Live from DCAZ 2024: An Interview with Nate Powell about Graphic Novels, John Lewis, and Fall Through - The Short Box Podcast Ep. 433
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Intro music plays
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How are you guys feeling today? Hey y'all. All right. That was a pretty valiant attempt, but I gotta ask a big favor considering that our guest of honor has come a long way to join us today. So let's show them like, you know, that Jacksonville love, right? So once again, DCAZ, how are we feeling today, y'all? Oh!
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Hahaha
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There we go. There we go. Nate, welcome to DCAZ. Hey there. How are you enjoying Jacksonville and the festivities so far? Very much so far. Like I got in here at noon and it was already bumping. Like I was very impressed by the, like how deeply stacked the tables were. Oh yeah. The aisles were full already. Yeah. Like y'all have done very well. So thanks for turning out and showing up for your local nerd community. Yeah. No, I couldn't agree more.
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I think I've gone on record saying that this is probably my favorite comic event that happens here in Jackson. I think the community obviously plays a big part in the work that the behind the scenes that goes into it. So, you know, I'm really honored to be a part of this for this third year. I think it's probably safe to say that you are a well-traveled man because of comics. And I was just curious, like, what's the most interesting or maybe random place that you've gotten to go because of, you know, doing what you do?
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Okay, I've gotten to do some weird events like signings, do some talks in like, you know, Belgium. Oh, I did get to go to the Netherlands and like once I was already there...
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They're like, oh yeah, yeah, we're gonna do a signing in a little bit, but first, in order to pay for, to be reimbursed for the travel to get you here, we're gonna swing by this art school real fast and you have to teach an entire class to a bunch of Dutch art students. It's not gonna be a big deal. And I was like, okay. And they, I like just got dropped off at this art school. And they're like, you'll be fine, you'll do great. I was like, okay. And just kind of walked in and had to like wing it.
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So that was one thing. I also got heckled by some eighth graders in a, I think it's Smithville, Texas or Smithville station. It's the middle school where they filmed Dazed and Confused. So me and Andrew, the co-writer of March, we had to do like a March talk for the eighth graders in their gym and I was like, oh, it's the Dazed and Confused gym. But John Lewis had been with us the previous day
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home and it was just like just the boys wanging it that day and we're like no we got this but whenever we do stuff with John Lewis we would suit up like full suits nice shoes and the second I walked into a gym full of eighth graders like I suddenly became an eighth grader again myself and I was like they're gonna eat me alive in this suit and so like
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I did okay, and then Andrew was like, I got this, I got this. And he tried to like, he was like, yeah you guys, I used to get made fun of for not being cool or whatever. And then dead silence in the crowd and just somebody in the back was like, you're still not cool. And that was it for us. We were both like, let's just get through with this. Let's get through with this. Like they totally dominated us. And the second it was done, we're like, let's go to the airport right now.
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I think one of my biggest fears is having to present in front of kids and maybe hearing, what are those? Yeah, so you survived your experience. Now, Nate, I think it's also safe to say that you've been pretty extremely busy. Like, I tried counting how many books that you put out. I think you put out four, if not five books in the last, I'm sorry.
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You've put out five books in the last three years, and then 19 books, comics, graphic novels, et cetera, since 2003, and that's almost a book a year for the last 21 years, and I was wondering, is that volume indicative of the market and the industry and the field that you're in, or is that more indicative of just your personal work ethic? It's a mix of, one side of it is that very personal, like,
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the fire I have in me where I'm like, I can't not make comics. Like I've been a full-time cartoonist since 2009. And then probably for six years after that, it was very like touch and go. Every few months, I would kind of like check back in with my old job at my old career and be like, what's up you guys? Are we still on good terms just in case? And you know, then things stabilized. But you know, like even doing...
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you know, like a very successful...
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Selling series like March. They're just there is not a lot of money in comics so what it means is you have to really commit yourself to Never stopping working and that's not necessarily the healthiest thing But the good thing is that like in comics as a culture and an industry especially since the 2008 financial crash a lot of the stigma has Completely gone away as far as like what it means to be a cartoonist the goal
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be and is not to be a full-time cartoonist anymore. In fact, people, I think, bring a lot more to their comics when their day job or their other life passion takes up a big chunk of their time. It also gives them enough security that they can make weirder and more personal stuff as comics without always being tethered to whether or not it sells well. That's a big part of it, is just never stop working. But also, comics just take
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a long time to make and so like once you really get in the zone like my two new books are the basically the only things I did during the pandemic I was like well I'm here in the house I'm just gonna like six days a week just make this happen yeah crank it out is there a deal I guess in your mind is there a clear delineation between like a cartoonist versus you know a comic creator or the idea that people have of like a comic creator like would you say
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just like categorically speaking, are you any different than say like, you know, Frank Miller, Jim Lee, like those type of names that I think some people would probably gravitate towards when they think comic books. Like where does the line for you in terms of like cartoonist, graphic novelist, comic creator? Good question, because so many of these terms are really.
