Canto Vol. II Issue 5 with David and Drew!

David and Drew – Interview

 

[00:00:00] Kenric: All right guys, we’re back. What can I say? This is, I believe their third outing with me on the show. I love these two. We have always have a good time. We just had like 20 minutes of pre-talk before you even started. That was a lot of fun that we might release as a mini thing. Cause we talk a lot about one division, which was a lot of fun actually, but they have a whole new thing.

David Buer and drew Zucker. Welcome back Canto five. It’s coming out.

Drew: It is. Thanks for having us. You really can’t shake us to this point.

Kenric: You’re kidding. I would have you guys on all the dive and get away with it.

David: We are here at least until 2022.

Kenric: That’s awesome.

Drew: Well that’s yeah, that’s the big news that came out.

Few weeks ago now, I don’t know. Time has lost all meaning for me in the mix. So I think the press release went out a few weeks ago. [00:01:00] We announced that we’re doing so Canto five reps up

Kenric: number five, right?

Drew: Yeah. Canto to the Holloman issue. Number five of five reps up. And for those. Of you maybe need spoiler alert, miner, spoiler alert.

I I’m sure a lot of the readers who came off of issue four or thinking, how are they going to wrap up all of Canto in one issue? Yeah. We sent out, we wanted the press release to come out about the future adventures because it will become clear after readers read issue five, that there is a quite a bit more stories to go.

Kenric: Yeah. And you guys, you guys sent me an advanced copy, which I, I very much appreciate it was an amazing read and we just, some, some major things. Pushing the story happens and some major plot points happen. And I [00:02:00] don’t want to give away too much, but Canto does, I think two very big things, not only for his, for his people, but also for how do you say her name?

Lauren,

 

Laura, Laura, sorry. But also for Laura’s people and it’s, it’s interesting. Cause you kind of go through and it’s not that you’re surprised that cancer succeeds. But it’s, it’s, it’s cool to see how you’re shaping this up to move forward for the next adventure, because do you guys even have a timeline of when the next adventure might start?

David: Is

Kenric: it something you can share or is it.

Drew: Yeah, we can, we can talk all about it. So we’re already having pre-orders for a three issue mini called Kento in the city of giants, which is a kind of like Canto in the clockwork fairies. It’s sort of a quasi expended side quest for Kento. Nice. I love those.

[00:03:00] And I love them too. It allows us, it allowed us to tell some stories that are a little bit lighter, lighter. They’re a little bit lighter and sort of tone and message.

Kenric: But again, man, the whole universe,

Drew: which I like. Yeah, and it allows us to explore different corners. We brought in a guest artist, Sebastian Perez.

Who’s doing fantastic work because drew and I are already hard at work on Canto, three lion hearted, which is coming slated for mid 20, 21. So mid this year, sometime around July, we think right

Kenric: when he goes on the V the Lionheart. Valley and five, what was your whole like thought process on that, that first scene?

Because I don’t think we’re giving anything away by coming in. It, it [00:04:00] kind of looks like he’s surrounded in snow, which is appropriate for drew right now. Being stuck in New York and this storm of the century, it seems like But you have a very significant thing happened and you guys use a lot of white, which I really liked because it made all the colors pop, but was there anything significant that we should, that we can talk about that we can take away from not only the color use, but the way you draw everything drew in the viewpoints.

And then also the fact that I don’t think you’ve ever actually named her that he’s talking to, or if you can even talk about that yet, I don’t want to ruin it for anybody who hasn’t read five.

Drew: We see her at the end of the shift for, so we can talk about that. The princess, we can

David: talk about that. Yeah,

Drew: go ahead. Drew, why don’t you take this one? I

David: mean, that was, that was very much David’s idea that that’s all kind of. [00:05:00] Coming from we that’s all from the script. So the idea is more to remove Canto from the world at that moment and sent and send him to a place that isn’t anything like the rest of the rest of the world that he’s been in.

And it’s sort of just, you know, this embodiment of magic. And more of a Oh, limbo almost, which is why you see some characters coming back in those scenes. And that that’s really what that, that was in the idea was just, let’s remove all of the, let’s remove all the color, but. Kind of make it be the opposite of the black pages that we had been using, where we would do the all black pages with the the spidering on it and the lettering over it, that people were all very much into.

So we just [00:06:00] built that into a full scene. It

Kenric: looks really nice.

Drew: Right. And the. Yeah. It’s, you know, from a practical technical standpoint, we do that to allow the lettering and arts and colors, like you said, sort of pop in, isolate those and really bring those forward from a storytelling perspective. This, the Valley of the lighthearted once was an real place and it was in the unnamed world.

