Cara Ellison and Sally Cantirino talk The Final Girls!

Cara Ellison and Sally Cantirino – Interview

 

[00:00:00] Jeff: Listen, there’s a spoiler our country today on the show, we had the fantastic Kara Ellison and the fantastic Sally Ken Turino. How’s it going?

Cara Ellison: Hi. Good. Thank you.

Jeff: Thank good. Thanks. Thank you guys very much for coming to the show. It’s a great pleasure.

Cara Ellison: Yes, you forget to be here. I thank you for having us on

Jeff: my pleasure.

So the first question I always ask like my comic guests is what was your first introduction to the world of comic books?

Cara Ellison: Oh, wow. That kid goes to Sally first. Cause sounds some good answers.

Sally Cantirino: Yeah. I mean, I think one of my first introductions to comics was Tokyo pop in the nineties, put out this thing called mixing where they had the sailor moon manga.

And I remember my mom buying that for me. So it had like sailor moon. It had a magic night Reyers. So it has like a mix of show Joe and showed in Monga. The later on, in high school I started reading some of the 98, late eighties, [00:01:00] early nineties vertigo stuff that they were, I think they were reprinting it as trades, as well as Our library had the coffee table book of low-cost 11 rockets by the Hernandez.

Jeff: Ooh. Yes. That’s a nineties Virgo. So you’re talking about what salmon preacher, things of that nature.

Cara Ellison: Yeah, like doom patrol animal

Sally Cantirino: man

Cara Ellison: shade, the changing man

Sally Cantirino: preacher.

Jeff: There’s some good ones.

Cara Ellison: Yeah, I was just going to say, I guess they also came to it via manga because I actually started reading mine after I saw Kobo bebop at university.

And so I actually saw, I like bang a little bit after that because I got more interested in You know, the Def Japanese kind of pop culture at that point. And they did later actually go to live in Japan and figured out that that’s a relatively niche in Japan. But yeah, I actually then kind of took a little bit of a break.

From comics after that. But I came back into it via [00:02:00] the regular way that everyone who comes to it is interested in, you know, the DC Versico stuff. So I read like Watchman, and then I tried to read everything that Alan Moore had written including some of his future shocks. They were, there’s a collected Alan were future shocks that he had done for two guys.

And Ady. Which are all heavily angry about that or which I really enjoy. And they’re all like, very much like thinly veiled. Like I hate that teacher and she is rubbish and that kind of stuff, but and then I fell into that a huge Garth Ennis period. I actually really started to get into stuff like the boys.

And I, yeah, so I had a, like a good period of that. And then I kind of went into like a, a very feminist angle after that. And then Kelly Sue DeConnick and the thing that she had done I got really into, so I really loved bitch planet a lot, like a lot, a lot.

Jeff: So, so Ms. Ellison you, you worked as a QA tester for rockstar North on grand theft auto four.

Is that correct? That’s true. [00:03:00] Yes. So what does a QA test or actually do.

Cara Ellison: So a QA test or for a video game it sounds kind of fun on the outside. And then when you actually do the job, it’s, it’s terrible, but essentially what’s not terrible and some people enjoy it, but essentially it’s kind of, like it’s, it’s like if you get, if you get like a broken game, if you’ve ever played a game that is buggy or didn’t quite work very well It’s kind of like that, where you play an early version of a game that isn’t fun yet.

And you’re, it’s your responsibility to find all the awful parts of it and the parts that don’t work. And that sends a report to the programmers and then the programmers, hopefully we’ll fix it for you. And then the next day you have to replay the exact same part of the game to see if it’s still there.

It’s not a fun job. I actually said most of my time, you know, like running into walls, trying to find them invisible holes in the world, that kind of thing. It wasn’t super fun. So

Jeff: are you where you actually, are you a good [00:04:00] gaming?

Cara Ellison: Good. I would say I actually have the best racing games, like card games.

So I’d spent so long on rockstar games that I’m actually quite good at driving and games now.

Jeff: So, miss Kelsey, you also were a journalist for PC gamer and rock paper shotgun, is that correct? That’s right. Yes. And also for television. So as someone who’s written for comic books, television, and for as a journalist for magazines, would you say that the fundamentals of writing is universal throughout each medium?