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having to do with the word choice we make relative to who we're speaking to and what their understanding is of comics and where that fits in the world. I would say that we are all cartoonists. I would also say that like...
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And I have to actually have to think about this like a couple of times a week if I have to like if I meet somebody or I have to explain to a neighbor what I do or whatever. Where sometimes it's better to be like I write and draw comics or like be like I make book length comics graphic novels. And then sometimes you'll see people's eyebrows raise because there I didn't realize so recently there's a substantial minority of the population that thinks that graphic novels have.
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graphic content and that's why they're called graphic novels. So nowadays I try to be like I write and draw book length comics but they're all cartoonists. I'm also a graphic novelist and a comic book artist and writer but...
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It just varies depending on the ear. Can you imagine a 18 plus sticker on a Garfield comic? Like a Garfield graphic novel? That'd be crazy. Parental advisory lasagna. You know, actually, I brought up Frank Miller and he just did a pretty good Batman impersonation. I went to go see the Frank Miller documentary. Documentary, yeah. There's a documentary that came out. They had a movie premiere on Monday. And I went to go see it. It was fantastic.
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that stuck out to me, right? So Frank Miller, artist and writer, like kind of a rare, I guess maybe not so rare now, but back in the day, like super rare, right? He broke the mold in the late 70s, early 80s for being an auteur. Yeah, well said. And he said something in the documentary about how they kind of go hand in hand, that at the end of the day, you're telling a story. And when you're writing...
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You're telling a story through the words and when you're drawing you're telling the story through the pictures And I was curious like as an author yourself That's you know that I think safe to say you do all the whole entire steps for creating comics like how does that hit your ear? Like do you agree like it's kind of you know they kind of tend to merge like do you have a preference? Do you enjoy maybe writing more than say the any of the other parts? It depends like I feel so comfortable drawing That I actually don't have
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I don't have to think about it to the point where I realize that I'm making lazy choices or whatever. It's not that I'm phoning it in, but just that sometimes I feel so at home when I'm in my happy place drawing that I'm like, slow down, like take a step back. But I also like...
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And I know that I'm a worse writer than an artist. And what that really means is like, I acknowledge that it takes more focus, more time, and just being willing to be more critical of myself, to be like, how do I make this good words? You know, like, so I allow myself like, a lot of lead time in the process of...
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of writing a graphic novel, like in general, like 80% of the time I spend making a book is that invisible labor before I ever even get paper out to draw the pages. And most of that is going through the process of taking like, you know, like...
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I immediately get my big ideas, my themes, like the questions I want to explore in a book. And I kind of have to wait for a character to emerge that I really care about. And I have this like list in my sketchbook of like little moments and scenes that I start to kind of shuffle around and see where they might fit with the big themes. And that's kind of like just like a slow marinating process where, yeah, if you're on the stovetop, you got to move it to the back burner for a while.
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and then see how things congeal and bring it back to the front burner and slowly a story emerges that actually makes some sense. But along the way, I require extra time to be like.
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where are the holes in this that I can repair and make better? And then it kind of, I'm able to let go of a lot of it once I get to the drawing stage, where I'm like now to kind of like let the real fun happen. Now, does your process change any considering, I guess depending if you're adapting someone else's story, like for example, March, you were adapting John Lewis's story and then in fall through, something completely original, like how does your process change
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those terms and I guess and I guess is it safe to assume that you prefer writing your own story or do you scratch a different itch when you get to like you know work with a collaborator? Well to answer the second half of that first I really enjoy the way that those two processes enrich each other.
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And it wasn't until I started working on March that I realized that kind of the clarity and the concreteness that I would have to develop in order to tell John Lewis's story and tell the story of the movement correctly and powerfully. That was something I could bring back to my own kind of like weird magical realist fiction so that the weird stuff could stay weird and free, but it was a little more grounded.
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But yeah, so like when I'm collaborating, especially when I'm like adapting something that's already been told in a certain way, like when working with John Lewis, for example, it took me a little while.
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during the first March book to realize that John Lewis was a lifelong oral storyteller. And like one of his most famous stories that he tells almost every single time he ever spoke was about raising chickens and preaching to the chickens as a kid. And the first time he's documented telling the chicken story is in 1961 when he was 21 years old.
