Jim Zub The Barbarian: An interview about Conan, Dungeons & Dragons, and the power of storytelling - The Short Box Podcast Ep. 483
00:01
In this episode of The Short Box. You know, iconic characters stick around because they have an intrinsic quality to them that speaks to something larger than themselves, right? And I think in the case of Conan, first of all, he's a foundational character of the sword and sorcery genre. And he exemplifies the idea of the wandering warrior and that a survivor, someone who can go into unknown places and survive whatever the world throws at them.
00:27
And then the world sort of changes on the edge of their blade, that his will and his physicality changes things. Wherever he goes, something amazing, exciting, and transformative is going to happen. And it's the kind of, you know, aspirational stuff that we don't get to have happen in our life, but we wish did, you know, that one person can go somewhere and make massive change.
00:53
intro music plays
01:16
Yo, Short Box Nation. Hello again, welcome back and thanks for present play today. If you're brand new, welcome to the show. I'm your host, Badr, and this is the Short Box Podcast, the comic book talk show that brings you the best conversations about your favorite comics with the people that put their blood, sweat, and tears in the making them. This is episode 483 and today we have Jim Zub on the podcast. All right, look, Jim Zub, all right, he's a writer. uh
01:42
artist, he's a former art professor at Toronto's Senesia College. You may know him from writing the flagship Conan comic for Titan comics, or maybe as the writer of Avengers for Marvel. He's also been writing the official Dungeons and Dragons comic series since the launch of the fifth edition in 2014. And then there's all those wonderful comics he's written for Image, like Wayward and Skull Kickers. I personally have been a fan of Jim Zub since the Udon days. He's worked on a bunch of my favorite Capcom and Street Fighter books.
02:11
But look the whole point is this Jim Zub is here and I'm gonna try to talk to him about all of that if time permits Right after we thank and give a big shout out to the big three alright I'm talking about the people who make this show possible including my two amazing sponsors Gotham City Limit comic shop and collective con Northeast Florida's premier anime comic book and pop culture event and last but certainly not least
02:34
You gotta give it up for the Short Box Patronies, aka the loyal supporters that make up the Patreon community. If you like what I do and you want to help me keep this show going for another 13 years, consider becoming a patron, aka a Patrony, over at patreon.com slash the Short Box. You'll get a bunch of rewards and perks in return. Once again, that's patreon.com slash the Short Box. Big shout outs to all the Patronies. Now, without further ado, let's welcome our guest of honor today, Short Box Nation.
03:04
It's Jim's up. What up, Jim? How you doing? Hey, how's it going? Jim, not too shabby. We're recording this episode on Monday, December 22nd. It's the week of Christmas. I don't know about you, but I've got a to do list that looks like a CVS receipt. is insane how much I still have to do before, you know, we get into the holidays and stuff. Man, I'm a mad man. I'm recording this. I'm recording the Monday before Christmas. But what makes me feel better.
03:31
is that uh you're also here recording with me. yeah, there's still a lot to get done before the holidays. That last little burst of momentum, I think, before we really get to rest. But then I've got a break all the way from Christmas through to first week of January and then dive back into it. But it's still making comics. It's not all that bad, let me tell you. How often do good ideas come to you during the holiday break? Or do you try to turn your brain off? Like, I'm not thinking about work. I'm not thinking about comics.
04:01
I don't think you can ever fully turn it off, especially when you talk about art or you talk about writing. Like you're always taking in material. whether you're out, like I was out, you know, finishing up Christmas shopping this morning with my wife and we were just wandering around uh downtown Toronto. There's a thing called the St. Lawrence Market, which is this amazing like farmer's market, all kinds of uh great stalls there and things. And we're just talking, we're talking on the subway on the way down. We're talking while we're walking around.
04:29
And you're always just sort of my wife's a writer as well. So you can't help but constantly talking about character and story and narrative. We're watching all kinds of different holiday films, but we're just watching movies that we wanted to catch up on in general. And that always serves discussion. What's good? What's bad? What would you do differently and why? I think that's one of the most useful kind of conversations that she and I have. It's not just about what is this good? What is this bad? Which can be useful depending on how you're breaking something down.
04:55
But one of the sort of things we'll do is we'll do this conversation like, okay, let's say you were given that cut of the film. You're the executive producer or you're the director and you realize, okay, this is the film we've got, or this is the show we have before us, or this is the comic in front of us. What is the least amount of changes you can make to make this stronger? What is a, if you have to try and trim a bit or you have to try and add a scene or you have to enhance a few lines to try and get as much characterization or fix a problem.
05:21
What would it be? And it's a neat little exercise for us as, you know, kind of writers and narrators and things like that, building a plan or coming up with, you know, your ability to kind of critique and self-critique and better understand how stories and narrative are built. What's the last movie that you guys watched together where you did this exercise and had a lot of things you would change?
05:45
Um, I don't really, I don't tend to throw mud like that. So we watch, it's sometimes it's really small stuff too. Like it doesn't have to be expansive because that's the easy cheat. If you just say, well, I just tear that whole character out. You're like, no, no, no, you can't do that. Like if you, you again, the least amount of changes is humanly possible. What's also funny is sometimes we'll, we'll talk about those kinds of things and then you find out, Oh, there's deleted scenes. And that had some that material where you're like, the director was thinking the same thing.
06:12
but somewhere in the edit, they had to cut bits out or somewhere some disconnect kind of happens. It's fascinating though, watching like, know, holiday films or watching nostalgic films where you're like stuff you grew up on and in your head, you remember it a certain way and then you rewatch it as an adult and you're like, oh, parts of this still work or parts of this don't work at all. Like, you know, whether it's tastes have changed or pacing is different or the way we build narratives is different.
06:37
or acting more broad or whatever. It's just neat to kind of look at that through a different lens. You know what, I'm gonna keep this in mind when I end up watching Jingle all the way later today. Even though that's a perfect film, so there probably won't be much conversation. not a single cut you would ever make. Jim, before we hopped on the call, I was about 10, 15 minutes into your TED Talk from six years ago. Boom, And can I say it was so...
07:06
Endearing man. was such an endearing watch and listen and I loved hearing your perspective on Dungeons and Dragons, how it has ties to this primal basic thing within all of us when it comes to storytelling. But I was really moved by your, just talking about your relationship with your older brother and wanting to... And the way it changed my life. I would not be a writer, I would not be a storyteller without Dungeons and Dragons and other tabletop role playing games.
07:34
it yeah, it absolutely unlocked something in me, not just to, you I think they're a desire to create stories rather than just passively have stories kind of happen, right? Like, and that's, think, you know, the thing we were just talking about when I watch a movie, when I read a book, I'm thinking about, okay, where does my taste fall with this? Do I like it? Do I not like it? Why? And I think that that, you know,
07:59
the desire to create the desire, you know, moving away from the passivity of just being an audience member. And for better or for worse, you've decided you want to make stuff. So then you're constantly analyzing, you're constantly building, you're constantly thinking about character, you're constantly thinking about, you know, engagement. And the feedback that I love about something like D &D where you're with either friends or strangers and you're kind of bringing them into this narrative and then they get to make, you know, decisions and choices.
08:27
And in our day-to-day lives, yeah, you get to pick whatever kind of coffee you want to get at Starbucks or something. But, but in this narrative, you get to make meaningful choices that can swing the whole kind of adventure, swing the whole story. And someone is looking at you and saying, what do you do? And within the frame of, of the Dungeons and Dragons narrative, there are consequences, there are consequences for those choices. There's consequences for those roles and all the excitement that that can bring with it. And yet at the same time, it's also kind of safe.
08:57
There's I was watching this great video. There's this guy, Michael Shea. He online, I think his handle is uh Sly Flourish and he does all these D &D advice videos and stuff like that. Role playing games. And he was talking about the duality of tabletop role playing that there's sort of these two main kind of mindsets on one hand. I don't know if you've played D &D or other tabletop games. I've only maybe sat in on one D &D session. Man, you got it. You got to dive into it because what it's different.
09:24
Watching live play stuff is vaguely interesting, but then realizing someone's asking you and you're making the decision on the spot, it makes all the difference. He describes that connection that you have with other people when you're playing a really good game, that you are building something that you couldn't have built individually, that we as a group are gonna come up with this thing and we're gonna build these memories and have this cool adventure together. And so in some ways it's really important, because at this moment we're all making this thing and it's gonna be really cool.