It was the place where. The magic and the world sort of resided and the shadow man. We know the story of the night. And when he went to the tallest tower and the princess wasn’t there, he sort of lost all his hope in a backstory. He goes to the Valley of the lion hearted to claim all the magic in this world for himself.

And so by the time Kantar gets there eons later. It’s a [00:07:00] slate that has been completely wiped clean, except for this woman he sees who is the embodiment of the princess, that the Knight in the shot a man once, you know, was, was one searching for. So that from that’s the storytelling perspective of it as he gets to this place and he’s expecting an actual value in once she finds as a void, that’s been stripped of.

All of the magic, except for what’s left, which is the heart. Well, yeah. Spoiler for

Kenric: everything not to say heart.

Drew: No will spoil some of it a little bit. Yeah. So he finds that the shoddy man had to leave his heart to take all the power. So that’s sort of the visual representation of what it’s like once the, after the shot, a man has taken everything away from. What, you know, [00:08:00] may very well be the heart of this world, but they all live in.

David: Yeah.

Kenric: I love the fairy tale overtones, like, cause you said before, David, how much of a fan of the wizard of Oz you are? And the more you get into this, the more you can really feel the, the you’ve you’ve created a modern fairytale and it’s so much fun. And it’s like, I don’t know. It’s very, that scene is very Ethereum.

You know, when you’re going through and when she brings up the doors, you know, and she opens up this huge portal door and she’s like, do you know what this is? And he’s like, I do. And you’re just like, Oh, this is, this is getting, I mean, this is getting beyond just a normal little clockwork night.

Drew: How am I? You can

David: see us, you can see pieces of this moving into, you know, what will be the story that gets carried through through the next two arcs.

Kenric: Yeah. Th yeah, this next [00:09:00] arc is going to be huge. And I can, all I can say is tell people that if this ends on a very huge Push. I think that’s the best way to put it.

And it’s going to be a lot of fun because I can tell I already can’t wait. Cause it’s the story has grown, you know, as stories, dude, but it’s gotten like, not a simple tale, but well, yeah, I guess a simple tail that moved forward and now it’s just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And now it’s much more of a massive thing and it’s, I, I can’t, I, I tell people all the time, have you read Canto yet?

You need to read it.

Drew: I appreciate that for sure. Yeah, I mean we always try to stay laser laser focused on Canto in his story and his motivation and that sort of thing, but it feels natural at this point, it’s sort of opening it up to a bigger world. So the first arc was about him going on a quest to find his Beloved’s heart.

And the second one, you know, he’s on this quest to lift the curse from his people’s clocks. So their time doesn’t [00:10:00] run out. Yep. And I think this is a natural midpoint for the story that we’re the largest quest that he’s on. So going forward, you’re going to see the logical next step, which is preparation for the coming.

Confrontation. Yeah, I guess I don’t want to spoil too much of it cause we’ve got a lot of it planned out. Yeah. There’s the preparation.

Kenric: Go

Drew: ahead. Sorry. I was just going to say he’s so the next step is the preparation and then the final step we’ll see is the you know, he ended his first arc probably coming face-to-face with the shot at man.

And so it seems poetic that. The entire story will culminate and another such confrontation.

Kenric: Yeah. Who are the shot in many different circumstances. The Spiderman is a great character. [00:11:00] Cause he’s got, you know, you could tell that these had some loss in his life and it’s changed the, the, the person that it was.

Or who he was and it’s, it’s not. So I just liked the fact that the characters that you’ve brought forth, no, none of them are rarely really there’s something more than there. You know, you have deeper connections going on, which you can kind of feel it as you read through, which I that’s. One of my favorite things with stories is when you have, you could tell there’s a lot of backstory.

That’s driving the character forward that I might not know about. It’s all subtextual and I liked that. So I feel like you probably went through and have a whole backstory for the shattered man that you haven’t even begun to hint at, beyond what you’ve already

Drew: told. It’s funny that we have actually seen the entire backstory of the Schroeder man so far with the tale of the night that Kintone, as people knew from the [00:12:00] first arc.

But of course there’s, you know, there’s a lot more to it and that’s one of the great things about how I think we’ve set up all these different characters is we get to go back to the well and keep going back for S you know, story to tell more about what’s going on with these different characters.

And that’s an important thing for the shot. A man, because shot a man is not somebody that can’t do is ever going to be able to beat in a physical fight. So he’s going to figure out how. What’s what weapons does he have? That will be effective, I guess.

Kenric: Well, you guys taught, you told the tale through the, through the but it was an oral history told by the clockwork.

So to me, it’s like, as tails go, as they orally go down, you know, you’ve said, you’ve set it up to where you can make changes as much as you want, based on the fact that it’s an oral history, not a written history.

Drew: Stories betray us exactly.

