Speaker 1Hello and welcome back to the James Kennedy podcast, you sexy, sexy, awesome, brilliant, wonderful and lovely people. How the hell are you doing? Man, a lot has happened in this past two weeks. As I mentioned on last week's episode, our man Julian Assange is now a walking free in the sunshine of his homeland in Australia. And for the first time in 14 years, Britain is Tory free, baby. They're gone. Who would have thought we'd ever live to see the day? They're gone and good riddance. Now we've got to see what wonders the newly changed Labour Party have got in store for us all. And oh, I cannot wait for that. Sarcasm intended. But hey, you know, we're used to the grind by now. So I mean, you know, how much worse can it be, really? And last week, we kicked off the first date of the James Kennedy and the Underdogs UK tour with our brothers in Amongst Liars, a tour that will be continuing tomorrow as we hit Leicester, Sheffield and Manchester before moving on to Reading, Cardiff and Wolverhampton. Man, I don't know. I can't wait to see all you gorgeous people there. If you want to know where we're playing and when and where we're partying afterwards, go and hit me up on Instagram at JamesKennedyUK and I'll keep you posted. But look, I just want to jump straight into today's episode because we have got somebody on today that I am a huge fanboy of and I make no secret of it. I have been enjoying this guy's work for many, many years, as have millions of people around the world. He is one supremely talented motherfucker and the visionary of so many well-loved characters from the world of comics, TV and TV. And I'm so excited to be here with him. I'm so excited to be here with him. He is also a super cool dude and all around nice guy. So it is my absolute pleasure to welcome onto the show today, artist and comic book illustrator to some of the most popular characters ever penned, including The Boys, Wolverine, Deadpool, Spider-Man, and my personal favorite, the iconic, subversive, anarchic masterpiece that is trans metropolitan. I'm speaking, of course, about the uber talented, the one and the only Mr. Derek Robertson. How the hell are
Speaker 2you doing, sir? Hi, Jamie. Nice to meet you. Yeah, you too, bro. I've been looking forward to it, man. Apologies to your listeners that I'm not Warren Ellis, but I'll try to hold up my end of
Speaker 1things. He didn't draw the pictures, bro. I mean, like that's true. He did not. That is the main thing for me. I mean, obviously, everything about trans metropolitan is fucking genius.
Speaker 2Yeah, that thing would not have existed without. I mean, that is one of the most pure and excellent collaborations I've ever had as far as getting to be me. And then at the same time, bringing in what the what the Warren wanted, because he was a really great collaborator as far as knowing when to let go and and then know when to be specific. And that's a very rare combination. And we made it work for 60 issues, which is really a miracle, considering that the scripts would come in pretty slowly and in pieces. And I'd have to take on other work waiting for an issue and then finish it all up really quickly and still try to keep that detail level up. So I don't think I could do that job
Speaker 1today, but I'm happy it exists. It feels very much to me. I talk about this with musicians that come to the podcast. There are some albums like, say, Dark Side of the Moon or something like that, where you could just tell that everybody involved is on. It's just one of those rare moments in time when the stars just align and everybody involved is just on. It's the right time. Everything just works right. And I felt like that when I discovered trans metropolitan. I was like, the fucking the dialogue, the commentary, the artwork, the vision, the whole world is just on,
Speaker 2you know? It really set me free in a lot of ways because the original vision for the book, uh, you know, with very little detail, it was more like a nutshell concept when, but I had worked with Warren at a small company called Malibu Ultraverse and we did, and I had done a creator own book for them that I was basically waiting for a green light. I co-created a character that got kind of like finagled away from me in a way that I'm still salty about. But, um, I, they offered me other work in, in the meantime, and our editor was Hank canals, who would go on to help found image and actually had already helped found him. And you, if you see that classic photo of all the image guys, the guy that's not an artist in there, that's Hank. Um, but he, uh, founded image with those guys. Those guys split off. He ended up helping Malibu Ultraverse get going, which was a fun company. And I wish it had lasted. Uh, they ended up selling off everybody to Marvel, but, um, the, uh, opportunity I had in the meantime, while I was developing my creator, I had to, uh, I had to, uh, have to, uh, I had to, uh, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, I had to, which is like story of my career. Like I always show up at the pool party and about the time everybody's drunk and we all get naked. The cops show up. That's, that's my career. Um,
Speaker 1you know, like, not again. So it sounds like your career sounds like my party.
Speaker 2I got it. I got to make it over to Wales. Um, but we had, uh, so it's just, but it's always been that kind of weird timing, but the good news out of that was, uh, because we had a late start, uh, going, I had a late start going in with my own thing. I got paired up. They needed an artist for a few issues of this book called ultra force. And if you look at the, early covers done by the brilliant late, great George Perez, who I loved and miss, um, you could see there was a lot of potential in them, but it, you know, it was the nineties. And so the nineties had a habit of like, how can we regurgitate new heroes with this one kind of like archetype over and over again? You know, like this is your storm type. This is your Superman type. This is your, this type. And then they would come up with a variation of that. And, uh, this segue into the voice but um the one that was really great though is that they handed me these scripts by a guy i'd never worked with before named warren ellis and i'm reading warren's script and the weirdest part was there was another uh writer named ian edgington who was doing the dialogue and like in in retrospect i go there's no world where you want somebody besides warren ellis to do the dialogue i mean that's warren's you know it's like hey we're gonna have uh it's like the beatles singing backup on uh for that guy on uh my body lies over the ocean you know back when it's like oh yeah you beatles come in here and do backup singing okay but they were just sheridan tony sheridan but they were just happy to you know they you know they were poor kids hoping to get some money and hey we're in a recording studio look at us maybe this will go somewhere you've heard of the beatles i'm it didn't really take off for them it's a shame how they've been lost yeah they had a lot of potential those guys who is it's a shame man yeah i don't know them and the rolling stones they just never found their audience but um that's a shit business bro yeah i know it's it's it's not fair but um so warren so warren wasn't writing his own dialogue but his scripts were amazing and he would just put these weird little details in there that made me i could smell the room reading his writing i could i get a i got a feel for like what if their what their boots must have felt like to walk around in i mean there was just something very uh palpable and and uh real about how he approached these otherwise kind of goofy characters and i was blown away and and i had a really good time drawing those issues there was lots of action in them and because they were kind of like silly fringe not real popular characters they were hoping for them to be i had a lot of freedom to kind of exaggerate them and do my own thing with them and it ended up being fun a fun three issues to draw and they were good plots they were interesting plots but like he had a moment where the character was like i don't know i don't know characters were sitting around working on a case and he said uh the description was they're eating bacon sandwiches and drinking black coffee and i was like oh that's a nice detail and i could just smell the room all of a sudden like you know and i knew what that would look like i could see these guys eating bacon sandwiches and drinking black coffee so um you know i had one of them pouring you know but um that was what was really fun but when it was uh towards the end i i said to the editor i'm like can you put me in touch this is pre-email because i'm old um but i said could you put us in touch and i'd like to talk to us so i rang him up and i said hey these are the best scripts i've read in a long time and i i have a nose for talent like nobody's business i can brag on that with uh decades of experience now because i told jim lee when i first met him and he was drawn alpha flight i go they should put you on x-men oh shit bro anyway um so uh but with with warren i just said i think you know you're going to be huge in this business you're you're you're another you're going to be a superstar he's like and he was real modest about it's like yeah good luck with that you know i was lucky i got this gig you know he's very humble and uh i was right and uh but i said if you ever want to do a monthly book together please keep me in mind i'd love to collaborate with you on something on an ongoing basis and it was really shitty because like in that little window i am still what if you ever have those time machine moments where like i wish i could get in a time machine and undo that decision so in that moment marvel came to me and said hey do you want to work alan davis is leaving excalibur would you like to be the replacement artist on excalibur that's drawing nightcrawler and uh you know rachel summers phoenix and you know it was a good book and and but i was like the idea of it was also a little bit like hey uh i don't know if you ever saw um walk hard the dewey cox story oh yeah yeah yeah uh there's a great scene where basically he's a fictional rock and roll star that goes through like every it's a parody of every music biography that's ever been made and john c reilly is amazing in it and he sings his own music and does great so uh but at one point uh they caught him and he's uh he's got a buddy holly