09:51
But on the other hand, it's still just a game and there's no, there doesn't have to be lasting negative repercussions. It's all positive and fun. And so it's a fun thing and it's a casual thing, but it can also be quite a, you know, an engaging and intense kind of thing too. It's the duality of that is something that I find really engaging and amazing about it. Yeah. Now that Ted talk was excellent and I'd recommend anyone that's into role playing or D and D to give it a watch. I guess I wanted to hear what was your first conscious memory of comic books and
10:20
What came first, comic books or D &D? Probably comics, but you know, in that classic sense of like newspaper comic strips, you know, whether that's like Garfield or Calvin and Hobbes or or um Hagar, the horrible and, you know, like like reading those in newspaper and quite liking them. And then eventually The Electric Company, which was this uh magazine that had it had Spider-Man comics in them, but they were really simplistic and and.
10:47
for a younger readership that I really, really liked. And then the Spider-Man cartoon and stuff like that. So comics came first in terms of memories and engagement and things like that. But my older brother, he was my proto nerd, right? Four years older than me. And so when he got into comic books, I got into comic books. Or he was into, know, sci-fi and sword and sorcery. And so I get into those novels as well. And I was trying to read above my current reading level or understand more and things like that.
11:15
And then eventually fell in really in depth. started collecting the G.I. Joe comics during that original eighties run because that was my action figure, you know, kind of obsession for a while when I was a young kid. And then through those, realizing that there were Spider-Man comics every single month. And I knew that character from the original Spider-Man cartoon and then Spider-Man and his amazing friends. And then just started reading those obsessively and really falling in hard on the Marvel universe.
11:42
especially the official handbook of the Marvel universe. was like, I think there's something in kids, you know, this is true of adults as well, but there's a particular formative age for kids that you want to codify your world, right? Whether it's you learn all the names of the Pokemon or you, you want to know sports stats or you want to, you want to put things in buckets. You want to organize your world because the world seems like such a chaotic and strange place. And whatever your hobby is at that age, that seven to 10 years old,
12:13
it sticks with you in some incredible, amazing way. And if it's video games, then it's video games. And if it's books, it's books or it's comics or it's whatever. And for me, was like, yeah, it was Dungeons and Dragons and it was the Marvel universe. Those two things just really adhered to my brain and the codification of something like the official Hamburg, the Marvel universe, which was this encyclopedic breakdown of what Marvel was at that point in time with these uh written in this way that was
12:42
seemed very authoritative and would talk about the history of these characters as if these were factual things that had all happened in order. And so, you know, in the early 80s, late 80s even, you don't have trade paperbacks. There are very few comic stories that have been collected in that format. And you can't afford the really expensive back issues. So the official Hamburg of the Marvel universe was telling you these stories and their importance, and you just have to trust it as gospel.
13:11
because you're never going to get to read those in their original format. And so to me, it felt like this very codified, very well planned out architecture, you know, of whatever the house of ideas and how it's all put together and all these amazing things and these teams and these relationships and they go on and on and on. And then the same kind of thing with the monster manual, which is this, you know, guide to all the monsters of D and D and alphabetic order broken down by type and where you find them and which ones are more powerful. And just sort of glomming onto that.
13:40
and obsessing over power levels and size levels and how these things all interrelate to each other. I think that they, that really tapped into something fundamental at that age that I wanted to, you know, proverbially get it all in my brain and, and, understand it and unwrap it. And I could obsess over it in a way that, you know, few other things in my life, uh, grabbed me at that particular formative age. I love hearing that because last year, maybe two years ago, one of my
14:09
best pickups at a local con was three volumes. was these three really nice black binders. And on the front they said, the handbook of the Marvel universe. And it was volumes one through three. Someone had, I guess, out, or not printed out, they had taken the original handbooks and perforated them so they would fit in this binder and they separated them into three whole volumes.
14:35
And I mean, got it for like 20 bucks. It was ridiculous. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, yeah, that crazy obsessive quality to it. And it was yeah, it was an amazing resource. And I still have them. And what's great is when I'm working on Marvel stuff, I don't look to them as current reference, because obviously, so much time has gone by. But what I find useful to do is I can flip through them and just sort of browse and go, hey, whatever happened to that guy? And then just kind of then I go to the wiki and start digging in and see what's current with that character.
15:03
Oh yeah, that storyline, what about that? And just start, it becomes kind of a germinator rather than me knowing, you know, everything about everything. It just sort of reminds me of funky old bits and pieces. And then I just sort of like, oh, and now of course we have access to all the digital archives of something like that Marvel Unlimited. So I can actually go back and read those stories, which is also kind of fun. Cause I'll have read, you know, some of those things in terms of the description in the handbooks. And then I go back.
15:32
Oh, now I can just sort of read those old storylines and realize they're probably not quite as they weren't as well planned out. You know, there's a hundred writers who have contributed to these things sometimes quite contradictorily, you know, in terms of the stories. But when you read them in the handbook, man, that was gospel. was really absolutely. How much time would you say you spend just reading? ah I do a lot of research and that's I don't know that that's the norm with a lot of other.
15:59
comic writers, not to say unique in that way. When you say a lot of time, like rough ballpark estimate in a regular week. Ah, geez, it does vary so wildly, especially with my convention schedule. But I'd say I'm spending almost as much time reading and researching as I do writing, that it's almost one to one, where particularly if it's a new project, like the longer you go on a particular run of characters, you know, the more you've internalized that and you've built up your own kind of reference pool and whatnot.
16:28
But if you're starting on a new project, I'll dig in pretty deep because I want to understand as much as I can about a character, especially characters that have been around for a long time. Even if I think I know them, even if I've got a good handle on them or I've read a bunch of the stories, I want to reread them with an eye for, OK, I'm going to be writing, you know, Wolverine or I'm going to be writing Captain America or whoever. Like, who is this and what do I think is most important or what is their current status quo and how can I?
16:56
exemplify that while also trying to move, you know, the baton forward. And that's kind of really important to me that I feel, I guess, because of that quality that the Marvel Universe or the DC Universe or any of these, whatever, I've worked on Samurai Jack or Rick and Morty or any of those kinds of things, um that I treat them like those stories have happened and that they have value and that they are canon. And that's not to say that we can't tell new things or reveal new elements.
17:24
but that you need to know what that foundation is in order to build strongly on top of it. And, uh, yeah, I just feel really strong about that. That, that if I, if I nail that down in my head, it'll make for better, more relevant stories later rather than me just stapling stuff on the side randomly and hoping that it fits, you know, something like Conan the barbarian where I've been, you know, I reread all the original Robert E. Howard prose stories from the 1930s.
17:50
but then also dug into the best of the comics and trying to really understand, okay, why do I like this character? What do I think is so great about them in their world? What do fans really love about this character? And exemplify those qualities while also trying to do things I haven't quite seen before, hopefully. You know, on the topic of that, I learned quite a few new things, you know, doing my research for this interview, especially about Conan, the big three being I...
18:19
either forgot or had no idea that Conan is much older than Superman. About six years, yeah. Yeah. I had no idea that uh he was integral in keeping Marvel afloat in the seventies. It was like, him Star Wars comics and Spider-Man comics. Yeah, those were the three big ones. Yeah. And then in the seventies. And then last but not least that his paperbacks with the Frank Fazzetta covers were selling literal millions on top of millions. That was new to me completely. I guess I bring all that up to say.
18:46
And the article I'm referencing, I mean you do a really good job explaining like how Conan has evolved with pop culture, with society, whether that be like, you know, the 70s Marvel comics or the 80s action movies or news to me, Jason Momoa played Conan in the 2011 movie had no idea. Yeah, it did not do very well. That seems to there was an attempt to reboot the movie franchise. But more people play, like more people know Conan now through the video games. Which game is Ian?
19:15
So the two, well, they've done a ton of video games over the years, but the two big ones, Age of Conan, which was like a massive multiplayer online game. Oh, wow. of Warcraft style. And then there's a game called Conan Exiles, which is like a survival game, almost like Minecraft, but you're Conan and you're naked running around and survive. Well, you're not Conan. You make a character who is in the high boring age and you awaken in this desert. And then you have to essentially survive. You have to gather leather to make yourself scraps. You have to gather whatever stone to make yourself a stone axe to kill things.