[00:13:00] It’s that, you know, stories. They’re not often we twist the truth, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t, it’s not the truth of the story. It’s

Kenric: the story. Yeah. How satisfying was it to find that out? How satisfying was to get through this arc?

Drew: How excited were we, how

Kenric: satisfying was it to get this arc out and done?

David: It was pretty nice, mostly because this was a this one was a worker for sure this one was a worker. It was nice just to finish this one up and to see how it was coming together, especially for us that it, I, I think from our end, it kind of proved that we weren’t a fluke.

That, you know, we, we had more story to tell and that there was still a reader base that was willing to come along with it. So w you know, it goes a long way, [00:14:00] especially in this day and age where getting to do this kind of thing, where you have an original character, original IP, everyone’s tightening their belt and everyone’s taking heads.

And we managed to find a reader base that is so loyal to what we’re doing, that we were not only more successful with this one. We, we get to keep telling it and that’s okay. That’s kind of an amazing thing. And, you know, while it was really nice to get to the end of this arc, I for David will tell you I was going up the wall just like bored, like, okay, I’m a week of not really drawing cancer.

I kind of want to go back to drawing cancer now.

Drew: He come play. He complains when he has too much work, he complained to me there’s not enough work, a Goldilocks zone.

Kenric: Exactly. What is the Goldilocks zone?

David: There is no goal.

[00:15:00] Drew: I’ve learned one thing about working with drew it’s that there are just 200 or two crawls. Just mix it together. Drew, that’s not rocket science. I’ll try.

David: I’ll try it. Take it. I’m taking your bed wall mat it

Kenric: drew. What are you going to do when, when you guys wrap up Canto completely.

David: I have no idea.

Kenric: Come up with another excuse for another Canto.

David: Yeah. David and I are talking about a project that. Is in very, very, very early stages. You know, w what we’d like to do next, then, you know, whatever kind of comes my way. But for now, I am. I am very happy doing this book. I mean, we’re, we’re 200 pages then, and I still like drawing it as much as I did when we first started.

If not more. It’s a phenomenal outlet for me creatively.

Kenric: Well, you guys have done an amazing job on this thing. I can’t wait for Canto three. Is [00:16:00] it just canter three Lionheart or lighthearted? Lighthearted. Nice.

Drew: And then city of giants is coming in April. So that’s the next,

Kenric: so city of giants first.

David: Yeah. City of giant line hearted. And then

Kenric: it’s, it’s going to be exciting. I can’t wait to read this through actually, you know, going on what we talked about before we really started this, the binge. I can’t wait for everything to be out and start from the beginning and read it right on through. Because that’s the one thing with you guys has worked so far is if I sit down, I just like that first volume, I’ve read that like four times and has never, it was never read 10 pages or 20 pages.

And then, and then walk away. It was read all of it. And so I can’t, I can’t wait to do that again.

David: I personally don’t know how we did that. Because I’m the biggest critic of my own art. I generally don’t like to go back and look at my own stuff. I have accidentally [00:17:00] gotten sucked into reading

Kenric: accidentally

David: and they make it may make me sound like a jerk.

I’m convinced it’s probably. David’s writing, but I have gotten sucked in to reading the book and been like, Oh, well, I’m like 15 pages into my own book. Whoops. Whoops.

Drew: But it’s so funny. It’s funny Kenrick. I’ve heard people, I’ve heard some, some rumblings about Canto too, where some of the, some discussion about how reading it all together in a, in a single volume may be more satisfying than even the single issues because.

You know, take issue free three, for example, there’s not a lot that, I mean, there’s a lot that happens emotionally in that issue, but there’s not a lot of action. There’s not a lot of forward plot

Kenric: issue.

Drew: And it, and it, I think it would feel very comfortable in a volume collected and all of the issues standing alone.

It kind [00:18:00] of feels like, well, I want the next thing I want the next issue. I want the next issue. Yeah. So I’m

glad

David: that you’re writing.

Drew: That’s great. Well, thank you juror. And you’ve ever said something

David: amazing. How often come up with the nicest thing I’ve ever said to you? Yup.

Kenric: So now that you’re, was it two years in

two or three years in, you got about two more years to go, I believe you said 20 or one more year to go 20, 22. I believe you said.

Drew: Everything. Yeah, the goal is the goal to have cancer three, six issues wrap up and then really just maybe a month and then Canto for start. So it’s, we keep up the momentum for the second half of the story.

So it should end it. Should we should wrap in 20, 20, mid 20, 22, I would think I’m not sure what [00:19:00] Canter’s future after that is. We don’t have anything locked in yet.

Kenric: Right? So there’s potential that something more could happen if the right scenario comes into play.

Drew: I don’t, I definitely don’t want to spoil the whole series will end.

