All Hail The King: An Interview with Tom King about Jack Kirby, Writing, and Helen of Wyndhorn - The Short Box Podcast Ep. 420
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in this episode of The Short Box.
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Now I'm matured and I've learned some things. I'm like, I wanna write a two-shit story. That's what I wanna do. I'm gonna write a two-shit story. That's my ambition. You really are a philosophy major. That's what I'm saying. I want that comic where your wife or your husband is yelling at you and be like, dinner's ready. Are you still on the toilet? Tom King wrote a comic book. See, that's success in life.
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Intro music plays
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Yo, Short Box Nation. Welcome back to another episode. Thanks for joining us. If you're new, welcome to the show. My name is Badr and this is the Short Box Podcast, the comic book talk show that brings you the best conversations about comic books with the people that put their blood, sweat and tears into making them. This is episode 420 and I'm joined by my right hand man, Cesar Cordero. Hello. Today, we've got a guest that has been dubbed the best writer in comics today by a philosopher.
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His name is Walter Gant. And he is the short one. Oh, yeah, one of our hosts. Yeah, sure. He is the short box OGN co-founder. I told Walt who we were having on the show today, and his hype was through the roof. So Walt, I'm giving you your shout out at the top. I hope you're enjoying this. But I think best writer in comics today is a sentiment echoed by a lot of comic fans, a lot of people, present company included. Yeah. So if you're scratching your head about who that could be, well, let me toss you a lifeline, ladies and gents. We got Tom King on the podcast today. Yeah.
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And what I say next might be a complete waste of breath, considering his prolific stature in the comic industry, considering his stock is red hot. With all the love James Gunn has been showing him. Oh my God. I'm sorry, online. I'm just, yo, I'm in a good mood. No, you're good, you're selling it, you're selling it. But just in case you've been trapped in a cave for the last 10 years, here's your too long dinner read. Tom King is an author, highly decorated comic book writer at that, and he's an ex-CIA officer. So stay there, don't say no incriminating shit this episode, okay? Do it for me.
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Why me? Because you be saying some incriminating shit sometimes, bro. Oh. You be snitching sometimes. Oh. Dry snitching, as the kids would say. Tom King is best known for writing the novel A Once Crowded Sky. He also wrote The Vision for Marvel Comics, which is one of my favorite comics here, ever. He also wrote The Sheriff of Babylon for Vertigo, and he has for sure solidified his place in comics thanks to his beloved runs on Batman, Mr. Miracle, and of course Supergirl Woman of Tomorrow for DC Comics. And come March 13th, AKA the same time that you're hearing this episode.
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He'll have added a new entry to his long running bibliography with the release of Helen of Winhorn, a new Gothic sword and sorcery epic that reunites him with Bill Quest Evilly from Supergirl fame. Outstanding. Helen of Winhorn is being described as Conan the Barbarian meets the Wizard of Oz. And you can see for yourself because issue one is in stores right now through Dark Horse Comics. Short Box Nation, without further ado, let's welcome and give it up proper. Let's give it up loud for our guest, Tom King.
03:24
I can't believe you had all those guys off camera cheering. Yep, that's it. It's a whole live studio audience here. That was very nice, kind things you said. I don't believe a fucking word of it, but I fucking, I think this Walt guy would have shown up if he really believed that. I think it's a goddamn lie. That's gonna be great. That's all I'm saying. But it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me on the podcast. You guys are fucking great. My comics only survive because people talk about them. Nobody...
03:52
Like goes to the store being like, man, I really want to read Supergirl. It's because your Supergirl is good. So I just appreciate what you guys all do and all the work you've done, which puts food on my kids table. So I just want to start by saying thank you. I appreciate that. Wow. We have, I think that's the first time a, a guest has turned the tables on us. God damn ungrateful fucking comic, right? That he says that. See, lavishing this. All right. This is good. Tom, I guess my first immediate question is.
04:19
Where will you be March 13th? Do you have a ritual at this point when it comes to, when you have a new issue one coming out? Do you celebrate or at this point is it like, it's work, I've got a new project, keep it moving? We're in comics, every day is work. Yeah. There's no celebration, there's no like, like when a movie comes out and the director's like, I'm taking two months off to be creative, that's not the medium I work in. There's another deadline that day you have to hit. So no, the day this comes out, I'll be writing.
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and I'll be doing letter and passes and I'll be pitching books and I'll be working on Hollywood crap. I'll probably do a signing out in third eye, which is like my local complex store out in Annapolis, Maryland. Yeah, I've been there. I grew up in Maryland. Oh really? So don't judge me. Waldorf. Oh, I'm fucking judging you. What do you think? I know it's Waldorf. Yeah. No one knows where Waldorf Maryland is. Yeah. Charles County. It's like a hour outside. So
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Tom, do you have a pull list? Do you still pick up weekly comics books? Are you just too busy to go in a shop now? No, I haven't had a pull list in a long time. I get free digital comics from DC, so I get all those for free. And I'm also on their trade comp list, which is the nice thing. So every month, I get a big box full of trades. It's just every trade that comes out from DC. Do you ever just get tired of all those books and have to figure out storage and where to keep them?
05:44
Dude, 100%. I bet, man. It's too much of a good thing, right? My kids go to school in Maryland and they spend a lot of time in the libraries up there, kind of where they go after school to hang out. And so we donate to the libraries all these sort of extra comics. So there's just some random libraries up in the suburbs of Maryland that have incredible DC comic book collections. That's awesome. I have an office. It's full of comics. It's lined with bookshelves.
06:14
But kind of the deal I have with myself and my wife is if I put something new on the bookshelf, something has to come off. Like I've reached sort of maximum comic book capacity. I'm familiar with that rule. Can you tell me a little bit about that? It looks like you've got a green lantern in a slab, a CGC and maybe a one- 9.8. Yeah. Can you tell me about that? Yeah, I put comic books down everywhere and I have like a lot of like art on the walls and shit. And yeah, I might've been doing some Green Lantern stuff, so put a Green Lantern thing
06:43
Oh, and I got a Superman there just because I love Superman. Those are my kids back there. Kirby. Yeah, that's my one my one statue I ever had made. The cat one of the statue. Wait, wait, wait, wait. You have a son named Kirby? No, no, that's my son named Charlie. Oh, he was almost he was always sitting on top of Kirby book. He was almost named Kirby. I couldn't talk my wife into it, but he's named Charlie after Charlie Brown. He's my only comic. Oh, that's cool. It's cute. All right. I got it. I got to know that. All right.
07:12
The house is on fire, you've already grabbed the family, the essential stuff, but you gotta grab one thing immediately from your office in your room. That's comic related. What are you immediately going towards? That's, man, that's tough. It's tough. I mean, sentimental-wise, I have the first comic book I ever picked up off a shelf that sort of started my entire life and career, which was Avengers 300. You know, I have the exact copy my mother bought me in.
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1989 getting a pack of cigarettes and threw a comp got me and I was like, okay, I'm now dedicating my life to this thing because I love it so much. So I should grab that. But I have some fairly expensive art that I think my wife would be pissed if I got that. I'd be like, yeah, I bought this. I saved this $3 comp. You can find a Ventures 300 for about five bucks in a bin. And I let some nice art stand. So I guess sentimentally, I would grab the 300 but
08:08
I really should grab some of the art. That's a good choice. I've got a question about an interview you did with Mitch Jared, Doc Schaener, and Clay Man, where you said- Those fucking guys. This is going to be good. You said that you exist in a weird liminal space between normal people and celebrities. Yes. How do you navigate being somewhat of a comic celebrity now that you and your friend's body of work is starting to reach the public via tentpole film projects? I mean, it's got to feel nice, right?
08:38
No, nothing feels nice. What are you talking about? I never felt fucking nice for a second in my life. No, I don't feel like I've reached any sort of celebrities. If anything, I feel like when I first got into comics, we were more celebrities than we are today. Interesting. When I first got in, there was, you know, cause at DC, I mean, this is like, everybody knows this Warner Brothers has been cutting staff for the last three or four years. They keep getting bought and cutting staff and then getting bought and cutting staff.
09:05
So when I first got there, there were seven assistants, there were six PR guys. You'd go into a room and be like, I got Grayson coming out. They'd be like, sweet, we've got 15 meetings lined up for you and we'll put you in hair and makeup. We'll do this thing and this thing and this thing. And now it's like, you just show up and they're like, you do it all yourself. All that sort of hand holders are all gone. And that sort of idea that DC creates celebrities, which was a little bit still there when I first broke in, is kind of gone.
09:34
No, I don't feel any more celebrated than I have ever been or ever want to be. Yeah, I do live in a weird space where if I'm at a con, I can kind of cosplay as a celebrity where I believe walking around people want to take selfies of me and I'll sign my name a ton. I do a lot of signings. When I do cons, I'm all about the signings now. So, I'm doing six hour signings usually. Yeah, I try to connect with each person. I shake everybody's hands much to the detriment of my own personal health.
