Ed Kearsley (00:02):
And we’re live. Welcome to Comex recent reads. I’m your host Ed Kiley. I’m filling in for Siz this week. Normally I just press the buttons on this show, but today I’m going to be the host and we’ve got two awesome guests. We might have another one coming in a bit later, but first off, we’ve got Sean Craig. Good day. Hello. Welcome to the show.

Shaun Craike (00:29):
Yes, hello evening trendsetters.

Ed Kearsley (00:33):
And you tell us what book you’ve got to talk about today.

Shaun Craike (00:39):
Well, I’ve got some interesting Indie American books here. I’ve got a little set going. It’s kind of a new series. It’s called Encrypted by I’ll turn a Press. I’ve actually got the best four issues and I’ll be talking through them tonight.

Ed Kearsley (01:01):
Excellent. And now we’ve got Shannon Browning as well. Joining us is Shannon. What awesome book have you got to talk about?

Shannon Browning (01:11):
I’ve got a personal favourite of mine. It’s called My Friend Dharma, and it is like the true story of a guy who went to school to high school with Jeffrey Dharma.

Ed Kearsley (01:27):
I’ve actually, I read that at the library one time when I had some spare time to kill so, and looked through the comic books at the library and I read that one. And my book that I’ll be doing today is Billy Bones and the Apo Apocalypse with Bob The Dog by Dana King. So

Shannon Browning (01:52):
Just my camera so the logo isn’t on half my face.

Ed Kearsley (01:58):
There you go. That’s better. Alright, let’s start off with Sean. Let’s have a look at this king encrypted comic book. It looks really interesting.

Shaun Craike (02:09):
Well, this is done by alternate comics. The guy that does it is the creator is Peter ett, who actually runs Alternate Comics and this is his first ongoing series course. He’s the writer, but he’s got each issue. He’ll be having a different artist, which makes things more interesting actually, their kind of take, just go through this one up here, how it’s got that standard comic style.

Ed Kearsley (02:48):
Oh, it’s cool. Yeah.

Shaun Craike (02:50):
Yeah. And the next issue here is this one’s actually all done in black and white, so it looks pretty striking too as well actually. And then the third one, this one’s actually done cartoony as well. Then yeah, this one’s definitely got the nineties kind of comic look as matter of fact. I just, yeah, this is probably my favourite page out the whole thing, this whole two page spread here.

Ed Kearsley (03:30):
Yeah, that looks awesome.

Ed Kearsley (03:32):
That’s great.

Shaun Craike (03:33):
Yeah, so pretty much like king encrypted. It’s pretty much like a superhero story. The guy’s obviously a fan of Batman and Teenage Mu Ninja Turtles. I’ve got that kind of vibe. He’s kind of a mutant or like a creature. He’s got the crown, but it’s actually his skull. And then what you think he’s wearing robes, that’s his actual wings and especially in the four fishery actually hanging upside down how he sleeps like a bat. So yeah, it’s pretty much each issue is self-contained and just basic his bows or something, but then he works out problems kind of peacefully or he goes for the least, how do I put it? Least violent possible. It will fight back when there’s this last thing necessary, but he definitely has that no kill code as well. And the book is trying to aim it for boys to read as well. This is something I can probably give to tween and teen kids who want to get into comics and especially it’s a new one too, so it’s like, yeah, something different. It’s got that similar kind of vein to the classic eighties, early nineties like Marvel in DC I would kind of say.

(05:05)
But yeah, cover, it’s just a fun read. It’s not going to change the world or anything like that, but it, it’s back to the classic good versus evil superhero kind of thing going that dark superhero.

Ed Kearsley (05:25):
Sweet. Did that cover the one that’s showing that looks a bit like Kelly Jones artwork on there?

Shaun Craike (05:32):
That’s actually done by Christian Rossi.

Ed Kearsley (05:36):
That’s

Shaun Craike (05:37):
The, I never heard these guys either, but yeah, this one was done by Nick Hunter. He’s obviously American independent guys.

Ed Kearsley (05:47):
That’s cool. The covers black and white too, for the black and white issue. Yeah,

Shaun Craike (05:50):
They’ve actually, both of ’em got different colours. I mean it’s got colours as well, so as well, this one’s done by Alex Jovi, so I think he’s done another series for alternative press as well, and this one’s by Ki Covington.

Ed Kearsley (06:08):
Cool.

Ed Kearsley (06:12):
The cartoony one looks a bit like Sam Keith.

Shaun Craike (06:14):
Yeah. Yeah, that one’s a very cartoony story. That one actually. And that one actually does say to be continued, but it’s not until issue eight when that story actually continues on.

Ed Kearsley (06:30):
Yeah, you were saying that he does it in chunks. He I’ve never heard it explain that.

Shaun Craike (06:38):
Well, when he launched it, you got issue one to four on the spot, so the next lot, which is probably supposed to be coming out even next month for the month after, but the last I saw, most of the books are like 85 to 90% complete, so they’re almost done. So I’m just waiting to, they’re available on the website and I’ll just start buy ’em. And just another note, the books are actually pretty cheap. They’re just like a dollar 99 US, which where you got $4 Australian because they’re the only comic company that I’ve seen in this day and age. They actually print on newsprint.

Ed Kearsley (07:21):
They’re kicking at old school.

Shaun Craike (07:23):
Yeah, it’s total old school.

Ed Kearsley (07:27):
No, that’s really cool. It’s

Shannon Browning (07:28):
Caught some of the artwork up here and I’m looking at one of the pages and yeah, it’s got a very, very Nike’s feel, especially because the colour is really, it’s not overdone. You see in a lot of comics nowadays. Everybody’s gotten a copy of Photoshop for Christmas and went crazy, but this

Shaun Craike (07:52):
Ridiculous sliding and all that.

Shannon Browning (07:54):
Yeah, exactly. This

Shaun Craike (07:56):
One simple and standard and it’s one of those ones where the story of that matters and it’s actually a pretty decent superhero story

Shannon Browning (08:08):
And is what, is he supposed to be like a gorilla or something or is he just a combination of different creatures?

Shaun Craike (08:14):
Well, that’s the thing they haven’t actually said, but he does mention something about being in a lab for a while. That’s one of his memories.

Shannon Browning (08:23):
And

Shaun Craike (08:24):
Then he deals with these other creatures when the first issue, he came from the lab too and he goes, yeah, I think I’m from the lab as well. You don’t know he’s origin just yet. It’s just pretty early. But that’s another thing. Each issue you get to find a little bit more about King Cricket himself, especially that last issue. His real name’s actually Cronin, but all he just says that and he’s supposed to be protecting his area and all that and just keeping the peace. He actually does fight an alien from centuries ago as well in the second issue, he saves the kids in the third one, the fourth one, he’s fighting something from the bog from a swamp. But what I meant to say was each issue, you find a little bit more about ’em, but then there’s some other questions as well that makes you want to read more to find out those answers. It keeps you glued to find out more about this character and what’s going to be next in the next feature issues

Ed Kearsley (09:43):
Even that’s a classic sequential serialised comic book format, but the self-contained stories and then the B and c plots scattered through and then they became APL as

Shaun Craike (09:59):
It goes along. How the comics were back in the eighties and the early nineties, just self-contained stories. They’ll probably have a issue one and two to be continued, but it’s not just sudden massive block or something and you’ve got to grab every issue and go to these other titles out there to get the whole story. It’s just like, that’s it. You don’t have to worry about any other book.