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and then like you know while I'd be lettering their script which Andrew wrote but the two of them are writing the book together you know I would like do these little tweaks where I'd be like oh like this is this sounds a little clunky on the comic book page or this is redundant or whatever I had to kind of step back thankfully Andrew kind of called me out and I was like oh there's a sanctity to Congressman Lewis's words that he's been telling in a certain way for 50 years
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And so I need to actually bend my storytelling style to make room for the words as he has spoken them So a lot of is just sort of approaching the relationship of the visuals to the words in a different way. I Want to stay on on March. I've got two questions that just came to mind, but you know John John Lewis passed away. We lost him in 2020
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and you had the opportunity to start working with him I think early 2010. So we're talking like almost a decade of getting to hear this man's life. I mean, there's three volumes plus a run. So four volumes of story about his life. And I was curious to hear like, when you think about maybe most impactful, important, or maybe just a lesson that you learned.
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from that experience that you still carry with you to this day, is there, and whether it be personal or even professionally, does anything come to mind, do you have a memory when you think about that 10 year or that decade long relationship? Yeah, I'd say that along the way, over that eight or nine years of solid adventuring, collaborating and developing a real friendship, recognizing the like,
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The public persona of John Lewis was truly who he was as a person. He really was just such a genuine guy. But
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seeing firsthand how a lot of his personality traits and a lot of his disposition that really helped him be an effective organizer and a very idealistic young person, they were still in effect, both as a collaborator and as a lawmaker. And so a lot of that would be like, he very much understood the...
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the uphill battle comics always play in the literary landscape, in the pop culture landscape, and how comics are always fighting for their legitimacy as a form of expression. And so this was a big ask. The fact that Andrew got him on board to make March happen specifically as a comic was really a test of faith in what we love about comics. But that also meant that whenever we would talk
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people together, whether it was like on TV or like for a website or something, about what we were doing, he knew that there would be a lot of focus, basically that our work together on March was perceived as kind of getting in the way of access to John Lewis sometimes. And so he remained very focused where he's like, we're here to talk about the power of this medium to tell this story, especially throughout the 2010s where things
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in real time in the streets and this history is also commenting on what's happening in real time. So when people would ask questions to him about our work he was so good about redirecting and sort of like decentralizing the way that our collaboration was perceived. He'd be like, oh I'm going to bump that back to Nate. I think Andrew can really answer that. And I really saw the ways in which his faith in like non-hierarchical systems
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and decentralized work was coming forth. And he was also just a really temperate, patient guy. He had the most serious poker face I've ever encountered in my life, where only if he was really mad or really, really happy about something would he break from this. Where he's like... And every once in a while you get a little corner of his mouth, where he'd be like...
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Or if he was just really ticked off, you'd get like a little furrow for just a second. But he's like, he's like, yes. And just, yeah, his ability to kind of recognize the impact that he had on other people around him and was something I really took to heart in terms of how you carry yourself, how you communicate and are perceived by other people. It made a very deep impact.
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I want to take a quick tangent and ask you, as someone that's been creating comic books, self-published, also major publications as well, for a long time now, what are your thoughts on where comics are now in terms of being accepted as a legitimate art form or their reputation now? I guess have you seen those strides?
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a little more respect to their name now? I guess in general, in general, yes. And this is where like, you know, like I was born in the late 70s. So when I was about seven years old, that's when Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns came out. And so starting in the late 80s, I remember to this day, like my mom still sends me newspaper clippings probably once a year from our local newspaper in Arkansas.
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And the headline for almost 40 years has always been the same. It's always a variation of like Zap, Bang, Pow, comics aren't just for kids anymore or...
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is that Bang Pow graphic novels turns out are for kids too. Or like, it's like, it's always like this push and pull of like comics of like broader culture insisting that comics be one certain thing. And I do think that's something that like the, you know the book ban, right? And the reality averse community, they're able to sort of take advantage of that vulnerability. The fact that like, because people don't understand
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or a medium, a format, and a language, comics can contain anything that any other storytelling medium has, but we've all been conditioned our whole lives, culturally, to be like, okay, like either comics or a kid's format or a comics, they're mature now, or a comics. Oh, like, and it's been amazing to have this explosion of nonfiction comics in the last 15 years, but at the same time,
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Especially like with March it had it's interesting like whenever we at a certain point when we do like big talks
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I realized it was my responsibility as the cartoonist to tell a room full of people about how it was X-Men that changed my life, that gave me a social conscience, that allowed me to sort of see the world around me and see systems through this new light as an adolescent, and that I don't see a difference between superhero comics and literary graphic novels. Like the fact that it is all the same pond
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vast and as varied as any other medium. I, to that point, I've seen something that said that you are the first cartoonist to ever win the National Book Award. Which, can we give a round of applause to Nate Powell for that? That's like, that's a, that was an awesome stat to see.
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And then I try to also count how many awards and accolades you've won, and I think I stopped around 500. I mean, exaggerating, but it was something crazy. You know, you've won a handful of Eisners, a bunch of IgNats, Inkpot, like every award.