19:44
stay alive and eventually you build up, you know, power and then eventually you build your own home and you, you, you, you know, gain all sorts of different abilities and go on and on and on. And that game still has tons of subscribers every single month. Uh, and it, know, in this survival is kind of mode and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people have played that game. And so to a younger person, Conan has a pop culture footprint, but it's more through the video game stuff or, know, the character is one of the, uh
20:13
DLC characters in the latest Mortal Kombat so you can play Conan killing some of the Mortal Kombat characters like it's weird how the character has Really stuck around in a way that few other pulp characters have from the 1930s So why do you think that is like what is it about Conan through your research and your perspective that that has made Conan survived this long considering like you said There's a lot of pulp characters from the 30s. I think
20:39
know, iconic characters stick around because they have an intrinsic quality to them that speaks to something larger than themselves, right? And I think in the case of Conan, he is, first of all, he's a foundational character of the sword and sorcery genre. And he exemplifies the idea of the wandering warrior and that a survivor, someone who can go into unknown places and survive whatever the world throws at them. And then the world sort of changes on the edge of their blade, that his will and his physicality changes things.
21:08
wherever he goes, something amazing, exciting and transformative is going to happen. And it's the kind of, you know, aspirational stuff that we don't get to have happen in our life, but we wish did, you know, that one person can go somewhere and make massive change, that someone can be, that we can be the ultimate kind of survivor, that we can put up whatever blows the world throws at us. And uh there's also something intrinsic.
21:34
beneath that surface, if you read the original Robert E. Howard stories, and most of them are short stories, you can read them in one sitting. The theme that keeps coming up over and over again, sometimes subtle and sometimes quite broad, is this idea of savagery versus civilization. that Conan is called a barbarian and he's called a savage and he's from, you know, a non-civilized, the land of Samaria and whatnot, and he enters the civilized world, and yet his will is the one that survives out whatever that conflict is. But not only that,
22:03
But this idea that the civilized world, and I'm using hanging air quotes for that, you know, the governments and kingdoms and religions, that they claim to have a superiority and a civilization and a moral authority. And yet they're the duplicitous people. They're the ones that will lie and cheat and backstab you and say one thing and do something else. And Conan, the savage, again, hanging air quotes there, he will say the truth and he will say what he thinks and he will...
22:30
Also, he'll say, if you cross this line, I'll kill you. But he'll also say, you know, if we're allies, I'll fight by your side. And to my dying breath, we shall fight till the very end. And if he says it, he does it. And I think that that, so then in that scenario, who was truly civilized and who was truly savage, right? And that is kind of the dichotomy at the heart of the character that makes him more than just the Lunkhead barbarian that people assume he is, or the
22:59
Yeah, just big dude with a sword. know, there's a lot of, there's a, kind of iconic character creates a template. And this is something else that's really, I've discovered and I understand. And you see it over and over again with these iconic characters. And in order for people to tell a story of a barbaric warrior or a uh lone warrior or a wanderer, that's kind of thing. You are either leaning into or purposefully leaning away from the tropes of that character.
23:27
So by the very fact that you have to acknowledge Conan, either by leaning into or leaning away from it, in some ways you're reinforcing the template. It's like Superman is the superhero template. So the act of making a character fly or not fly is choosing to be more or less like Superman. To give a cape or to not have a cape is to purposefully lean into or lean away from a Superman archetype. And by doing that, what you're saying is we have to paint outside the lines or paint within the lines of Superman.
23:56
in order to define this character and their superheroic identity. And I think the same thing is true of Conan, that the character is arguably the most well-known fantasy character on the planet. Like the Lord of the Rings characters are, I'd say equally, they have just as much awareness, but my mom doesn't remember the name of the individual hobbits, but she knows who Conan is. Do you know what I mean?
24:25
You know, people will say, oh, Game of Thrones. And if you're a fan, you would know the names of all those characters. But most people just know the name of the book. You know, your average person on the street who didn't watch the show obsessively. so I could, but Conan is the name of the character, which is the name of this, you know, the whole thing. And, know, that's what I think makes that so potent and powerful. You can be almost anywhere and they at least know who Conan is. And that's a wild thing.
24:53
I guess when you consider, you know, this is a character that was, you know, birthed in the thirties and, know, it's 2026 and we're still, you know, he's still going strong in a bunch of different media. What would you say is, has been the most radical, the most radical different take on Conan or departure? Yeah. Departure. Um, I mean, there's a kid's cartoon, you know, from the nineties that is, yeah, it's, know, and they, have to kiddify a bunch of those elements in a way in order to.
25:21
whatever they were trying to sell toys and what may have you. I'd say that's probably the furthest from the source material. Although surprisingly, it's stuff that's not parody if you're saying official-ish material. Honestly, the John Milius movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger is not a very clean adaptation of the original stories. It's taken on its own pop culture kind of milieu now at this point and in many ways helped propel the character out to superstardom in a way that...
25:49
very few other fancy characters have ever had. But Milius also took a bunch of his own kind of philosophical stuff and injected it in there. He also, he took a little bit of Cull the Conqueror's, you know, uh origin and sprinkled it in there. Even the name of the villain, Thulsa Doom, is from a Cull the Conqueror story, not from Conan the Barbarian. And so it's this fascinating thing where I think the Milius movie is an amazing sword and sorcery film.
26:17
the purists, the people who absolutely love Robert E. Howard in the original stories, in the 80s, they didn't love it, you know, because Arnold is a great physical presence, but he's not a philosophical kind of actor. And Conan in the original Weird Tales stories, he's much more, it sounds weird to say eloquent, but he is, he's actually kind of poetic and lyrical, thoughtful and thinking about broader issues of morality in a way that em the movie
26:47
does it, but it's spoken through other characters. Like there's a character, you know, the wizard character who's played by Mako, he does the narration and he's saying things or the archer character Subutai, he says a bunch of philosophical things and, you know, Arnold's Conan responds to it a little bit, but it's not the same kind of stuff. the original stories, a lot of that is driven by the Sumerian himself. And so,
27:14
It's weird now because I'm whatever the flagship writer of Conan the Barbarian, which I can't help but laugh every time I say it out loud because it's such an insane weird thing to be and to do. But I have a much greater appreciation now of that source material and the strengths of it. Can you speak to this or give me a little more information? I've read somewhere that in preparation to write Conan that you ended up working with an archaeologist and a pulp historian to make sure that you were like,
27:42
as accurate as possible or honoring, you know, Robert. I wrote some Conan stories before that. So I wrote a Conan story at Dark Horse. I wrote a bunch at Marvel, but then the chance to relaunch the series at Titan and work directly with the rights holders at heroic signatures came up. And that was when I was sort of like, you know, the Marvel series wrapped up during lockdowns and the pandemic and all that kind of stuff. And I, you know, I felt like
28:08
we'd gotten this short shrift, not through any fault of our own, but just the market forces. And obviously everyone was distracted with other things happening in the world. And I got to work on one of my favorite characters and it didn't go the way I wanted it to. then I got the second chance and no one gets to write these iconic characters ever. And then the chance to potentially do it twice is insane. And so I kind of knew.
28:32
it was all on the line. I could make whatever grousing I wanted about what I would do differently. And now I was being given the chance to do it again. And so I took the project very, very seriously and I wanted to understand and unearth as much of that research as humanly possible. And luckily Heroic has, on one of the people they work with is this guy, Jeff Shanks, and he's an archeologist and he's a pulp historian and he obsesses over this stuff and he's collected it for decades.
29:01
And he knows the material really, really well. And just getting to talk to him, because although Howard wrote 21, you know, arguably plus a couple of fragments, like 21 Conan stories, there's hundreds of issues of the comics and there's pastiche novels and there's all this other related media. And Howard wrote hundreds of other short stories. He wrote horror stories and westerns and boxing tales and Arabian adventures and all this other kind of stuff.