Shannon Browning (10:33):
It’s also good from a creator point of view that you don’t, you never end without ending the story. My comic series, it’s like three issues into a six issue run and the last issue was like 15 years ago. So

Ed Kearsley (10:52):
Tale as old as time with the independent comics, have to make it all yourself.

Shaun Craike (10:58):
Yeah,

Shannon Browning (11:02):
Sounds good. But it sounds like an interesting tale.

Ed Kearsley (11:05):
Yeah,

Shaun Craike (11:06):
Well, I will say I actually have been following alternative comics for a bit and there’s, there hasn’t really been anything that’s been released from ’em I didn’t like, especially surprisingly how cheap the comics are. So when you go on the comics, their website, you can buy a bit of a bulk of them and if there’s some you don’t like, it’s just like I brought it for three or $4. You don’t feel too gig with something like you brought for 10 bucks and it turns out that you hate it and it’s just like, ah, I wasted that much money for this one book.

Shannon Browning (11:43):
Yeah, I like it. I’m going to have to check out their website.

Shaun Craike (11:51):
They actually also do Indiegogo campaigns as well. They’ve wrapped one up recently as well, so it’s good to go on that. So the next one will be interesting to see what they’re going to be releasing next.

Ed Kearsley (12:10):
Sweet.

Shannon Browning (12:11):
Yeah, so they do, they just sort of throw stuff at the wall to see what will stick a little bit like, oh, we’ll do this one character or that one character and see if it sells. Well,

Shaun Craike (12:23):
They are pretty much a creator and stuff, so Peter, he has to go through the books and just say, yeah, I’ll print this one. This one’s like, no, sorry, come back later. This needs to be improved. He pretty much plays a pretty tough editor, but he has to, he doesn’t want to be releasing. He has that quality over quantity.

Shannon Browning (12:50):
Yeah,

Ed Kearsley (12:52):
It’s simple.

Shannon Browning (12:54):
Yeah, yeah. Well, this day and age, I mean that’s the way to work it. You can’t really sort of do a scatter gun effect and just throw as much out there and see what does well old school Marvel or something like that. It’s so specific nowadays that unless you are putting something quality out there, it’s going to get lost in the crowd.

Shaun Craike (13:17):
Yeah. Well, I probably could say me DC back in this time kind of got away with it. Even some stuff that was still average, they still did pretty decently, but they had the main titles and I guess back then Marvel and DC were probably too big to fail back at that time until what, 9 6 9 7 when Marvel declared bankruptcy.

Shannon Browning (13:47):
It’s kind of amazing when you see Marvel now being an old school comic person. I got into comics in the early nineties or hardcore in the early nineties and all the trouble that Marvel had and they were bankrupt and they couldn’t sell and they were just, everything was an X-Men title and that sort of thing, and they were one step away from disappearing completely. I think DC even was considering buying them up and then what they are now, they’re one of the biggest brands on the planet. It’s just like if you think you’re doing badly, just keep going. You never know how it’ll turn around.

Ed Kearsley (14:30):
They sold Spider-Man and the X-Men movie rights, and that’s what kept them afloat.

Shannon Browning (14:36):
Actually, the funniest part about that is they were selling rights to anything and everything they could, and the whole reason that the original Marvel series of films were like Iron Man, Thor, captain America, so and so forth, was that they couldn’t sell ’em. Those titles were so poor and sold so badly that no one was interested in those characters in any way, shape or form.

Ed Kearsley (15:05):
If you told anyone in the nineties that the Avengers would be a bigger franchise, then the X-Men, yeah,

Shaun Craike (15:12):
They just look at you

Ed Kearsley (15:13):
In 30 years. No one would believe you. Yeah,

Shannon Browning (15:18):
I remember you guys probably remember this as well. You’d go in the comic store and you’d see the way they were set up and you had the DC section, the Marvel section and that sort of thing, and in my comic store, the DC section, it had the Vertigo stuff at the top on the top shelf so the kids couldn’t reach it. You’d have an entire shelf of Batman, you’d have an entire shelf of Superman, and then you pretty much had everything else. So it was like about six shelves, vertigo, Batman, Superman, and then the rest of dc. But then you’d look at the Marvel shelf, there’d be one shelf of Spider-Man, there would be one shelf at the bottom of everything else, so like Captain America, Avengers, anything, all the rest of it. And the other shelves were just X-Men titles intimidating to get into X-Men at the time

Ed Kearsley (16:18):
Got a message from Ma on comics here.

Shaun Craike (16:21):
Yeah,

Ed Kearsley (16:23):
Say hello to them or Mastodon comics and music.

Shaun Craike (16:27):
Back when I was mackay there was this place, happys that was the comic book shop there, and yeah, it was kind of similar. They had that DC section then the Marvel section and yeah, it was roughly the same, but I didn’t really pay attention to it too much. But then they had the independence section where the Dark Horse and then some of the other titles there I was going through with them more often. I did try actually buying, trying to read the X-Men and Spider-Man back at the time, but

Shannon Browning (16:58):
They in The Annoyed

Shaun Craike (17:00):
Me Nice was just like I’d read one book and it’s like, you got to get this other Spider-Man title, but that story and then get these other two on the next week and it’s just like, oh man, freaking I got to keep buying and buying all that stuff. And this was during the Spider Clone Saga.

Ed Kearsley (17:19):
Okay. Yeah,

Shaun Craike (17:20):
Yeah. And oh God, I hated it. And it was the same as with that X-Men with that age apocalypse. I just thought this story is a mess. I was like, what the hell’s going on here? I just didn’t really get into ’em. I just gave up on those books I was getting, I was actually reading Dark Horse books. At least you have three or four titles that I want. There was one Aliens, one Predator, star Wars, and probably something else, but it just came out. Each title came out per week, but it’s like per month. It didn’t just bombard you with all this stuff and it’s like, yeah, I have to give the whole story, just it, just let it brief.

Shannon Browning (18:08):
During that, I collected both Superman and Batman during that period of time. That was 12 books a month because there was at least five Superman titles. There was more than that of Batman. There was the spinoffs that kept the main story kept on going into the spinoff and then coming out again, so you still had to collect those ones. So you get Robin, you get Night Wing, you get Superboy, Supergirl Steel, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Shaun Craike (18:38):
I bet you were going through a heap of pocket money, man.

Shannon Browning (18:42):
This is when I first started working and I’m living at home and I’m not paying any bills or anything like that, so I remember it was about 30 bucks a week I was spending on comics when I first started and when I finished it was getting up around 70 and $80 a week every single week, and I was unemployed for a while and I just had to cancel everything. I just couldn’t afford it anymore. Makes for a hell of a collection in the next room that I never touched.

Ed Kearsley (19:18):
I got a comment here. I’ve heard that quite a bit about Queen Saga books, not liking it. I myself love the Age of Apocalypse. I didn’t mind the Age of Apocalypse so much too, but The Clone Saga, I wasn’t breeding Spider-Man at the time, and it’s something I want to try and see if there’s a trade paperback of it. I just remember it went for so long, it went for way too long.

Shaun Craike (19:46):
Oh yeah,

Ed Kearsley (19:48):
I

Shaun Craike (19:48):
Remember.

Ed Kearsley (19:49):
I feel like it went for four years, but maybe it was just like two, but it was way too long for such a,

Shaun Craike (19:54):
I’m pretty sure. I don’t know. I just remember, I think it went for three, four years like you said this because it just kept going. Then it became a different Spiderman for a while.

Ed Kearsley (20:09):
That was Ben Riley came in and

Shaun Craike (20:12):
Then much later on they ended up changing it back to Peter Parker because obviously the Ben Rowley character didn’t hit off too well with the fans, and I just remember Wizard Magazine just bagging the shit out of it. For some reason, they still put it in the recommendation sections.