and elvis you know and then it's his turn you know so that's kind of how i felt like oh i'm gonna follow up and the book wasn't doing great and i'm like oh so you want you know fucking rookie of the year to come in and take over for alan fucking davis i mean i assume it's okay that i swear right fuck yeah go for it yeah okay all right yeah so i i could i'm following up alan fucking davis you know i'm like there's no way so i was a little bit on the fence and then also i was supposed to do this creator own book that didn't get off the off the bench so i said i passed on it and also didn't know who the writer was going to be because the guy that was supposed to come on uh backed out so it was gonna be like an unknown writer i followed up alan davis it was going to be a monthly book but that was at the time when marvel was selling and giving royalties to artists so there was like i could have made a killing oh man financially and then turns out that writer was warren elks so but after i said no i found out typical yeah yeah yeah so instead of trans metropolitan there might have been a long run on excalibur but um which would have been awesome but anyway didn't work out that way life is funny but didn't work out so bad because when uh marvel went bankrupt um warren uh had called me up and said uh hey i'm they're starting this new company called helix i've been asked to you know i pitched a book that they want to do and i'm curious about what they're going to do and i'm curious about what they're going to do and i'm curious if you want to be the artist we've done another small project together too called man of the atom and he was very happy with what i did there because it was a lot of sci-fi and talking rather than superhero action he wasn't sure how i'd handle that and he liked it and i was known primarily as a superhero artist at the time which is very funny because after i did trans metropolitan people didn't know i could do superheroes so you get they want to pigeonhole you wherever they can yeah uh but but trans metropolitan was exactly the kind of book i was sort of dying to do because i loved indie comics i'd love love and rockets and uh peter bagg's hate and i like uh you know and then the weirder the better i was really into uh you know new wave and punk music and you know that was really my taste and i really wanted to yeah i really wanted to do something that would unleash that and uh and spider jerusalem for me ended up kind of being my spirit animal like he is the me i wish i could walk around being you know and apparently i'm not alone because so many people identify to him but it was warren's cynicism and my happy anger but also he was just a fun character i was already a fan of hunter s thompson right and warren was much better read than i was with his world of an understanding of what politics were happening at the time and i like to say warren made me a better american because um i was not as dialed into what was happening as uh warren was and by the time i finished that book i was now uh i now i'm unstoppable i can't help but consume everything i am spider in that chair of fire going give me information so um you know but that's uh you know and also when like you see me outspoken online it's because that's just as half of that team i feel like it's my responsibility to be that guy but um as the other half of spider jerusalem i feel like i have to represent but he uh but it ended up being a really great thing but the editor at the time uh was like sure if i could handle the job because she thought i was a superhero artist and so the editor the editor-in-chief my friend karen she's uh but she was like unsure so she said well have him try out on this other thing and but the editor wanted me the writer wanted me it was an original idea and i i had already drawn designs and i was like no i go i'm busy and then at the same time marvel had offered me spider-man team up and i was having to make a choice like am i gonna do this or that and i ultimately i'd still love to do spider-man team up but that's fine um but at the same time my friend gave me some good advice and said if you do something original and it takes off spider-man will still be there and i'm like good point so i went i rolled the dice and i said the marvel had just gone through bankruptcy i wasn't sure i i was literally thinking about getting out of comics entirely because i was still young right well i mean it looked like the comic book industry was imploding and then i wasn't finding work and i'm like you know i'm still young i could go to my hands you know my wife my wife talked me out of it uh thank god yeah she was like before we were married too so she was really uh banking on me doing okay as an artist well god bless her man but i uh ultimately i i had to decide and i really wanted to do this book it sounded like a great idea and the script was awesome i had already gotten the first script at that point but they wanted me to audition before i did that and i said i'll tell you what i'm gonna do uh i'll do the first three issues and if you're not happy with them i i get my ownership for designing and creating the characters and i'll move on you can bring on whoever else you want that's is is that fair but i don't have time to audition for you i've simply been around too long and do too much to audition for a book that i'm creating you know yeah and they said okay well that's fair and so i turned in the first four pages of number one and my contract showed up the next week so i they were very happy with it and then i would go on to do all 60 issues we got nominated for eisner's we got you know we we have been a perennial seller we've made the top 100 of a multiple best of all time list which from multiple publications rolling stone comics journal playboy magazine at the time herald us is one of the 10 best ever so i was amazed how well we did after the book was published because while we were doing it barely stayed afloat and they kept trying to cancel us but we kept the team together from issue five on they kept we kept the whole team went through like nine editors but we kept the same artistic it's the classic story that there
Speaker 1are so many um like iconic like creations like the life of brian you know monty python or nevada's never mind they have that same sort of story where it's like they were doing it on the bones of their ass with no budget you know they were up against resistance and then it just became this fucking timeless masterpiece classic you know what i mean it sounds very much like the same
Speaker 2sort of experience you can't imagine the world without it and you know like and i'm not i'm not bragging about my thing and specifically but i know what you're saying when you tell that story it's like oh my god like there's a world where tom selleck was on uh was uh indiana jones you know but if it weren't for magnum pi we wouldn't have harrison ford as indiana jones and he probably would have killed it i love tom selleck but i mean it would not be that movie 100 you know
Speaker 1yeah man yeah no it's funny how life works out like that sometimes isn't it you know and it's beautiful when it happens especially when it gives us such an iconic piece of work like trans metropolitan that's not even to mention all of the other iconic stuff that you've done which we're going to come on to but you must be so proud looking back at the huge cultural kind of landmark that you made quite unknowingly during
Speaker 2that time it remains my favorite of all the creator-owned stuff i've done so far it still holds a very special place in my heart because of the entire experience and i went through the five craziest years of my life working on that book which i'll return to
Speaker 1okay well i'm dying to know already but i wanted to ask you when you look back at trans metropolitan now as i have done recently are you shocked at how fucking close to the mark you guys actually were in terms of how things would turn out politically and socially that is the craziest part of that
Speaker 2book is like how prescient we ended up being and what the funniest part is we were thinking of a world like decades away like we weren't thinking about we were not thinking about a couple of decades we were thinking about a couple of decades and we were thinking about a couple of decades and we were thinking hundreds of decades right and on and the other funniest thing is like of all uh this is an audio recording i'm about to hold up my iphone this is the only thing i couldn't predict
Speaker 1right of course social media and and iphone yeah well was it just chance then that you got so much
Speaker 2of it right yeah that was total well i mean here's what's funny i i'm gonna be a little more philosophical about that statement um i don't know if you pay attention to such things but if you ever get anxious about the state of the world you know what will calm the fuck out of you read history because we are in a loop we go through loops my father explained it to me once it's a pendulum that it'll swing back and forth never panic too much because it's always going to swing the other way right when things get a little too left wing they'll come back to the right we can do right wing they'll come back to the left it's a pendulum it just goes like this but at the same time like uh history uh as the split ends saying it never repeats but um as but but the truth is it does and we're living through a time now where we're watching some very familiar patterns play out yeah so um it's scary because we know how bad it can get but it's also comforting because probably aren't going to go there but um with transmetropolitan so warren was tapping into uh the post-watergate years in american politics the beast was representative of nixon uh the smiler was supposed to be representative of a couple of politicians but physically we based him on tony blair and jimmy carter so and then we were both kind of loving um he has a number of other journalists that he was following that i don't remember their names which i'm ashamed of but we both agreed on hunter as thompson who i had read also and was a fan of oh and and by the way before he died he gave transmit a big thumbs up and he was not crazy about parodies of himself but apparently i found it early days of websites he was uh i found it on hunter s thompson's website a very nice write-up about transmetropolitan so He liked Spider Drew so much, which made me feel like I did something right in this world.