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I could think of. And I was curious, is there any one particular award or achievement that means maybe a little more to you? And I guess I've always been curious too, like when I see these accolades, how does that impact your career in a tangible way? Is it as simple as, hey, it's opened the door for me or I don't have to work so hard to let people know who I am? How has the accolades and awards impacted your career in a tangible way?
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on the most basic level, it does allow me to have something to point at in a way that, and like even to take this back to like being a young adult, you know, like I'm not going to throw my parents under the bus here. My parents are cool. But in the 1990s, et cetera, they didn't exactly understand like the deal. And I was, you know, like this.
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hardcore punk kid who was making zines and putting out tapes and records and making these weird comics. And none of it really made sense. And then, you know, like I started offset print, offset printing my self-published books. But there was, you know, like four-letter words and stuff in there. And my parents were like, we can't show this to your grandparents. This is garbage or whatever. And all of that changed when I had my first book published that actually had a spine that a publisher published.
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like, this is something we can point to. We can show your grandparents this. And so there's a part of me, of course, that's like, oh, thanks, but I feel like that's a stand-in for the way that that kind of stuff works with the world at large. It's like, it's okay to...
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to have something to point at, to be like, see, this makes sense in a certain way. As far as awards that are the most meaningful, one is an award I didn't actually win, but I was nominated for. My first full graphic novel, Swallow Me Whole, I was nominated for an Eisner Award for Best Lettering. And that's the one where I was like, I did it.
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lettering is the glue that makes comics hold together that makes it work and there was a lot there was a lot of stuff going on in that book that could only effectively be communicated through the weird way that I decided to letter it and in fact the way that you couldn't read and couldn't understand some of the things in the book which made some people really mad like I would I still occasionally get like one star reviews or or angry emails that are like
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you know, like, this was printed way, way too small, like a bunch of this is scribbles and I don't even know what it's saying. And I'm like, my job here is done. But like, getting nominated for best letterer was one of those things where I was like.
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This is like one of the nerdiest parts of comics that requires like an actual eye for how comics works. And it's nice to be recognized for that. Also, I wanna like give a shout out to Dan Santat for being the second person to win a National Book Award for a comic. And so it's nice to kind of like, the club has expanded, but to prove like it's not a fluke. You know, like, so like there are these little signs like that where I'm like, all right, this is an up, this is a constant,
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uphill battle but yes like it's nice to have some things no longer be exceptional you know you got to go and get a members only jacket smidgen you know right now anytime
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You mentioned fall through and I want to definitely get to talking about your latest bodies of work that are out. We got fall through and then your graphic novel adaptation of Lies My Teacher Told Me. I had a chance to talk to you before we got on stage and I told you that I read, I read Lies My Teacher, you sent me a review copy of Lies My Teacher Told Me. I read that maybe a month ago on the plane and I think they almost had to kick me out because I was like, guys, it's all a lie.
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Christopher Columbus, a lie, all of it. Like Air Marshall? Yeah, all of it. Seat 12F. But then I started reading Fall Through last night and I got 50 pages in it and I admitted to you that at first I felt really disoriented because I was like, wait, what is quite going on here? And as I'm doing research into the book.
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I think it might have been on your side or somewhere, but it was described as Love and Rockets meets a Russian nesting doll. Wait, a Russian doll? Yeah, a Russian doll. Which I thought was such a great comparison so far. Can you talk a little bit about fall through and what the premise is, and a little bit about what we discussed before? Yeah, you bet. So basically, okay, fall through is pretty much like the.
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I describe it as the book I've tried to make this whole time. Like, it all kind of finally happened. So it's basically an interdimensional 1990s southern punk band's relationship story. So like, yeah, it's an interdimensional soap opera, meaning it's basically X-Men just with fewer powers and a couple of guitars. But yeah, more or less like, uh,
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In a nutshell, no spoilers, but also hopefully you'll forget this if you do decide to read the book.
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Yeah, basically, it's this. I'm from Arkansas, and I grew up in the Arkansas underground. And it's about this Arkansas punk band. In the early, mid 1990s, they go on their one tour, and there is a song that the singer has embedded a spell into that's on their one seven inch record that they made 500 copies of. And.
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as there's this push and pull amongst the band members about like
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You know, there are a lot of big questions about ideals and what it means to build something together, to work together, and who's pulling each other along, and what it means to be committed to each other as people or in any kind of creative community. Basically, she curses the band to be stuck in an endless loop on a tour that will never, ever, ever end, and which is very disorienting, but also like when you're surrounded by people you love making something that's very meaningful to you,
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You don't mind being caught in someone else's spell. So this is where the soap opera element really builds. Like, then obviously, as many of us have been in our 20s and caught in, like, these very intense friendships or collective efforts, you know, a lot of that comes to a head, and it's a matter of how they're going to get home, how they're going to deal and reckon with each other, and what it means to have something that they cared for so much begin to kind of disintegrate.