Shannon Browning (20:33):
I do. I did collect the miniseries that ended it, but I got the occasional book here and there, but it was very convoluted. I’ve read up on that whole thing afterwards. What happened was that they had a very definite endpoint that they were going to work towards, but the books originally were selling really, really well. So management said, well extend it, keep it going, turn it out longer. And they said, no, we’re ending at this point. And they said, no, no, no, no, no, keep going, keep going. So they just started throwing shit at the wall and they got to a point where it’s like, this is all too convoluted. Who is this character? Who is this Cain character? Why is this happening? Who set this up? We’ve already said that there’s three other clones of Peter running around. Yeah, they had no idea how to end it, and then they did the whole storyline where it was revealed that Ben actually was the clone. He melted and it was revealed that the person behind it all was Harry Osborne. I mean, sorry, Norman Osborne, the Green Goldman, and that’s when they brought him back. He’d been dead since the sixties or something when Spider-Man had killed him and when he got stabbed by his own got glider. So yeah, that’s when they brought him back into the comics was the end of the spider clone saga.

Ed Kearsley (22:03):
All right, well, on that note of people getting stabbed, let’s talk about Shannon’s book, which is

Shannon Browning (22:12):
Good segue. Okay. Yes. Now, many years ago I found out about this guy. His name is John bdo. He calls himself, dear bdo, I found him through this trash, which I found in the $1 bin at Comic bookstore one night, one day, and I just thought it looked interesting. Trash tells a story of when he dropped out of college, he was living back in his parents’ house. They forced him to get a job, so he got a job as a garbage man. There’s two versions of it. There’s this one, and here’s our fourth guest. Finally.

Ed Kearsley (23:03):
Hey, again,

Shannon Browning (23:06):
He’s not at all. Yeah, there’s two versions of this. There’s the published version, which is a lot shorter. There was a digital version, or I read the digital version as well, which he extended out. It’s a lot thicker and goes into a lot more detail, but at the back of this, he was talking about some of his other projects that he worked on, and that’s where I found out, I’ll just show it there about this book here. My friend Dharma. Now track that down and I’ve had a copy of it for a long time. I read it every now and then because it’s fascinating. This guy, he went to high school and was friends with Jeffrey Dharma, so after it came out that had been, sorry, once Dharma had been arrested and gone to jail and all of his crimes were admitted and stuff, he sat down and he sort of wrote some notes and collated it a little bit just to get his head around the concept, but it wasn’t until a few years later when Dharma was killed in prison that he actually sat down and started drawing it and turning it into a story, and there were several versions of it.

(24:30)
He started off with, I think it was just four pages or five page short story with some of the details, but he knew that didn’t cover the story properly, and he went and interviewed some of his high school friends about the story and got their memories. He looked into a lot of interviews that Dharma made at the time, and then of course as his own recollections, and they always said Dharma was a weird guy, but he had a nightmare of an upbringing. His parents fought all the time. His mother had some mental issues. He himself had some mental issues, obviously, but he used to do things like collect dead animals and he would put their bodies in acid so the flesh would eat away so he could study the bones and stuff.

Shaun Craike (25:35):
There’s a head of Supplementaries on that guy,

Shannon Browning (25:41):
But it is such a fascinating read. It really is because it’s a side of true crime that you don’t normally get to see. I’m a big true crime fan. I watched the documentaries and I started reading the books until I found, I made the mistake of reading the book about Snowtown got a certain way into that book, read about some of the stuff that this guy did as a kid and just like, Nope, I don’t want to read anymore.

Shaun Craike (26:12):
You don’t. About the guy Linsky then one the most in the world.

Ed Kearsley (26:19):
The Iceman.

Shaun Craike (26:21):
Yeah, the Iceman. He’s responsible for over what, 300 assassinations,

Ed Kearsley (26:28):
So he says Mob.

Shaun Craike (26:30):
Apparently he was actually responsible for offering a Jimmy Hoffer, the Union Boss in America.

Shannon Browning (26:39):
Oh, yeah, yeah. Guy that went missing.

Shaun Craike (26:41):
Yeah,

Shannon Browning (26:45):
That’s what the Irishman was about. The movie with Robert De Niro, with his CG face. Actually, speaking of movies, they made a movie out of my friend Dharma. I think it came out around 20 16, 20 17, around that time. It’s not bad, but for some reason it works a lot better in the comic. Like this gentleman, he’s a cartoonist. Yeah,

Ed Kearsley (27:15):
It’s a very distinct art style that

Shannon Browning (27:17):
Exactly. Yeah.

Ed Kearsley (27:19):
That’s building the world of how weird it was with that weird kid.

Shannon Browning (27:23):
Yeah, exactly. We went to

Ed Kearsley (27:24):
School with

Shannon Browning (27:25):
Him doing all this weird stuff when

Shaun Craike (27:27):
It comes to adaption movies, they usually leave certain little parts out here and there, or they change it.

Shannon Browning (27:34):
It wasn’t so much that they were pretty true to the story, but just the tone was wrong. For some reason, I can’t put my finger on what about the film didn’t really work. I finally got a chance to watch it. I think it was on YouTube when I finally could track it down because it disappeared. It did the whole Sundance thing and like, oh, everybody’s raving about this performance, and then it just sort of vanished. But his sort of simplistic, cartoony sort of style for the story helps tell the story a lot better.

Ed Kearsley (28:13):
It’s his story. You’d tell the story better in your own words.

Shannon Browning (28:19):
Yeah, exactly. And

Ed Kearsley (28:21):
He’s using his cartoon as his words. That’s why it translates better off the page than other people are adapting it to a different medium.

Shannon Browning (28:34):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. But it’s a really, really fascinating read. If you can track down a copy somewhere, I highly recommend it. He was a creative team on that book. Okay. It was written and drawn by an individual called, lemme just look up. His name is, I think John Backer. Backer is spelled B-A-C-K-D-E-R-F, but the name on the cover of the book, I’m just bringing that up. Sorry. Excuse me. God damn it. Apologies. Yeah, he calls himself Dear Backer, a graphic novel by Dearth back, so that must be like a nickname or something that he’s just learned to refer to himself. I think it was individually published. I think he did it himself.

Shaun Craike (29:37):
Oh yeah,

Shannon Browning (29:39):
Sorry. I apologise. I don’t actually have the publisher for that. This one was Slave Labour Graphics, but I dunno what, no, I don’t have those details. I apologise. I, but yeah, great book, really great book. Fascinating insight into kind of a notorious figure

Ed Kearsley (30:10):
Also really highlights how bad the kind of school system was back in the seventies where the kids just getting wasted drunk before going to class and the teachers just don’t want to deal with it.

Shannon Browning (30:25):
Yeah. Back then

Ed Kearsley (30:28):
His whole story was just crying for help the

Shannon Browning (30:31):
Whole time. Yeah, very much. I think the author says at one point he said it was kind of terrifying because all of these skills that he learned to cope in high school, things like disappearing, not being noticed in crowds, being charming, talking his way into things or out of things and stuff like that, which allowed him to get all up to all these weird shenanigans while they’re in high school with him. Those are the exact tricks and traits that he developed to become the really efficient serial killer that he became. So Abram Comic Arts published my friend Dharma. Thank you, Adam.

Ed Kearsley (31:16):
Thanks Adam. Thanks Adam. So Adam also says he’s,

Shannon Browning (31:22):
I’ve got my right now, read it with the lights on my friend.

Ed Kearsley (31:30):
Yes.