Speaker 1That's an endorsement right there.
Speaker 2Yeah, exactly. And I wish I knew how to do a screen grab. Too early on my technological skills.
Speaker 3With your Polaroid camera.
Speaker 2Pretty much, yeah. It would have been that. That's the only screen I probably could have got it on. But yeah, that's where we both came from. So in a weird way, Warren was casting a wide net for what he saw the future to be. But we were both discussing it. And what I really love about that world and creating that world with him is that I had a lot of my own freedom to bring my own ideas in. And he would rather, like he was a wonderful collaborator in playing Yes, And. He would never say no, but, or, you know, which was an old Chuck Jones way of running his cartoon writing room. You couldn't say no. You had to say, yes, and it's an old improv trick to work some music as well. Yeah, you don't change the song. You pick up on what you're. You know, other player is doing. And so that's what we were really good. We were like a good band. So I would draw, I throw something in the background, like with issue one, I would just, I was much younger. I'd stay up very late at night, watching late night TV, getting high and getting through deadlines. And that was, and I'd stay up till like six in the morning, seven in the morning, then sleep from seven to one and do it all over again. And so I was, you know, I didn't have kids. I was in my twenties. It was a. Very different world. And, um, you know, and this was cable TV was kind of a new thing. So, um, or satellite TV where you had like 500 channels.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 2So you could do that or DVDs and VHS and all that stuff. So I was very much, uh, consuming, consuming, consuming mentally and anything that would catch my imagination or whatever. I would just weave it into whatever it was, whatever panel I was working on, which is why those there's like a real stream of consciousness going on in the backgrounds of those. And sometimes I would just get a funny idea and I, you know, but that's what I loved about that world. And why I brought that up is that there was no wrong for me. And I love that it was so freeing. And I, if I did something that w you know, I would make sure all the details that, uh, Warren asked for were in there. Like he, like the specific example from issue one, uh, uh, spiders coming down off the mountain and he pulls into a toll booth and there's a guy working there. And, um, and the only thing that, uh, Warren had really. Mentioned was he's got this switch on his neck and he's kind of scratching at it. So I made sure he did that and there was a switch in his neck, but in the background, I just threw a calendar up because paper calendars were going to be around forever. Um, I threw a calendar up that said, uh, with, with, uh, Muppet and a naked woman in the road, sex puppets, I don't know what it was. Uh, you know, it just looked, it just made me laugh. It was like the kind of thing I would have written on my binder. You know, it was like a, it's like I was doodling on the page. And, uh, but then later on, he'd come back and go, Hey, what, what was sex puppets about? And I said, Oh yeah, I thought about that. I said, well, I imagine in the future they would try to do like a Sesame street show for sex education for kids. But the first thing that would happen is that they'd want to profit off it. And so it would go from being PBS to Cinemax and the girls would get hotter, you know? And there was also a movie called meet the feebles. That I'd seen around that time. And it made me laugh. And so it was like this sort of progressive idea of a progressive, not politically, but progressive as a group, um, of, of like these puppets and the show would become very popular and the women would get hotter. And suddenly it's like the, one of the biggest shows on TV because people are weird and perverted. So, um, that was sex puppets. And so when he got to issue five, it goes, I like that. I want to write it in. I'm like, awesome. Go for it. So by issue five, you know, he's watching some, you know, he's watching sex puppets, you know, we kept bringing them back around, but that's where sex puppets came from. It's that little calendar in the background of issue one, you know, and the design drawing I did of spider Jerusalem, like right out the bat, he's like one of the most fully realized characters I ever sat down and just drew, uh, his original name was Caleb Newcastle, but, um, yeah, it is. The editor thought so too. He came back. So it's too English. Yeah. But he, um, but he said, uh, but when I, but I drew him as Caleb Newcastle, but the only descriptions I got from Warren is that he was bald, he was covered in tattoos and he wore a black suit, no T with no shirt. And I was like, got it. And so I sat down and I designed him and then, you know, of course who he is, this journalist and all this stuff and getting in trouble and get beat up by cops. And I said, okay, I got it. So I sat down and I drew the initial drawing of him, uh, cold. I just did the entire first drawing of him. And I, he, I pretty much nailed him right out the gate. I mean, he changed a little bit, but, um, I gave him piercings. I had like hovering piercings, which I thought were kind of like a cool thing. Like they would float around his ear, like magnetically. I have a fascination with magnetics. Um, but, uh, but then Warren was like, nah, let's piercings are overdone. Let's let's leave the piercing side. I said, cool. And, um, then, and I gave him a stubble and I didn't know that he would go into the shower and lose all his hair. I thought he would constantly. He'd be like, you know, working. So I gave him kind of like choppy cropped hair and a little bit of stubble. And he's like, no, no, he's burned all the way down. So no, no hair at all. I'm like, got it. But I left his eyebrows. Cause I figured even the, you know, shower would be programmed to avoid your eyes. Right. Right. Um, but then, uh, but I didn't want to draw the tattoos because I knew I'd have to do them issue after issue after issue. And, uh, yeah, he, I, I got a lot of pushback. And so I, I ended up making an action figure, a custom action figure out. I have a Michael Jordan from a space jam and I painted him up and drew all the tattoos on him as a reference. So I could stand him and turn him around and remember what's where and, uh, and I still have that in a box. I'd love to see that sometime, man. Yeah. I got a photograph. Next time he surfaces, I'll take pictures of him. Uh, he should be online. I would take him with me to places, but anyway, um, that was, uh, but I, I finally succumbed and I drew the tattoos and, uh, and spider Jerusalem was born. So he was. Uh, but I drew this cat next to him and I had him like, he just finished taking a piss in an alleyway and then you can see this futuristic background behind it. But I drew this crazy mutant cat on the initial design drawing and, uh, I gave him the three eyes and the two mouths and I gave him five legs. But, uh, Warren asked about that. It's like, what's with the cat? And I said, oh, I just figure in the future, like God knows what's ended up in dumpsters and strays and still be out of control. So like, you know, cats would be eating like leftover pharmaceuticals or liquor. Yeah. Or looking up like, you know, the super, whatever the fuck's in the liquids of all the shit that spider consumes and there's around and they just start to mutate, you know? So you just have these weird freaked out and looking animals, you know, dogs and cats like walking around stray and he goes, oh, that's cool. I like that cat. Let's make it his pet. And I said, oh, that's great. Yeah. Yeah. I'm done. I mean, I'm there, let's do it. So, you know, that's the way we would collaborate and the glasses and the glasses in the bag were all me because I just figured. You know, he would need something to carry his computer in and because laptops was as far as I could imagine in the future and I didn't even think about this shit, but anyway, I was tapping my wrist listeners, his imaginary Apple watch. Yeah. Right. I figured, you know, who knows, you know, I could have embedded it in his arm with the way Warren was thinking, but, um, uh, but that was, but you know, but I like, I kind of liked the tangibility of him. One of the things I love about star Wars so much is that it feels like a real, real human. Yeah. Yeah. It's a real world that you can get in there and, and work with, like, you know, I love that Han Solo would have to, you know, pound the side of the millennium Falcon to get it to start up. Like there's something very real about the mechanics in the star Wars world that turned me on. So I, I like bringing that element to anything I create. And um, so I wanted that for spider. So I had, I gave him that bag, that shoulder bag, little Indiana Jones inspired and, uh, and I gave him those and I gave him the glasses and the glasses were all me. And I was like, Oh, I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on.