10:03
I actually, I mean, I've had when I was a kid, you know, I've walked up to a celebrity and had a bad experience with them and said, fuck them for the rest of the time, even though maybe they were just having that bad day or something. Right. So, I don't want to be that one guy that's like, oh, just... Because sometimes you're tired, sometimes somebody's talking to you, sometimes you just don't have the energy and it gives you... You have to kind of get up for every experience because these people, like, they've been waiting in line for a long time, you got to give them... And I fucking charge for my signature, so they're already paying money for this. So, I have to give them whatever.
10:32
That's how I feel. Nobody pays for just a signature. You're paying to have it. I love people asking me questions. I love having conversations with people. Right. An experience. Yeah, an experience. So yeah, that's kind of just my responsibility while I'm out there. I just have to do that. I had tongue in cheek say that your stock has skyrocketed since James Gunn mentioned the news of the Supergirl movie, the casting, and also just publicly praising your work, your comic book work.
10:59
I guess I was curious, what is your relationship with James Gunn? Are you guys talking comics just generally? Do you guys just hang out or chat? All of your James Gunn questions are going to end up the same way with me just being like everything is great and happy and just get the most boring answers because that stuff has to, if I talk about that, we have to go through PR people and since they're not on the phone, not since they're not in the thing. Oh yeah, that's fine.
11:24
I can't talk about it. So all I'm going to say is everything is wonderful and nice and happy. And thank you for asking that question, which is the boring fucking answer. I wish I could tell you all the everything. Look, you're talking to somebody in public affairs. I understand. We get it. I used to be in the CIA. I know how to avoid questions. That's the one thing I love it. Stay on the messaging. That's right. So let's talk about Mr. Miracle, man. I got to say, Mr. Miracle, the gate. I'm going to tell him. I got to tell him. Thank you. You know, dark course PR is like, this is not what I'm just going to tell him. Thank you.
11:53
I want to say thank you. That's all. I always talk Mr. Mr. It was very special to me. It was wonderful and it was honest. And I have to know like while you were working on it, was there some was there like a dark side esque pressure to honor like Jack Kirby's legacy or or maybe it was easy or I mean how was it to incorporate some of the more metaphysical aspects of the book because me I would have felt like Scott Free trying to escape apocalypse wrestling with the story, you know, like.
12:20
I don't know. What was, what were your expectations? All that stuff. I'm curious because that book really spoke to me. I'll just say this. I have a shrine in my house of all of Kirby stuff and it's only, and it's only Kirby stuff. And the only thing that's not him is you. So I'll just, I'll just say that. Yeah. Well, I'm looking at a Kirby page. I got over my, over my, uh, wall right here that I stared every single day in my life. Um, dude, I, I, I'm a huge Kirby guy on some level.
12:50
Some of the pressure was low, some of it was high. The low parts first. Number one, when Dan DiDio was the head of DC, he's like, Mr. Miracle has never worked. We've never managed to make it work at any of the time. So on that level, I was sort of taking a swing at it. I was basically going down a path other people had failed. When you're on Batman, you're always thinking, man, Frank Miller is always gonna be better than me at this. When you're on Mr. Miracle, you have a shot at doing it well.
13:19
So that was low. And then there was also the low pressure that I had Mitch. And when you're with Mitch, who's just like my favorite artist in comics and one of my best friends, you feel like you're just, you know, you're swinging with a net beneath you. He's gonna take whatever you get him and make it more beautiful and make it more, and make it transcendent. So like those two things were low pressure. The high pressure parts were twofold. Number one, the Kirby thing you mentioned, cause I really wanted to do something that was Kirby, but from the beginning, we're like, we can't out.
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Kirby, Kirby, you can't go bigger than him. You can't be more cosmic than him. Kirby was the greatest thinker who's ever been in this medium. His imagination stretched to other realms and galaxies. And so we had to kind of take all of that curviness and then internalize it as a metaphor, which I thought I could do, but I was arrogant. The other thing was I had just had this big hit with vision, which was a surprise hit. I didn't think it would go over and it went over.
14:18
And it was very much people being like, okay, that was your first album, what's your next one? It was very much like, that was the assignment from the beginning. It's like, Tom, you did a vision over Marvel, do it over at DC. And I was like, oh man, I don't know if I can do this again. And sort of hit that, it's a tough road where you're hitting something that's both popular and artistic at the same time.
14:41
Right. The sophomore slump is always looming over you like a specter. Like, Jesus, dude, what do you want? 100% man. Yes, that second movie, that second album, it's all that stuff. Can I say that I feel like you did a pretty good job. To me, that's a very spiritual book. You're run on it, man. That's a very spiritual book to me. I got a daughter, I got a wife, and all that stuff resonated with me hard. A lot of that stuff. And just the way Dark Side is kept coming up.
15:10
Grant Morrison reference, but you know, you had, it became something else too. Like you took it and you made it yours and then it meant something else to me. Like man, like the grind, the hustle, like everything that made, anytime you felt some sort of authoritarian type presence, dark side is, and not just like in a literal sense, in your life, you know? And what does that mean to somebody who's just trying to be a good person, a good dad, a good friend, you know? A good hero to maybe,
15:40
people that don't see it. I'm not, man, I don't want to blow smoke up your ass, obviously, but it's good shit. And I feel like if I didn't get that out there out the gate, you were like, B, you were like, yo, C, you got to talk about Mr. Milk out the gate? I was like, man, I got to let my man know where I stand. No, it's cool. I mean, you got to go back in time for that book. It was 2016. I've talked about this a lot, but I had one of those sort of...
16:09
first season of Sopranos moments, right? When those panic attacks, where you kind of think you think you're going to die and you go to the hospital and you ask the doctor, am I dying or am I crazy? And they're like, you're crazy. And you're like, thank God. Oh, wait, I'm crazy. And then 2016 hit and it was just, I mean, that year was, we had no idea it was coming. We didn't know that was like the entrance to the cave. We just thought it was just a little bit of darkness and there was light coming. We didn't know we'd be in here for a while.
16:36
But so we were just like entering sort of a cave of like, what's gonna happen. And everyone was saying, well, it's gonna be a shitty ass time, but it's gonna be great art. And I remember thinking, I'm here, I have a character I love, I have an artist I love. All those people were saying, we gotta make great art. I got it, I'm the fucking guy. I have to do that. Like, That was your dark side is. Yeah, and dark side is started with, with a buddy of mine, Julian Lytle, who's a Kirby fanatic.
17:04
I called him and I was like, the offer is Mr. Miracle. He's like, oh, you get to do Dark Side. I was like, Dark Side, he's kind of like a Diet Coke Thanos. I mean, I know he came first, but come on, Thanos is, I mean, because this is the time that, you know, all the movies are coming out. And he's like, no, no, no, no, you don't understand. Dark Side's bigger than Thanos. I was like, why? He's like, because Dark Side is. I was like, what does that mean, Dark Side is? And Julian's like, you ever have two paths and you know the right way to go, but you still take the wrong one? Dark Side is, man.
17:30
You ever just look around, you don't understand what's going on, you don't understand why everything is going horrible? Dark side is, Julian was saying this to me. And as he was saying it, I was seeing just those flashes of black with that writing, dark side is, and I was like, oh shit, yeah, that's what the book is. Yeah, so it comes from a guy named Julian, who was still one of my best friends, he was over at my house every day. So, yeah, and then that became a book, and it was really, Mitch took a hold of it. And you have to remember, at that same time, I was working on Batman, and that was sort of the high pressure gig.
18:00
In some ways, Mr. America was a little bit of a low pressure compared to Batman. It's funny how that is. Yeah. How much say did you have in the characters that you wrote? Did you come up with the plot first or was it the assignment, the character first? I guess what was your process in picking some of these, respectfully, B, C-list characters? That was something me and C was saying was you have this uncanny ability to take someone like the human target or the Omega Men and just elevate them to...
18:29
this status where it just becomes a classic. I guess what comes first, is it the character or the plot? Yeah, man, this is another instance where it's like, we see you take these characters that maybe some people sleep on, and then you instantly elevate them to some sort of transcendent level, and then people are like, what the fuck? Because I'll tell you this much, I have never said the word human target more times than I did last year. It's ungodly how many times I said human target.
18:55
Hey, the human target has as many TV shows as the flash. They're equal in TV shows. It's true. It's true. I am of the firm belief that any character can be awesome. I'm maybe not like brother power the geek, but who knows? That's funny. But I've always asked editors, I was like, no, give me a character. I do. But a vision was given to me. Mr. Miracle was given to me. Human Target was very much given to me. Supergirl in some ways was given to me.
19:24
I like being put in a box. I like, I do very few things well. I'm terrible at running and putting basketballs and hoops. Lord knows I'm raising my children wrong. But if someone gives me a character, I can see sort of what's essential in that thing and see how to bring it out. And basically it's just by treating it seriously, by just being like, oh, giving you sort of the best version of that. I mean, I was writing Archie the other day. Yeah. For some reason.