Right. I think there are storytelling opportunities beyond 2022. Right? I think there’s a way that I would like to tell them well, you

Kenric: guys have not created a rich world. You have so many characters, you don’t have to stick on one. You don’t have to stick on Canto either. Right? You have a whole other places to go if you, if you choose

Drew: well, so, so exactly.

So if, say, hypothetically. After we wrap Canto the, the major story arc, we have an opportunity to start. I can’t tell ongoing, and that could be something that we set far in the past before all the events of Canto happened. And that’s a story that we could tell for, you know, 50 or a hundred [00:20:00] issues just in that time period without, without Reaching a period that starts with Kimpton.

Number one. Yeah.

Kenric: That’s rad. That would be amazing.

David: It makes it a lot of fun because like, even just like when we have to do callbacks for stuff, there’s so much room there. There’s so much to mind out of this. And there’s just even little things that were just like throw away details that we would play in the background.

And then you’re like, Oh, okay, I’ll take this and you just develop it into something else. It’s, it’s really a it’s a world that’s easy for us to just kind of spin new stuff out of, which has been a

Kenric: lot of fun. Yeah. How hard is it? So Kantar, three’s coming and we leave Canto in a precarious position when you’re riding that out.

David, do you get. Do you get scared for him? Like, how am I gonna, how am I going to put this together in a place that he could succeed? Because I mean, [00:21:00] we’re not giving anything away, but I mean, he could fail, he could succeed. And do you sit there and go, man, did I write him too much into her corner? And I don’t know how I’m going to get him out of this.

Drew: No. And the reason I say no is because writing myself into a corner just forces me to be more creative on how the story unfolds. But I have also shared with the true, my vision for how this all ends. And I think we both are very. I feel very satisfied as to how we’re going to wrap this up in a way that’s expected, but not.

Yeah, I guess it’s, I think the readers are probably, I mean, we’re all, most of the readers of cancer are well-versed in fantasy stories. And so they probably will have a sense, especially after the end of Canto too. You’ll have a sense of where this is all going to end up, but I think it’s going to wrap up in a way that will be satisfying and [00:22:00] surprising.

Yeah.

Kenric: Well, I’m excited. I’m not even kidding. Cause and the little guy has definitely, for lack of a better term, you kind of fall in love with that little guy. You know, just his demeanor and his tenacity and, you know, and he’s so freaking cute with a little Potbelly and you just like, Oh my God, I just want this guy to succeed in everything he does.

And so it’s, it’s fun to see him get to this point. And just like, I don’t know. I can’t wait just to see him kick some serious ass

Drew: and he will, he will, he’s going to have some fun. Alex is alongside him too. Okay, kick ass. I’m excited to share that story. Did you

Kenric: outline this whole story? The whole arcs, all the arcs. Did you out, did you, when you guys sat down and said, cause if correct me, if I’m wrong, when you guys first came on, we talked about the vision of how Canto came and [00:23:00] drew, drew Canto showed it to you and you were like, Oh, I’m going to write a story to this.

In a short form and you wrote, you, you started writing something out, you guys both fell in love with it. Boom. Canto was born, but when you sat down to actually create Canto after seeing Drew’s initial vision of the character, did you outline the F the thing from arc one all the way to arc four? Or has there been some things that have changed as you go along?

Drew: I would love to tell you that we sat down, we have a 300 page world-building binder. Right. But we do not. So I, that would be awesome. Do that though. I just, you know, and just kind of being flippant about it, but there I, I had a, I had an idea in my head. Sort of where things were going to go with him beyond the first [00:24:00] story arc.

We talked about it drew and I, we didn’t outline in detail, but I, I would say that what’s happening in Cantor two and then what’s coming due in the future is similar to what we, what we had talked about. I think we’d all had a a strong story structure in mind. And I think we’re following along with that.

David: Yeah. Th this has stayed pretty pretty on par. I mean, we w volume one was re very much, you know, it has an ending that had this not been successful. And that was the only one we got to tell. It ends in a good place where I plank you can feel like you got a full story out of it. There’s obviously the open door, but.

I think it ends in a way that, you know, had we needed to end it. We, we could we always had a base idea of where we were going with this, you know, [00:25:00] and I would say it’s more or less stayed in on the, on the tracks. You know, stuff has obviously been rearranged, but I, I think it’s, it’s getting to where we had planned for it.

Kenric: And so drew and. Can’t tell if I only had a heart and he correct me if I’m wrong, I believe in the end of the volume and people out there listening to this, if you haven’t. Red Canto. I highly suggest you go pick up. If I only had a heart right now, you know, go to your LCS, see if they have an, and if they don’t ask them to order it, if you need it right now, I believe it’s uncommon, solidly.