Speaker 1I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on.
Speaker 2I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. I'm going to put them on. Like, I'm not I never like to sound like I'm trying to take anything away from Warren's brilliance because those scripts were fucking brilliant. But the more we went on, the more he let me play. And so, you know, he would not. Like I said, if we're using the band analogy, you know, if I was Ray Manzarek, he was he was Jim Morrison and he would do his thing and do it awesome. But I was there like doing the bass with the keyboard, you know?
Speaker 1Oh, yeah. You need both. You couldn't take one of you away because it's a visual medium. You create a whole visual world.
Speaker 2But you never saw Jim Morrison running over to Ray Manzarek and play like this. You know, Ray was Ray was doing his thing, you know? So but that's how Warren was to work with. So the more we went on, like in the scripts themselves, they would say they would say less and less. They would in a lot of play unless he had a very specific thing he was trying to achieve. And I would always adhere to what he needed as best I could. But if he said but in some places. Like. He would just go draw us low or a high vision of the city, make it loud and noisy. And that's all he'd write. Just that one sentence. And it would be a splash page. And I would just go to town, you know? And so all the little signs in the background, like Mr. Tree. And I drew my I drew my this was issue eight. I'm describing. But I drew my friend Brian Pessain, who you can see in the first steps of The Mandalorian. But we weren't famous then. But he he's holding up a little. He was he's a comedian. Very talented. And great actor. But he's holding up a little pamphlet says insane Pessain's used porno clones. And, you know, that was, you know, that's just something I thought up because I thought it would be. And I wanted an excuse to draw Brian into the panel. So, you know, but it was stuff like that.
Speaker 1What a what a project to have at that age. You know, we are in your 20s. You're consuming all this content from everywhere and everywhere. And you've got the freedom.
Speaker 2And the world was changing so quickly that I didn't realize. Right. That we were. At the top of a very like a bobsled ride. I did not. Technologically, we had just kind of gotten used to the email. Yes. And we just started to really understand what the reach of the Internet was. I'll tell you this. Amazon dot com was only selling books.
Speaker 1Yep.
Speaker 2I remember in 1997. And I wish again, if I'm going back in time to get that Excalibur series with Warren going, I'm also going to stop off and go buy stock.
Speaker 1And I was like, I'm going to Amazon too late to get Apple could have seen that one coming. Well, you know, it sounds incredibly similar to my experience with my first album made in China. You know, I was like 22 when it came out. So I was at that age where I was just, you know, discovering who I was and learning about the world. And I was just a sponge absorbing, you know, everything and anything I can get my hands on all different types of music, books, political ideas. And I was very lucky that I had a project to spew it. All out into without any restraint. You know, I didn't have a label. Very similar situation to what you're describing with the first issue of Transmetropolitan. You know, no interference from anybody. Complete and utter freedom to just explore and be as wild, as ambitious as I wanted to be. And I look back at that kind of innocent time of discovery and experimentation and freedom with a lot of nostalgia, you know. And I feel very lucky that I actually had a project like that to throw all these things into. It sounds like Transmetropolitan was a very. Similar experience for you.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, that that is a definite plus to that project. I would have in that freedom. I don't know that I knew what I had. It was a very strange time in comics, and we were so close to getting canceled all the time that it felt like nobody was reading it. So it felt like I was there was a little part of me. It's like, oh, I'm just I'm just wanking here. You know, it's like nobody gives a fuck about. My crazy future world ideas. Then nobody likes this character. Warren doesn't like me, you know, like, I don't think that was necessarily true, but that's what my brain was feeding me. I was, you know, so it was all kinds of that stuff. And but then, you know, it kept getting attention and then it would get, you know, I said, we want Eisner nominations and lost a preacher, ironically. But but it was that I could slowly see that we had something good. And. And again, they tried to cancel us at issue six or they were considering canceling us at issue six when the entire line of Helix Comics went under and they we were the only thing that was kind of selling. And so they said, we're thinking about just bringing you over to Vertigo. And we were like, yes, works for me. And that's when that happened. But it was a little weird because we were like, geez, are we getting the chopping block? But Warren and I were like, absolutely. Sure, we were going to get canceled after four years for issues just because of the stuff we were doing. You know, they're never going to let us keep publishing this. Spider Spider Jerusalem's making the president shit himself in a bathroom. You know, that's not going to they're not going to publish this. Guess we were wrong.
Speaker 1Thank God. I mean, do you think that was a timing thing, though? I mean, could that happen now?
Speaker 2It helps to do something different. What I realized every the smart thing I've done, if there is anything. Smart that I've done, because I lament about all the dumb choices I've made. The smart thing I did early in my career was not give up on the idea of running off and making something original. So the very first thing I ever did in my career that got me published, I was 17 years old and I did a book called Space Beaver. And Space Beaver was a funny animal comic. And a lot of people thought I was inspired by Ninja Turtles. And I I wasn't I was aware of them, but I wasn't really into them. I was into. Much geekier stuff like I really loved Rocket Raccoon, who would go on to be a big MCU character. But I really loved Rocket Raccoon. And that was being drawn by Mike Mignola at the time, this little miniseries that Marvel did. And just brilliant early Mike Mignola art for your listeners. Mike Mignola is the creator of Hellboy. And then also there's this DC book that I like from a very young age called Captain Carrot and the Amazing Zoo Crew. And it was just this fun. Justice League of like kind of Warner Brothers inspired animals and in super as superheroes. But they were drawn brilliantly by Scott Shaw. And I loved his art style. I loved his storytelling and I love the character design so much that I wanted to create something like that. But I just made it up as a doodle in summer school. I really didn't think it was going to get published. I just I would just draw to entertain myself. And somebody got a hold of it. You can read about it on my website because it's too long to tell the story. But but I the thing came out of it as I was a published artist writer out of my senior year in high school.
Speaker 3Right.
Speaker 2So, you know, and then I got thrown in the deep end like, OK, you're in the publishing business, kid.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 2You know, I didn't know what that meant. I didn't know I should have four issues of the first of the series done before publishing issue one. So I'm scrambling to get more issues out. And, you know, and again, the pool party analogy like the the 10. Ninja Turtles had blown the black and white market up into a big balloon. And as soon as and so everybody wanted to find the next Ninja Turtles, which is why I got published, I'm sure. But then they popped that balloon right as my book came out. So my book got lost to time. And, you know, it didn't it didn't become it almost became a TV series, but it didn't happen. And but it did get me going to conventions and things like that and meeting other professionals like Jim Lee, who drew me. But I got to meet a lot of people at the beginning of their careers. And I met a lot of really interesting folks along the way. I found, ironically, I pulled some stuff out of my attic this last weekend because we're organizing. And I found this old briefcase from 1992, 93. That was my held all my work, all my business papers, everything I used to keep in this whole briefcase. And it was like opening a time capsule.
Speaker 3Oh, wow.
Speaker 2And in there, I know your readers can't see or your listeners can't see this, but I'm going to show you. So, you know, I can.
Speaker 1And that's all that matters. Yeah.
Speaker 2So, you know, I'm not full of shit. Can you see it?