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Yeah.
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Because I can only say I highly recommend checking this book out if you can. I gave you a compliment that I really enjoyed that you did. You know, you respected the readers. You know, you had faith that we were going to get it. You know, you stick through it. And then I also got to compliment you on just, I don't know, man, reading this kind of showed the full range of sequential art as a medium. You know, like you're flexing everything.
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your your
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the panel placement, the monologue, the dialogue boxes. You know, like it was a really good exercise and insight into like what can be done with sequential medium. And I think kind of goes back to what you were saying that like, you know, comics is much more than this thing that some people put in a box. So. Thank you very much. This is also like, I think plot wise or like concept wise, this is the furthest out a book has ever gone that I've made. So I feel like the challenge
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was really there to also make it function as a linear story and be as solid as it could in order for the weird parts to stay weird. And also, whenever I read books or watch movies, I'm usually drawn to stories that have kind of unsatisfying endings, or they seem to open up as they end, or they seem to wind up back where they started.
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you know, as a reader or a viewer, this is what makes me feel compelled to read things again or to watch a movie again. So most of my solo books, all four of them, generally operate under that premise that things are not clear the first time around and you start to develop a sense of what is happening in this world with these characters, enough to make everything work, hopefully, but importantly that sort of compels you to head back to the beginning and be like,
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Now that I made it through with a completely different perspective, the story itself is different and then read it a second time. And I'm glad that you brought up stories that inspire you because I'm not sure if you're aware but earlier this week, yeah earlier this week Men's Health magazine put out this massive kind of like coverage on comic books. They had interviews, they had write ups, editorials.
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that was kind of making it's rounds on Twitter and online was that they interviewed 45 different comic creators. And I'm talking like, you know, cream of the crop comic creators, Robert Kirkman, Scott Snyder, you know, those type of names. And they asked them, hey, what's three graphic, I think it was either comics in general or just graphic novels that they'd recommend people to check out if they wanted to get into comics and kind of get a feel for what the medium is capable of.
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visuals was Billson Kevich, legendary Billson Kevich. And his three picks were Mouse, it was the graphic novel adaptation of the Kent State, and March. March was among those. He shared some beautiful words about March and what it meant reading John Lewis's story. And it got me thinking, I'm curious to hear if you had the opportunity to recommend maybe three graphic novels or comics
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inspired you personally or you feel are good benchmarks of what the art form is capable of, what are three that come to your mind? I'd say, I'm gonna keep it super recent, like in the last decade, because there have been several just incredibly strong books that have hit me so hard in the last five years or so. One of them that I would highly recommend is to go more on the weirdo horror side,
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that's very close to my comics. E.M. Carroll.
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released A Guest in the House last year. That's easily my favorite graphic novel of last year. It may still be filed under Emily Carroll, depending on the printing, but E.M. Carroll, A Guest in the House. Also from maybe like three or four years ago, Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero O'Connell's Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up with Me, which is like an incredibly complex
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dark relationship book that's like, it's like a heavy YA read that that's one of the most authentic accounts in any medium that I have ever read or seen that details just like realizing too late that you've gotten roped into a toxic relationship and the way like a nebulous relationship works where all of a sudden you're like, uh-oh, I'm in too deep.
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That's definitely up there. And then on the non-fiction side, I would actually go for Kent State as well. All of these people are friends of mine. But like...
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having familiarity with the stories they tell and everything, knowing how long DIRF, Back DIRF worked on Kent State and coming from being an editorial cartoonist and a journalist who started making non-fiction comics, but also him being a 10-year-old kid, 10 miles from Kent State as it happened, the ways in which he's been able to sort of...
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weave so much of that together while navigating so much of what isn't known for sure about the events that happened in the span of a couple of minutes. That was a big deal. And I guess my last recommendation would be Rebecca Hall two years ago released a book called Wake! The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolt. And so she's the writer of the book.
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Alberto Martinez might be the artist, but she is she's an academic.
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a professor, a researcher, a lawyer, but it's a really interesting nonfiction hybrid where on one side it is actually the history of women-led slave revolts in the United States and in the Caribbean. But the real story within the book is her trying to research that history and her inability to get certain concrete answers because of the lack of preserving...
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elements of that history. It's really fascinating and it kind of stands alone in terms of the ways in which history is told in a visual format. Great recommendations, and I'm sure you could probably rent them here at the library. Yes indeed. I guess I got one more topic for I think we start getting Q&A and just thinking about like topical conversations that have been happening in the you know in the medium of comics.