Shannon Browning (31:33):
Yeah. And yeah, if you find a copy of Trashed as well, which is one of the other books done by the same guy, lot lighter, very, very funny. If you can get the extended version of it, there’s a lot of more great stuff. He goes into a lot more detail with some of his workmates from the garbage trucks and garbage collection. Hilarious story about a guy he lived with who just while sitting at the pub one day stood up, suddenly ran out of the pub and ran down the street and disappeared. He was roommates with the guy. He went home one night and all of this guy’s stuff was gone, which was most of the furniture and that sort of thing, and they never saw him again. He just completely disappeared.

Ed Kearsley (32:33):
Oh, got another comment from Adam.

Shannon Browning (32:37):
Trashed is great. I read that recently. Yeah, it’s interesting as well because in the extended edition, he goes into the history of garbage collection. It’s interspersed throughout these recollection stories of his, that’s stuff’s fascinating. It’s something that you don’t ever think about, but there is a long and kind of sort of history when it comes to garbage collection, a lot of corruption, a lot of shady practises, a lot of just nasty shit that they’ve done just trying to get rid of people’s garbage.

Ed Kearsley (33:19):
But yeah, there’s a Garbo

Shannon Browning (33:24):
Living my dream,

Ed Kearsley (33:28):
But yeah, it’s an essential service basically in modern society, so someone’s got to do it, so someone’s going to charge a lot of money for it.

Shannon Browning (33:39):
Yeah, well, back in the fifties, sixties and seventies, and even going into the Jimmy Hoffa stuff, a lot of gangsters and the mob controlled garbage.

Ed Kearsley (33:56):
That’s the Sopranos.

Shannon Browning (33:58):
Yeah, exactly. There was a lot of money in it.

(34:04)
You collect the garbage, you can kind of charge what you want because if they didn’t pay you, you just stopped collecting the garbage, and that’s what happened in New York in the seventies. There was a massive garbage strike and garbage was just piling up on the city streets and making the entire city disgusting. But yeah, there was a union dispute and that went on for a long, long time, and this is back when New York was one of the most terrifying places on earth. This is the New York that you can make escape from New York about not the pristine, clean version that it is now. Not that it’s that pristine or clean, it’s kind of disgusting.

Ed Kearsley (34:48):
I hear it still smells like pea, but New York, when it was fun,

Shannon Browning (34:54):
I was in New York back in 99 and I remember hitting the button to cross the road and I lent on the light pole. I just put my hand on the light pole and immediately picked it back off again because it was just nasty to touch.

Ed Kearsley (35:09):
I,

Shannon Browning (35:10):
I’d never experienced the city like that in my life. I remember when the movie, the Day After Tomorrow, the one where the new Ice Age comes up and everything freezes. There’s a scene in that where a giant tidal wave floods through New York, and I always joke about that’s the best thing that could happen. Finally, the place will get a wash.

Ed Kearsley (35:44):
Well, on that note, shall I talk about the Billy Bones and the Apocalypse with Bob the Dog?

Shannon Browning (35:51):
Please do.

Ed Kearsley (35:52):
By Dana King. All right. So this is a story about a punk rock zombie and his dog Bob. It’s by Dana King, that’s her there, and just the first thing to start off with is having the record as the mohawk for the punk rock zombie character.

Shannon Browning (36:26):
Oh, nice.

Ed Kearsley (36:27):
It’s just a great design feature. You could see it there with the Fronton view that cracked into his head.

Shannon Browning (36:39):
That’s great.

Ed Kearsley (36:42):
Yeah, it’s really cool. You can see he’s taking it out so he could throw it for Bob the dog to catch, and you’re going to keep showing everything. The bad punk rock Zombies is totally Return of The Living Dead, which was my zombie movie in the eighties. That was the one I was allowed to get from the video shop. So that’s one I’ve seen the most and the Brains

Ed Kearsley (37:17):
San

Shannon Browning (37:17):
More cops,

Ed Kearsley (37:21):
And when they lease the canister in the place with all the medical animals and there’s the little doggies running on its side, but there’s only half of it.

Shannon Browning (37:36):
Yeah, that is a wild film.

Ed Kearsley (37:39):
There’s another really great bit, you see where there’s a thing where the zombies are getting closer and then the closer falls off the edge of the balloon. It’s really fun, experimental, formal stuff that’s really good. And then there was this bit where it says that it says still swing, his broken guitar belly crushed the skull of it was once maybe a nice stripper just saying, as I was reading that, I was like, oh, Dana, you don’t do that. You show you don’t tell. And then I wasn’t going to do that as a review, but then spoiler alert, oh

Shannon Browning (38:33):
Wow,

Ed Kearsley (38:34):
There’s a

Shannon Browning (38:36):
Full screen.

Ed Kearsley (38:41):
There’s a three page spread of the

Shannon Browning (38:47):
Wow.

Ed Kearsley (38:49):
And when I was reading, it just felt like, I was like, oh, Dana, you don’t do that. She’s like, oh yeah, okay, okay, turn the page buddy. And that’s what really sold me on it, but it’s just so good. It’s a really informal narration style. It’s like just someone’s telling her the story and then Billy is based on, she said two of her favourite guitarists, but it’s a really good likeness of Billy Joe Armstrong from Green Day. So I’m guessing is why the guy’s called Billy as well.

Shaun Craike (39:24):
That free print three actually did look pretty nice,

Ed Kearsley (39:28):
And then there’s look at those colours.

Shannon Browning (39:31):
That’s great.

Ed Kearsley (39:32):
And then it says, make sure and take the time to appreciate this awesome scene. When the cartoonist is telling you, it’s like, look at what I drew. Just look at it.

Shannon Browning (39:48):
This took me hours. Damn it. Look at it.

Ed Kearsley (39:51):
It’s great attitude. I think it matches the punk rock aesthetic of the bad guys. They look really cool. And yeah, I want to get number two. I believe there’s another issue that’s Billy Bones of the Apocalypse by Dana King. It was really fun.

Shannon Browning (40:16):
When did that come out?

Ed Kearsley (40:18):
I think that’s been out for a while. I don’t know if there’s a date.

Shaun Craike (40:23):
I think it came out last year.

Ed Kearsley (40:28):
No, it doesn’t say so. I couldn’t answer that one properly. We’ve got some, the puppy is adorable.

Shannon Browning (40:44):
Very rather

Ed Kearsley (40:45):
Not visit, I think that’s Police. Let’s this one see it.

Shaun Craike (40:59):
Yeah.

Ed Kearsley (41:02):
Billion Mandy Vibes, a little bit of Tru Films. Yeah, it does have a lot of trauma vibes,

Shannon Browning (41:14):
Mandy sort of feel to it. Yeah, it’s kind of a cartoon network show, but a lot more free formed, almost like a graffiti sort of look to it.

Ed Kearsley (41:30):
Lots of fun. It’s a good book.

Shannon Browning (41:32):
Oh, great.

Ed Kearsley (41:38):
All right, so we’re at the halfway point. I’m going to play an ad, it only goes for 30 seconds, but I’ve got to run to toilet. So when the A stops, do you guys hold down the fort? Until I get back. Okay,

Shaun Craike (42:01):
Alright,

Shannon Browning (42:02):
Will do.

Voice Over (42:04):
Are you feeling a little down tired of reading the same old books again and again looking for something different? Why not? Head over to the Comex shop now and pick yourself up some freshly inked inspiration

Shannon Browning (42:34):
And we’re back, ed will be returning very slowly when he has answered his call of nature. Sean, so I haven’t met you before, mate. I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to you. So what’s your origin story a little bit? What do you do?