Cara Ellison: They can vary quite a bit especially with like how much control you have over things. So for example with journalism, you obviously usually have an editor who they’ll tell you usually what they want you to write about, and then you go away research and write to bit bites it Unless you pitch a feature for example, and then they’ll also kind of make corrections and stuff like that.

With TV writing, it’s often slightly more collaborative. So you have to be kind of, arguing over everything with everyone else in the room constantly. It’s kinda the [00:05:00] same in the video game arena. So now that I designed video games, everyone is like collaborating. So no one person really gets to kind of tell the story, I guess.

Jeff: Knowing how to analyze a game, which is once again, a story structure, does that give you a better sense of how to organize and world build for comp books?

Cara Ellison: I would say that it helps. I think comics are a very different medium only because a lot of the world building you mean, you obviously want to do a lot of the research and legwork for the team, but you also kind of want to be able to write to that very strict page number.

You also want to, usually if it’s. Traditional comic book. You want to write to a page turn you know, you want to be able to provide cliffhangers if needs be there’s quite a strict structure. But what does help you write in for comics? If you’re a video game type you tend to make, try to make your dialogue quite short.

It’s, it’s [00:06:00] helpful as a skill to be able to fit, you know, things. Big things into a small sentence,

Jeff: essentially. So speaking of developing combo, Ms. Karina, you first started self publishing comics in high school, is that right? Yeah,

Cara Ellison: I,

Sally Cantirino: I was sort of on the fringes of the music scene in New Jersey, just like, you know, going to shows and that sort of DIY culture.

Once I started going to, I did a pre college classes at school of visual arts in New

Cara Ellison: York.

Sally Cantirino: To kind of find that Zen culture and that mini comics culture and started drawing and writing my own stuff. And it was, you know, just going to staples or Kinkos or whatever. And. Photocopying and speak in my own little mini comics, just doing everything, but like literally cutting

Cara Ellison: and pasting.

Jeff: So what did your friends think of you as an early comic artists? Were they encouraging of you making your and self publishing comics? Were they thinking, what the hell is she doing?

[00:07:00] Cara Ellison: Maybe I

Sally Cantirino: little, both, obviously like, you know, my friends, I have a lot of friends who were also creative, also musicians, also artists also writers. You know, I, I hope that we all encouraged each other.

 

Yeah.

Jeff: So

Cara Ellison: there’s a little bit like, Oh, you’re the, you’re the friend who can draw. So you draw this

Jeff: job. I’m a high school English teacher. And I have some students who are definitely lovers of arts. So, and it always kind of, I think they always get stuck in thinking as, you know, as teenagers. What is it that they want to say and focus on it when they do want to work on their own product, including, so I think we have one, we do have one that is interested in comic books.

So as a teenager, what were your comics focusing on?

Sally Cantirino: A lot of them were just

Cara Ellison: I like, if you look at like what

Sally Cantirino: my influences were, it was music. It was living, living in New Jersey. It was stuff like love and rockets, but also the sort of surreal newness of things like doing

Cara Ellison: patrol.

Sally Cantirino: So I was like, I wanted to make weird comics, like doom [00:08:00] patrol.

I wanted to make. Stories that were about these interpersonal dramas and friendships, like, like love and rockets. So I’ll just, Oh, sorry. I just sounded like for me, I didn’t feel like I was a great artist and I didn’t feel like I was a great writer, but I felt what I make made comics. I could tell a story more effectively than just making art or just

Cara Ellison: writing.

Jeff: Hmm. And well, you also later was an alumni of a pre college program in visual arts in New York and a sequential artists workshop in, in Gainesville, in Gainesville, Florida. So what did you, how did that help you as an artist and storyteller?

Sally Cantirino: So I knew Tom Hart and Delilah Korman from. Tom heartbeat.

One of my teachers at SVA, and when they moved down to Gainesville and Tom started to control artist’s workshop, you know, I was kind of just miserable at university in New Jersey. Like I was just going to a state school, like whichever school [00:09:00] was just going to give you the most scholarship money. It was like,

Cara Ellison: you know, more

Sally Cantirino: yeah.