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AI is one of those topics. And before I ask the question, I want to preface it by saying I was reading about the making of March. And it said something in there that you
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depicted almost something like 300 real life people. And throughout that process, you develop a shorthand to help you get faster, but also keep some signature trademarks of the people. You did a bunch of research as far as old magazines, illustrations, and picture books to depict the time frame accordingly, and then Google search as well. Now, if we're thinking March.
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Book one came out around 2010. That's probably when you were doing the work. Technology has vastly improved since then. You know, in the short, I say short, but 14 years, technology has vastly improved in artificial intelligence here, and I was curious, I guess, what are your thoughts about the usage of AI in the comic-making process? Do you think it is a viable tool? Do you think there are moral implications that people should weigh when considering to use it? Like, I guess, what do you think about the topic?
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Yes, so when yeah when I'm I Have I have to talk to my kids about this all the time like because of the way I've seen artificial intelligence Programs creep into all these other elements of their lives to be like let's talk about what this is actually doing But in in terms of comics and its impact I think of it mostly in terms of a labor issue like
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I refer to them as artificial intelligence programs, like they're programs that are developed to take...
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pre-existing work from artists like you, like you at all the tables. And if it exists online, it is used, like all the data within every image that every creator makes can and will be used in order for a program to more effectively replicate any image in any certain type of way. But what that really means,
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You have to think about this in terms of like who has access to the resources and the money to make that happen. The only way it'll ever truly be used is to.
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avoid paying people to actually make art. It's the only way it will ever be used. You know, like, it was interesting to even see cartoonists kind of play with these tools in the first couple of months back in like 2021, 2022, because it seemed like this bizarre thing where you could just like type in recommendations and it would work. And even though they knew consciously that they were training the programs to work better,
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continually training the programs to work better. And I'm like, this is like the allure of like the spectacle of watching the program get better over time. But yeah, it's like something to be very, very mindful of. And it's not ever going to replace human creators, but it will certainly endanger the ability of human art creators to be able to be fairly recognized,
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and compensated for their work, because it's in every single AI produced image. It's the work of creators like everyone at these tables. Well said, thank you for that. And I guess one more question and we'll get to QAs here, but on the topic of creating and such, DCAS is a celebration of self publishers, DIY, that spirit, indie comic creators. And I was curious, if you...
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could give advice to all of these aspiring comic creators that wanna get their stories out there, what would your advice be? And specifically maybe something that you wish someone would have told you early on that would have made your professional life a whole lot easier.
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The two main things I always tell people is number one, show up. It's that the creative community and the industry of comics is something that happens in real physical spaces. And I started tabling at comic conventions for probably like five years before I really had a substantial book to show. And then it might have been another five years
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I had something that people were really paying attention to. But people do in fact remember you like once you meet four or five times across the table. The fact that you're there year after year like you know like and there you know there's like a weird gatekeeping part of it. The fact that you have to spend a whole paycheck to like rent your table and to get some copies of books printed or
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it benefits you as a creator people are there is a cumulative effect like you are becoming part of a community but other creators and publishers notice that you're there and the other main thing is that you know if you have like your book idea or your thing that you really want people to notice to see if they might be interested in publishing or whatever like a lot of times you'll make a mini comic or you'll have a sample to show people don't stop making
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because oftentimes, especially if I'm like behind the table at a publisher instead of like doing my own table.
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the editor or the publisher, they'll see something and if they're impressed by it, their very next question is like, so what are you doing now? What's next? It's not like, oh, I'm interested in this thing. This is the thing I wanna talk to you about. They wanna know what you're currently doing. And a lot of people, I think, put all their eggs in the basket of their demo piece to be like, this is my golden goose. I don't even know if that's what a golden goose is, but I think that's what it is. But basically, it's like, don't stop working.
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way but like you have your thing to show around they everyone wants to know what's on the horizon so make sure you have something on the horizon that you're working on always forward well said because let's give it up for Nate Powell one more time I'll go through my little skill real quick
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So we are going to open it up to our audience questions. So first off, thank you to Nate and Bada for such a wonderful conversation thus far. So if you're here in person, do use the note cards to write down any questions you come up with and volunteers and I will collect them and hand them over. For our Zoom audience, please write in your questions in the Q&A chat box and we will get that up there. But we had some early birds already pass them along, so Bada, you're locked and loaded to go. Fantastic, all right, we got some great questions
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First and foremost, when building a new world and original characters from a writer's perspective, what processes do you normally lean into and which habits do you try to avoid? Okay.
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Great question. Okay, so character wise, this is where I have more fun and I feel more comfortable. It's like, oftentimes, it's like your characters, like being the on paper version of a baby slowly growing, your characters may not have that sense of depth and life at first or even for a couple of years. And we can even see this like when we read
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beloved superhero comics or like stuff that's been published regularly for many years. Characters develop depth and complexity over time. So like if you're doing like a one-shot book, give yourself that lead time to let your character develop and even while you're drawing it, sometimes a character will do something that surprises you like it'll seem obvious that they're going to make a different choice and you're like...