Shaun Craike (42:54):
Well, I’m just a energy or comic or manga as myself, but I will pretty much just say there was a time probably when I first started working on my own comics, so to speak. I was actually living with Ryan Vela at the time.

Shannon Browning (43:13):
Oh wow. We

Shaun Craike (43:14):
Actually used to share a unit with each other for a while, and I did play in his old band Kade for a while as well. So yeah, I’m actually at Run as well. Then just after a while, this was back in the time when Mackay was just a sleepy, dull sugarcane town. If you weren’t raising a young family or into the local sports system, those boring boringest town you would’ve been lived in. I ended up actually moving to one of the mining towns for a while just because that was the only place I was able to get a job. Then after that, just got moved to Brisbane and I would probably say Brisbane’s now, probably my home at the moment. And that’s when I started properly trying to work on my own comics, just like I was just starting with a crummy zine kind of stuff for ’em, and I just learned as I went along and yeah, so the latest thing I got is this one and I’m working on the second one right now.

Shannon Browning (44:42):
What’s the name of that one mate?

Shaun Craike (44:44):
Blade Web. Blade Web. So that’s the manga inspired one. It actually does go from right to left, but I did that with, the short story really was with this one was, I told this story probably a couple of times before, but there was this mango anthology that was around about two, three years ago, get a punch from Melbourne and they asked me through Instagram just like, oh, please do a story for us. And I just said, yeah, okay. This was after I finished the Yaku, I was going to do this other project and I’m just like, yeah, I might as well just do this one off. And they also add, if you get chosen the winner, you get a hundred dollars and then they’ll probably ask you, oh, can you do some more stories? Become a bit of a regular, I’m kind like, oh crap, what if I do win this one?

(45:48)
I’m going to have to, I had to write down these notes and that it, but then halfway through all of a sudden they just disappeared off the net. I couldn’t, their email was invalid. All their social media and their websites just disappeared. I just dunno what happened there and I was actually going to throw it in the bin, but Shane and Quick Nick and Ryan pretty much just said, don’t throw it away, you idiot. Well just like, no, you freaking it. It’s like, no, it looks great. I showed him the work and it’s just like, no freaking keep going with it. It looks great. Just just finish it off and see how it goes. And I was like, yeah, okay. So yeah, you have to thank Shane, Nick and Brian for convincing me to not throw it in the trash.

Shannon Browning (46:53):
It is probably amazing how many creative products only exist because someone had a good enough friend who would smack you in the back of the head and say, don’t be a dickhead. I heard the same thing about Stephen King’s first book. I think it was Carrie. He had written two thirds of it, got the shits with himself and had thrown it in the bin and his wife found it and read it and she came up and gave him what for and says, finish the bloody book. I want to know what happens.

Shaun Craike (47:24):
Yeah,

Shannon Browning (47:26):
So you’re in good

Shaun Craike (47:27):
Job. It was kind of similar when I was doing KU that was actually written by someone else, but I had to admit, there was a number of times I just went, why am I doing this? And then I walk away from it and then a little while I just go back. It’s like, nah, I fri finish it. Finish it. Especially that

Ed Kearsley (47:49):
Was five issues too, wasn’t it? That was a big, big project. Yeah, that

Shaun Craike (47:52):
Was probably the most frustrating comic project I ever worked on just because before that I was just working on autobiographic stories and just one pages and just how I worked back then just I had a story about someplace in Brisbane and I used to go there all the time, so I knew what it looked like, so I just knuck it down pretty easy or pretty much a story that happened seeing a band and it’s like I go to this gig venue so many times, I know what it looks like, I just draw it. It’s stuck in my head pretty well and to places in Brisbane and probably the band practise room where I used to go to, I used to hang around all the time. I knew what that place looked like off by heart, so when I started it’s just like, oh yeah, this shouldn’t be too hard. But then it’s just starting the whole thing. It’s just like, oh, this actually is a lot harder. I didn’t even do any character drawings. I just hit the ground, just started and just went off of it and I just ran into so many problems. Then after that I started doing these character drawings and bit, I’m going on the net just like what does this place here in New York City look like and certain buildings, it actually made me do research and actually try a lot harder and frankly it did make me improve a lot actually, and got me in the better habits,

Ed Kearsley (49:30):
Especially the amount of pages too, getting the reps in just

Shaun Craike (49:35):
Pages and also pretty much I had to watch a number of Kung fu movies and certain stuff, just hitting pause buttons, just trying to get some spots. Yeah, that’s the pose I’m wanting, seeing Jackie, Jan doing a flying kick or something, seeing how they fight and all that, and I just have to just watch it so many times just like, okay, so they do this pattern and that pattern. Just observing how they fight instead of just drawing, fighting, not knowing where to help sits going to go actually plan it properly.

Ed Kearsley (50:12):
That’s excellent.

Shannon Browning (50:14):
No, I’m glad you’re stuck with it, mate. You still enjoy it, you still got a lot of enjoyment out it.

Shaun Craike (50:19):
Well, I’m enjoying this project actually a lot more better now probably because I just know what to do better. I actually did do some practise sketches, like character design sketches and actually been looking up certain bits of scientific stuff I had to look up about armoured power suits and these things actually do exist. The first prototype by the military American military was actually made in 2005 for the military use. So I think the first one was done in the sixties or seventies, but that was more for construction use and the military use is just, it just looks very thick and it’s comparable to the one of those war hammer 40 K kind of suits. It’s just big and slow, but it’s still, it’s almost like a freaking tank. You just stuffing yourself in this little tank. But now the suits I’ve just seen through Google and certain level of sites, it has gotten thinner and they still have certain sticks there, so it has been evolving. So pretty much the suits that I got, it’s come to that point. Where it has is just wearing a suit, which is also, it doesn’t improve your strength. It also is mostly bulletproof, defends the most standard bullets and certain lasers.

Shannon Browning (52:06):
Sweet. Great. Are you working on another issue at the moment?

Shaun Craike (52:15):
Sorry,

Shannon Browning (52:16):
I said are you working on another issue at the moment?

Shaun Craike (52:18):
Yeah, and it’s kind of being a bit slow, just I’ve got a baby and

Shannon Browning (52:25):
Oh, they don’t take a lot of your day.

Shaun Craike (52:28):
Yeah, look after themselves. I do have a day job as well, a full-time job, so it is kind of like just trying to get as much time as I can, but I’m definitely going to try to push myself a lot harder than I did on that one. My work ethic or pretty much if anyone asks me about any advice about working on Conex, I just tell ’em, just do it. Just make your comment. Just have a good look at it. That’s what I see you do your next project, see if you can help, do yourself improve and just keep going on that. Just see if you can do better, set your bar and then try and make your bar higher and higher.

Shannon Browning (53:19):
Yeah, that’s all you can do. The only person you’re really in competition with is your form of self, so just do the best work that you can do and screw everybody else pretty much.

Ed Kearsley (53:32):
And unlike any physical activity, you get better at it the more you do it.

Shannon Browning (53:36):
Yeah. What about you, ed? You still working on radical or you got something else you’ve been working on?

Ed Kearsley (53:45):
Yeah, I’ve got Radical four is coming out very soon. That’s completely done, which I didn’t draw that one. I wrote that one and letter it and coloured it, but George Vega is an American artist, did the line art for that one and it looks amazing and that’s coming out soon. I’m going to figure out how to do a Kickstarter and get that rolling and I’ve also got the Final Dragon stuff, which was in the comics, presents 1, 2, 1 3. So collected all those three parts of adding six pages onto the start and going to recolor it and relet it. So it’d be basically a whole new story for anyone who’s got the presents issues.