You guys can correct me if I’m wrong, but you can also order it from good reads and Amazon and all that kind of fun stuff. I just want to put it out there. It’s a, it’s an amazing read. And I believe at the near the back of the the book at the back of the book drew, you share some of your original designs and.

Obviously Canto has morphed from what you originally showed David to what you guys produced on the page for the initial stories. [00:26:00] What has changed since has anything changed since then? Have you have you put any small details that maybe a reader might not notice?

David: No, I don’t think there’s any substantial changes to him.

I would say that you do see a slight evolution of me figuring out how to, how to draw him. And volume two is very much the consistent Me hitting him on, on model every time. I would say the, the metal that connects his legs to his body has gotten a little bit shorter than it initially was. And he’s maybe a little more compact than I originally had him, but he’s a little shorter.

Yeah. He’s a little bit shorter. For the most part a it hasn’t changed. You know, the design we landed on. It has kind of remained the same. I have the original, a character turnaround that David and I did a [00:27:00] taped up on the wall. And it’s the touchstone I use when I have to, whenever I feel like I might be wandering off model, but

Kenric: that’s awesome. Hey David is there I’m I’m always curious when you have something that’s gone and you guys are. I think you guys said you’re 300 pages or 200 pages in 200 or 200 pages in and mentality and judgment can change for the character. Right? Cause, cause he’s evolving through all his life experiences that we’ve been reading through.

Is there something that we can kind of look at from book one to book and volume one act one book one, two. Canto five, that Canto is obviously a different has grown and the places that he’s needed to grow.

Drew: Yeah. So I, in [00:28:00] Canto one, if I only had a heart, he starts out with a naive amount of courage. Yeah. So he doesn’t understand his world. He doesn’t understand the threats out there. So he goes out thinking, well, I have courage and that’s all I need. And I have hope that I can, I can solve this problem that I have.

And by the time you get to the end of that story arc, he finds out well, Not only did I fail or I thought I failed with my quest, but that my inspiration in the story of the night was a lie. It was false. It was twisted through time. And when he comes back and he, and then he inspires his people to rise up and overtake the slavers.

He realizes that there are, you might set out for one goal, but you might achieve something else that may be greater. And then what you set out to achieve. So [00:29:00] in Canto to the hollow man, he’s now in this mentality I think drew said this heavy is the head that wears the crown. So he’s thrust in this leadership position where he doesn’t know if he can do it.

So you had cancer who is naive, really courageous. And now you have cancer who has been sort of worn down by the world. And by his experience. And he goes on this second quest to save his people. And at the end, he realizes it’s within his power and his ability to save his people. And he’s going to do that.

And he’s gonna, he’s gonna take the steps he needs to take to do that, but that’s not something, I mean, you, you know, young Canto and the first story arc. Would have done the same thing, but I don’t think he would have gotten there to do it right.

Kenric: That determination is completely different.

Drew: You would have never made, made it to that point.

And so you’re [00:30:00] you, this, this maturing of his character as he understands the world and when he goes out there and these future story arcs to find who’s his friend who’s, as far as the final battle comes. He’s going to continue to learn that there are nuances in the world that, you know, you could live a hundred years, never, fully be able to predict or understand or handle everything that the world is construct you.

Yeah, that’s crazy.

David: He’s going to become old man Canto and it’s going to get really wild

Kenric: old man,

Drew: all rusty, rusty,

David: rusty, a beard.

Kenric: Stuck in the forest waiting for a girl to come along.

Drew: Magnetize metal shavings.

David: Yeah. He’s going to look like a Michael Bay transformer.

Kenric: Oh my God. Have you guys, Oh, what was the [00:31:00] question? Have you guys sat down and thought about, well, I guess you’ve already answered this. I was going to ask you what you thought about after Canto, but you guys are working on something that you don’t want to give away yet.

That is in the early trials. My thoughts on it. Yeah, please do

David: we, we know what it’s based around and what our general ideas. Yeah, I guess idea of it is yeah.

Drew: Yeah. We want to do, I want to say it, I’m going to say it out. I hope it comes to pass and it’s of course, years down the road, but it’s a I think we’d like to do, I personally would like to do a space fantasy inspired by the Odyssey and Alison Wonderland and starring a boy and his dog.

That

Kenric: would be cool. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds rad. I have a, I have one too that I want to get off the ground, but I don’t know if it ever will, because when I sit down to start thinking about it, it always comes out so corny, but I think there’s a part of me that feels like it could [00:32:00] be good because it’s so corny and I want to do a supernatural baby detective.

Where this guy dies, right? And this voodoo doctor, she, or I don’t, I don’t know how this part is going to work yet, but this voodoo doctor basically gives his soul a fighting chance to inhabit the next person being born and all the souls that are available to go into the baby being born, kind of battle it out.