19:53
And so I went back and read all these old RTs and treated him the same way I would Mr. Miracle. Like what makes this guy cool? What makes him funny? That damn Reggie. Damn Reggie. Hates Reggie. God damn Reggie. Do you have like a morning routine that you stick to or a particular process when it comes to writing? Like do you ever have time to just write for fun or just do other non-writing comic book things for fun?
20:18
Non writing, I do have a routine. It always falls apart because I have three children and a dog. But generally speaking, I write Monday through Friday, don't write on the weekends. I want to spend time with my kids and all that crap. But I start on Monday, finish on Friday. I turn in a script almost every single Friday. It's gotten a little weird with the Hollywood stuff because of working on that stuff. But.
20:43
I start the script on Monday, finish it Thursday night, no matter how late I have to go, it gets finished Thursday and then I edit it on Friday, turn it in Friday night. That's the way I'm every single week. So what that means is, if today is a Monday, today I didn't write shit, so I sucked. But because I was doing what they call lettering drafts, they send you the letters and I had to do like six of them today. So I didn't have time to write. So that means I have a lot more to write in the three days I have to write the script after I write to you, which is Penguin. So
21:13
Yeah, that's sort of my routine. If I get fucking four days to write a script, it's the best we get ever, but this week it's three. Does the voice of the character ever get in the way of where you wanna take him? Like, is there a situation where you're like, but no, I planned this out, but because of the way the character is, it's just like, no, they wouldn't do that, you know? Like, ah, shit, now I gotta turn this around. Dude, all the time, every single day of my goddamn life. Yeah. Yeah?
21:40
I'll have like a huge, I'll have a plan and I'll be like, all right, he's gonna do this and do this. And the character's just like, no, I'm not fucking doing that. That's not happening. What's the last time that happened? What's the last time that like that happened? Should have one fucking Archie, I don't know. That's funny. That's, I totally, I a thousand percent believe that. It's like, Jugghead's going on a diet. Nah, son, no, I'm not. Yeah, I mean, literally, last week I was like, okay, Betty and Veronica are, you know, Archie's doing this thing and Betty and Veronica are gonna like kind of just fall into it.
22:09
And I started writing them and they were immediately pissed at Archie. And I was like, God damn, but you were supposed to follow it. I only have two pages and you got to be here in two pages. Like, no, we're pissed at Archie. You got to deal with that first. And I was like, all right, I guess, I guess we're doing that. Um, so yeah, that, that happens absolutely. That happens absolutely constantly. Um, trying to think of like a, do you have other friends that, you know, obviously that earned the business that write with you, do they ever commiserate with you about the same sort of thing where it's like, God damn it, I had this great idea. And it's like,
22:38
I didn't know until as soon as I tried to execute it that it completely contradicted what the characters were about. Yeah, I mean, Josh Williams and I have a standing call. We talk comics once a week for about an hour. And we kind of just be creative and also gossipy about all the shit and line things up. So yeah, we kind of have one sort of creative call. And I bounce, my kids are the best people to bounce shit off of because they actually seem to care about everything. So I'll be like, does this work? Does that work?
23:08
But mostly, and then I have an ongoing conversation with those three fuckers you said, Doc Schaener, Mitch and Clay, where we've been talking, we have a text thread that goes 24 hours a day, it's been going on for like six years. So I also go on there and kind of, you know, look what I just made them do, look what this person just said. Is there a name for the thread? Yeah, it's called Three Men and a Baby. I knew it. Yeah, because we don't know which one's the baby. That's great. Tom and the Scott Freeze.
23:37
Yeah, that don't fucking say that. It's a bunch of artists and a shit and a writer. So I'm on the I'm always like, it's me constantly apologizing. Like, I'm so sorry. I'm so because they're like, I just work 12 hour. I just work, you know, 24 hour days for eight days in a row on this goddamn splash page. And I was like, splash page superheroes. All right. You're like, you're like, draw this for me. I'm sorry ahead of time. Yeah.
24:05
Well, I guess on the topic of your process and your colleagues, and to bring it back to Helena Winhorn, was it easier working with with Evely or Clayton on this project since you guys worked on Supergirl together? Or was this like so different that it might as well have been working from scratch again? It was very much the same. In fact, it's such the same because I wrote this, right? During COVID, I got a little crazy. I don't know if this happened to some people, but I got crazy productive.
24:35
So I was writing like a fiend during COVID. So I got so far ahead that I could write my books like one after another. So I would just be like, I'm writing all of Human Target next four months or Human Target months. And then I'd be like, okay, I'm writing all of Rorschach. I'm writing all of Danger Street, all of Supergirl. And I sort of wrote them all in a row that way. And I wrote Helen of Windhorn right after Supergirl. So it's been whatever two and a half years since I wrote it. And so I was in that rhythm of writing for Bilkis.
25:03
And I mean, Clayton, I work on every single project together. So we kind of have a, you know, we know how each other think. So, no, it wasn't for I mean, this is the it's literally the writer, the pencil or ink or the colorist and the letter from Supergirl. Anything has changed as the editor. And it's a very nice editor. So, yeah, everything's it was very much a continuation of Supergirl. It's also very similar. I didn't want to go. Sometimes you want to do, you know, like.
25:32
Mitch and I did Sheriff of Babylon, which was like a very military, grounded thing. And then we were like, didn't wanna get shut up in that box. So then we did Mr. Miracle, which was like cosmic and weird. And then we didn't wanna get shut in that box. So then we did Adam Strange, which was like kind of the anti-hero. This was not that. I was like, I wanna do more of Supergirl. I liked that. I think people loved it. I just wanna do more of that thing in a similar genre with a similar storytelling technique.
25:58
And there's, you know, there's, you know, literary aspirations to all of it, but mostly I just want to be like, if you love Supergirl, here's more of that. And that's, that was, that was the goal from the very beginning. Can I say, I really thought that what we, I guess what I've seen, what I've, I guess I've been exposed to regarding Helen of Winhorn, it gives me a John Carter of Mars vibes a little bit. Like, I mean, I, I don't know. Do you dig any of that stuff? Is that stuff influenced you at all? I mean, do you like the pulps, that sort of thing?
26:26
Love the pulps. Yeah, I mean, if you look at the strange adventures, there's a lot of John Carter from Mars there. For sure, yeah. And you know, I never assume. I mean, again, I'm older and I enjoy, I get made fun of on the show lots of times from like, you know, it's cool that Doc Savage is a real smooth cat. He's a sharp cookie, that guy. I've been reading the shadow and all that stuff, you know. I wish that was a joke.
26:50
I really wish that was a joke. Well, I mean, but it influences so many things and it's still good. You know, like good art's good art. Like I think that's one thing in America that we kind of have sort of a little shelf life on our art as opposed to like, that's why you can go to Europe and still headbang to the scorpions. You know, and like people are still like, yeah, this is cool. You know, like here it's like, ah, that's old. But I feel a lot of that classic stuff is kind of making its way back.
27:19
I really, really liked seeing the space opera elements in Supergirl. Like beautiful, the story and kind of rooted in sort of a western, you know? And I like that, you know, this new, it's like, all right, you like that, but it's kind of the same, but we're flipping it up on you because now we've got sort of like the Edgar Rice Burroughs influence coming at you, you know, where it's like, here we go, you know, another adventure, but you're in for a wild ride because it's not what was...
27:48
what was going on before. Yeah, I mean, look, Dune, Dune to wherever you want to call it's coming out next week, it's gonna be the biggest movie in America. It's getting like the best reviews in Star Wars. Yeah, that's what I hear. I can't wait to I'm so I'm hyped. But I mean, Dune comes directly out of John Carter from Mars, you can draw a one to one line. So I don't don't think of yourself as old you're in the zeitgeist. I mean, that just I mean, Dune is just a is just a 60s drug retelling of John Carter from Mars. No kidding.
28:16
colonial narrative of white guy goes to a brown land and becomes a king. That's exactly what Dune is. But with drugs. So yeah, no, nothing, everything old is new again. And I think, you know, no one where that stuff comes from, some of that stuff has some just absolutely gorgeous art. Speaking of, I mean, Bilqis is no slouch for God sakes. And I wanted to ask if I could jump in, like what of her work, based on your interpretation and what you've gotten to see.
28:45
Like what of her work on this particular title, I guess speaks to the description of it being Conan the Barbarian meets Wizard of Oz. Was it like a, is there like a specific page or cover or moment that you could speak of without spoiling the story obviously? Dude, this is gonna be the most, people are gonna be talking about the art. I was on a book called Human Target and it was a very weird book to market, to talk about because.