Shannon Browning (54:49):
Nice.

Ed Kearsley (54:51):
And doing the sea mandrels from Earth, trying to get a page of that done a week.

Shannon Browning (54:59):
That’s a pretty good goal.

Ed Kearsley (55:01):
Yeah. How long

Shannon Browning (55:02):
Does it take you guys to get through an issue?

Ed Kearsley (55:06):
Takes me years, but I am always doing four things at once. I can’t concentrate on one thing at a time.

Shaun Craike (55:16):
Yeah,

Shannon Browning (55:17):
About you

Shaun Craike (55:18):
Myself. This one probably talk about 18 months, but that was just, that’s

Ed Kearsley (55:27):
Not bad.

Shaun Craike (55:28):
Yeah. I had to do everything myself. I don’t have any assistance like the Japanese or anyone editing or it’s all DIY.

Ed Kearsley (55:45):
You’ve got a pretty detailed style as well.

Shaun Craike (55:48):
Yeah.

Ed Kearsley (55:49):
So that’s, it’s going to add hours to

Shaun Craike (55:54):
Go and make my way just to make it look spectacular as I can.

Shannon Browning (56:03):
You’ve got to please the inner critic. Yeah. Oh, well. Great. What else have you guys been reading recently? Anything?

Ed Kearsley (56:15):
Oh, that’s the second part of the show is where we, oh,

Shannon Browning (56:18):
Sorry, I’m jumping into that. I apologise.

Ed Kearsley (56:21):
That’s okay. We should get you on for the host, but I’ll go first with my one because some classic Australian nineties.

Shannon Browning (56:35):
Oh wow.

Ed Kearsley (56:36):
Comic books, which is S Scunge, which is by Let we have a look. No, it doesn’t have a, yeah, we went by the name of Racer Head back in the day, but it’s the guys that do the B, the Barbarian.

Shannon Browning (57:04):
Yeah, I know Sarah.

Ed Kearsley (57:06):
Yeah, so this is what he was doing in the nineties and it’s all different. I think he was writing it and then there’s all the brightest and greatest of Aussie independent black and white artists of the day. Look at that stuff.

Shannon Browning (57:27):
Holy.

Ed Kearsley (57:31):
I think there’s some, see if there’s a,

Shannon Browning (57:37):
That looks like, so 2000 ad,

Ed Kearsley (57:41):
It’s Frank Wessing and David Cove do that.

Shannon Browning (57:52):
That’s

Ed Kearsley (57:52):
Incredible. That’s crazy.

Shannon Browning (57:55):
That is very, very nineties though. Like the muscles, the detail, the shading and all that sort of thing. You’re looking at it and it’s like, all right, I can see Mark Alvery, I can see Jim Lee, I can see Frank Miller in City.

Ed Kearsley (58:11):
This looks very familiar too. They can’t find a credit, but it’s very nineties. He’s got the rockabilly cliff thing going on and this is the first issue. Oh, it’s got the same story in it. Oh, because that’s a zero issue. So that’s the zero issue. That’s the first one. But this was great for me, especially as a teenager, trying to figure out how do you make comics and having stuff with the news agents that was made by people in Australia. It’s very inspiring. So super helpful, which is, I think for the young people seeing our comic books, it’s like, oh yeah, people in Australia are making comic books that I can do it too. So that was my recommended read. Probably hard to get, but there’s an informative big part of my comic book. DNA was still S scunge, the NYPD serial killer on the edge of the law. So he is a serial killer, but he’s also a cop like Dexter. Yeah. Shannon, have you got a book to recommend?

Shannon Browning (01:00:05):
I do. All right, you guys, I don’t know if you guys realise this, but this week Just Gone was the 35th anniversary of the Michael Keaton Batman film from 1989. That movie was major for me because that’s what made me this lifelong love of superheroes and it got me into reading comics and eventually inspired me to draw my own and that sort of thing. And a little while ago, they did this series here, Batman 89, which is essentially Batman three. They did two stories at the time. They did Superman 76, which is based on the first Christopher Reve movie, and they did this Batman 89. I liked Batman 89 a lot more than Superman, 76. I thought these were great. I’ll show up the page here. Now. This story is the origin and story of Batman 80 nine’s version of Two Face.

Ed Kearsley (01:01:19):
It’s Billy D.

Shannon Browning (01:01:21):
What’s that?

Ed Kearsley (01:01:22):
It’s Billy D.

Shannon Browning (01:01:23):
Billy d. Yeah. For those who don’t know, Billy D. Williams played Harvey Dent in the original Batman movie with the intent that he was going to play two Face later on, and as everybody knows, he was replaced with Tommy Lee Jones in Batman Forever.

Shaun Craike (01:01:42):
Was this actually the one that was kind of based on Tim Burton’s original script before they decided to get Joel s Schacker instead? Or is it just a

Shannon Browning (01:01:53):
It’s a whole new story. Whole

Shaun Craike (01:01:56):
New story done by my creator.

Shannon Browning (01:02:01):
It was Sam Ham who I think was one of the writers and creators on the original Batman movie. He was the writer. He got a great guy named Joe. I’m going to butcher this name. I’m sorry. Quinn owns is the artist and the cover artist. What’s seen

Ed Kearsley (01:02:24):
Jason Quinones?

Shannon Browning (01:02:26):
What’s that?

Ed Kearsley (01:02:27):
Is that Jason Quinones

Shannon Browning (01:02:30):
Joe?

Ed Kearsley (01:02:31):
Ah, I’m friends with a cartoonist on Facebook who, I think he’s a Jason Quinones, so it might be different

Shannon Browning (01:02:38):
Way. Okay. Yeah. But yeah, I follow this guy on Instagram. His art is amazing. It captures the look and feel of the films perfectly. Bruce Wayne looks exactly like Michael Keaton, Batman looks exactly the way he did in the film and the way he’s lit and movement and stuff like that. This also introduces that version of Robin that you can see just there. Once again, I dunno if you guys know, Robin was meant to be in the original film. He was going to be played by one of the Wayans brothers.

Ed Kearsley (01:03:29):
Oh, that’s right. Yeah.

Shannon Browning (01:03:31):
To such a degree that his name is in the credit still, and B, they had to pay him and he got royalties from it. So he has been making money from that movie ever since 1989. It’s probably the most money he makes from any of his projects, and he was never even in the damn film. They cut him out at the last minute. It’s probably one of my favourite Robin costumes as well. Let me see if I can find a decent image on it.

Ed Kearsley (01:04:09):
My favourites the Tim Drake with the nineties.

Shannon Browning (01:04:14):
This one, hang on,

Ed Kearsley (01:04:16):
You think was Neil Adams.

Shannon Browning (01:04:19):
I do like that when they redesigned it, but there’s been so many redesigns of Robin over the years.

Ed Kearsley (01:04:28):
It’s what they use in all the cartoons and stuff. They use that for the Dick Grey and Robin now.

Shannon Browning (01:04:34):
Yeah, I did not like what they did with the Catwoman costume. They sort of cut holes in the butt and the shoulders and stuff. So

Ed Kearsley (01:04:48):
What in the second movie

Shannon Browning (01:04:50):
From the scene in the comics. So they’re great. Hang on, I’ll just see if you can get that right up next to the camera. There’s Robin there.

Ed Kearsley (01:05:00):
Oh yeah.