29:27
Jeff was such a phenomenal resource and is such a phenomenal resource because he can contextualize things. So we will talk about the big plans that I've got for the series. And then he'll say, okay, here are other Robert E. Howard stories that speak to the kinds of things that you want to do. So read those to get into that mode. Or he'll say, these are the movies and these are the books that Howard wrote that got him obsessed with those kinds of things.
29:53
So you can go even deeper than the bedrock. You can go into the foundational material that inspired the author in the first place and try and glean some knowledge from that as well. Here's what's happening historically in Texas around the time that he wrote that story. And that's why those particular themes come out so strongly, or that's why those particular elements are part of that, or geographically, the Hyborian age, which is the uh prehistory of our world where Conan's running around going on his adventures.
30:20
Here's all the different source materials that Howard's drawing upon and using for his own kind of inspiration and getting as much of that stuff and sort of downloading it to my brain to try and better understand and put it in the proper context or put it into a context that I can then make the kinds of stories that I think will be entertaining and engaging. And that's just, it's a fun process. It's like this endless puzzle and uh it's a cool challenge, you know? And that way,
30:50
when I came around to relaunch the series in 2023, it was with as much of that love and knowledge of the source material as I possibly could, and that I could try and take as much of, you know, the character's been around for 90 years, and it's like, clearly, it speaks to something intrinsic. Rather than me trying to reinvent the whole thing, it's, okay, so why does this thing continue to resonate? Why does this character continue to stick around?
31:20
What speaks to me about that character and why do you know if this character was best-selling in the 70s and the 60s with those paperbacks and in the 70s with the comics most of that audience isn't dead but they're not currently reading the comics. Why? How do we bring them back? And then if I exemplify those qualities hopefully how can I entice brand new readers to get on board and see those qualities in the stories that they maybe didn't even realize that were there and could speak to them as well. And that's been
31:49
It's a, it's an absolute honor. You know, I gotta say, uh, the current flagship run is what got me on fully on board with the Conan, uh, with the Conan hype train. Uh, and this is coming from someone who grew up on Conan, but always looked at it as my dad's books. My dad loves Conan. Like that is his guy. He's got all the magazines. I he used to show this in the best way possible. Oh yeah, for sure. No, no, a hundred percent. Uh, he would show me like, uh, when I was first getting into comics, it was his books that
32:18
I was reading to get into it, and a lot of it is from like 70s and 80s Marvel. And he always pointed towards the black and white Savage Sword of Konya magazines to show me like, hey, this is how, he was also a really big art nerd. So he would study like, John It's such good quality. Some of those older ones are just phenomenal. And the black and white format, the magazine, first of all, it didn't have the comics code authority. So they could go deeper in terms of violence and sexuality.
32:44
But not only that, but the slightly oversized magazine and the black and white, you strip away all the color. And so the line work has to work on its own merits. It has to create and summon so much atmosphere. And so many artists came into their own, like young artists really came into their own on that book. But guys like John Buscema, you know, was delivering at such a high level because the love of the character was coming through. And, you know, that's kind of our watchword. Like we want...
33:10
to create the kinds of stories that hopefully stick around decade after decade and speak to that level of consistency and quality. You know, I, one of my buddies in the industry, he meant it as sort of a cast off insult. And he said, how does it feel to be everyone's dad's favorite? I said, dude, that is an absolute compliment. I don't know what you're talking about. First of all, it's actually kind of cool as a title. You're talking to, you know, a generation of people who
33:37
comics were one of the biggest things in their lives and that we've been able to rekindle that, you know, fire for them is huge. But second of all, and this, I don't care if it sounds crass, guess who has disposable income? Your dads, you know what I mean? Like guess who's willing to spend that money on stuff they love? Like those guys and, and I meet them now at every single convention. Like these guys will come to the show specifically to meet me and their kids will go off and go searching for anime. And these guys will be lined towards my table.
34:07
and we'll have a 15 minute conversation. You know what I mean? And they tell me about growing up with the character and how much it meant to them. And they had a subscription to Savage Store Magazine and they haven't regularly collected stuff in a comic store for 20, 25 years. And now they're in the shop day and date on release, you know, for these new issues because it speaks to them and they feel like they're 15 again or whatever. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, no, that's great. I want to talk about where Conan is at now. the flat, by the time, like I said, we're recording the December 22nd.
34:36
As of today, the flagship series Conan the Barbarian is up to issue 27 in a couple of weeks, January, I think seventh, you'll have a Conan scourge of the serpent issue four come out, which will wrap up that mini series. Where is Conan today story wise? what? Yeah. So one of the things I wanted to do in the original Marvel run, it roughly traces Conan's life kind of in order. They do eventually jump over in Savage Sword to some older stories or
35:06
they eventually do a separate series called King Conan where he is the king of Aquilonia. But for the most part, if you're reading the flagship book, it's one relatively continuous story that they're doing. Dark Horse tried to do it even more comprehensively where they started with what they considered the earliest Conan story and they were just gonna carry through continuously. And I decided we were gonna take a different tact because obviously you have these two major publishers that have done this over decades.
35:33
we have to do something different. The original Weird Tales stories of Conan, the prose stories that Robert E. Howard wrote, were not in chronological order. The very first story, uh 1932, is Phoenix on the Sword, and Conan is a king already. And so uh they jump around the timeline. Sometimes he's young, sometimes he's older. But if you read them in publishing order, there's usually a thematic connection between them. He talks about...
35:58
his days on the high seas in one story. And then the next story is that's a story of him as a pirate, you know, something like that. And so when I was launching the series, we didn't know how well it was going to do. I was promised 12 issues, no matter what. And so we did a free conflict day, number zero. did one to 12, but by the time we got to like issue three and four, and it was selling like the first issue had six printings with three printings of issue two, three, and four. And so it was like, okay, the, books that hit it's doing really well. The momentum is there. The readership's coming back.
36:27
And now we've stabilized at a really awesome sales number. And then with special issues like issue 25 that came out right before New York Comic Con, our sales shot up because we did this really special anniversary issue, fully painted every page. uh And that brought a bunch of people in the door to sample it and a bunch of them are sticking around now. And so it's like, great. We have this longer term plan. Like essentially, Harold came to me and said, we know you want to do more than just 12 issues. What is the plan?
36:56
We kind of laid out this big mythic arc of what I wanted to do with the character and where we're to go. And that we eventually plotted onto 50 issues. So I want to be on the book, you know, through to issue 50. And so we're just past the halfway point now of that big mythic story. And in addition to the 12, you know, monthly issues per year, we also have a mini series that we're doing now every year. So that mini series becomes a pillar.
37:21
for big broader kind of payoffs. And those payoffs include not just Conan the Barbarian, but other Robert E. Howard characters. you, although Conan's the most popular 10 times over, you've got other characters like Solomon Kane or Cole the Conqueror, or these eldritch investigators named Kirwin and Conrad, or this like Arabic adventurer guy named El-Borak, or like all these other characters that were in the stories that Robert E. Howard wrote, and they carry on cool thematic things, and they actually tie together
37:50
in terms of continuity. So if Conan is in the prehistory of our world, he's essentially traversing the land and finding the relics and treasures of the time of King Cole, who was in the time of Atlantis and all this stuff. And in our modern world, uh we find some of the relics of both the Iborian Age and the Atlantean Age, you know? And so it's this cool kind of pulpy continuity, and we're never gonna go past the 1930s, because that's the time when they were written. But
38:18
they're all gonna sort of connect together into this bigger, broader, massive story that talks about myth-making and heroism and survival and all kinds of stuff like that. So if you're reading the Conan Monthly book, you're always gonna be in the Hyborian Age and you're gonna get your Conan-style adventure uh in Sword and Sorcery. But if you read the events book, so last year Battle of the Blackstone and this year Scourge of the Serpent, you get to see even bigger cosmic stuff that's happening.
38:45
ripple effects because of what Conan's doing and what these other heroes are interacting with. I want to bring up a couple names because on the topic of the Conan series, the spinoffs, you've been very fortunate to work with some stellar creative. Unbelievable. artists are phenomenal. I want to bring up uh three names in particular and I want you to tell me what comes to mind, know, share an anecdote, whatever it may be. First and foremost, let me just say this really quick. The name is going to be Roberto de la Torre, who you, the artist who you launched.