Speaker 1Yeah. What is that?
Speaker 2It's Stan Lee's business card from Marvel Films, which he gave me. Wow. Because I was meeting people like that. In those days, you could go to a convention and you're lucky if there was 4000 people there, you know, total, you know, that would be a big con in those days. And but Stan would be there. And, you know. You'd just be hanging out. There'd be like a little because I was an artist. I was I had the pro pass, right? You know, they'd have a little after parties and things like that. So I just shot the shit with Stan and he gave his I like your stuff, kid. Here's my card, you know. So I kept that card. I would later work with him. But, you know, but it's just funny how those days in the late eighties was a really interesting time to break in. So I didn't get rich, but I got a I got but I am I got a wealthy I got a wealth of knowledge. How's that? Right. Like I got to learn. And in those days, I learned how every aspect of the comic book industry worked at the time because I was writing and drawing a comic book. I was going out to diamond distributors at two o'clock in the morning on Tuesdays to unpack boxes for new comics Wednesday from two to six a.m. And so I was learning how distribution worked and how that side of things work. The guy that published my book owned a comic book store. So he had me. Uh. um, work, the council, when he wanted days off so I can make some extra money because Lord knows I wasn't really rolling around in those non-existent space fever dollars. So I would work the counter. I would work whatever jobs I could work. So I've worked in the counter. So I worked behind the counter at a comic book shop. I worked out at the distributor and they liked me enough that they ended up bringing me on for a full-time job. So I would go out there and sweep and organize and things like that. But I learned a lot talking to those people, seeing how orders were filled. It was a really interesting experience. But I gleaned a wealth of knowledge for how everything trickles. So by the time I got into mainstream comics, I really knew what I was doing. I also still have a healthy work ethic as a result of knowing that, oh shit, if my book's late, that fucks up the distributor, puts them in a tough spot, fucks up the retail, puts them in a tough spot. So I try very hard not
Speaker 1to be late on books, but life happens. Yeah. There's a lot of parallels there, man, between the music world because it's an independent artist. I very much had to follow the same trajectory. I've had to learn about distribution. I've had to learn about promotion and retail and mastering and barcodes and all that fucking bullshit because I've always had to do all of it myself for better or worse. But I'm actually really glad that I've had that experience now because it does give me a much deeper appreciation of every other aspect of the chain and where I fit into it and why things have to work in a certain way into a certain... Awesome. schedule, you know? And I think that that's really useful for creatives in any field to know because when I speak to people like, you know, who've been signed to a major label, you know, from the age of 19 or something, I'm like, I'm amazed at how fucking little they know about anything. Like, they literally don't know how to do basic shit. You know, like, heaven forbid, you know, they lose their record deal and their publicist and their driver and their guitar tech and their fucking assistant and their tour manager, you know, they'd be fucked. Right. And, you know, as the old saying goes, knowledge is power. So even though it's a harder road and you have to carry more of the load, in the end, it just gives you more freedom and more power, you know?
Speaker 2Right. And I think when you get people with big egos, it's the people that don't understand the chain.
Speaker 3Yes.
Speaker 2You know, like, you don't realize how many people it took to build the stage you're standing on, you know? You just know you got to command that stage.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 2You know? But it's really, it's good to know, you know, how many hours that stage took to build and how lucky you are that that time was spent. And that it's an honor to be on that stage. It's not, it's not about you. It's about bringing, it's about what you can bring to that stage. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1Oh, 100%. Yeah. I mean, like, you know, if you take everybody else in the chain away, you've just got some dude dancing in silence on stage, you know what I mean? In darkness, you know what I mean? It's true. It's true. How has the industry changed then? Because like, I'm sure you know, the music industry is pretty fucked these days, you know, it's struggling.
Speaker 2Yeah. Well, I would say the comic book industry is kind of fucked, too. Old paradigms are dying. And what I, and again, we were talking about how the pendulum swings and how things go cyclically. I, every time I've been through enough of this that I'm not worried about it, because I'm already seeing it happening. But again, if you get worried about things, look at history, and then you'll figure out your place in that going forward.
Speaker 3Yeah.
Speaker 2And, and historically with comic books, I've noticed that we've been through this before a number of times. Like I was telling you, Transmet was born of me getting ready to leave the industry and Marvel being bankrupt. Now, imagine right now the idea that Marvel could go bankrupt.
Speaker 3Yeah, true.
Speaker 2It's outrageous, you know, but I want you to also imagine a world where Spider-Man is sort of like that character people used to like. You're like, oh yeah, I remember when he was really popular, because that's going to happen, too. Mark my words, maybe not in our lifetimes, but it's going to happen. Right. And the reason I will tell you this is because you know who was super popular when I was seven years old, so much that they made action figures? The Lone Ranger.
Speaker 1Ah, he's holding up a toy of the Lone Ranger. Just in case you're wondering.
Speaker 2I got this on eBay years ago, and it was, I bought it off a guy that was the product salesman. You go to toy stores and go, this is the Lone Ranger toy. And so he had, that's a perfect one in a near perfect box, which is almost impossible to find. And I got one when I was seven years old. Now, the reason I bring that up is how often do you hear about the Lone Ranger anymore?
Speaker 3Never.
Speaker 2They did a Johnny Depp movie. It flopped. You know, when's the last time Flash Gordon was super cool? I mean, super cool. Like everybody needed to see the Flash Gordon movie. No, he's an afterthought, but he inspired Star Wars, you know? So these characters will go that route eventually. There will be a generation, there'll be burnout. But I mean, how, when's the last time you heard about Hopalong Cassidy? He was on toy boxes and they sold Hopalong Cassidy hats and he was on lunchboxes for the kids in the forties, fifties, you know? And my dad fixed his car. Yeah. True story. They filmed a lot of stuff up where my dad grew up in Sonora, but that's where they would go out and just shoot a lot of those Westerns. So he ended up meeting a lot of those cowboy actors, but, um, that's a side note. But the point being is that eventually Batman, Superman, I mean, and it's also the miracle of these characters is that we've had Superman since the late thirties. We've had Batman since the early forties. Yeah. And I'm part of a generation that they keep getting reinvented and passed on like a baton and a new generation brings their love to those characters and they expand them and change them. But if you watch how many evolutions Batman's been through in his decades, you know, we're probably going to get a funny Batman again. Right. It's probably going to happen. Uh, but that is because the times reflect how we consume these characters. And, you know, in a weird way, the funny Batman that we would get is the boys, you know, because that's us taking a thing and twisting it and Mally making it, you know, turning it upside down and shaking it this way to see what
Speaker 1comes out of the bottom. Yeah. Got you.