Shannon Browning (01:05:01):
But I really like that suit. I love that translation of the mask where it’s basically like a pandemic mask covering his face. I like the hood. There’s just something very traditional but very updated to that design. So yeah, I bought this hardcover as soon as it was available. They’re doing another series at the moment, which is basically would’ve been Batman four. That one has the Scarecrow in it. The Scarecrow was played by Jeff Goblin, which was back in the day when they were doing fan casting stuff like that. There was talk about having Jeff Goblin play the Scarecrow, so that’s perfect. If you’re a fan of that film or that film series or just a good Batman read, I highly recommend picking up Batman 89. The last thing DC needs is more money, but do it for yourself.

Ed Kearsley (01:06:12):
The thing that we need most is good comics.

Shannon Browning (01:06:15):
Yeah,

Ed Kearsley (01:06:20):
That’s a good one. All right, Sean, have you got a comic book from your past that you’d like to recommend for everyone to read?

Shaun Craike (01:06:31):
I would say just I, I’ve actually been getting into the June war and stuff after seeing the movies, but we’re not going to be talking about the movies before. But actually, yeah, I’ve actually been rereading this one Sling A Girl I brought this ages ago and I’m not sure if it’s still in print or not, probably in America, but not here in Australia. But yeah, it’s pretty much espionage I would say. I know it sounded like a silly title and all that, and they’ll probably be saying, oh, is it frigging a bit perverted or something? And I’m just like, no, it’s actually a lot more serious than darker than what you think it is because what it is about these, these girls from Italy, all of a sudden they get, they’re either on the brink of death or something, something really bad happens to them, then the government will pick them up and bring ’em back to life, giving them a second chance.

(01:07:49)
But it adds cyber nags to ’em and stuff, and that’s some reconditioning and they end up learning becoming soldiers and they got their handlers as well. So they’re pretty much going around taking out terrorists from far left and far right, organisations around ly around the Europe. But it’s pretty much, we focused on Italy because there’s a lot of places like they mentioned in Italy and all that. So there would’ve been a fair bit of study about that country and culture, a fair bit of notes at the back of each trade about certain illegally phrases and just how the country is liking it and stuff like that. So yeah, it actually does get pretty real, but I wouldn’t say it’s not fully action packed. There’s more drama with it. It’s like a third of it’s probably, or probably just over a quarter as the action, but a lot more is about going through the handles and the girls with their lies and trying to deal being part of a counter-terrorist team. And definitely one keeps going about her memories like that. Some of ’em just keep coming back and she’s, it wasn’t nice somebody else before then, they’re like, try not to think about it. They’re like, we have to recondition this pump of drugs a bit more.

(01:09:48)
So yeah, it’s a bit of spy work there as well. So no, nothing like a Spy Ex family. It’s actually more got a more dark and gritty feel going through it and a bit of it questioning personalised and some of their actions. Is that a Japanese comic? Yeah, a manga, especially some handlers. You get to see one of them pretty well. They treat one of the girls, he just hits them and he treats her shit. But then much later on she ends up saving her from a bomb and she just cops it really bad and then he just has to go to hospital. He’s just like, what I’ve been doing, just, he just feels like the worst human beings. I kept treating her crap and then she saves me and she’s just like, what does that make me? I’m a terrible person. Just kind stuff like that. That’s one of the little side stories, but yeah, I’m up to 11, 12. There’s 15 volumes all up each. It comes in omni buses now, so the first one’s one to three, four to six, then it’s like 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. And yeah, this is kind of the one I get to read on the way to the bus to and back from work instead of everybody else on their phones scrolling through freaking whatever, bloody garbage social media it is.

Shannon Browning (01:11:41):
That’s something I really miss about the commute to work because there wasn’t really much else about the commute to work, but it was great reading time. The amount of novels and comics and everything else that I got to read through because I had this hour long trip on the train every single day on the way to work was fantastic. And I don’t really get that much anymore. I don’t remember the last time I really had a chance to sit down and read a novel. It was during the Pandemic. I remember rereading Stephen King’s, Christine, the one about the car, and not only did I enjoy the book, I just enjoyed reading a book.

Shaun Craike (01:12:28):
Yeah, I read novels, Steve here and there. I suppose the last novel I actually read was The Great and Secret Show by Clive Barker. I finally read that after all that time, but that would so actually make a great movie. I seriously wish they’d make a movie of that. I can’t really talk about it if I get started, then it’s that story that had that number of twists and turns and then it’s something completely else right at the end. It’s that kind of story.

Shannon Browning (01:13:03):
Yeah, I haven’t read a lot of close stuff. It’s very,

Shaun Craike (01:13:07):
It’s not so many good books, but they just keep referring to, they just keep doing the Hell Raiser. That’s his most famous book. And Hell Raise is great in that, or for some reason, Candyman Candy Man’s Crap.

Shannon Browning (01:13:24):
I like the Candyman book,

Shaun Craike (01:13:29):
But they had to make a bigger, long movie about it. But no, he’s got other books out there like Weave World and Arat, but Arat is not finished. There’s free volumes. It’s he’s supposed to be working on a fourth one, but the guy’s got such a vivid way out there imagination and it’s just like there’s stuff out there I just find that are actually better than his most famous one Hellraiser. And it’s just like they should make some more movies based on his books. The Great Secret Show or Weave World, or what’s that other one? Galilee, he’s a very underrated writer, novel writer. He’s done comics as well, and he’s actually playing video games as well. And he does painting too. He’s got a couple of creative stuff as well. But he’s mainly a writer and he’s actually probably my favourite novel.

Ed Kearsley (01:14:43):
I read the books of Blood in my twenties and there was

Shaun Craike (01:14:48):
Some insane stories in that.

Ed Kearsley (01:14:50):
There was the one that stuck with me was the Cold War like East Berlin story, and it turns out everyone’s werewolves spoilers.

Shannon Browning (01:15:05):
I went through a massive horror reading phase in my twenties, read Everything by Stephen King and Richard Lehman and Dean Kuntz, and I was going through Clive Barker. I could never track down a copy of the Books of Blood. They just weren’t available that time. They’re probably very easily available now. But then when I just had to go to the local Dimmick or something like that, remember them that you had to go with what they had, either what they had on shelf or what they could order in, and the books of Blood were just not available, although it was fun asking for that at the counter Walk up. I am this skinny little, well not really little, skinny, tall teen walk up and it’s just like, do you have the books of blood? And just have the girl behind the counter got his eyes get very wide as she looks at you.

Ed Kearsley (01:15:57):
It at a second hench store.

Shannon Browning (01:16:02):
Not that massive one in Sydney. Oh, you were in Melbourne? Sorry, I took it back. Yeah,

Ed Kearsley (01:16:06):
It was a little one on Swan Street in Richmond.

Shaun Craike (01:16:11):
Yeah, kind of also funny just how I didn’t see any June books for a long time until those movies finally came out. I actually love those movies because with, I

Shannon Browning (01:16:25):
Haven’t seen, the second one

Shaun Craike (01:16:27):
Now is pretty much just a punching bag for the internet, so I just had to walk away from Star Wars, but now I’ve discovered June based in the movies and I want to read the books, and I’ve been going through the law for that too, and it’s so surprisingly that it surprises me when you go through the law and you look at those movies, it’s like, this is so, it’s very similar to Star Wars, but it’s still different. But it’s also that the first June book came out in 19 65, 12 years before the first Star Wars. And then a matter of fact, there was three June books that came out then the first Star Wars. So June’s a lot more mature and more involved, and

Ed Kearsley (01:17:20):
For me, June was so paranoid that I couldn’t read the first one and then started reading the second one and I couldn’t handle it. It was too the intrigue. Everyone’s just trying to kill each other and they got little robots that

Shaun Craike (01:17:39):
It’s probably,

Ed Kearsley (01:17:39):
It’s not a guy with a knife. You have to be scared of, it’s like a little bug that’s got a poison needle on it that’s going to come and stick in the fruit. It was too much to handle.