29:11
Normally I go out and I pitch a book, you know, I work with slackers like Clay and Mitch and I'm like, this is why I was like, you got to buy Mr. Miracle because it talks to our time or you got to get on Batman because he's about to get me, you know, like you're using like little hooks for, for human target. All I said was like, just come for the art, just come for Greg Smallwood. You don't have to fuck. You don't want to read my words. That's fine. I guarantee you this is a game changer art book and that's what human target was just from day one. As soon as I was seeing it, I was like, oh my God, this guy's just like, he's like, oh, where's the bar? Fuck that.
29:40
And that's why I could sell this book the same way. Bilkes' art on this is next level. She sent me a mood board at the very beginning and it was full of kind of this, it was full of two things, kind of these high fantasy ideas and a very sort of 1930s like old movie vibe. Love it. Which I dug. So I sort of combine those into this thing. So she's also changing her style. For people that don't, the book is about, it's about a girl whose father's a pulp writer, like we were talking about before. She's 16 years old, she's a pulp writer.
30:09
of stories like Conan and like, if you guys don't know the author of the Conan story, Robert E. Howard, Robert E. Howard, famously when he like was only 30 years old after he literally invented a new genre that we're still writing to this day. His mother died. He, they were very close. He walked to his car, took a gun out of his glove compartment, shot himself in the head and, and, and nobody, and nobody knows really why it's not really sort of understand it. And that's sort of where I started from there. So this is about a 16 year old girl.
30:39
and her father is a Conan story and he kills himself. And she's left alone, her grandfather comes and gets her and brings her to his home, which is like this big, like sort of castle-ish place, things sort of Beauty and the Beast, the big Gothic house. And what she slowly learns is that her grandfather is the Conan character and that her father was writing about her grandfather. And the story is about this grandfather and his granddaughter bonding together over the fact that the generation between them killed themselves.
31:07
and them trying to sort of understand why that happened. And in the middle of trying to understand that and try to understand each other, they're living between these two worlds, one through the grounded world of the 30s and one of Conan the Barbarian magical mystery world. And so Bilkes has to do all that stuff. She has to do the emotions of a girl losing her father. She has to do a huge fantasy, you know, blow your mind worlds you've never seen before like we did in Supergirl with the planets, but now we're in a different genre. We're in sword and sorcery.
31:37
And she has to do the Gothic big castle with all the swords and all the intricacies. So all of those things, all in her style, I mean, it's to die over. She's been drawing it for two and a half years. She's put more lines in this than anyone has a right to see. You'll be blown away by how it looks. It's incredible. And the colors are brilliant. Oh yeah, we had a chance to read the first issue. I finished it last night, and I think your hook is on point. Yeah, her style is distinctively different. And not...
32:06
Like it's it's noticeable. You're like, oh man, like all the stops have been pulled out Like I'm assuming the mood board like there was a color palette too because that that it's changed completely it's so so good and everything you said captures it like it's the idea of like All this pulp stuff like you're saying like you you guys know who wrote come on. I'm telling you man I'm a huge Robert E Howard fan. I'm old as hell
32:34
Yeah. I mean, seriously, like all the stories, man, freaking Phoenix on the sword. I mean, everything like for people who don't know Conan, maybe you know, Game of Thrones, the Dorthraki that's Conan. That's all it is. George RR Martin took the Dorthraki is like, what if we combine Conan with high fantasy and sort of that idea of like the Jason Momoa character that you saw in the Game of Thrones. That's who Conan is. He's like the toughest, biggest fucking barbarian who kicks ass. Now, obviously when it comes to our
33:01
people are going to interpret it different ways when they read the book and make their own meanings. But is there anything in particular that you hope people maybe pick up on, whether it's like a messaging or a theme or maybe like a specific thing you had in mind when you wrote the story?
33:16
I mean, the way artworks or the way it's supposed to work. Like when I was in college, I was a philosophy major because I don't know, I didn't want a job afterwards or some shit. Yeah. Yay. Yeah, I just want to piss off my parents. I don't know what it was, but I was a philosopher. And you really love school debt, so you know. Yeah, I love school, that's the whole thing. So I didn't understand why, philosophy majors are the most arrogant fucking people. So, and one of the arrogant thoughts they have is like, why do people even write literature? If you wanted to tell me something,
33:45
Just fucking tell me, do it in a philosophy book. If you wanna tell me, if you're pride and prejudice and you wanna tell me there's, judging people is not always good till you get to know them. I was like, just write that as a sentence. Why do I gotta read a fucking book to discover it? With the wisdom that came with age is the fact that there are things in our language that we can't get at. There are things you cannot express just by writing sentences, by writing essays, by explaining it.
34:14
You can only get at those things through story. Like our language just limited. It's a wall between us and the real world, a wall between our emotions, a wall between you and me. And the way you get through that wall is through stories, which is why our fucking Bible is based on little vignettes. Because you're trying to communicate with someone in a way where you can't talk to them directly. You can't say, this is the moral of the story. Let me tell you a story so you can connect with part of me, connect with part of you. And where we come together, that's where the magic happens and that's where artists fucking form.
34:42
I'm never like, oh my God, I really want you to know the secret of this story. And if you figure this secret out, you'll know what it's about. I'm trying to get at something that I can't get at myself through this story. And I want you to bring yourself to the story and in the middle we'll meet and have some, we'll have actual chemistry and we'll have actual, you know, a literary experience. So that's what it's about for me. So, so then in that same regard, like what does your ideal story have to have? Like what elements make it good for you?
35:12
Ah, you know, when I first started writing, I was like, my story is people read them on the toilet and it only takes one shit to read them.
35:23
I'm like, sure. And I've learned some things. I'm like, I want to write a two shit story. That's what I want to do. I want to write a conflict. You got to fold the page and be like, I'm coming back on my next shit and finishing this. You know what? I'm going to go eat that gas station burrito and I'm going to come back and say, I want to, I'm going to write a two shit story. That's my ambition. You really are a philosophy major. That's what I'm saying. You gotta aim for the clouds, man. You gotta aim for both shits. I see it. You know, like don't just aim for the bottom.
35:53
two shits. When my daughter comes to me for advice, I'll be like, you will listen to what Tom King said. My friend Tom King said one time you shoot for two shits honey. And she'll say, get away from me. I'm talking to mom. I want that comic where your wife or your husband is yelling at you and be like, dinner's ready. Are you still on the toilet? Tom King wrote a comic book. See that's, that's success in life. It's like, look, my leg is asleep. I'm not getting up. Tom, I'm going to give you maybe the biggest compliment you've ever gotten.
36:22
Human target was a three shitter for me. Whoa. Oh, three shitter. Oh my God. Dude, that broke through the roof. Oh man. I'm just laughing because on the cover, human target has destroyed bathrooms throughout America. I'm laughing because on your side of the podcast, everybody's hearing that. It's like, Oh, three shits. You know, they don't hear what we're saying. All right. Toilet talk aside.
36:49
You have brought up Clayton Cowles a few times, who is the letterer for Helena Winhorn, also the letterer for a few of your titles. Every title I've done. Every single title, save the save. Well, last week's episode was all about the role of a comic letterer. I was fortunate enough to interview Hassan Otsman Alhaw. And he just really gave a great perspective on the hidden art of lettering. And I was curious if you could speak kindly about Clayton and maybe talk about.
37:19
how he contributes to the book outside of just providing letters to the script and to the comic. No, a letter is a storyteller. He's a partner in everything, or she is a partner in everything you do. Clayton and I are just connected at the hip. I've been with a few letters, sounds very bizarre. Clayton and I first worked together on Vision.
37:48
And I just remember getting the, getting the constant. And what I love about Clayton, there are letters who can do sort of more, you know, like, no one does fonts like John Workman, right? Like I worked with him before, it's crazy. He still draws them on the thing. And nobody does balloons like Todd Klein. And nobody does expressiveness like Ahsan. But what I love about Clayton is his placement, where he puts the balloons and where he puts the captions. He always knows like just the right,
38:17
You can put it just up in the panel or in the middle of, you know, because I always do splash pages with just a little bit of dialogue. It's constantly doing that. And he knows exactly where to put that caption, exactly where, so it really hits the reader. And that's what I love about him is just his theory of placement. I'm also a guy who believes that it's my job as a writer, and I don't always conform to this, but to get out of the way of the reader. Like when you're reading my books, I don't want you thinking about who's making them.
38:46
I want you thinking about the story. If you're reading Helen Winhorn, I want you to be thinking about Helen, not about the fact that I wrote the most beautiful fucking purpley sentence. I just, I want you to get, you know, you, like what do comics do? The best thing they do is people work hard all fucking day and they listen to the news and it's shitty and you get home and you sit on your couch and you read a comic and you get to disappear. And that's what's wrong. So Clayton doesn't do.