Speaker 2Irony. Yeah. And, and also the tropes, you know, like making fun of the tropes and, and cause now we can see them. You have to have a trope around the long enough before it's even visible. Yes. So if you look at the industry, it's been through in my time in the industry, it's been through the black and white bubble, uh, rows and bursts, the image marble bubble rows and burst. And then there was like the, it's been on a slow comeback ever since, but now we're living in the age of the As soon as superhero movies, which are based on work that guys like me did back in 1970 and early eighties, all these stories that they're telling now came out of the late seventies, early eighties. So we're, we're seeing comic book stories on the big screen that are many decades old. Yeah. Right. And that, and characters that were created around that time, you know, Spider-Man only came around in the mid sixties. So, uh, so he's about as old as me, you know, this is the, we're living in that time now because people are just now discovering what us nerds have known for decades. And, but it's been, but it's being served up on a silver platter with a lot of hot sauce, you know? And so they don't have, they don't have to learn to make a pizza. They're just ordering it on the phone. You know, it's a big difference. You know, when I, when I first started drawing Wolverine in my sketchbooks, nobody knew who he was comparatively to now, you know, he's a major character. He was a fringe character then. And now he's, you know, major, major movie star character. Like now Hugh Jackman and Deadpool, that's like the biggest movie of the summer. But when I was drawing him, I would say, Oh, I love Wolverine. And they're like, who's that? So, cause the only place you could see Wolverine was in the X-Men comic books that you have to go out and buy. Uh, he wasn't on TV or in, in the cartoons or anything. Um, this would be the mid eighties. So I've watched it happen enough to know. That it's cyclical and these characters will find their way to the memory box and somebody will pick them up and reinvent them again. I think there's like a Buck Rogers thing. That's going to blow everybody away. That hasn't happened yet. It just, it just needs to be done in the right way in the right hands. You know, who's been a staple? Conan the Barbarian. That guy always interesting. Always cool. Never changed him a bit. The Howard people have been very protective of him. Well done Conan the Barbarian. Always cool. Movie came and went, still cool. Bad movie came and went, still cool. Even Jason Momoa. I love Conan, but the point being is like, but these characters, they find their niche and, uh, and as a result, the industry reacts to it and with the industry reacting rather than proacting, which is where we're at right now, in my opinion, uh, the big corporations have swept in and, uh, taken over the comic book companies, which used to act fairly independent of the, uh, the money people. They would, they made their own money or they called their own shots and money would be made from them. So that ironically showing you that Stan Lee card, you know, that was the beginning of that. That's when Stan was trying to get a Spider-Man movie made. And that's what Marvel films was about, but it never, it wasn't the beginning of the MCU by any means. Um, it was the beginning of the end for Marvel as it was understand. So, um... It's a very strange time to be doing what I'm doing. And I'm very fortunate that I planted the seeds for this cornfield in the 80s rather than waiting until now. Because I've seen a lot of people go, well, okay, I've been drawing mainstream comics for 30 years. How do I get my creator-owned thing out there? And some people do and some people don't. But for me, it was like it wasn't an escape as much as it was I didn't know what else I could do. That would be my telephone.
Speaker 4Yeah, pick it up if you're going to take a call, man.
Speaker 2No, but the idea being is that we're watching a reactive industry. The music industry is very much like this, too. And I've always – I love – again, I like history. And I listen to music from all eras. I had a very strange musical upbringing in that I was the youngest of a lot of kids. And I had an older sister about three and a half years older than me that I grew up with. And her room was right next to mine. And parents that were 11 years apart and on their second marriage when they had my sister and I. So the reason I bring that up is they had me very late in life. So their musical tastes, they were more like grandparent age from all my friends. So while all my friends' parents were into the Doobie Brothers and stuff, my parents, my dad was into Frank Sinatra, Big Band. He loved all this old Big Band music. And I'm so glad he did because that stuff is awesome. And I got a great education in that. And my mom, on the other hand, totally loved country western. But she liked the classic stuff. So she's a big fan of Marty Robbins, who's fucking awesome. He gets better with over the years. Marty Robbins, Johnny Cash. I saw Johnny Cash when I was a kid. Wow. Live. Yeah. Because nobody else would go to concerts with my mom. So she'd take me and I got to go see Johnny Cash. I was in his prime. I was like 72, 73. So I saw Johnny Cash. But Johnny Cash, you know, and stuff like Sons of the Pioneers and Doris Day. And the Carter sisters, stuff like that. You know, classic. The foundations of rock and roll in a lot of ways, too. Like that. A lot of that country western stuff was a good foundation for what would become a whole other wave of rock. So I got a big education in that because that's what they... I didn't get to listen to what I wanted to listen to at all. But I kind of fell in love with what everybody else liked. And my sister at the time was really into whatever was super pop and bubblegum of the 70s. So I was like the Bee Gees, you know, the Grease soundtrack and, you know, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band and, you know, stuff like that. So that was the foundation of my... And ABBA. She loved ABBA and I do, too. Shamelessly, I admit, some of the best songs ever written. Oh, 100%. Yeah. Oh, they're so good. I mean, when you're a kid, you're like, ABBA. You know, it's like your sexuality is somehow tied into the music.
Speaker 3You're like, yeah.
Speaker 2You're like, ABBA. What are you, one of these? You know, I'm like, fuck you. But also, my parents were really religious, so I wasn't allowed to listen to cool stuff. So like anything that had like a slightly demonic or scary cover, no, Derek, you can't have it. So I didn't discover Led Zeppelin until I was on my own. Wow. Because I noticed your t-shirt. And I'm like, they're now like my desert. They're like my desert island band. Like if you said, okay, you can only have one artist on desert island for the rest of your life. I'm like, I think it's going to be Led Zeppelin because I always hear something new. And that's not, you know, like I play, but I can't play like Jimmy Page. No matter how hard I try.
Speaker 1You're not alone, bro. You're not alone.
Speaker 2Right on. But that's the, but that whole, and I'm sorry to digress into my musical taste, but the reason I say that. No, it's just fascinating. Go for it. Well, the reason I say that is because I'm not alone. The reason I say that is it's also the foundation for my artistic taste. So I, I learned a long time ago that the past doesn't go, this is the whole philosophy of trans man is, um, when I was about, I was starting issue seven, I think it was seven or eight and I moved to Italy, Florence, Italy to live. Uh, my wife went to, my then girlfriend went to study, uh, and I went along with her and I'd never lived abroad in my life. I hadn't been to Europe proper ever. I'd been to Spain. I'd been to Sweden once and I was, and then again, jumping into the deep end and the best year of my life. I go back all the time. I speak fluent Italian now, but, uh, well enough that I can get by and I get compliments now. Hey, your Italian is very good. Thank you. Uh, so it's cool. It's nice. It really opens up doors. So, um, so, but I'm sitting there in the piazza de senioria, uh, my wife is off at school. I'm completely by myself. She goes away from anybody I know and figuring out what the hell I'm doing in Florence, Italy. But I took my drawing board out and I took my paper out to work on this issue of Transmet. And I just sat there and I looked at how that doorway was constructed, how those windows are. And by living in an old city, which is centuries old, uh, I discovered something that would end up being the main philosophy for transmetropolitan and ultimately my art and my music tastes all the time. The past never goes away. The past is always with us. It's just where it gets put. And so the world of transmit that I would start building from there started to be dictated by like how I saw the past being incorporated. So you had this, my build, my apartment building was 500 years old and I would go up these ancient steps to get to my apartment. It had a big wooden door with one of those classical locks. We had a big ass key, big, big metal key to our door. That was awesome. Like those locks probably hadn't been changed in 300 years, but, uh, we, uh, but we, but I'm living in the past, you know, I'm living with a hundred, hundreds year olds technology, but I'm, you know, alive and well in 1997 and downstairs, what probably used to be a barn is now this fancy building where they're selling clothes and, you know, everybody's got a little telephone and neon signs are on top of these ancient buildings to say, Hey, they've electrified everything. There's the wifi is great in Florence. And that is the way the present interacts with the past. And if you can appreciate it and not take it for granted and really look at it, you'll see your place in history in the moment. So I found that really interesting because now I like looking at the artist I grew up on to see what can I learn from them now that my skillset has come up here and I can draw better. And I don't need to figure out the fundamentals as much as I can figure out technique. I'm back to looking at Dave Stevens. I'm back to look, I've always looked at Brian Ballen, but I'm looking at, Oh, just to study their inking technique because it took me a long time to become my own inker. And, uh, now I'm studying technique and now it's starting to come to me in ways that I'm like, Oh, look, they did that too. And I didn't even know that. And, you know, you probably hear that in music as well. And so like my, the fundamentals of my musical taste are from everywhere. I like, you know, it's like whatever. This speaks to me is, you know, like Stephen King once said, I may be a monkey, but I know what I like. And that's, that's music. You know, it's like, if a song is good, a song is good. I'm tired of tying up my identity or anything with like a song that I might find good. I remember, you know, cause you always, cause even to this day, you'll have somebody go like my best friend hates snow patrol. Like he can't stand snow patrol. Your friend is right. Oh God, yes. I love them.