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characters alive, it just did it. It's always like, give your character time to actually develop into who they are and let them change, even if you're in the middle of making what you're making. I'm also like, as far as building your world, this is where it turns out I'm not a big world building guy. You know, like I thought I was, and it was the kind of thing where growing up reading Lord of the Rings, where I'd be like, okay, now it's time to make
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fantasy epic and then sometimes you just don't have it in you like that's not your wheelhouse so I've discovered like that kind of attention towards making everything original and fresh and mind-blowing or mind-bending that may not be in the cards so like what worked for me is instead of like being a JRR Tolkien I feel like my stories aspire more to be like Ursula K Le Guin where
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I'm not patting myself on the back, but I'm saying like...
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Le Guin's stories are wildly fantastic and visionary, but a lot of her stories are really operating in a world very recognizable as our own, except some really wild stuff kicks things off. And like mind-bending, mind-shredding stuff can happen in a relatively ordinary place. In fact, it's that contrast that makes the mind-shredding so mind-shredding. So like I found that my zone
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and where I'm happiest telling stories is starting with our world and then waiting for certain things to just fall off the rails from the world that we recognize. So like there's no, like unless like that's your thing is to be like I'm a world-building person. You don't have to rebuild a world from scratch.
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Well said. I think this next one kind of takes us back to us talking about March and then the words that you shared about Kent. Someone wants to know, is there another historical event or time period that you would love to make a novel about? Man, I think...
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I think I'm still, if I were to jump back into a historical nonfiction book, I would actually be most interested in exploring something that happened within my lifetime. And I think this kind of goes back to...
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that my last answer is the fact that I'm entering with a certain familiarity with the environment that gives me more time to spend on, you know, this like fascinating aspect of history or of the world that maybe I didn't understand at the time. One of the reasons why, one of the reasons why I was recommended as the artist for March and why John Lewis ultimately picked me was because I'm the southerner
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are all from northern Mississippi. I grew up in Montgomery, Alabama as a kid. And so like, it was wild, because once I started reading about the life of John Lewis, and he was talking about living, living 100 yards from the old Troy Highway, and all of a sudden I was sitting there doing my homework, and I'm like, wait a minute. When I was a kid, the ditch where I used to play was a quarter mile from the end of the old Troy Highway.
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on like the southeast end of Montgomery. And I'm like, I know the old Troy Highway, and that means I know the kind of grass and trees and flowers. I know the wildlife that's there. There is a level of like geographic familiarity as well as cultural familiarity where I'm like, whenever possible, I'm able to actually dig into my own memories. Even though this is like, this is John Lewis's experience from the 40s into the 1960s.
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I have something to say in here, and I can bring my own memories and experiences into the environment to make it as alive as possible. So that's why I think I would explore something within my lifetime if I were to do another. Good stuff. I feel almost obligated to ask this next question because this person drew such a lovely illustration Well done. the whole time. Who submitted this one? Can I get a show of hands? Okay, nevermind.
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they want to keep it mysterious. They want to know how do you grow your creativity? Such an excellent question. Like such a fundamental one though. I think a lot of it is never getting over the things that you do.
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ask like having curiosity and stoking your curiosity. And I think a lot of that is like the older you get like I'm about to turn 46. And so it's like you know you get in a set way of not only doing things but thinking about things, thinking about your world. And this is where you become the man. So you have to fight the man in yourself and part of that means not assuming that you understand the world around you.
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So by continually asking questions and having curiosity, I feel like that's the type of thing that allows creative ideas to emerge. Even with fall through, with this totally fictional, weird, magical, realist thing.
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There's like weird time paradoxes and stuff that doesn't add up. And the way a lot of that worked was how, for me, a lot of times writing is just problem solving. And so the plot oftentimes was a result of reverse engineering from being like, oh wait, this doesn't make sense. And then I realized I have a question to be like, oh, so what really happened in this little thing that really happened in the world? And I'll go find out a little bit about it and be like, how interesting.
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not the way that I thought that went down. And being like, okay, so if that happened this way, then you kind of move backwards and all of a sudden you're like, aha, and doors begin opening. And a lot of that's just a result of curiosity and not assuming you know about everything. That's good life advice right there. All right, this next question.
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they want to know, is social media still important from a marketing perspective for a creator and their work, especially since the downfall of Twitter? I wish that it weren't, and I don't necessarily even think it's that effective for me. However, it's...
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it's absolutely important. And you know, like, I've seen on various, like various social media platforms as we all do the social media shuffle, like the musical chairs of social media, to be like, oh, we're all moving over to this one. Is that, is that like, most of the time.
