right? And then you write the dialogue, but if there's no dialogue, you've really got to get into the emotion and you have to tell the artist, okay, Power Man is mad because Iron Fist owes him $25 and he knows he's got, you know, it's that sort of stuff. And sometimes the artist nails it and then you realize someone buys the comic and just, oh, there's nothing there so you don't read it. And then you get your lettering proof back and you're like, should I put words in this panel so that people will stay there and focus on it? And it's an interesting dynamic. But yeah, I mean, we do this with our students all the time. It's always show, don't tell. And then even as a writer, you get caught up in it. And sometimes with your editors, like I have to say to some of my editors, you're telling me to tell and not show. You know, they're like, don't put a flash back in. And I'm like, comics were great for flashbacks. One panel per page, every seven pages is fine. And yeah, I got into a, well, I'll tell you about that later. Yeah, yeah. Young lady. Yeah, that is a tough one. You want me to grab this? Go ahead, I can chime in afterwards. Well, number one, congratulations on your quest because it's cool. And these things that are bothering you will always be there. They never go away. Even if you have deadlines, it doesn't, it's just another problem. It's the same, but it's the same problem. Now the good news is that this is about instincts. You're just gonna have to trust yourself, all right? And really listen to yourself. Like I've seen people and their instincts are telling them it's time for this idea or it's time to wrap up this project and they don't listen. But listen, you know, listen to you, you know. We've done this. And you literally have to pretend your own editor and give yourself a deadline and a hold to that deadline. And then you're now practicing what it's like to be a real professional person. So when they start calling you to be a professional person, you've got it. You already, you trained yourself. You know, it is, it's like anything where you just have to act the part and then eventually you'll have the part and you'll already be ahead of the game. I found out I was doing this for myself by accident. Like I literally gave myself deadlines and held to those deadlines like the world was gonna stop if I didn't finish this comic no one was buying. You know, like, but I treated it like it was Star Wars and it's coming out on the 31st. No matter what happens, so we better get it done, right? And I acted that way for years without anybody telling me to. And then when they got, when I got Spider-Man and that actually became my life, like you gotta get this out. This is a budget thing for Marvel. I've never missed a deadline because I have accidentally trained myself. So that's number one. And by the way, that professionalism is 80% of what an editor wants above your talent and above everything else they wanna make sure they can count on you because if they can't, they're probably fired, right? If you don't hand in your work, they're in trouble. So if they can count on you, even if you're not the greatest writer in the world or the greatest artist in the world or you're not totally there yet, you're still finding it, they will hire you because you can get in the pages. So that's number one. So you have to just train yourself. And there was another part about how you know a story's done or an idea's time has come. And I learned this in art school and I found out it was the only thing I learned in art school that actually mattered. And that was, I had a very hippie teacher who literally said, hey, man, it's never finished, it's just done. And truthfully, those words hover over me. And that doesn't mean give up on what you're doing. Like you get it as good as you can get it and then there's a point where you just have to let it go. You're just changing for changing or you're just turning something violet to purple doesn't make it better or worse. You're just touching, you're just fixing. So I think about that, let it go and do better the next time. And so I know we got to wrap this up in a few minutes but I think we do. I don't know if we got a time similar to it. And this is what I tell our students a lot is when it comes time to turn in the final, they're sweating, they're freaking out their finals, man. And they're like, there's always a couple that just sort of bail at the last minute and don't turn it in. And I tell them like, look, turn in, finish it. I was like, cause even if you get, if you turn in something, you're gonna get a passing grade. It might not be an A or a B, you might get, well, I'm the one who's always given out the C's and D's. Everybody gets an A and he's the good guy. They worked so hard and they did all the pages. But I tell them, I'm like, if you get like a C on your final in our class, like that might haunt you for a month or a year or two. But if you don't finish this project, it'll haunt you the rest of your life. And that's the thing when you're a creator or an aspiring, people say I'm an aspiring creator. There's only, the thing that separates the aspiring creator from the creator is you finish something. And once you understand that process of completion, it doesn't necessarily make it that much easier, but you know, oh, I can do this. I've done this before. It's like any other sort of horrific uphill battle. It's Sisyphus pushing that rock up the hill. You get it up the hill and you go, okay, I know I, oh, oh, wait, this isn't, this is just the plateau. There's another hill beyond this, but I can keep going because I've done this before. And that's it, you have to finish. You have to finish. And even if you're not happy with it, come on, how many people here who are artists have completed something and then within whether it was an hour or a year looked at it and was like, wow, this was really bad. Raise your hands. You know, come on, let's be honest, we all do it. You know, you find that thing. I mean, I have a novel that came out last year and like, he's a worse speller than I am, okay? But I went over with a fine tooth comb but the editorial team at the publisher missed a typo on the dedication page. And I was like, okay, this is just a bad way to start, you know? But at the same time, it's like, hey, I got a book. It's got, I think, 47 typos. I think I counted them. And I was like, but I have a book that I wrote that you can go buy on the shelf and am I happy with all of it? No, are there things that there's problems with? Yeah, but did I write a book? Hell yeah, you know, it's like, and I walk around with that sometimes, even during my most self-hating moments, which there are a lot of them. And I'll be like, hey, you wrote a book. You know, at the end of the year, I compiled a list of all the comics that I had published in 2016. And it was like, you know, in 2013, I was still struggling to break into an industry that people were telling