And then whoever wins gets to. Be born. So they give him the ability to battle it out and he wins. And so he’s reborn after just dying. But he retains everything. So he’s like a 60 year old grumpy man in this like two year old body, but he can talk and he can walk and he can do everything. And he’s investigating supernatural paranormal and he’s got his Mo and I always have vision that his mom is helping him investigate and he’s got his little gun and he just talks rude because [00:33:00] he was 60 year old curmudgeon.

And all you see is like the old Looney tunes, cartoons where all you saw was there, the hem or their address and their ankles of the mom. That’s all you see because he’s so short. So that’s his perspective.

Drew: I’ve

David: got the elevator pitch, I’ve got the elevator pitch for you of what you compare it to for a publisher.

The X-Files meet five from umbrella Academy with the episode of family guy where Stewie and his brother fight it out in Peter’s balls.

Drew: And you just sing the theme song, super natural baby to tick

David: picture

Kenric: it. Oh, it’s so stupid. I feel like it could be funny and it could be a lot of fun. And then you could just see, like, I’ve seen the cover where all you see is she’s like, all you see is her dress and it’s like a total fifties mom’s dress, you know? [00:34:00] And he’s in a, he’s got his what do you call the hats?

The Oh my God. What can I think? That, that like the he’s Pajaro yeah, he’s dressed in a photo. He’s dressed, he’s dressed like Humphrey Bogart, you know, and he’s got his gun and it’s smokey and it’s just like the one streetlight coming down and that’s, what’s highlighting him. Supernatural baby detective.

Drew: Perfect Kenrick a couple of years from now drew and I are going to be doing a new book and it’s called. Concept of supernatural, supernatural baby detective.

Kenric: Well, if you guys ran with it, I would be so happy. You have no idea. I would just be like, I just want to be on there as, as, as a creator and helper.

That’s it. I would be a static. You have no idea. Yeah. Creator helper. That’s that’s, that’s what I am. I’m always good with the ideas. That’s always the execution. That seems to be the hardest part. I think that’s how most people are. Great ideas, better at execution. [00:35:00] Yeah. And that’s what makes it kind of look so hard that people don’t understand.

It’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work to get going.

David: It is there, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of thought process that goes into this stuff. Especially from our end that like, at least for me, if you’re giving me your money, I. I am. I really feel like you deserve to have the absolute best that I can put out there.

So, you know, it’s why these pages are so detailed and why every page I do. I just try and op it as much as I can. Because it’s, if you’re gonna invest your, your time and your hard earned money in me, then that seems like the least

Kenric: I can do, right. Yeah. Well, this is the time to, you know, unless you can devote a large portion of your time.

You’re not going to, you have to [00:36:00] really, really love it and really get into it because I meet people all the time. That just kind of, yeah. I just kind of play around with it and their stuff is never where it needs to be to be successful, you know, because they don’t, they’re not putting their heart and soul into it.

And it’s just like anything, you gotta be really, really into it and really love it. And I don’t know, everybody I’ve talked to, that’s made it, that’s gotten to the level you guys were at. It’s it’s an all day thing. It’s an, it’s an everyday, all day consuming thing.

David: I, it took me about a decade to have a book that was an actual success.

And I, and I’ve done multiple books and it just, that’s what it takes. Some people get lucky. Some people are, you know, really, really talented and it just kind of clicks together for them really fast, but it is a lot of work and I’ve seen a lot of talented people. It never happened for them. And then wandering to other things where, you know, their talents [00:37:00] serve them really well.

But this is you, you have to be in it to win it.

Kenric: Yep. Who, all right guys, we’re closing in on almost an hour, which is kind of crazy. It went fast. It went too fast. I love talking with you too. Anytime you guys want to come on, please. Just tell me Kendra for coming on on Tuesday. Okay.

Hello? I’m not even kidding. Anytime you guys have something. Yeah, let’s talk. I’m gonna, I’m gonna, I’m gonna make that supernatural baby detective someday. I’m telling you.

Drew: I think know more. I think kids is going to meet a supernatural baby

and they’d just look, they’re like, I don’t know, they just make eye contact and they’re exactly the same height they do the head nod. And I just sort of look at each other.

David: Yeah. I’m still waiting for our Canto lock and key crossover where cancer goes into lock and key and meets boat.

Kenric: Oh, [00:38:00] that’d be awesome.

That’d be funny.

Drew: I’m waiting for pleasure. It’s the heart.

David: Can I be Mo? Yeah, that’d be my my ultimate thing.

Kenric: I’m waiting for the LA I’m waiting for the Canto plus she’s like, she just seems like a perfect plushy to give my seven year old.