39:11
his lettering disappears. It's subtle in a way that just draws you in and you're not like, oh my God, I can't believe it. You just kind of fall into the comic book and you're not thinking about the lettering because that's how good the lettering is. What's harder, being an intern for Chris Claremont or a CIA agent or the man who's going to help save the cinematic DC universe as a quote, in sagrital part of James Gunn DCU? You know what was the hardest job? So I went from Chris,
39:41
Chris Claremont, I did that. And then I was in the CIA almost right out of college. I worked for the justice firm for a little bit in between. And then I was a full-time dad, a stay-at-home dad for two to three years, depending on how you count it, with first one kid and then, God fucking, my daughter came right after. So two kids and they were babies. And I worked that until I had enough money that we could afford daycare in the comic industry. And then I was a full-time comic writer writing 24 hours a day.
40:10
And let me tell you the fucking stop in between the stay at home dad, that was the hardest job. That was the one that I just in terms of being exhausted at the end of the day in terms of like you don't even know if you did a good job or not. I miss it so much and I'm so glad I had those years with my little guys. But it's such a unique combination of adrenaline and fright and also incredible amounts of boredom to read, you know, the same curious George book for the 57th time.
40:40
And you're like, I wanted you to come a book writer so bad. You either have that on half your head or the other half of your head is like, I could be in a war zone shooting people. What am I doing? So you're like, yeah, that was, that was not shooting people. That sounds wrong, but I could be contributing to America's security. And instead I'm here being like, Oh, and then mama, mama, red pajama. So that, that, that was much her, the Chris Claremont being his intern was not a
41:09
hard gig, my entire job was just to sit there and say, yes, Chris. So really, like, I could have gotten like, you know, like one of those little ducks that bops up and down, you know, I would just go, if you've ever talked to Chris, this is a known thing, you just say hello and then he goes on a monologue and I you you're at a con so maybe you get a maybe you get a 45 minute monologue. There was no con around us so there's a five hour monologue. So I would just sit in his office and Chris would go on and I
41:35
worshiped him as a writer. And to this day, I still do. I think he's one of the game changers in our business. And so I would just kind of sit there while he told me everything that was wrong in the comic industry for five hours. And then I would come back on Tuesday and he'd start over again. That was the gig. I was 19. It was wonderful. What are some, I guess, if you could drill down to one big lesson or piece of advice that he gave you that you still carry to this day, is there one that comes to mind that you're happy that you got from him or learned from him?
42:04
I mean, the lesson he'd say, and probably the lesson I should say is he's like, every comic is someone's first comic. That's his calling card. But actually that's not what I fucking learned because I don't follow that as much as I should. I remember, I love Star Trek. I'm a nerd. And he was talking about Star Trek and writing Star Trek. And he's like, you know why Star Trek is perfect? I was like, no. And then talking about the original series. He's like, because when you write Star Trek, you've got Kirk, you've got Spock, and you've got McCoy. And so Kirk's brain is outside of his body. I was like, what the fuck does that mean?
42:33
That means when you're writing him, if Kirk has to make a decision, whether to go this way or that way, his logical side is Spock and his emotional side is McCoy. And so you're not writing three characters, you're just writing Kirk. And I had never thought of writing that way, of being like, wait, so the supporting characters are just there to support the hero? I'd never, I'd always thought of them as like, Spock is Spock, McCoy is McCoy. I don't know, that fucking blew my mind as a writer, as a little baby writer, the idea that the other characters are there to sort of serve Kirk.
43:03
I don't know. Yeah. So that was the thing that most knocked me over to this day. That's funny. Cause I've said the same thing about Harry Potter, Hermione and Ron or Luke, Han and Leia. Like it's the pathos logos, arrows connection. All that stuff is like, yeah, it's one brain and that they're all having a conversation with each other. You know, I that's freaking fantastic, man. Okay. Also, can I interject real quick? I know you wanted to ask something. God bless it. How, how do you keep making the right decisions?
43:30
Thank you for putting Batman mask of the phantasm in like everything. Thank you for that. Also, that's Clay man. Clay loved phantasm. OK, now we're down to the mystery here. OK, when I first approached Clay with that project, because I was going to keep. Well, it was a compromise. They said they give you this Batman book. I could pick any artist I wanted for it. And I picked Clay because I just think, I don't know, Clay is like a modern day Jim Lee. He doesn't draw. I wish he'd draw more so you could see. But sometimes I look at his pages and they're just little miracles because he's pen and ink.
44:00
He drops from memory. Clay is a genuine genius of the medium. If you know Clay, he's very low key. He doesn't say a lot of words. He's like, I'll do it if we do Phantasm. So I went to DC. I was like, I don't care how we do it. Can we just do Phantasm? Clay said, I'll do it. And yeah, that's how Phantasm came in the book. It's cool.
44:23
Do you have a white Buffalo in terms of someone that you want to work with, whether it be an artist or another writer or just a creative individual? It doesn't even have to be in comics, but is there someone that you had the opportunity to work with before you died and make it happen? Who would that be?
44:40
Man, that is...
44:43
Yeah, I mean, mine immediately goes to complex artists. I'd just love to do anything with, you know, that would really blow my mind. I don't know. There's like the little kid in you that's like, man, Bill Sikevich, like, you know, like to hit the dream. I did a story with Walt Simonson, my sort of hero as a kid who wrote Avengers 300 we were talking about earlier. And that was just, I mean, that absolutely blew my goddamn mind. But yeah, like,
45:12
or like artists. I mean, I've Chris Somney. I mean, I've been chasing that guy only does for himself now. Gabriel Hardman, I love his sort of noir phase he's in now again, only draws for himself. These bastards who are running for themselves. I hate it. Yeah. Some of those guys. When I first came into comics, there's this thing called Twart, which was art plus Twitter. That's how long ago this was. And it was a bunch of young guys.
45:36
And I followed them like I was their fucking stalkers. I just thought they were the best artists in comics and they were all in their early 20s. And they've all gone on to become huge sort of legends. And Mitch was there and Doc was there. Brett Scoonover was there. And Asamni and Harv. So I always say I'm going to try to work with all of them eventually by the end of my career. I've worked with most of them. You know, speaking about hearing you mention these artists, I'm thinking about like the different publishers and just like your different projects and where you've been at. You know, Marvel, you've been at DC, you've been at Vertigo.
46:06
I want to say image. I've done image. I've done image boom and Dark Horse down the last year and now Archie. Like I just said, I guess I'm today years old learning that you're doing Archie. Like is that it's a one. It's on my mind just ever last week. I'm sorry to keep bringing it up. I apologize for the Archie, sir. I need to put this on my calendar is what I'm saying. My kids are super Archie fans. It's their favorite thing. My two youngest. And so I, I called. I
46:34
was at a con, I saw the editor of Archie, and I begged him to let me do an issue, just so my kids thought I did something interesting for a living. That's awesome. And they very, very, very kindly said yes. So yeah. All my cousins from New York would give me the Archie double digests. And like when I was younger, I'm like, Archie? Like what? And he's like, yo, get into this Archie kid. What are you doing? I'm like, what? I had my Archie phase in high school. But I brought that question up to say that, you know, you've made your rounds across the different publishers.
47:01
But considering that we're here to talk about Helena Winhorn, can you speak to how Dark Horse stands out from other publishers? Like I've, you know, in other interviews, I've heard that a lot of the comic making process is pretty much the same across different publishers, but is there something that Dark Horse does that just makes them stand out or makes the process a little fun or unique for you?
47:26
I mean, it's different levels of support. So I did an image book and that's zero support. So you're basically doing it yourself. And I was lucky on that to be teamed up with Elsa Chartier, who was an incredibly organized person and was just carried a lot of that load for Love Everlasting. And I would never, it was hard. It was legit hard to do everything by myself. So I want now when I do projects to have some sort of editorial support. And...
47:55
I like the editor of Dark Star and it was and they're just I mean, this is super behind the scenes and nobody gives a fuck about but the deal they offered was just absolutely wonderful in terms of the possibilities of making it into a TV show or making it into a movie. So when you're even when you're a baby complicate, which I was not, you know, I created Sheriff of Babylon and gave the rights away like they meant nothing to me. I got that beautiful watchmen deal where if it's out of print ever and so DC just says, oh, it's still in print and I'd
48:25
get to do back. So I never want to kind of do that again and lose control and Dark Horse gives me just an absolute ton of control. It gives Bilkis and I a ton of control over this property. So that's so that we and we're having incredible success with already in Hollywood. So that's music and I'm with Daniel Shabon, who's a fantastic editor who edits Bendis and edits James Tynan. And so you have a fantastic editor and you get good media control.
48:55
That's all it that's perfection for me. Is that like at this point in your career, is that the most important thing for you now where it's like, all right, I've already written Batman, I've written all these characters that I can prove my writing prowess. Like, are you at a point in your career where you're thinking more so that like longevity, control, ownership, like, I guess what, I guess what piques your interest in terms of like taking on projects?