39:14
this new flagship series with. And I just want to say personally, thank you for introducing to me like one of the I mean, this dude is unbelievable. I mean, remarkable. And it feels like I feel weird comparing him. But I've told a lot of people, hey, Roberto de la Torre, what he's doing on this Conan series is like the second
39:32
coming of John Buscema. It's yeah, it's John Buscema by way of Frank Frazetta. Yes, Alan Toth. Yeah, it's a he's he's a phenomenal fully formed artist. He's an incredible talent and he's he's such a an amazing, amazing artist that brings just the most classical, powerful kind of storytelling chops. But it never feels derivative. Like it's so. The storytelling is so pure and the design sense is so good and that that explosive sense of momentum.
40:02
uh beautiful light and shadow. He's just a phenomenal artist. I first discovered his work actually when I was uh starting to work on Conan at Marvel and uh some people sent me. He had done work at Marvel. He had done some superhero stuff, none of it looked like none like what it is now. No, no, he's he's come into his own in a way that's really if you haven't seen it, it's hard to describe, but it is absolutely phenomenal.
40:27
But he started doing these commission pieces from what I was told. He started doing these commission pieces and someone asked him to do a Conan. And man, whoever that fan was, you changed the course of my life and so many other people's lives. And so he did this Conan piece and it was on one of those comic art fans or one of those kind of forums. And then because people saw it and they go, man, that is some bad-ass Conan. Another person commissioned a Conan and another person commissioned a Conan. And all of a sudden his commission list went from a variety of different superhero and other pop culture characters.
40:55
to just mainlining Conan and Red Sonja and the Hyborian Age stuff. And then people started sending them to me and I was just sort of blown away. I begged my editor to get him to do a variant cover for us and I was like, man, I would love for him to do some of the issues or things like that. And so Marvel brought him on to do one story he did for King Size Conan, the special that they put together. He also did a story in the last issue of Conan that Marvel published, Conan the Barbarian, number 25.
41:22
But he and I, I actually bought a commission from him just as a fan. And so we started Facebook messaging back and forth and we were chatting about Conan and everything else. And I was saying how much I hoped that we would get to work together someday. And then the run at Marvel ends and the license wraps up there. And he messaged me and said, oh man, it sucks we never got to work together on the character. And I said, yeah, it's too bad. Maybe another time. And we were sort of dallying back and forth talking about the potential of doing a creator-owned thing.
41:50
Maybe we do like file the Sierra numbers off and do some bronan, like, you know, some kind of something that would be a lot of fun. Bronan is a great phrase. Yeah, just whatever. And then I pitched to take over the Titan run and there were seven or eight other writers that pitched to do the book. And so I didn't think I had a hope in hell of getting it. And lo and behold, I ended up catching the diamond again and they asked me to write the book. And then...
42:17
You know, my concern was, hey, people think they already know what my Conan run is going to be like because I just did it at Marvel. We've got to really make them sit up and take notice, both in terms of the storytelling and in terms of the art. And I said, we should get Roberto Dolatore. And the guy who owns Conan, know, Fred Malmberg, he said, we've tried to reach out to him, but he seems like a mystery man. We don't have a line of communication. And I said, well, I do because I was talking to him on Messenger.
42:46
And so I ended up reaching out to him and saying, okay, new plan, Rob. So instead of us doing a greater own book, why don't you become the preeminent modern Conan artist? And I remember he just laughed, you know, ha ha. Yeah, sure. How? And I was like, I just got it back. Like I got my hand on the steering wheel and I wanted to do this with you. And so, uh, I brought him into the fold and, you know, that launch has changed the course of my career. Uh, and, and I owe him a great deal for that. And, um,
43:13
It's been fun both as a fan and obviously as a collaborator to work with him. And he is, I think one of the things he was worried about early on was he didn't want to be dictated in terms of pacing. He didn't want to be told how many panels on a page and you have to show this and you have to show this after this, which, know, the standard in modern comic writing is what we call full script, which is exactly that page one, panel one. Here's what's happening. Here's the dialogue. Here's the text and whatever.
43:40
And so I said to them, let's go old school. We'll do it just like they did in the seventies, like Roy Thomas or Stan Lee did. um I'll write the plot outline. So I just say on this page, these things are happening. You tell me how many panels you need to do that. um And by the end of the page, so-and-so is going out a window and so-and-so has got their arm cut off or, know, whatever may happen, or this is the most important salient information on the page. You have to have this in order for the narration to function, but otherwise do it, whatever you want.
44:08
Conan's gonna kick the crap out of however many people you wanna draw. And if that's a small army, then I'll make it work in the narration. And then Rob sends the line art, he sends the beautiful, insane finished pages, the inks, and they're all traditionally done. And then I sit down to craft the narration and to craft the dialogue. And literally I'll look and go, oh, there's this much space above Conan's head. I got room for two sentences, and his expression looks like this.
44:38
what comes to mind, you know, it's pretty easy to summon it because you look at it you're like, oh my God, the visuals are so stunning. All right. Let me ask you about, about another artist, Doug Braithwaite. Oh my God. Such a huge fan. I think in your blog post, you called him like one of the legends, know, one of those, one of those guys. it made me think, yeah, I can, I have no argument against that. He's one of the hardest working dudes in comics. He's also one of the purest kind of artists. If you look at the quality of his figure work.
45:08
It is classically trained solid, solid, solid. Everything looks absolutely built. Like it, feels like it exists in its own reality. He draws with a sense of detail, but not over detail. He's not trying to draw every blade of grass, you know, but when he draws a jungle, feels thick and lush and crazy. He plays with light and shadow. He makes it look incredibly easy when you see how fast and how
45:36
Capably, he's able to stage some complicated stuff. I've been a fan of his for so long. I love the work he did at Marvel on books like Thor and The Punisher and stuff like that. And I didn't even think it would be possible for us to work with him. We lucked out in that, Titan, I think, knows him and had reached out to him to do a cover. And then we realized, OK, we know that Rob's not gonna be able to do 12 issues in a year. It would be great if we could trade off. And so then the possibility, they were like,
46:05
Do you think we could ask Doug about interiors came up? And I wasn't sure he would, you know, grab the baton, but he did. And he had never drawn Conan. He had always wanted to. And we thought we'd been only having for four issues. And thankfully we collaborated so well together and we just, just really got along really well. And he said, you know, I don't know the Conan stuff. know that the broad visuals and Barry Windsor Smith and John Buscema and Frank Frazetta, but I don't know all the, you know, line and verse. And I said, that's my job. Don't worry about that. I'll send you reference.
46:34
I'll get you on board. And we would have these great phone calls and we would just have these great back and forth, you know, email chains with the editor. And by the end of that four issues, we asked, said, you know, if you want to stick around, we'd be thrilled to have you. And he said, I don't normally do longer runs on books, but I actually can't think of any other book I want to do right now. So let's just keep it going. And now he's locked on with me. You know, he's doing pretty much every other arc on the series, which is, you know, such an honor.
47:03
Um, I just got to see him in November. I was in England for Thought Bubble and we got to hang out there and we've just really bonded over the whole thing. And he has been in this industry a good decade, maybe 15 years longer than me. And so he's also, I don't, you know, I don't mind saying mentoring in that broader sense. Like he's given me a a good feel for the ebbs and flows of this industry, you know, and to, and to really appreciate where we're at right now.
47:30
That sounds awesome to hear, man. And I love how open you are with your career, the behind the scenes making of comics, the amount of information that you share on your website. I mean, there's so many articles and blog posts about like, Hey, here's how to write a script. Here's my advice on networking and things, which I think is valuable. I mentioned in the intro that you were a former art professor at a college in Toronto. Do you ever miss teaching?
47:57
Well, this is a relatively recent thing. I was teaching full time. So my teaching career in Toronto started in 2004 and I was teaching. I was teaching full time from 2006 all the way to, you know, 20, oh my God, 2023. like, uh, you know, I was at, yeah, I was a 10 year prof. And so, um, and it gave me, it was simultaneously an unbearable amount of stress because I was my
48:27
creative career was growing and my writing career was taking off. But I knew, and I'd seen so many examples of other freelancers whose careers had washed out. And the teaching job was so stable. It's a really potent uh union job. And I loved interacting with the students and I loved iterating on the curriculum and I was good at it. And so I knew I could have stuck with it, but at the end of the day, telling stories is really who I am. Like it's intrinsic to myself.