Interested in going to shows and going to class. You know, and Tom had invited me to be part of the program down there. And so I being part of that, having that mentorship structure was a lot more, it was a lot better for me than being in college classes. You know, Tom is an excellent storyteller.

Lila, Carmen’s an excellent storyteller. I learned pretty much like relearn how to draw and how to ink from Justine Mera Anderson, who was like an alumni of some of those vertigo books that I was reading. You know, she worked as an anchor for them and for wizards of the coast. And think Lucas film as well.

So, you know, having that mentorship Really helped me grow as an artist. It’s also extremely cheap to live in Florida. It’s a

Cara Ellison: good place to be sort of

Sally Cantirino: struggling to be

Cara Ellison: a freelancer.

Jeff: That’s cool. [00:10:00] So, so eventually you guys found each other. So how did the idea of final girls come about and how did you guys find each other?

And in that partnership start.

Cara Ellison: So I started writing the first issue of the final girls in 2015, which is a really long time ago. And I think it was, it was possibly a reaction to something I had, I had read or seen on TV at the time. I think it was, I want to talk of the Lake. I don’t know if you’re familiar with top of the Lake, but it’s like a kind of a.

Drama a buyer what women do when there’s a horrible crime, somewhere in New Zealand. And it’s very kind of nature-y and like cool looking at all the landscapes and stuff. And and I think it converged somehow with my reading, the boys. And I also I think maybe around that time was Jessica Jones coming out or something I can’t remember, but basically something had converged on like those ideas clashed.

And I was just like, I have the story. I know I’m the only person who could probably be into telling this story. And I started [00:11:00] writing this thing and all my writer, friends. Really liked it. So I just kept workshopping it basically. And then a while later I showed it to my friend and editor, Katie West, and Katie was like, I want to make this comic so let’s find some people who can help us.

So that’s where Sally came in. Really?

Sally Cantirino: Yeah. KW from the band vial, preacher, I think is a friend of Katie’s and they had just like DMD me out of the blue, like, Hey, are you like. Do you mind if I pass your portfolio along to my friend, Katie West and Katie reached out to me, the Cara, it’s funny. I, a year later I just found out we have a bunch of like music.

Like we know a bunch of mutual people through on winnable. Oh, no

Cara Ellison: way, because, because Steve Horvath he used to add on winnable and he was just like such an amazing person because he actually kind of is [00:12:00] responsible for starting my writing career. So, yeah, Steve’s the best boyfriend does the vintage RPG podcast.

I didn’t even know this. I’m just finding this out so that, you know, that’s this podcast is we just find out

Jeff: you’re both welcome. So what is unwinnable then? Since I actually have no idea what that is.

Cara Ellison: It’s basically a video game magazine. It was started up by Steve and a few other people and essentially it’s based out of New Jersey, I think on it’s like kind of like, it’s not just video games, it’s kind of pop culture comics.

All sorts of things. And I got recruited to write for them a very long time ago. It was probably like, I don’t know, 2011. And yeah, I just like, I, I, I guess it made my career in a way because I made a small interactive fiction game for the magazine. Cause it’s online. It’s like digital. And because of that game, I got recruited to start to make my own games.

So that kind of made me into a [00:13:00] game designer in a way. Well, that’s

Jeff: really cool. And I also want to thank you for putting out that two times 15 is a long time ago,

Cara Ellison: because I feel like we’ve been in this type of dynamic for like 50 years.

Sally Cantirino: Last year was 10 years long. So Dean was 16 years

Cara Ellison: ago.

Jeff: Oh man. Time is awful. I actually just realized at the very first time. I will never again, have a student in my class who was alive during that 11.

So yeah, it’s just just remind me that apparently time is moving by extremely quickly. It was in slow in some level. So anyways, so how does this partnership funds between you two? Does Ms. Ellison, are you running full script and you’re writing like a Marvel plot summary? How much lead is going to Reno

Cara Ellison: have.

So I, I basically figured out that the story I went to to tell was so complex. I would have to script every beat. Do most of the locations research and link to a lot of like kind of background work [00:14:00] because it, it was, we had to do a lot with five issues. Basically. It should’ve probably been a much longer comic, but you’re only gonna do five issues.