49:22
I mean, that's asking a good question. I mean, it's mostly like who I get to work with. You know what? Like, you know, at DC, I love my editors. I love Marie, who's head of DC now is very wonderful. Jim Lee, who's the publisher is just one of the smartest guys you'll ever meet in solid like a rock. I mean, obviously he's been in the great stars and comics for 30 years. So I just, I like the people I could work with there and I love the characters. So that's always part of it.
49:52
The other day I was like, Tom, you have to start thinking about your legacy. I was like, I've been in comics for 10 years. What the fuck, Chris, 10 years and you're thinking about your legacy. I was I've only beaten CIA by like two years now. It's ridiculous. So I mean, I want to do both things. I want to do create your own. Sure, I want to do that stuff. And I want to I don't know. There's something part of me that wants to do the Hollywood stuff. I keep trying to do it. I fail every time I run as fast as I can towards a wall and hit it as hard as I can in Hollywood.
50:20
I spent two years of my life doing a TV show with Tommy Lee Jones. People know I wrote a movie for DC that didn't go anywhere. I still have an itch to scratch. I'm from Hollywood. My mother was a studio executive. I don't know. There's some edible thing there. I don't know what the fuck it is. But my first love, my only love is comics. I was...
50:45
I mean, here I was yesterday, just sitting around being like, oh, my kids were at their grandparents' house. Like the house was empty. I was like, I can do anything I want. And I was like, I'm grabbing a Sergeant Rock and going for a read, you know? Like I was just, I sat down and read Sergeant Rock for an hour yesterday. I know that's, I love comics and I grew up on comics. It's always my first medium and they're the most fun thing to write. So yeah, I want to write Wonder Woman until I get to issue 100 and then hopefully do Superman for 100.
51:13
That way when I have my grave set on it can be like, Tom King wasted his fucking life. Yeah, right. So yeah, so I want to be in both worlds. I like superheroes and I also like doing the other stuff. I know I can speak on behalf of a lot of fans. I hope you continue to do the comic book thing and that is your passion. And hopefully get to do like the Hollywood stuff. I'm really dumb excited to watch the live adaptation of Supergirl and I think a lot of your stories.
51:40
would make for some great live action movies, hell, even like an animated series. So I hope Hollywood wakes up and gets hip to the Tom King train. I want to go out and pivot. And if you don't mind, do some rapid fire questions from our listeners. So I mentioned we're huge fans. That also extends to our listeners, to the entire Short Box Nation. I had reached out to our Patreon subscribers, told them, hey, we got Tom King on the show. If you got any burning questions,
52:08
Now is your opportunity unless you can catch them at a convention. So I got three questions from listeners, and then I got a voicemail I want to play you. So this first question comes from our guy, Mac Jacobs. He writes, what's up, Mac Jacobs? Hell yeah. He writes, hey, Tom, with incredible work such as Supergirl, Woman of Tomorrow, Danger Street, Human Target, Batman, et cetera, et cetera, do you find it hard to come up with new ideas? And how long does it generally take you before you take your ideas to a publisher? I absolutely love everything you've done. No, I've never.
52:38
I had trouble coming up with new ideas. I was one of those kids, I was like a fat kid growing up and they'd always be like, well, you come and laugh and everything, but you've got a really good imagination. And I'd be like, oh, fuck, what a use is that in good imagination? I wanna win the goddamn race. I wanna be the best goddamn tetherball player in the yard and I just got a good imagination. Tetherball.
53:07
But who the fuck could hear if they were right? I've never had trouble coming up with stories. I go for a walk, I watch a lot of old movies, I steal from old movies constantly. I put on some music, I go for a walk, I imagine the characters and soon they're doing things and I'm following the story. It's really no different than being nine years old and you pour all your G.I. Joes out in the middle of the floor and you say, okay, what are we doing today, guys? You know, what's fun? I still do that for a living, so.
53:36
There's a famous comic strip. Oh God, who fucking wrote it? Archie Goodwin wrote it and drew it, the late Archie Goodwin. And someone's like, where do your ideas come from? And he drew a comic strip and he's like, here's the secret to comics. He shows him typing at his typewriter and then he stops and he puts one hand on his fist and looks out into the air. And sometimes it's a two fist. That sounds wrong. But yeah, it's all just about sticks.
54:05
It's all just about staring into space and imagining it. Yeah. Someday I'll be like, fuck, I'm blocked. I have no more of things. Not today. Really quick, to go to that old movies comment you made, do you have like a particular director that you gravitate towards in terms of like watching the movie? Do you have a favorite director, I guess? It's a good question. No, I don't really have a favorite director. I like to watch a lot of noir. It's kind of where I'm wearing a fucking Laura Sturdy. So I I watch, constantly watch noir's and old. If you want.
54:34
If you want to be a good writer, go back into the 40s and 50s and watch Westerns and see how simple the plots are. Obviously, Supergirl owes a lot to True Grit, which is not an old movie, but it's an awful mess. And then Up in the Sky owes a lot to The Searchers. The Searchers, yeah. So yeah, but I watch a lot of old noirs, which are sort of a bizarre genre of the 40s and 50s where someone does a crime and they eventually get caught by the crime. Because the way...
55:02
The way the censorship code nobody could do a crime without getting caught So there's kind of this horrible fate to everyone where they kind of fake constant and I'm utterly obsessed with the genre This is the Hayesburg code Yeah, the Hayes code. Yeah Exactly. And what we had that we had that in comics too If you if you did a crime in 50s and 60s comics, you couldn't you couldn't get away with it. They had to be resolved
55:28
C, do you want to go ahead and toss up this next one? Yeah, this is coming from our boy Chris Jenks. He asks, what was the inspiration behind one of the most influential books, Mr. Miracle, one of my favorites, of all time? That's what he said, parentheses and everything. It's a great question. What happened was Dan, you and I went out. Mitch and I had just been working on a book that had been taken from us. It was The War of Jokes and Riddles.
55:57
Basically, they decided that was going to be in the main Batman series and Mitch wasn't good enough to draw it, which seems absurd to us in retrospect. Because they took that away, they wanted to give us something just so we had work. So, Dan, Didio and I went out and he offered me Mr. Miracle and that day I went home. I was in Baltimore. I took a shower, so I gave you that horrible image. I was just thinking, what can't Mr. Miracle escape? I was like, he can't escape death.
56:28
And what does that mean if you can't escape death? He probably wants to escape it. Well, how do you, how do you, what do you do if you want to escape death? You kill yourself. I was like, oh shit, he kills himself. And then he survives and wakes up but doesn't know where he is. And that's, that's, it just started with just very simple thoughts like that and went from there. And the inspiration was, I mean, I told you about that. I had had this sort of breakdown, woken up into this shitty world, not to repeat myself. And I wanted to write about
56:55
what it's like to be a new father and to think. You have moments where you're like, is this real? Is this my life? Is everything going terribly? Is everything going poorly? I wanted to write about that feeling and use all of that curviness as a metaphor for what that was. And that's what we've been. You have those thoughts in the shower and I'm in the shower like, we're running out of eggs. I should probably go get some eggs tomorrow. This is why there's no eggs in my fucking house. That's good.
57:22
All right. We got one more question from our listeners. And this one comes from our friend Henry Hernandez. And he took the prompt very seriously. I think he maybe thought that this was the only opportunity because he sent in a flurry of questions. I'll let you pick which one you want. But a lot of great questions here, Henry. So he wants to know he wants to know what do you consider to be your greatest achievement so far and why? What have you done to improve your skills over the past? Like in life or like in comics? I think I think safe to say probably in the context of comics.
57:51
in the context of comics, like my greatest achievement. I made Elmer Fudd cool for a small moment. Yo, co-sign that. That could be it, right? That's gotta be the thing. Thanks to Lee Weeks, though. Lee Weeks did the most of that. He did, bring it. He brought the A game. That's a good one. All right, that's a good one. That's gotta be the height. All right, what have you done to improve your skills over the past year as a comic book writer?
58:17
Damn, that's a fucking great question. Every day, when I go to sleep at night every day, I'm like, what did I do wrong today as a comic book writer? Like I have that angst at the end of the day. What did I do to improve my, I watched a lot of movies, I read a ton of books. I mean, I tried to absorb shit. I tried to get out of my comfort zone and read sort of comics I hadn't read before, old strips I haven't read before, trying to find sort of a new zone to get in.
58:45
I worked a lot on changing my style. You know, I'm trying to get out of repeating myself. I really fucking am. So yeah, maybe that's probably the thing I most did. I tried to change my style of writing to get a more clean line into it. All right, and then last question. And finally, why did you kill Alfred during your Batman run? I just, I don't like British people. I don't know what they're... Yeah, fuck it.
59:11
We're Americans, right? We fucking overthrew the British. That's the whole point of our country. Famous, you guys, Alfred was not supposed to die. It was supposed to be a fake out. It was supposed to be fear gas. And Damien was seeing his worst fear, which was Alfred dying. And after the issue came out, it was so popular and people liked it so much that Dio called me and said, Alfred's dead. Wow. Which was news to me at the time. And that's why he has such a shitty death. He just kind of, he doesn't sacrifice. He doesn't...