Speaker 1Oh, they're, they're in my, they're in my kill list along with Cole. I'll play.
Speaker 2Yeah. I like them too, but, but I like them along with a lot of other stuff, but I would rather just talk about what we both like rather than what you hate.
Speaker 1Well, you know, hatred is a big part of my personality, so don't take it away from me.
Speaker 2Hey, that's fair. Cause I'm sure if we got into it, I would have an equal list of shit that like, oh, that's the worst, you know, but that's what makes it wonderful. I was on a train going through Switzerland with my family back in 2019. And for whatever reason, we, we got booked on this. Panoramic train to the Swiss Alps on our way to Italy, and it was beautiful. And then this French, uh, TV station was like interviewing passengers and, uh, they wouldn't leave us alone because we were the only Americans on the train, I guess. I guess we were interesting. They didn't know who I was or anything, but, uh, they wouldn't, they kept talking to us, but then they said, uh, is this better than that? And I said, yeah, travel is a feast. It's not a competition, you know, it's like, yeah. We, we need to treat the world more like, uh, it's a feast, not a competition. Music is a feast, you know? And, and, and for me, it's like the idea of, you know, great. You don't like Coldplay. You don't like snow patrol. No problem. I'm going to listen to them on my headphones and enjoy the fuck out of them. And you listen to whatever you like. And isn't it wonderful that we can do that? Because in the old days, it's like, you know, I'm running into a bank vault, but I'm only getting $5 bills. I'm a $5 bill, man. And that's the way it is. Okay, well have at it, Haas. I like these hundreds. They look pretty good to me. That's a good point.
Speaker 1Well, you know, I mean, you got to have the thing that you react against as well, haven't you? You know what I mean? Like that is the push and pull that creates things. Yeah. You got to have the light to have the dark and you got to have the dark to have the light. You know what I mean? You know, you need both. And I, for me, I've just always lent more in the direction of the, the angry punk rock reactive kind of.
Speaker 2But see, I met Joey Ramone. What? No way. I have a picture of me and Joey Ramone together. What? Yeah. I mean, I'm, you know, from back in the day but i mean i you know but my tastes are all over the place you tell me you name a genre of music i'll tell you an artist i like you know that's cool so that's um
Speaker 1if you are like that with everything for me yeah i am it seems like the world is like life is a feast for you it sounds like it's like the music what you're seeing around you what you what you're watching being in italy looking at the door construction all of that is going into the same yeah and sponge and then coming out through your unique kind of yeah that's i never thought of it
Speaker 2that way but yes but i have taste i mean i'm not like a guy i'm i'm fussy but i you know there's definitely music i can't stand but i just don't listen to it i don't shit on the people that like it fair yeah you know i just go that's not for me you know that's that's that's my not that's not you know something i enjoy but i don't i don't begrudge anybody else for having a good time with it you know yeah like you know i there's like speaking of country music you know i'll tell you five bands i like that are you know out there right now but i'll tell you like if you're another one of those guys that's going and i'm a pickup truck and we're getting new jeans and i'm down by the water and you know what i mean i'm like i you you that's the same as the guy that's going you know i got the titties in my hands and the champagne you know it's like you're just sitting about the same shit like yeah if you have something to say i'm really interested in that same and that and that's i think really what it comes down to is like i'm always a sucker for a story so if you got a song that tells me a story or makes me think about something or it kicks me in the ass because i'm like oh man that's a good line like that that i don't care what kind of music it is i'll listen to that story you know yeah love it man uh well
Speaker 1put as well well let's talk about the music then because you know you told me we spoke previously that you yourself are a musician as well so where are you at in your musical journey are you just starting out are you learning can you play i i'll pay something for you oh sweet uh i don't know how
Speaker 2good this is going to sound because it's going to be coming through my headphones yeah as you hear
Speaker 3that sounds great you say you're staying by your man tell me something i don't understand you said you that's bad oh man
Speaker 4that was a podcast first baby live music performance love it that sounded great
Speaker 2did it come through okay yes i could hear myself very well through my it was like i was singing with my ears and my fingers in my ears so i that came out really well yeah if i sing it as well as
Speaker 1playing bro i didn't know you could actually fucking like properly play uh that's what i
Speaker 2normally do like when i draw it i just stop and i'll pick up and do that for a little bit that's
Speaker 1so cool are you um are you self-taught you're teaching yourself or have you got a teacher
Speaker 2yeah no i'm self i'm self-taught and i'm you know youtube is my friend now but right i played piano for a lot of years as a kid and so i got a lot of music theory and i write my own stuff and oh cool man but in the late recently it's fun learning shit and i'm getting much better going up and down the neck and and i'm learning i'm learning licks and like i can you know i can badly if we were not on a podcast and we were just sitting in a room like i can play like here comes your man by
Speaker 1that lick oh that's so mom mom mom seeing like you playing that then and i and hearing you talking about the things you're learning and the excitement it reminds me of when i was sort of where you were at you know it's in my early 20s late teens maybe younger with the guitar doing that same thing you know i mean like we didn't have youtube back then you know so it was like learning from magazines and cassettes we didn't have it when i started either i used
Speaker 2to buy guitar and but the good news is that like when as a kid uh because i learned piano i learned to read music a little bit um the biggest challenge i had was learning to figure out what's happening on the guitar that relates to the piano because they're two very different instruments and it took me a long time to realize like oh i see all these six strings that's like six keys on the piano and they're stacked like this and as soon as i understood that then it started to take off for me and then i could read but i also know like because i can understand music theory like uh you can tell me any key and i could play in that key i just had to learn the chord oh that's cool so you know if you if we were hanging out and jamming and you said hey i i'm going to play something in c and you put me at the piano i'll play along with you no problem blues in a or whatever in fact i'm actually better if i'm just improvising on a piano than if i try
Speaker 1to play you something that's so cool that's so cool man i mean it really takes me back to like when i was learning and there was a whole world of possibility that i was like delving into blank do you know what i mean the excitement of rushing back to work on that lick and finally mastering it and you said something interesting to me in the email you said that now that like art and and you know the illustration stuff has kind of become your job as such yes um that music is now the thing that's getting your juices going yeah well it's like yeah but i mean
Speaker 2i only do that for me i mean i played that for you because by request you know you said hey play me something okay i'll play you something but i don't try to go out there and go i'm gonna be a musician now and i have massive respect for people that are and like that's actually why i was excited to talk to you because i had a feeling we would find more in common than not but you're doing what i wish i could do and you like what i do so i think we come at a very interesting place
Speaker 1oh yeah 100 man well it's exactly the same for me and i remember i said to you you know um when you said that like now the art has kind of become your job that music is now your refuge well it's the exact kind of same situation for me because now music is kind of my job i i do i have this kind of fantasy that one day i'm going to retire and you know not spend any more time in a transit van and actually spend my time just down a mediterranean painting you know i've never painted before in my life but i really feel like that's the next thing for me it's something i would just do just purely for fun to enjoy it to use my hands and to lose myself and just for my exactly what you're describing is what the guitar brings to you you know james i want to jamie i