Shaun Craike (01:17:50):
No, me, at the

Ed Kearsley (01:17:51):
Time

Shaun Craike (01:17:52):
That’s in it, the Spicer actually does mutate. Certain peoples like navigators, they’ll look like a fish. They swim in tanks in the ships, and then they actually do mention about people that it has different effects. There’s actually people that, what would you call? They turned into animals, but they’re still human. They’re pho type of people. They end up rocking up. There are cyborgs as well, but there’s no ai. The AI got all destroyed and got banned. The people, the human race forced to actually evolve. So you get these people as well who are actually very smart and they’re like human computers themselves. Yeah, and especially the story, it has that similar like Dat Beta, the boy that’s supposed to be the saviour, but he turns out to be the tyrant, which is pretty much is the same as poor tradies. And then his kids, they up turning into worst tyrants than him.

Shannon Browning (01:19:21):
Yeah, I know. They’re making a third film and it’s based on different, one of the books.

Shaun Craike (01:19:28):
Yeah, the Emperor of June,

Shannon Browning (01:19:30):
That’s the one. Yeah. And that, that’s kind of one

Shaun Craike (01:19:33):
Looking, I’ll have to probably split that into two movies as well. Dave Lynch is 1984. June, it’s just, I saw it on TV and

Ed Kearsley (01:19:51):
I started the cinemas

Shaun Craike (01:19:52):
I’ll Give From Sym for David Lynch. He was given a very impossible task because there was no way you can actually pull off a proper June movie in just two hours. No way.

Ed Kearsley (01:20:10):
Yeah, I was six and my dad wanted to see it, so he was like, oh, just come in and watch it. I just remember Sting with his metal undies. See Martin as a guy with metal undies. I was like, what have you been doing?

Shannon Browning (01:20:27):
I saw that for the first time, maybe only about 10 years ago. My girlfriend and I, we sat and watched it and it was such a trip. It was just like, what are we watching? And you could tell every single story moment in it felt like you were missing an entire chapter before and after it.

Shaun Craike (01:20:51):
I dunno why Also Patrick Stewart and the Army had to carry their pugs in the battle as well. That was so strange as well.

Shannon Browning (01:21:10):
Well, it was David Lynch. I mean, you weren’t going to get a straight beginning, middle and end film out of him no matter what. He was working

Shaun Craike (01:21:18):
Probably most commercials film especially, he had to throw in all that, some of that body horror and stuff in there as well. Heineken Planet,

Ed Kearsley (01:21:32):
Those guys will Bruce.

Shannon Browning (01:21:37):
And unfortunately the 4K transfer or the digital transfer that they clean the film right up and it doesn’t do it any favours. Especially

Ed Kearsley (01:21:48):
Made

Shaun Craike (01:21:49):
One old movies where they clean it up and doesn’t really work. It’s better when it’s blurry because always you actually see that special effects more clearer,

Ed Kearsley (01:21:59):
Which makes these movies for what it’s going to be played on. It’s like when they recolor old comic books and do it in the native colour, the four colour process on bright white paper and it looks like garbage. It’s supposed to be on the newsprint that’s a bit yellow, and it stuck up the ink and they made the comics. They knew what it was going to be printed on, so they made them to look like what the finished product was going to be.

Shannon Browning (01:22:31):
They could take all those shortcuts because they knew it wasn’t going to show up because of the printing technology,

Ed Kearsley (01:22:37):
And they knew the colours were going to change. The papers are a bit yellow and it’s going to suck in ink, and then when you do the exact colours onto bright white paper,

Shannon Browning (01:22:48):
It’s just ridiculously vibrant.

Shaun Craike (01:22:52):
Yeah. Remastering comics can be a hit or miss. I do have the latest version of high boiled where it got recolored and they still actually did a pretty good job. I would say there are some areas which actually do look better, but then there’s some areas where I’m like, the original was better. It’s a bit of a hit and miss that one.

Shannon Browning (01:23:30):
Although one thing that technology allows ’em to do now, which I’m appreciative of, is that they do those full sized reproductions of certain stories, but it’s the original art and it’s not like you see all the pencil lines, you see the ink lines, you see the different shades of ink and stuff like that. You see where they put notes around the outside.

Ed Kearsley (01:23:56):
I get the artist editions.

Shannon Browning (01:23:58):
That’s the ones,

Ed Kearsley (01:23:59):
Yeah. They take photos of the pages and then print them at the size they were drawn out.

Shannon Browning (01:24:04):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, they’re

Ed Kearsley (01:24:06):
Amazing.

Shannon Browning (01:24:06):
Fantastic. I’ve never been able to afford to get one just yet, but I’ve gone through a bunch of different ones in stores and stuff and they’re amazing. It makes you feel better about your own work as well, because that’s

Ed Kearsley (01:24:22):
Exactly it.

Shannon Browning (01:24:23):
Yeah. The only way you’ve ever seen comic art is to reproduce stuff and it’s flawlessly black and all the lines are perfect and it makes you feel like, oh God, I can never do this sort of work. And then you see the artist edition and you see that they’ve made mistakes. You see that they’ve whited stuff out. You see that this didn’t really work and they’ve had to edit it and that sort of thing. So it’s like

Ed Kearsley (01:24:50):
And pay stubs.

Shannon Browning (01:24:51):
Yeah, exactly.

Ed Kearsley (01:24:52):
Just whole panels where they’ve just redraw it and stuck it down, stuck

Shannon Browning (01:24:55):
It over the top of, yeah, so it knocks the artists off the pedestal just enough that it makes you feel more confident that you’re allowed to make mistakes, you’re allowed to get things wrong. You’re allowed to have panels and anatomy and stuff like that. That didn’t work quite well at the time, but you can learn from it.

Ed Kearsley (01:25:19):
I’ve got a Walt Simonson Thor one, and just seeing how much whiteout he uses just to fix his mistakes, but also to do the energy effects and stuff. Just wiggle a whiteout pen through it and it makes those cool effects where when you don’t know, you’re drawing up to it and colouring it in up to the negative space where he’s just drawing through and then cutting through it with the white to do that reduction. It’s all cool. I really like those as well,

Shannon Browning (01:26:03):
So when I’m making enough money again, and I might splurge on one, I dunno which one, but I’d really like to own one of those because I think they’re magical. I love seeing the actual art. They were done much larger, so when they were shrunk down, the mistakes would disappear. Yeah, exactly.

Ed Kearsley (01:26:23):
That’s where you normally draw two times bigger and it reduces down and makes all the detail look a lot.

Shannon Browning (01:26:34):
It hides the fact that you don’t have a perfectly still hand. You shake a little bit as you’re tracing stuff and that sort of thing. Oh, it’s a fun job, isn’t it? Being an artist. It’s a fun way to live.

Ed Kearsley (01:26:55):
On that note, I think we might call this episode here.

Shannon Browning (01:27:00):
Alrighty.

Ed Kearsley (01:27:01):
And we’ll thank Shannon and Sean for coming on and talking about comic books. Thank you for letting us come on.

Shannon Browning (01:27:10):
Yeah, thanks for getting us back, Ian,

Ed Kearsley (01:27:13):
And thanks to everyone who’s watching and everyone who dropped a comment, and I think that’s going to do us for tonight, so we’ll say bye-Bye to everyone. Bye.

Shannon Browning (01:27:30):
Good.