48:56
And I was burning out like in some weird ways. Everyone has stories about how during the pandemic, you know, big changes, right? We were in lockdowns all that kind of stuff. And some people decide they were going to, you know, move away because this was now their chance to change up their careers or they lost their job and they were like, well, nothing matters. I'm going to take a real shift. And for me, it was in 2019, I was burning out because I had a full time writing slate. I did over 40 comics, like 40 issues I wrote in.
49:26
2019. Plus I was teaching full time. And so I would come home, I would in the morning get up, get on the subway. I would either read my lecture notes or I would be doing research reading for writing. On my lunch hour, I would be rapidly typing responses for, you know, emails or school emails. I would get home, would have dinner with my wife, I would run up here to my studio, shut the door. And usually from around seven till midnight, I was just either hacking away at emails or hacking away at scripts.
49:54
And then most weekends I'm out at a convention or I'm catching up on work or you're squeezing in a little bit of time with friends and family. And my wife would joke about it, but she would be like, are we still married? Because there was times when I would literally go to bed and she had already fallen asleep. And then I would get up before she woke up and I would start responding to emails before I jump on the train to go to school. And she goes, the last thing I remember hearing before I fell asleep was the keyboard.
50:22
And the first thing I hear waking up is the keyboard. Like, I don't know if you've slept. And I was like, I did, but it was before, you know what I mean? Like, and it was just on and on week after week and month after month. And I was getting these opportunities to work on books that I always wanted to and collaborate with people that I always wanted to. And that breakthrough that you hope for and you pray for your entire creative career. And so I didn't want to let anything go, but then I had the stability and the joy of teaching at the same time. And the only thing that was suffering was my personal life only thing, right?
50:52
And so in some weird ways, the lockdowns and pencils down on a bunch of projects was a reset button for me to kind of look and go, okay, before I lose my mind, what is important? You know, what really, really matters. I had had a, a teaching sabbatical lined up that was supposed to start 2020 world spun off its axis. So I didn't end up doing that. Obviously I deferred that, um, three times. So I finally took that sabbatical in 2020.
51:21
for, and it was transformative because now I could just focus on my writing and it was a joy again. And the Conan book was taking off and I felt really good. I was getting to travel to more conventions and have more of those interactions and enjoy them and stay places longer and travel with my wife, you know? And so, um, I think at that point, the dye was cast. It was like, okay, we got to slow down. We got to pick one path here and
51:50
you know, without trying to sound too corny, like I paid my dues and now I'm, it's, it's not like it's not work. The big joke, some of the guys at the school were like, Oh, you're retiring. I'm like, man, if this is retirement, I don't know. just have, I have one career instead of two and a very thankful for the one I've got. Yeah. Did we mention that you were teaching your professor teaching drawing and storytelling courses at Sinesha? Yeah. Sorry. No worries.
52:18
What was your favorite topic or curriculum to teach during your That's a question. So for a while, I actually taught animation history. Oh, wow. So I love animation. And we were in an animation and filmmaking program. And so I have a huge archive of animation, all the way from silent films, like the earliest stuff pre-Disney, uh through to modern animated films. I have a huge, huge library of animation. And contextualizing that and watching key films in class and teaching students that not only
52:47
are their favorite artists inspired by, you know, stuff that feeds its way all the way back to the start of filmmaking, but that this stuff is a constant inspiration pool that they can draw upon, both literally and figuratively, that all their favorite creators, you know, if they love the works of Miyazaki, I'm gonna show them the five filmmakers that inspired Hayao Miyazaki, you know what I mean? Or if they love whatever, um you know, Frozen, like let's look at Disney design and how it's...
53:16
changed over the decades and where that all comes from and bring them a greater appreciation of where this stuff all flows and also give them a lexicon in terms of art and language and storytelling and an appreciation for this art form. And that course, sitting in a lecture hall and getting to watch films and watch them light up, you know, and get excited about filmmaking and learn this material and internalize it, not because
53:45
They had to memorize it to do well on a test, but because they loved it the way I love it. You know what I mean? That was a joy and it is a joy. It's one of the things I love about teaching. And I would tell them on the first day of school, I would say, if I do my job well, you're excited to come to class because you're going to walk out of here with more ideas and more inspiration, you know, not just learning this stuff because you want to get a good grade. and when it worked.
54:14
That was the whole thing. That's what made it so beautiful was that we were all getting excited and they would bring their own films. Like they would bring modern stuff, you know, as YouTube was taking off and independent shorts and films where, you know, they were getting inspired by weird video games and memes and strange stuff I had never seen before. And they would bring that to class and be like, Zub, have you seen this? And you would get like, you would realize that it's an ongoing conversation. It's not a one way lecture. And that I think is also really cool.
54:44
know, anime is a perfect example. Like I really like anime and I was into it. My brother got me into anime because he went off to the University of Waterloo and the original kind of anime fan clubs uh of the late 80s, early 90s. He kind of plugged into that stuff. When people were trading VHS tapes that had been copied and copied multiple times with fan subtitles and stuff like that, he got me into that. But obviously, anime is now, you know, transformative.
55:12
pop culture, is mainstream culture, anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool. But to see which shows the kids were really digging, and I say kids, these are 20 something, know, college students. But the kids would bring their whatever anime or whatever video games they were really into. And then I would be like, okay, there's whole areas of this stuff that I need to also get caught up on or get excited about or learn more about, you know, you brought up your brother and I just got to ask, what does he think about your career? Like, do you guys ever chop it up about comics or anime?
55:41
Yeah, I mean, it's weird. I think it's very strange for him. I, know, I think some people assume that like, oh man, he must be my biggest fan. And I don't know that that's necessarily true. And I'm not saying that in a mean way. I think it feels really strange for him because his annoying younger brother is, is a comic book author and a D and D guy. Do you know what I mean? And so there have definitely been weird, amazing moments. Like uh some of his closest friends are the,
56:10
nerds that he met in university and a bunch of those guys are huge fans of my comics, you know? So I think that that's a weird thing. The other thing is, you know, we grew up on gaming and D &D and all that stuff. When we were kids, so there's a convention, it's now in Indianapolis, but it used to be in Lake Geneva, which is why it was originally called GenCon and it's still called GenCon, even though it's no longer in Lake Geneva. And it's the biggest convention in North America for...
56:36
know, role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons or board games and card games like Magic the Gathering and stuff like that. And when we were kids, we always wanted to go to Gen Con because if you looked at the original Dungeons and Dragons adventures at the front, it would say like whatever the name of the adventure. And then it would say this was originally a tournament adventure at Gen Con 12 or something, you know, and we were like, hey, can you imagine ever going to Gen Con? Can you imagine like playing in one of those tournaments? And then the thing that you play tested is published. Like that's as far as our dreams went.
57:05
We didn't think about, someday I'm gonna be a comic writer or someday I'm gonna work on D &D. It was maybe we can go to a convention and meet the people who work on D &D and play test it. Like that was as cool as I could have imagined my nerdy life being. And now I go to GenCon every year and I have a booth that I share with other authors that I've been doing for more than a decade now. And my brother had still never been to GenCon. And so GenCon 50.
57:35
forget what year that was, it 20, might've been 2017, 2018. Someone will check and find that I'm wrong, but I, for Christmas, I got my brother, I told my brother he was going to Gen Con for the first time. And so for the, so I flew, you know, I fly out to the show and he flew with me and he wasn't just going to get to go to the convention. He was going to get the gold star experience because he was getting an exhibitor badge and he was going to see the show before the show sets up. And all my industry friends,
58:04
Like those are my peers and my people I know, those are some of his favorite authors and artists, you know what I mean? And so we go out for dinner with them and we're hanging out with them and I'm introducing him and you know, all that kind of stuff. And he's wandering around the shows like sparkles in his eyes, having this incredible experience. And I'm working my ass off and Gen Con's one of my busiest, one of my best shows. And he was seeing, I think for the first time past social media. So if you look on Facebook or Twitter or whatever,
58:33
you see selfies and, look, this, you know, gaming luminary came by and bought my book or this. I went over to hang out with these guys, or this is me having beers with, you know, these cool people. And it is all those things. And those things really happen. But you're also working 12 hour days and, know, every meal you're either doing meetings or you're running around like a chicken with your head cut off, or you're finding inventory for your booth or you're managing all the little, you know, things that need to happen to make a huge show like that go through smoothly.