Basically just so we can maximize the amount of money that we could pay our contributors and also not, you know, break Sally and the rest of the team, like with like the workload. So, basically we wanted to make the comic into five, so that meant I had to plot everything really, really, really carefully so that it would have a satisfying end ending and people tell me th th the comics succeeded, but the set up in the beginning is like really hard because.

You have to, it’s an ensemble comic. So any ensemble comic, you know, when you’ve felt that first issue it’s like really tough to get. Right. So, yeah, so I just felt like I had to do almost everything and then just hope that Sally got it. And she, she did. She just nailed every time. Thank you, Kara, like flying

Sally Cantirino: around on Google earth.

Like I have, [00:15:00] I have never been to Scotland. I have no conception of Scotland, Philadelphia at the time. I was just kind of like, I’m just

Cara Ellison: like this alert doesn’t fail me. Philadelphia is kind of like the Scotland’s of America. Anyway.

I feel like as someone

Sally Cantirino: from New Jersey and like, Living in Philly for two years. It’s like, okay, I understand the like, attitude.

Cara Ellison: It’s so similar. I feel like the humor is really similar as well. Every time I visited anyway, and people are like, they’ve got that kind of cynical humor that the West coast doesn’t have.

So like only

Sally Cantirino: we can insult us. We’ll fight you. That’s what we can insult us. As much as we want.

Jeff: I honestly did not know. They were actually real locations that you guys were using. I unfortunately, being wants, maybe it’s part of being an American that I do not understand the geography of anything that’s outside the United States.

So I didn’t realize those were all real absolute, real places. That’d be where [00:16:00] referencing.

Cara Ellison: Yeah. So I, I try to send along, you know, like links of pictures that give a good reference for each of the locations. But yeah, they’re all real places. Just cause I thought, you know, that would be easier to, to draw, especially if you hadn’t been to Scotland, like it would be actually harder to make a fictional fictional Scotland.

Then, then, then just draw from. Photographs. So I sent them along. I actually recruited a lot of my friends to take pictures as well sometimes, but it sometimes didn’t quite work that way, but yeah,

Jeff: so, miscarried. So how was it to try to visualize a place in, you know, in, in, in, in, in a real, tangible way that you’ve never actually been,

Sally Cantirino: It’s, it’s very difficult, but you know, like having Having resources like Google earth, having resources, like just being able to Google these places and get a sense of them.

You know, it’s like, all right, I can build this out into my head, like the [00:17:00] beach front of the North sea, where the oil rigs are. It’s like, okay, I can, I can build a scene in my head based on, you know, flying around and Google earth and. If I can kind of visualize it and visualize it and be able to turn it around kind of three 60 in my head and figure things out,

Cara Ellison: you know?

But yeah, I mean, Kara was great about saying like,

Sally Cantirino: it’s this bar, it’s this area of rich houses. It’s this beach, it’s this Lake.

Cara Ellison: Yeah. There’s one panel that Sally did for the, the townhouses in Edinburgh. That’s amazing. It’s like a, an angle that you would never have thought of you if you’re a rice or you think had just like words and you’re like imagining and words and whatnot, but like, it’s just something that I feel like Sally brought to everything where she actually made Because you had this one angle on the townhouses that like shows the actual curve of the street.

Cause it’s almost like a half [00:18:00] moon kind of a street. And she managed to show that curve and this really amazing angle that she put on the, on the houses and I was just rereading it like this week. And I was like, God, that’s such a good, it’s such a good panel, you know? And there’s like loads of those where she managed to just like, get that.

And I don’t know. It was very impressive to me. Someone who cannot draw. Yeah. I mean, sometimes

Sally Cantirino: just like drawing something in the most accurate way, if it’s, you know, is not always the most accurate way of showing it or seeing it, like you could go to those. Houses in real life. And that curve would not be as pronounced, but it wouldn’t have the same drama.

It wouldn’t read the way that it’s like, well, these, this is it’s a certain, you know, it’s, the street is literally called like a circus it’s circular. Like I have to show that it’s this. This unique, interesting [00:19:00] place in shape.