Speaker 2want to try i want to challenge you okay don't wait don't wait there's nothing wrong with being terrible at something waste some paper do some shitty paintings right now because you think you think and this is what we all make the mistake of in life we think we have this imaginary future where we're happy and old and can afford it and then we're going to do the thing we want to do but the truth is we don't know we never know and i think we both discussed privately about losing loved ones yeah and you know how much i wish my dad was around to see what's happening for me today because he was so supportive of me in those space fever years that not being able to be with him i never got to hand my children over to him to hold you know it's like those things are hard but it's also i also dreamed there was going to be a day i was going to buy him a ranch and we would be able to like spend evenings on the porch together and talk about how great life is and it just doesn't happen so waste some paper go buy some paints go buy a little you know it's like 15 bucks for a good watercolor kit and buy a stack you know buy a pad of paper you're going to spend maybe 40 dollars and and just fuck around make some mistakes paint some bad paintings yeah that's a great point and you know what's great about youtube youtube will tell you how to do it yeah no you are totally
Speaker 1right i've been dragging my heels for way too long i i'm really excited about the idea of having a new passion and a new hobby and a new challenge and something that i can learn from scratch again with that same excitement that i did when i was 10 you know learning to play blues in g or something
Speaker 2but that's the thing that's really uh fascinating is that uh we deny ourselves things that we're really don't have to because again life can be a feast if you just look for if you don't deny yourself you know if you're if you're trying not to be like i have no aspirations of being on a big stage with anybody anytime soon i don't think anybody's going to have me up to like derrick come play your shitty version of stand by me by the clash all right stadium's going crazy here's some fat dude with glasses come on another old white dude with a
Speaker 1yeah yeah just what the world needs ladies and gentlemen i only play acoustic yeah yes
Speaker 2i can't i can't do a lead to save my life
Speaker 1i wish that the uh the listeners could have seen you gesticulating and weaving your arms around just like i could
Speaker 2but that's that's the you know but that's okay because it's like for me it's like that's that's like that's like eating a bite you know take a break drink a glass of wine and
Speaker 1have some popcorn that's playing the guitar for me love it beautiful yeah well drinking some wine is exactly what i'm gonna go and do now my man so before i let you go man this has been a really really fun chat i feel like we could probably talk for hours um but we've got to do some plug in man we gotta let the people know what you've got coming up what's going on yeah please do
Speaker 2because actually indie comics this comes full circle too like the industry is in a weird place but a lot of the talented people that have been laid off at dc and some of these smaller companies that are doing so well that talent moves to another company and then once upon a time there were gold key comics and charlton comics and ec comics and atlas comics and all these different industry legends that between the 70s and 80s came and went and that's just the that's just the publishing industry just like there were record labels that are no longer around you know yeah same kind of deal so uh but a lot of the talent is now trying to do their own thing so people that know a lot about publishing and editing starting their own company so that's the case of magma comics where i've got i'm working with two veteran guys from the industry denton tiffany and bobby kernow and they've started a really cool creator own company they've only got a handful of titles but all of them are good and all of them with talented people uh and they've let me do one so awesome but this is the first time i've written a book that i'm not drawing and normally i i wrote the first script for myself to draw but then i was looking at my friend steven and steven has had a 20 plus year career in professional animation he's worked on he was one of the designers of batman beyond he was um he's worked on uh an endless list of cool stuff and i can't rattle it off but i promise you it's awesome and he's worked under bruce tim and darwin cook he was one of the animators on the new frontier movie based on darwin's work great stuff and so but his style looks nothing like mine and one of the things that i thought worked really well about the boys was i brought a love for superhero and my dark sense of humor to gar's cynical you know vision of the superhero world and what it would mean for our world and that's where it kind of got a yin yang like i knew where to make it funny and and punch up his comedy and i knew where to you know bring some sweetness and i also knew like what a good superhero should look like like what would fool the people in that world right so because i because i basically how do i fool myself you know so how do i make these characters likable i'm like my likable characters so i i saw that in steven's work but steven does not have my dark sense of humor he's actually got kind of a sweetness to his work so i thought if i took this apocalyptic kind of gringy dark story and put his cartoon style on top of it maybe we'd have something kind of magical and i think we did it and when we get off i'll send you the first issue when we get off you can tell me what you think bro i would love that thank you but i just but i got some nice quotes from my colleagues that were kind enough but uh mark wade loved it fabian love it and uh so i'm getting some nice quotes that we're going to be blasting out there uh and uh but it's the first time i've written something that i'm not drawing and i'm kind of art directing but i love being a writer because i'm now writing for somebody else to draw and so my imagination's going into a whole new place because i don't have to worry about how it's going to look on the page that's steven's job i have to worry about how does the story come together is this are these good characters is this going somewhere and um i'm getting i'm getting big pats on the back for my colleagues who are writers that's amazing yeah i can't wait
Speaker 1to check that out man what i hope you like it i'm sure i'm gonna love it man tell the folks what
Speaker 2it's called and when it's out and where they can get it magma it magma comics and it's called greaser gemini blues that's for the first four issues if we get another four issues it'll be greased or something else right you know like like the empire strikes back it's going to be a different subtitle
Speaker 1is the part you want to remember there we go boys and girls from your old pal derrick robertson yes indeed famous musician derrick robertson yes you know for whom we just had the world exclusive live performance here on the james kennedy podcast just for you lucky listeners yeah oh derek dude this has been a lot of fun i feel like we could talk for fucking hours but i can't keep
Speaker 2you all day i know it's a working day for you out there man so um it is a working day for me and i pleasure jamie uh if you ever want me back let me know i'd love to talk to you again oh 100 likewise
Speaker 1bro yeah let's definitely do this again and we'll incorporate a little bit of alcohol next time just to get the party going i'm just gonna plug to you stuff before you rush off greaser gemini blues episode one is out now on magma comics please rush out and get it you will not regret it the brilliant and the awesome mr derrick robertson is at derrick robertson.com derrick wr on instagram and derrick r on twitter give him a follow give him a like give him some love and for all you guys out there that are currently watching the boys on amazon remember derrick robertson is the co-creator and original illustrator of the boys so go and tell him how much you love it derrick this has been so much fun thank you so much for stopping by man we appreciate you thank you for all of the amazing and legendary art and characters that you've given us over the years long may you continue to do your thing brother and i hope to see you again really soon take care
Speaker 2take care man yeah you too jamie i really enjoyed it likewise brother good day man you bet cheers
Speaker 1buddy derrick robertson co-creator and illustrator of the boys creator of the legendary spider jerusalem from the trans-metropolitan masterpiece as well as illustrator for wolverine deadpool spider-man and tons of other legendary iconic characters that we all know and love so much and i think you'll agree an all-around good dude and an absolute gentleman as well so let's have a standing ovation for the wonderful mr derrick robertson that was a lot of fun man as i said you got to go and check out his latest work greaser gemini blues which is out now on magma comics hit him up on his socials and while you're at it you can also hit up this podcast on whatever platform you're listening to it on give us a subscribe a follow a rating and a review you know the drill by now man just look at all this awesome fucking content that you guys are getting for free and what do i ask in return the mere click of a button it's the least you can do bro go and get on it and if you're in love with me i'll see you in the next one bye esther sheffield wolverhampton manchester redding cardiff or any of the other places we're playing come and hang out with james kennedy and the underdogs because we are setting off on the motorway first thing tomorrow morning if you want to stay up to date with what we're doing it's james kennedy uk on instagram and i'll be back next week with another great conversation with another awesome guest don't say i'm not good to you have an awesome week take care of yourselves take care of each other see you next time Thank you.
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