59:01
And so we would go out for meals and I would be really quiet. And he's like, are you okay? And I go, yeah, I'm just saving my energy up for when I get back to the booth, because if things keep going well, I'm going to interact with hundreds of people in the afternoon. every, some of those people that come to the booth, they're going to meet you. That might be the only time they ever meet me in my whole career. And if they have two or three minutes of great interaction, they will buy my books for the rest of my life. And if they have a terrible interaction,
59:29
they will go online and tell people I'm a piece of garbage. And so you've gotta be on. You have to be yourself, but like the best version of yourself when you're sitting at that table. I believe that very intrinsically. And he was seeing for the first time how that worked, that every person coming over, you're giving them your full attention and as much of yourself and your social engagement as you can.
59:54
and tuning the dials. It is you, but it's like, again, that best version of you, your most attentive to version of you. And then you're doing it over and over and over and over again. And then we go out for an industry party and then you're just crashing into bed and then wake up at seven 30 in the morning, grab quick breakfast and head to the con center. And he was like, Oh, this is a job. Like, like, you know, you could that this isn't just fun and games and Jim tells stories for a living, but this is like really a lot. And that's not some.
01:00:23
Nail my wrist to my forehead. Oh, woe is me. I'm at Gen Con working on Dungeons and Dragons and Conan. I love it. I wouldn't do it if I didn't love it, but it can be a lot. And we finished that. Yeah. We finished that weekend and we're getting ready to go to the airport. And I looked over and I'm with this right kind of smile. And I said, well, first one's free. Now it's on you. You know, I can tell you had an amazing time. You've got to pay for your own Gen Con from now on. And he glances over at me he goes, I don't think I'm coming back.
01:00:52
And I was like, what? How could you not want to come back? And he looked at me, no word of a lie with tears in his eyes. And he said, it will never be better than that. Damn. I mean, I'm like, got it. think my eyes are getting a little watery. He's right though. He did have the, he did have the ultimate con experience. You could, it was so pure and it was so, you know, and, and that that's your first one. It would, it was the ultimate one, you know, in that kind of crazy.
01:01:22
So yeah, yeah. I guess, is there any piece of advice that you would give to an aspiring writer that looks at your career and like, man, one day I want to have a, you know, it's such a variety. Yeah, I feel so weird about that question because I wish I could say I'd architected it out and I planned out my career and I knew exactly every move I was making and why I was making it. But no career is like that. And everyone will tell you about the weird serendipities and the good and the bad and the ups and downs that they have. But
01:01:52
I will tell you like staying in the game as most of the game, like that you've got to just keep putting work out there and you've got to keep having the, the audacity to keep doing it, but also be humble enough to know you have a lot to learn and that, know, um, and that you always start from a place of, of being a poor carbon copy of, of your influences.
01:02:18
And then over the long haul, you start finding your own voice and your own kind of things that make you who you are in the time of storytelling that you see in yourself. And that doesn't mean that you're going to get what you want or get the opportunities that you want, but that you're putting out work that you as a reader would love to see and that you would be excited to see rather than trend hopping or anything like that. Yeah.
01:02:45
Who in the industry was your mentor or that you could call a mentor? And what was maybe the best lesson you got from said person? One of the earliest mentors I had was Scott McCloud, the guy who Understanding Comics. What better mentor to have in comics than Scott McCloud? I know. I was doing um a web comic just for myself. I was working in animation independently and then um at Little Startup Studio. And I started doing my own web comic.
01:03:11
the evenings just as sort of like a creative outlet. I had moved to a city where I didn't know a lot of people and I saw these people making web comics and putting them online. This is when Penny Arcade and PVP were just starting out and things like that. And I started putting my own little web comic online and it had been going for four or five months, I think, and I was taking a break for Christmas. And it's different now, social media and RSS feeds and...
01:03:37
all the auto propagation of the internet. This is before all that stuff. Like I hand coded the HTML on my first website, you know? And I wrote this kind of classic, you know, tortured artist. Hey, I'm taking a break for the holidays, but I'm doing, you know, please come back in January. I'm doing the best I can, but I know sometimes the pages aren't very good and I don't always know what I'm doing, but I'm so thankful you guys are reading and I promise I'll work harder in the next year or whatever. And my email is right there on the front. My hotmail address is right there on the front page.
01:04:07
And Scott McCloud emailed me out of nowhere and just said, you're doing a good job. Don't be so hard on yourself. And I was like, oh my God, Mr. McCloud, you know, so freaking out. And then he just sent me his phone number and we jumped on a phone and started chatting about comics in the industry and changing technology and all this kind of stuff. And he was the one who eventually convinced me to go to my first big convention as a, as a professional. went to San Diego Comic-Con 2002 because of him. uh
01:04:35
and he put me in touch with other comp creators and going to that show did not, it didn't, it transformed my life, not in the sense of like instant professionalism, opportunity and publishing. It transformed my life in terms of connecting to a broader community of other creators and artists that they were real people that I could interact with and that I could be a part of that community and feel like I was one of them rather than on the sidelines.
01:05:05
And then it would still take years for me to get my first professional gigs and for me to start getting paid, let alone be gainfully employed on a regular basis in comics. But it opened the door to the possibility. Scott, one of his most amazing qualities is he treats everyone who makes comics like they're a worthy professional. he always, he doesn't have these aspersions of that he's greater than you or that your work is lesser than.
01:05:35
based on your inexperience. He was always like everyone is peers. I remember the very first time I met him in person that was at that San Diego 2002. And I just came over his table and I was so excited to finally meet him in person and shake his hand. And he was having a conversation with Chris Claremont. And as I come walking up, Scott says, Oh, Jim and gives me a quick handshake. And then immediately goes, Chris, do you know Jim? And now Chris Claremont is looking at my badge and you can see the gears turning as he's embarrassed.
01:06:04
because he doesn't know who I am. And of course he doesn't know who I am. I'm nobody. I've literally got no professional footprint whatsoever. But as far as Scott was concerned, we were both comic book creators and we should know each other. And that just by its very example, I think really opened my eyes. I mean, think about it that, know, Scott's the ultimate kind of let's look behind the curtain and show you how things function, right? And I think that that was inspiring to me to sort of go, hey, I keep learning these things about writing and about working in the industry.
01:06:33
I should write about this. should share this with other people. And Scott very much, whether he intended it or not, was a model for that. That is incredible, man. Big shout out to Scott McCloud. I love hearing stories about Scott. And I guess, Jim, the last, I'm like so like taken back by No worries. You've had some great stuff. I the brother story had I'm very thankful. And Scott McCloud, I mean, that's awesome. I guess last question for you, Jim, as we wrap up. um Like I said, this should be the first episode of 2026.
01:07:05
Like I said, we're on issue 27, 28 of Conan by the time this episode comes out. You mentioned that it's going to run for 50 issues. What can people expect from the flagship title Conan and from you come this year, 2026? Sure. We've got some amazing, cool plans. I feel like we've hit such an incredible stride, but we're not going to slow down in any way, shape, or form. We've got a new event book that we're building up to. We've had this wonderful pattern where we do a free comic book day book.
01:07:32
that unveils our next big event. we did a, know, Battle of the Blackstone Free Complic Day two years ago. This 2025, we did Scourge of the Serpent. Our next free Complic Day and accompanying event has already been announced. It's called Tides of the Tyrant King. And I am very, very excited for people to check that out. uh It's going to be an absolute beauty. I get to work with Jesus Marino, who's an industry legend as well. And I have been so excited to work with him and he's just phenomenal.
01:08:01
uh Fernanda Dagnino and Doug Braithwaite are doing just a phenomenal job on the flagship series. Month after month, I could not be more proud of them and the collaboration with them is phenomenal. I'm doing some more stories for Savage Sword of Conan. I've got a story I'm doing right now with Ivan Gill, who just finished up on Scourge of the Serpent. ah And then there's more coming. Alex Horley and I had an incredible collaboration on Conan number 25, that fully painted King Conan issue. And we have more stories that we're gonna be doing together as well.