Drew: Yup. We’re all totally agree with that. My, my dream crossover is a three issue mini series.

That is. Teenage mutant Ninja, turtles, Canto and saggy, your Jimbo, and each, each issue an issue takes place in Cantos, worlds and Manhattan in soggies world. And we’d get Kevin, Kevin to do the TMT issue. And drew gets, does the canter and Stan Sekai does the It would be soggy issue and they just are like going, they like roll top [00:39:00] and they’ve got to help each other in some way to get this ongoing.

I don’t know what the story is.

David: If that ever would’ve happened, I would just be sitting there going one of these things is not like the other.

Kenric: Oh, no, no,

David: it wouldn’t be

Drew: like you can’t somehow find through symbols through a portal and goes into the sewers of New York, meets the turtles. That issue, they find their way to another portal. You they’re back in Cantos worlds,

and then they all end up.

Kenric: Why can’t he go back into the Valley and go through the portal there?

David: Perfect.

Drew: Open the tourist site somewhere.

Kenric: She’s like, Oh, was the doors. Okay. I’m going to send you back to your land. Okay. Oops. I’m in Manhattan

Drew: and he turns back and [00:40:00] she’s April on the old

David: Canto come to Manhattan. He gets

Kenric: arrested. Oh my God. What if he comes to Manhattan, but he’s like nine feet tall because that is his height is in our world. Huh?

David: He would just be an attraction in times square.

Drew: He stands still. You could see it. He gets there and he stands still and everybody thinks it’s a piece of modern art.

David: Oh my God. That would be so funny. We have our pitch. We’ll just do it, do it.

Kenric: Oh my God. That’d be awesome. That would be so awesome.

Drew: I’d

David: actually really liked to see you, like [00:41:00] write this email out. I’m like, I don’t want you to actually send, yeah. I just want to read the email and see how

Kenric: phosphorus, what did the pitch, how the pitch sounds. Picture it.

Drew: Yeah, the pitch for this. I think crossover for IDW would be just listing how many tens of thousands of copies of each issue that we will set.

I’ll be like,

Kenric: Oh my God, that would be so awesome.

Drew: You got it. Like the that’s that story where James Cameron was pitching the secret of the alien. He went into the room with, Andy’s heard this. No,

David: Yeah, I, I, this is a great story.

Drew: He went into the, after Eylea was a massive success. He went into the room with all the executives and he wrote the word alien on the whiteboard.

[00:42:00] And put an S on the end and made it a dollar,

David: sorry.

Drew: I’m sure it’s just an urban legend. I’m sure there’s no real truth to that, but that is how you pitch. That is awesome.

Kenric: Sequel. I don’t know. Cameron’s got enough to do that.

David: Oh yes. Yes he does. Especially back in those days

Drew: you did Kenrick. I’ll just say that. We the way we pitched the cul, the Canto was very similar except with the sea. We put lines through it for sentence, and they were like done.

Kenric: Do you want me to get you pennies on the

David: dollar? Keep in mind when we pitched volume two, we were standing in the corner of a hallway at San Diego comic con while our editor patiently listened to us pitch this while I’m pretty sure it [00:43:00] was already approved.

Kenric: That’s that’s hilarious. Are you guys missing the Comicons right now or do you like the fact that you haven’t had to go and, and kind of hockey wares?

David: Yes. And no me personally, I had, so I did Emerald city the year before or the year Canto came out. So Emerald city was a couple of months before Canto released and I had decided I was going to take a break.

From tabling for about a year or two, because it’s just, it’s expensive and is a huge investment of resources and time and energy.

Kenric: Once you get sick,

David: you know, and especially if you’ve got a day job, it’s hard to kind of constantly justify this stuff and then you’re losing time drawing and all, all of that.

Yeah. San Diego was great. I love going to a con and just walking around and kind of mooching off of Other people’s boobs and hiding behind them. But I, [00:44:00] I miss seeing people like, I mean, David don’t really get to see each other despite how much we talk, but I, I miss getting to see this group that I don’t get to spend a lot of time with face to face.

And I, I miss kind of interacting with fans. But the flip side of that is it’s really nice not having to travel and it has made it so I can kind of invest more time into the work and other

Kenric: things. When they’re going strong, do you go to many, do you go to as many cons as you can? Or do you just go to a couple.

David: I only had a couple, I, I personally don’t have the resources cause I generally have to pay my own way to get anywhere

Kenric: to do it. What New York to Seattle is not cheap?

David: No, it is not. New York is only happened for me

Kenric: because I live here. Yeah. Yeah. I’d love to see you come up to him again, though.

[00:45:00] David: Yeah. I mean, I can generally get a pro pass from New York, so it’s not a big deal.

But if I had to pay for New York with everyone else, it’d be hard.