me I was too old to get into. And by 2015 or 2016, I had published, I think, 34 comics at three different publishers, you know? And it was like, hey, that ain't that bad. You know, I'm doing all right. So yeah, you just got to pull it away. Well, let's talk about that for a second. Let's talk about the aspiring creator because there's a lot of creators in the room, right? Well, here's the one thing people think that if you're not published by a publisher in the Diamond catalog, you're not a comic book creator. The good news is, if you create a comic book, congratulations, you're in the industry. You're not aspiring anymore. You are in the business, you know? And that's an empowerment that most people don't take for themselves. But it's absolutely true. This is a DYI, you know, medium. Like, I'm almost jealous. Like, when we were working in the 90s, you had to find a publisher to publish your, you know, newsprint black and white stuff. But today, if I was breaking in, I would be all over Tumblr, man. I would have like four or five different Tumblr accounts that were dedicated to different web comics that I was doing. And I would, oh my God, how exciting. It would be just to like instantaneously put your stuff out all the time. So I tell people, man, you don't, you know, I get, you see, every day someone in Tumblr goes, how do I write for Marvel? Like, how do you make, like, my goal is to write for Marvel? I'm like, well, that shouldn't be your goal. Your goal should be to write. To write for yourself. And to make these books and to create stuff for you. And then, when, oh. And then when, that's the mattering. And then when, and then when you're done with this book that you've made for yourself, it can be a calling card to get you other work, but Marvel isn't the gold key of the industry. It's you, the creators are, you know. So I just tell people who may not be aware that they're actual comic creators, that you are a comic creator. You made a comic book. Ta-da, your comic creator. So congratulations. And just to add to that, and then I, no one's holding a flash card up at us, but the thing I'd like to add is that I do firmly believe that we're going back to a time, we're going to be, we're going into a regressive time. And we need to look to what artists were doing in the 60s and 70s and 80s and how they were getting their art out. And it's like, it's selling out of the trunk of your car is a lot easier now than it was back then. And so we need to look at what hip hop was in the early 80s and what punk rock was and what zines were and utilize modern technology to get stuff out there because we're going to see the closing of America's mind. It's not starting to happen, it's we're in it. Okay. No, it's Silo's. Clinton talked about it on a data show. Everyone has Silo'd. Everyone only follows the ideas that they believe in. And if everyone's doing that on all different sides, what's art going to be like? What's music going to be like? But it's a time for artists to get really dangerous again and really shake up the status quo and not be afraid to be hated. Yeah, and I've been thinking a lot about and hopeful. There's not going to be a lot of hope on the street. So they're going to look for our work to make me feel something good. And I think I need to do it as a writer. I just need to write something. And I found myself, I was writing an issue Iron Man of Rery Williams and it was just the funnest damn thing and I had no control over it. She just took over the book and just decided we're going to have a fun adventure and it's going to be hopeful and heroic and empowering. And I was like, well, I don't even know where this came from because, you know. Well, you needed it. Clearly, but it was fascinating to me that this flew on to me anyway. And there was someone way back there, I saw. Last question. You know, the major companies, I don't really have much control over what they, I will put something in and they'll tell me to take it out or they'll tell me to move something. I'm working on some creator-owned stuff that will be like, oh, wow, okay, you know. Again, you might see me next year selling out of the trunk of my car because no one will wanna talk to me. But, you know, I mean, the greatest writers in television and film, the vast majority of them were blacklisted during the McCarthy scare. You know, the greatest hip-hop artists were the ones that the FBI targeted in the 80s. I'm not really afraid of any of that, you know. It's like, when you can be an unarmed black man with no criminal record or even more terrifying an unarmed black child, no criminal record, who can be shot and killed, there's, you have one of two choices. You can either give it into the fear or you can use that fear to drive you forward. And I'm taking that fear to drive me forward and create work that speaks to that. Because, and I said this here in San Francisco two years ago, I don't have the power to make the world a better place. I can't wave a magic wand and have President-elect Trump not be President-elect Trump anymore. But as a writer and a creator, I can at least create places to escape and give hope and give inspiration and get people angry and riled up so that we can reverse and change course in a shorter time span. So that after these next four years, people realize, wow, we were stupid. Well, you know, it's funny, as writers, and there's a lot of writers in the room, right? Yeah, it's just a, but it's offensive how badly written everything that's going on the world is. I literally, we were talking, we were, we have Friday night dinner and more than we were talking with a lot of the writers and we're talking about how if we pitched this, what's happening, just this week, right? If you pitched this as a story or a storyline, they would give it back to you. This is, no one can relate to this. This is, no one knows what you're talking about. And that's really one of the many, many reasons I'm offended, but so many writers that we know are pitching their Trumpy Trumpness in their comics. And they're like, dude, this is not, you know, first of all, you're not gonna be able to outdo what he's doing, right? And by the time you're done creating your thing, who knows what our world will be like? You know what I mean? You know, it can be a distant memory of all this, that's a hopefully, I'm seeing how hopeful I am that I think it'll be a distant memory, but it's interesting and I'm curious what our culture will look like in a year. You know what I mean? I think it's gonna be a big mixture of people trying to outdo what they're seeing. And then there's people just slingshotting in a different way. I think also like fantasy and just leaving the planet stuff is gonna be big. There's gonna be a lot of people wishing they weren't on this planet. Star Trek's gonna have a big comeback. You know, you know, so we'll see. Okay, thank you gentlemen. Oh, thank you. Thanks for coming out guys. That was very cool.