59:40
So eventually I went on a walk with my edit. I was walking my dog, I called my editor on the phone, I was like, we can't kill Alfred this way because he doesn't sacrifice himself. He doesn't save anybody. Alfred can't go out like that. And we came up with a way to sort of retroactively make it so that him being in that room was him saving Batman. And once we'd done that, we knew Alfred was dead. I did not expect him to stay dead for fucking five years. That's news to me. I hate, man, I have to say as a writer, it's shitty because
01:00:08
I love writing Alfred in Batman. It's just like we were talking about with Chris Claremont. Alfred is Batman's brain. Alfred is Batman's kind of sarcastic, doubting brain to everything he does. And Gordon's like the other side, like his grumpy grandpa. Just like Spock and Ambones, that's Alfred and Gordon. Damn, I'm really glad you cleared that out. I did not know that story. Yeah, that's how it went down. Who knew? And if there's one person that doesn't need any more heat on them, it's Dan DiDio. So thank you for sharing that story. All right.
01:00:38
I've got one last question for you. And this one comes from someone special. Here on the show, we fully understand that the fans and the readers, as well as the retailers, are the lifeblood of comics. So we reached out to our favorite comic retailer, who's also sponsored this show, Ben Kingsbury from Gotham City Limit. He went ahead. We gave him the VIP treatment and let him submit a voicemail. So I'm going to play that for you. Hey, Tom. Ben K. from Gotham City Limit, Jacksonville, Florida, here.
01:01:07
We consider Wonder Woman and the Penguin both must read DC comics right now at our shop, and that's where our question stems from. Would you rather pen an epic about a hero's journey or delve into the psyche of a captivating villain? I'll leave you to answer. Thanks so much for taking our question, and remember, short box nation, always take it to the limit. Hell yeah, that's awesome. Hell yeah, man. Thank you, Ben. I appreciate everything you do. You know, just to be perfectly honest.
01:01:38
Don't tell anybody this. I'd rather kind of go into the villain disaster. I love writing Wonder Woman. It is, it's super fun, but it's hard. It's a hard book to write. Because every book has to be, I mean, there's just, there's a high bar to clear. And the whole point of Wonder Woman is how awesome Wonder Woman is. And it's to show that off over. And I like that. I like how she shines. I like that. And I love the backups. It's my favorite thing.
01:02:05
If I was like just to sit down and write something, I like dirty grimy stuff. I like street level stuff. I like crimes. I like people bleeding. I like bad guys winning. That stuff is, I just, that's what I like to watch and that's what I like. I like Sopranos. I like The Boys more than I like, say, watching like a Justice League or something.
01:02:28
Got it. You're more of a DS9 guy. We got it. We got it. I fucking am. I am a DS9 guy for sure. That's my favorite Star Trek. So yeah, I like the dark side of things. But Wonder Woman is pretty much a joy. I got to write Wonder Woman next week. You segued into Ben's segway so good that I couldn't tell my joke when you were like, do we have any other questions? And I was going to be like, yeah, what does God need with a starship? Oh my God. The best line ever. Star Trek 5. Star Trek 5.
01:02:56
Not a great movie, but goddamn, it's a great line. Okay, Star Trek V is not a great movie, but I would argue it's great as far as you get that bone-spock dynamic with Kirk. Just them pure, mm, chef's kiss good. He's like, you know, Jim, you really pissed me off today. You know, like just them having his, I'm attempting to toast a marshmallow. You know, like all that stuff is just, mm, delicious. No, it's like moment to moment, there's some beautiful.
01:03:24
It's like the first time that McCoy gets like his own scenes, his father and the whole thing. There's some awesome stuff. Oh, my gosh. There's some awesome stuff in that movie. You get the fan dance, you know, like everyone gets a moment. But just as a movie as a whole, it's not great. But it's worth it. It's just worth it for why does God need a starship? That's an utterly. I wrote a I wrote a Green Lantern comp of me and Doc Shaner, which was all about. And when I write how Jordan, I just write him as as as Shatner's Kirk. That's beautiful. That's so funny.
01:03:54
Because it's no fear, right? It's no fear. That's what Hal is about. And that's what- Oh, God damn it. Now that's all I'm ever going to see. Now that's the voice of Green Lantern in the Justice League. When it's not Jon Stewart, it's gonna be like, it's like, we gotta call Hal. Where's he at? But he's the guy who looks God in the face and says, why do you need a starship? So I wrote this whole thing where like, they're all asking each Green Lantern to, do you wanna be God? And all they're gonna, no, I don't wanna be God. We're not supposed to be God. And Hal's like, yeah, I'll be God. You know, like that's, yeah.
01:04:24
Of course. Show me what you got. Why wouldn't I be God? I've got a ring. Yeah. I would like to think that we have touched on a little bit of everything. Obviously if we were to touch, you know, deep dive everything, we'd be here for a six part, eight part show. So I've got one more question for you, but I want to insert this one here and ask, is there something like a topic or question that you feel...
01:04:48
you don't get a chance to talk about or answer or kind of like, you know, reference, like what's a question that you wish more people would ask you about in terms of like your career and comics and when you get on other podcasts, you ever feel like, damn, I wish they would have asked me about that. I really want to talk about that. Tom, do you need a nap? Are you okay? Damn, how can I forget? Tom, how are you? Tom, buddy, are you okay? The person. It's hard. It's hard. It's a hard day. Who is Tom King?
01:05:16
I'm okay. I'm okay. I'm okay. I'll be fine There's virtual hug virtual hug there's no question anybody ever asking me I like talking comics I like talking movies I like it all. It's fine Well, I guess with that in mind What's one piece of advice that you'd give to an aspiring comic creators listening right now that wants to be the next Tom King Maybe it's something that you wish you would have known
01:05:42
when you first started that maybe would have made your life a whole lot easier. Do you have any piece of advice to share? And don't say comics will break your heart, kid. Okay, don't, just don't. Comics have not broken my heart. Thank God. I'm sure 10 years from now you'll have me on and I'll give you the whole spiel of how it all fucked me over. Tom, we won't have to wait 10 years. Okay, let's not do that. See you next week. All right, next week. I'll see you then. Come on. I have my dream job, guys. I do it every single day. It's... I have no complaints about comics.
01:06:12
This is very practical, boring advice and I apologize for it, but maybe, whenever you ask me how to write. Alan Moore wrote a comic book on how to write comics. It's like $7 on Amazon and he wrote it right after he wrote Watchmen. So it's like Alan Moore at the height of his powers as a writer. Now more is obvious. He's like the goat. So like I could give you lots of advice or I could just tell you go buy the goat's book on how to write comics because that's what I did.
01:06:39
And I learned about character and about structure and about everything. And it's just like, it'll take you 30 minutes to read it. And so, so just go on Amazon and be like Alan Moore, how to write comics and buy that fucking thing and read through it. I hope that, that's very, very practical advice for the wannabe comic writer. It's, it's exactly what I did and it fucking worked. All right. You know what? Fuck it. I wasn't going to ask this question, but I'm asking it. If you had a Mount Rushmore of comic book writers, it sounds like Alan Moore is a gimme. He's on there. Who else is on that Mount Rushmore?
01:07:08
I've thought about this. This is a tough one, man. This is tough Are we just wait first? I need some clarification. Are we just seeing comic books not comic strips? Oh Throw the strips in there throw the strips in there. We're doing strips too unless unless you can make a completely separate You don't value them as why do I know I do value them cuz for me the first
01:07:33
The first three come super fast because it's Frank Miller and Alan Moore. I just think they are the two touchstones of my generation. The sort of 1986 moment in comics will never be equaled with DKR and Watchmen coming out. I'm fortunate enough to be friends with Frank and he's an awesome dude. He's been super supportive of me and my career and I love the dude. Alan Moore probably hates me for the Rorschach stuff, but he's still cool. I still love him. I worship his stuff.
01:08:01
And then I got for Stan Lee on there. You go back and read those Stanley, I know he's got a bad rep because of like all the publicity stuff he did, but those original Stanley comics when he sort of brings soap opera into the comics and makes it what it is, I think they're still unrivaled. And his record of what he co-created with Spider-Man and Fantastic Four, I mean, it'll never be equal to what he brought to comics. So I start with those three, then it gets a little harder. But if we're putting strips in, it gets a little easier.
01:08:30
because I can throw Charles Schultz on there. Charles Schultz, I think in terms of comics, like I'm talking from like ancient Cairo to today, in terms of pictures going with words, I think Charles Schultz is the top of the mountain. I think peanuts is the best thing that ever came out of comics, and maybe ever will come out of comics. And it's so bizarre because he was a super weird Midwestern kind of semi-religious guy, and somehow he managed to mine his.