Drew: That’s crazy. I miss them. I miss, I miss getting together with people and it’s sort of being that, that nerd bubble, if you will just kind of shutting out the rest of the world and just being surrounded by things that. You love or, you know, not stuck.

Maybe you’re not even that interested in it, but it’s just, it’s like in your wheelhouse. Yeah. And it just feels very very comfortable. I miss that, I go to WonderCon Emerald city, San Diego, New York. Oh man. As things go along, I might go to Chicago and Baltimore and a couple other places. Yeah. By, you know, it’s this, the staying at home has really paired back.

All of the extraneous nonsense that distracts you from the [00:46:00] creative process though. You know, if I’m not going out and having drinks with folks or lunches, dinners, cons. I’m just not, you know, since we can’t do any of that, all I’m doing is, you know, at home producing comics. And I think it really, other than the first part of the pandemic, which is really stressful, I think for everybody creatively.

Yeah. After I got over that hump, I, I think it was probably my most productive year, last year, so far. And It’s kind of crazy, most successful. There’s a lot of things that are going to come down the pike that nobody nobody knows about yet. And I think that. No, I think it’s all the result of everybody else having to stay home too.

And just focusing on what matters, which is creating material, right. Creating stories, and then you know, making things move forward. So when the time comes that we can all sort of be released from our cages, [00:47:00] we can, we were ready to go. We’re ready to hit the ground running.

Kenric: It’s going to be, it’s going to be crazy when that, that gets all cleared out.

Drew: I think people have this concept that it’s going to be a light switch that it just turns off and everybody can go about their business.

Kenric: I can live with this for the

Drew: rest of our lives. This gradual process is going to be, we’re going to, we’re going to get it. We’re going to get relief in trickles.

Kenric: Yeah. I think we’re going to live with it for the rest of our lives.

In some form or fashion, it might not be like it was 2020. And I can see things getting to somewhat of a base by next fall. That’s what Dr. Fowchee was saying. He thinks by next fall, we’ll, we’ll be as close to normal as we’re ever going to get. And so I think it’s more people get the vaccination and hopefully they get a handle on any of these variants that keep happening it’s variations.

But I think it’s going to be like a yearly thing, you know? Oh, there’s a strong bout of COVID going around. Everybody should stay home as much as possible, [00:48:00] that kind of stuff.

Drew: That’s crazy. It is crazy. It’s just like dystopian. I am still in the story of the day where we can wrap up what I, what Watchman in the TV show.

And it was raining squids. Yeah. I watched that before. COVID that’s like the craziest thing after COVID. I thought, you know, what, if the sky opened up from another dimension of rain, squid zone, squid on us. I just would not beat that surprise.

Kenric: I’d roll with it

Drew: squids now. Okay. Fine. Greener dimensional squids.

Kenric: All right, David, before you guys go, I kept wanting to ask you, what does your husband think of your comic career? Is he into comic books or is he completely different?

Drew: He only reads one comic and that so

David: quietly we [00:49:00] have the same our spouses both have the same

Kenric: relationship with it.

Drew: That’s funny.

He is not a comic Scott. He’s definitely a geek. So, well, I mean, we’re, we’re enormous Lord of the rings fans. We’re just watching, he watched it for the first time and I’m watching rewatching all of game of Thrones. Oh, nice. And he’s loving it. So he’s the end. He goes to Comic-Con, he can’t, it’s like two hours on the floor and then he’s offered the pump.

But yeah, he’s definitely in the, the, in the sphere and our sphere, but not, not as much a comics guy.

Kenric: Well there, you guys go. All right. So guys, before we just right before we wrap up, what date can we tell people that Canto two issue five is out. Okay.

Drew: Issue number five arrives on Wednesday, this Wednesday, which is February 3rd. And then if you’re feeling really ambitious, you can tell your shop to pre-order. [00:50:00] Canto to Holloman trade paperback, which comes out in may a release date of May 12th, and then they can also pre-order Canto and the city of giants, number one, which arrives in shops on April 14th.

Wow. Okay. So just load up on Cantor. There is a lot

David: of

Kenric: Canto comment. You guys will be shocked of how much you’ll read it too. So just, just, just take our advice and do it. You’ll be all right. All right, guys. Well, thank you so much for coming and hanging out. It’s it’s I love talking with you too. That’s not blowing smoke.

I really do. And I’m serious when I tell you anytime you want to come on, just, just reach out to me. I think you guys have. All my stuff. So whatever you guys want to come on, just let me know and let’s do this again.

Drew: Fantastic. Thank you for having us. And we will see you next Monday. All right, guys,

[00:51:00] Kenric: let’s do this. All right, we’ll see you soon. Take care. No problem. Thank you.