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This is where, yes, creators can typically do a better job, even when they're publishers, at sort of hyping what they're doing or communicating why they're doing the project they're doing or whatever. But I think this is where we all have to remember that in ScreenLand...
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very, very few people actually see the things that you post. And this is where the algorithms work against all of us except like the absolute biggest creators. And that's, I mean, good for them, that's great. But this is where like...
52:18
A lot of it really is shouting into the void or posting things into the void. So it's like you have to learn, like it's okay to repost an image after a couple of months. 98% of your followers did not see it. So that's okay. And be like, but people also just forget. We live on screens and we move on to like another shiny object and we forget. I forget too. So I think that I don't know what the future is community wise.
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holding together these ideas and these books and projects people are doing, but I don't think the future is in social media five to ten years from now. I don't know what it will be, but it is certainly something that I use every day because I don't see an alternative that's viable, but I no longer have faith in it to actually kind of be the rising tide that lifts all boats. It lifts one boat.
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Well said. I don't know about you, but I think I drew the line at Macedon. I was like, they're running out of names for these things. Alright, I think we've got enough time to maybe combine these two questions here. And these questions are related to your artistic influences. And is there a creator that you dream about collaborating with? And I think just in general, who are some of your artistic influences? I always have a hard time when I think about like...
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writer, like a dream writer I would work with. There are some friends who's writing I'm So Moved By, like Mariko Tamaki is somebody who I would love to do a book with.
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Sometimes it's former collaborators, like one of my storytelling soulmates is Cecil Castellucci. And we did a weird hybrid book back in 2012 that it was like before the ascent of YA comics prose hybrids. And it sold very poorly because, you know, like basically books and libraries didn't know where to put it on their shelf. So I would like to kind of return to a project.
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But yeah, in terms of like influences...
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When I'm drawing a book, even like this kind of weird magical realist punk soap opera, I still imagine, you know, like there's a part of me that's still primarily influenced by 70s and 80s superhero artists. So I'm constantly still channeling my all-time favorite Arthur Adams. And then Billson Kevich is probably my number two. Like John Romita Jr. has run on X-Men and Daredevil in the 80s and 90s.
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was massively influential on me, but also it still looks very weird when I look at it today. It's very abstract, very kinetic, and I can see why it's just so raw, fresh. It looks like it's really quickly drawn, and so it's that kind of freshness that I try to tap into when I draw still.
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I think we might have just became best friends. You mentioning Arthur Adams is your number one. I guess we've got maybe time just for one last one and I think it's applicable considering the audience and where we're at, you know, here among a bunch of creators and aspiring artists, but someone wanted to know, how do you deal with writers slash artists block? Oh, yeah. I mean, it happens all the time. So in terms of, in terms of the nuts and bolts of actually
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being at the drawing table or being at the keyboard or in my sketchbook or whatever. On a writing level, that's where like, the way I structure my time is that like, I'm always drawing something. So, if I'm just doing art duties on a book.
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like lies my teacher told me, then in my sketchbook, I'm writing and fleshing out my next graphic novel. If I'm at the table and I can, like this is one of my survival mechanisms is I've had to learn that like everyone is going to like lose the fire at a certain point and it becomes work and it's just grueling. So the mantra that I tell myself is all work is work. So like the second I realize that I'm starting
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get bored. It's not the second, but like you know like I'll stick it out for a little bit, but if I'm just like, oh man I have the rest of this page to go, I just stop doing that page and I'm like sometimes it's like what's the absolute easiest page in this entire book and I'll immediately do the easiest page and you get like that like little like serotonin dose where you're like I
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where it'll be like a tiny drawing in the corner, but I'm like, that's a page, it's a whole page. Sometimes I'll be like, what's the most fun page in the entire book? And then I'll have to be like, now I get to do the exact opposite. Like oftentimes, especially doing like, especially with my non-fiction work, like doing the March trilogy was very heavy and brutal at times, really dense stuff too.
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And so there were those, it was kind of life saving that at the same time as doing March Book One and Two, I did this fantasy adaptation of a Rick Riordan book. And so I could tell when it was time to be like, I'm going to go draw sorcerers and dragons for the rest of the day because I know it's sitting over there and I kind of need dragons.
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And a lot of it is, yeah, you recognize your weaknesses or your vulnerabilities because we all have them. And then you're like, if you need to pivot, all work is work. Just do the more fun thing, the easier thing. If you need to keep working, just go in that direction. It's all right. Well, thank you for such a wonderful question. And give it up for both Bodder and Nate for such a wonderful interview. Thank you.
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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've made it this far. If you enjoyed this episode and you have some thoughts or comments that you want to share with us, write us at the short box, jacks 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 podcast or Spotify or wherever you get your podcast.
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01:00:17
I'll catch you soon. Peace!