01:08:30
It's a main mainline in the high boring age for me in 2026. And I've got a new creator on series that hopefully will be announced and launched before the year is out as well. Hell, yeah. Actually, you know, speaking on the topic of creator on I have one more question for you. And it's not even for me. It's for my buddy, Josh, who listened to the show. Big shout to Josh. I told him I was interviewing you and he was like, I was like, you any questions for him? He's like, actually, I do. Josh asked.
01:08:57
Ask them why I can't seem to find the skull kickers trades anywhere. love that book. Oh, funny. You mentioned that. So the skull kicker. Yes. Go kickers has been uh out of print for a little while at image, but it's coming back. I should have said this. So uh in, uh in, in February, March, April, you're to be able to get the skull kickers, uh new trade paperbacks being published by only press. So they're called the compact attack additions.
01:09:23
and they're gonna be coming out. Each volume is essentially got two volumes worth of the old image trade paperbacks. And there's so we've got brand new covers by Edwin Huang and Misty Coates, our original artists on Skull Kickers. And those are gonna be all collected together in those three volumes. And there's eventually gonna be a slip case of all three of them that you'll be able to get as well. So my very first Sword and Sorcery series is gonna be back in print. Skull Kickers is an absolutely wonderful.
01:09:51
series that really transformed my life and put me on the map in terms of sword and sorcery and got me my first regular gigs and comics. very, special to me. And for people who never read it before, it's a bit like Deadpool meets Dungeons and Dragons. Two monster hunting mercenaries uh kill bad guys and get themselves in danger and have to kill their way out. So it's a lot of fun. Hell yeah. I'm literally like texting him as you're like, I'm a stenographer. I'm a stenographer. I'm like, Jim.
01:10:18
Said three volumes total. Okay, you know what, fuck it, I got one more bonus question because how can I have you on the show and not ask you a Udon related question? Not only have you written a bunch of Street Fighter comics, but I noticed that you also get credited as editor on a ton of the Udon Capcom art books, which I love. I have just about every single one of them. If you know anything about those books, some of them are out of print and very pricey.
01:10:46
I guess, you get access, like you mentioned, you had access to like all of this Conan uh material for writing the Flagship series. Did you get the same treatment from Capcom when working on some of these art books? Udon's got an incredible relationship with Capcom. Those Udon Street Fighter comics started in, I want to say 2003. And I was at the studio. I joined originally as a colorist. It was supposed to be a summer job. And by the end of that summer, I had sort of...
01:11:12
wedged my way in at the studio and I worked my way up from colorist to illustrator. Eventually I was a project manager and art director and editor. And so I was sort of the number two guy at the studio running projects and helping to manage the studio with Eric Ko, who's the owner and one of the founders. so um eventually Eric was handling all the comic book publishing and then I was handling kind of non-comic book stuff. So things like the original art books. And one of the things, know, Capcom was very
01:11:41
kind of a closed door in terms of foreign publishing. And we were able to crack that open and start doing official English translated art books, which kind of transformed a bunch of the industry. You see now those video game art books being translated into English quite rapidly, but that was not the norm back in 2004, 2005, 2006. And so we were able to kind of get a toehold in there and convince them that this was a viable market and we were going to treat the work with the respect it deserved.
01:12:10
Our translation team was amazing. Our editorial team was great. And yeah, we got access to the Capcom archives, both in terms of those art books and then everything else. And it gave me the chance to travel to Japan. got to go to, you know, things like the Tokyo Video Game Conference or go to the Capcom head offices and hanging out with those guys. We found out about secret projects like Street Fighter 4 before it was announced to the public by over a year because we were going to be doing tie-in comics and, you know, art books and all kinds of things like that. It was an amazing experience. It was so much fun.
01:12:40
And that crew, you know, I learned so much about business and contracts and publishing and conventions, and it gave me access to a whole different side of the industry. you know, it's funny, my, my creative career has gone through these waves and these different eras. was sort of that web comic era where I was just getting my feet wet and figuring out comics. Then there's the Udon era where I get known in kind of the, the anime and manga space and video game space.
01:13:07
Then I transitioned over to doing my own creator-owned stuff at Image. And then eventually, Jim Zubb, kind of the comic book writer who does stuff for Marvel and D &D, and now Conan. And it can be kind of weird to me, because I'll see people at conventions who know me from different eras. And they're asking me different kinds of questions. So the web comic guys, like I'm good friends with the Penny Arcade guys. And now they're known for packs, their own video game convention and all that.
01:13:36
But to me, they're just, you know, like that's just Jerry. Like he's just one of the guys at Penny Arcade, but he's a big deal, you know, in this space or whatever. Or, you know, I go to Japan and I see a bunch of the Capcom guys or some of the other, you know, companies we work with at Sony and Konami and Bandai and all those different companies. And they know me through a different kind of lens, you know, and now the comic book creator kind of Jim. So it's, uh it's all very weird and in all kinds of best ways.
01:14:03
I can only, last thing I'll say about Udon and Capcom, even though I can go for another hour, is it must've been absolutely just insane to be able to see all of these original pieces of art or even like unseen art from like Bingus and Ackiman. Yeah, yeah. Like Shinkiro. Yeah, and getting to meet those guys as well. So a lot of them are not, yeah, they don't let themselves be photographed and things like that. I remember being, we convinced,
01:14:32
several of the artists to come to San Diego Comic Con for the first time when we were doing the first official translation of one of the Capcom art books. like Keenu Nishimura, who's done tons of amazing design work for Dark Stockers and Street Fighter over the years, we were at a restaurant with Keenu and she was just doing sketches for all the Udon people. And she did a Chun-Li sketch that's still framed up in my house, you know, at that dinner. And then the Udon artists were doing drawings for her and we were like training art around the table and...
01:15:01
Like we had dinner and then I think we stayed at that restaurant for another three hours. And once the staff realized who these people were, they just gave us wide berth and brought over a bottle of wine. And I think they were just excited to have us in the restaurant. Like it was just so wild, know, uh, was so fun and it was such a cool experience. And it's the kind of thing that it's hard to describe, you know, like, um, that kind of stuff, like getting to know any of those guys, it was just such a cool and again, transformative kind of experience. and.
01:15:30
Eric Ko, my boss at Udon, he's a dyed in the wool fanboy. He loves this stuff so much. And it was a point of pride to get to know them and to become friends with them and to treat their work with the respect that it deserves. And the relationships he's built up with those Japanese publishers is now so strong because they respect him and they love the quality of the books that he puts out. And he goes to Japan like twice a year. And yes, he's going to negotiate for licenses and stuff like that, but you can do all that over email and zoom now.
01:15:59
He does it because he wants to travel and he loves to visit them and he loves going out for good food. And Eric is, you know, I tell so many people he's one of the smartest, best business people in comics and publishing, pop culture publishing, but he's like a silent killer. Like no one understands how well connected and how well respected and how thoughtful and careful he is and how as a person, he would give you the shirt off his back that he is such a giving and wonderful guy.
01:16:29
You know, and I remember going to those conventions and we would stay up till dawn talking about entertainment and publishing and, know, our dreams and aspirations and all that kind of stuff. And when I started to get my own comics out there, he was so proud of me. And even though it, it meant that I was going to be leaving Udon, he knew that that's where my heart was that I needed to write stories, not just execute projects, you know, for other people's IPs. Damn. That's great.
01:16:56
Jim, this has been fantastic. And if I don't stop now, I will go down another two hour rabbit hole and talk to you. We'll have to do a part two maybe later this year. With that being said, ladies and gents, this is the Short Box podcast. And we just finished talking to Jim Zub about so many things. We talked about Conan. We talked about Dungeons and Dragons. We talked about writing. We talked about Udon and Capcom. I mean, what more could you ask for? I know what I can ask you. Go ahead and give Jim Zub a follow on your favorite social media app. I'm to have links to his
01:17:25
website, which I highly recommend you check out. I'll have links to the TED Talk we talked about. Check out the show notes for all your links and needs and all of that stuff. And make sure you give them a follow. Jim, this has been great. I wish you the best of luck with what you got going on. And thanks so much for sharing your time and your story. Thanks, man. I'm glad it all worked out so well. I know it's been a long time coming. And I hope we get a chance to chat again.