01:08:56
bizarreness through a child's comic that also appealed to every single person in the country. It's bizarre how he did that. Which leaves me one more slot and I'm fucked because I don't know who should I put on this last slot. Should I put like my boy Walter Simonson on there just because he brought me into it? I'm going to put Walt on there just because I love him. Just because for the love. Just because there's no one better in comics than Walt Simonson and he should be on the list. Mount Rushmore's only got four heads but we're taking the fifth.
01:09:26
I forgot about the fourth egg. Look, look, look. First off, just like five fingers. What do you mean? Zod was able to laser his face on the mountain. Superman to Tom King can do as he wishes. I've been to Mount Rushmore because my family is from Northern Nebraska. So I've actually been out to the sun, the worst cause I've actually seen the fucking thing. I have to remind myself every time I ask that question. Oh, there's only four, but you know what to say as I was pointing out? Well, that's my four easy.
01:09:55
I think I'm going to refine the question too. If you had to pick your Zod, who's on it, dude, I was, dude, I was about to do artists. Can we do artists now? That's hard too. Right. You can put as many as you want. Well, what are yours? What are yours? Oh my God. He threw it back to us. Oh shit. Well, bill Waterston's bill Waterston's fucking genius. He's going up there for sure. He's still alive. He is still alive. He is fucking bill Waterston is right now in Ohio.
01:10:25
fucking watching the Daily Show. He's the Big Twitter comics. Yeah, for sure. He's definitely doing that. Yeah. Bill Watterson, Bernie Wrightson. You've got artists of writers. Oh, you're doing art now. You're just doing art. Good God. I feel like I always have this list and I forget it every time. OK, I'm just going to write what comes to mind. Yeah. This is making, is it, riveting? No, no, no. I want to say Rick Veach. OK. Wow, really? He's on your mouth. Rick Veach, man.
01:10:53
You got two Swamp Thing guys on there. I see where you're going. Where you're going. For sure. I mean, you know, I'm an easy mark for the horror stuff. No, I get it. Horror is fucking hard. I just did that book with Mitch. It's hard. Hard to write horror. I'm impressed. I wanna say Mike Kaluta. Another guy who did Swamp Thing covers, I feel like. But also horror covers in the 70s. His shadow stuff is unparalleled. He is the king of covers, man. Those 70s covers. Gary Gianni, Mark Schultz.
01:11:22
God, there's so many. I don't know. I can't. My head's exploding. Cadillacs and dinosaurs, man. Love Cadillacs. I just read that over Christmas break. I love that book. All right, no particular order. Top of the head. I'll hit myself in the morning. Andy Kubert, Jim Lee, Mark Bagley, Mobius, and Frank Miller. Oh, look at you with your little pinkies out with the Mobius, dude. That is a wonderful list. And I work with Frank Miller, just very briefly on one page. And I've worked with Jim Lee, very briefly on one page. But I do.
01:11:52
I did a whole book with Frank Willard. So there was that. Oh, no, no, Frank Willard was with Andy Kubert. Oh my God, my brain slipped. I did a whole book with Andy Kubert called Up in the Sky. And he was a joy to work with and is the nicest one. Damn, I forgot. Tom, you've got so much in your catalog. I forgot all about how good Up in the Sky is. Like that is, we were talking about, we had Christopher Priest on the show two episodes ago. And- Legend, legend Christopher Priest. Yeah, oh, dude. Yeah, man. The combo was amazing. It was fun. And-
01:12:20
We were joking that he was on to talk about Vampirella, but his Superman Lost series had just wrapped up. And he obviously really loves what he did. It holds a high place for him. It was really awesome to hear what he was talking about. But man, he found a way to insert Superman in every single question, even if it was about Vampirella. But yeah, I forgot that you also have a killer Superman run. Yeah, your catalog is crazy. But do you have any good Jim Lee stories? Because I understand Jim Lee was the reason that
01:12:48
Omega Man came back from cancellation, right? He went ahead and kind of pulled some strings. I do, but my favorite Jim Lee story, so we went to Toronto and there's, I'm sorry, for Canada fans, there's a huge building in Toronto that's like their Empire State Building. It's like the needle or something. You can go to the top of it as a tourist and what they do is they hook you up to a rope and you walk to the edge of the building.
01:13:17
And you lean over the side of it and look down on the whole city. Like you're at the top of the empire state building and, um, me, Scott Snyder, Jim Lee, and Dan DiDio decided why not, what are we going to do tonight? Not do this. Um, and we went to the top of this building and, uh, Dan got out was like, no, fuck, no, I'm not going. Sane man.
01:13:42
Scott and I kind of slowly walked, and you're just, every instinct in you is being like, no, don't do this. Like your feet are like, go fuck yourself. I'm not going any farther. And you're just like, we're tied to a rope, we can't die. And your brain is like, no, we're gonna die. That's too far. And you go and you look off the edge and you're just like, oh my God. And Scott and I are freaked out of our minds. And we're like, we're brothers forever. We did this together. We're courage. And we look over and Jim is next to us and Jim is.
01:14:08
all the way leaning off the edge. So just the ropes holding him, looking down at the abyss of life. And I swear to fucking God, he looked bored. He's like, that's it? That's all you got? Gangsta. That was Jim Lee. He's just like, what's the next thing? What's the next mountain I can climb after this? That was, he's like, can I jump off? Can I cut the line? Can I, like, that's it. That's who he is, man. Jim Lee was like, I survived Rob Liefeld, all right? Nothing can scare me. Yeah, dude. Yeah. True. Damn, all right.
01:14:37
Tom, I feel like we have given you ample time to think of your answer to the last pivotal question of the show, which is, who is your Mount Rushmore of comic book artist? You still gotta give us yours. Now I gotta do them again? Oh my God. I got you now. Alex Toth. Nice. Frank Miller again. He's the only guy, he appears on both. That's why Frank is a genius. Joe Qbert, I love Joe Qbert's stuff. I can't get over it. And I'll put one modern guy just so I don't sound like.
01:15:06
But Darwin Cook, Darwin Cook to me was just so fucking transcend. I've got three of his pages up on my wall. I just think Darwin. That was a guy I would have, you know, I was on a panel with him in the very beginning of my career, and he was like six seats over. I was like, when this panel ends, I'm running over to say hi to him. And a very kind fan got a signature from me. And by the time I look back, he was gone. And then I never saw him again. So I regret that I never got to meet him. But I worshiped Darwin's art. I think it's brilliant. It's brilliant.
01:15:37
Tom, this has been fantastic and a lot of fun too. Yeah, man. Thanks, man. A lot of fun. I'm going to be thinking of you next time I'm on the shitter. Oh, my god. So thank you for that image. I have a legacy. Three shitter, baby. Tom, do you have anything that you want to say in parting? Do you have shameless plugs, anything you want to say about Helena Winhorn before we sign off, or just anything in general? We toss it to you. I'm going to reiterate what I said at the beginning, which is just thank you to.
01:16:06
everybody listening, thank you to the store owners who are out there. Like I said, I started with Vision, a book that was super weird. I moved on to Mr. Miracle that was super weird. I write super weird shit in it. Only people only buy it because someone at the complex store is like, have you tried this? And people are like, no, I don't wanna try that. That looks weird. And they're like, you gotta try it. Like my whole career was made out of that conversation. And so I just wanna say thank you to all the people listening who had that conversation. I appreciate it. Man, thanks. Cause that's how I got into your work with Image was
01:16:35
Amber, local comic shop girl, was like, you need to read this weird shit. And I was like, sign me up. Thank you, Amber. I appreciate it. Well, I guess with that being said, I'll go and let the listeners know. I'm gonna have links to your socials, the website and the show notes. And of course, yo, look, Helena One-Horn, issue one, is out the same day that you're hearing this. It's in your local comic shops. It's a fantastic book. Like I said, me and C had an opportunity to read an advanced preview. I'm gonna go pick up a copy today. So you do so as well. And let us know what you thought of this episode.
01:17:04
And Tom, once again, you've been great and we welcome you back anytime you want, man. We'd love to pick your brain some more. Yeah, man. You're so kind guys, man. I really appreciate it.
01:17:16
There you have it short box nation. That's the end of the show. Thank you for hanging out. Thanks for being here and a special shout out if you made it this far. If you enjoyed this episode and you have some thoughts or comments that you want to share with us, right? I said the short box, Jack's at gmail.com. And if you really liked this episode, help us spread the word, share this episode with a friend or someone, you know, that loves comics as much as we do. And don't forget to leave us a five star rating and review on apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your pod.
01:17:46
It takes two minutes tops and it would mean the world to us. So leave us a review. Now, if you want more content like bonus episodes or perks like early access and commercial free episodes, and in some cases, free comic books, consider joining our Patreon community at patreon.com slash the short box. It's an easy and very affordable way to support the show and get rewarded for being a fan. Once again, sign up at patreon.com slash the short box. Speaking of our Patreon community, I want to give a big shout out to our current members, including Adam Chaitani.
01:18:16
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01:18:45
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