Cara Ellison: Yeah. Royal circus is absolutely. I think where Sean Connery’s townhouse house was when he lived in Edinburgh.

So, that’s like the richest postcode, I think can add in bruh is that one street. So I had to put an egg cause I was just like, these houses are ridiculous.

Jeff: You know, that’s really kind of interesting. But w Ms. Allison was saying about, I was writing because I write as well. And I, and I realized as a writer, I’m not great visually.

So. I’m sure there’s a lot of things about putting in a panel or think I’m putting in a panel that works in my head, but don’t work an actual two dimensions of a comic book. Were there instances like that where you realize you had to make a compromise because you know, Sally Ms. Karina was saying.

You know, as someone who actually has to do the art, this is not possible on an actual page to make that work.

Cara Ellison: Definitely. There are definitely times where everyone was just like, I don’t think we can do this. Is there some other way? Or can we sometimes actually panels are, they have to show a little bit too much going on and there’s the actually room for the, the [00:20:00] dialogue anymore.

So that then that has to be shifted to another panel or you have to rewrite it. So, that happens a lot, but I think also just like, Communication is really important. You know, it was like Katie and me and Sally constantly kind of going, okay, well, can we have less? I mean, I always just said to Sally, like, if you need to draw last panels or more panels, like, I’m totally cool with it.

Like, you kind of know where we’re going anyway. So, hopefully she felt like she had the freedom to kind of mess around with the script anyway, but I feel like a lot of it is just being like, well, this isn’t feasible or show this, you know, sometimes like, I think, I think when you first start writing comics, people are like, They’re always giving you the feedback.

I was like, well, you can’t have two emotions in one panel because, you know, as a writer in your brain, you’re like, Oh, you can, you can do that. But you can’t, you have to have separate emotions panels, which I think is the writer’s big problems sometimes. But yeah, I think we coped. Okay. Yeah. [00:21:00] If you

Sally Cantirino: split the emotions into like, One emotion, one panel and one emotion and other panels.

These two small panels next to each other. It builds this. Moment, you know, catchable moment.

Cara Ellison: Yeah. And also, like, I feel, I feel a lot like making it room for the beat, an extra beat to happen is a really interesting thing that an artist can do, like where you could just be like, actually this moment with land batter, if we did this.

And I think that’s like, just part of the process, you know, when you’re making a comment, can you just kind of have to like, like, okay, I think this would like, give it a little bit more emotion than if we just sat the line and then moved on.

Jeff: Yeah, I must admit as, as, as the writer, sometimes I think to myself, can you just make this panel like animated and just make it, I can put all into what I want to somehow find a way.

Like a whole grand panel or

Cara Ellison: something kind of figuring out the relationship as well, because I think some [00:22:00] comic book writers I’ve worked with, they kind of want you to just be like, okay, go nuts here, do whatever, whatever you want, but there are other rights other Other comics are coming regardless.

They’re a lot more like, I need to know every single detail and I want to know exactly what you need from me. And most people are kind of in between, but like some people are like, nah, I want to just like, do what I want with your script. And like, I think all of it is fine. You just have to adapt.

Jeff: Yeah.

So, so final girls is a new five issue series released exclusively via Comixology originals line. Of exclusive content. So why was Comixology the best vehicle for this series?

Cara Ellison: They really wanted to publish material. I think I think that’s why they have, I like a lot of books that are like really unusual and they have teams that are just getting started or teams with unusual ideas.

So I think our book was just like, honestly, the weirdest pitch they’d ever got so cool. You know what I mean?

[00:23:00] Jeff: So, so what was the pitch.

Cara Ellison: The pitch was. So, basically it was up by the way that justice. Has means something different to our generation. So a lot of superheroes obviously go out there and, you know, kick the bad guy’s ass and that’s the comic.

But I think now we’re coming around to the idea that maybe another form of justice apart from punitive justice is slightly batter to make sure that people don’t commit the same crime again or who don’t, or don’t hurt anyone again. Because I think. Statistics have kind of generally proved that sending someone to jail is not going to reform them and it’s not going to stop them from doing that, doing something bad again.

So, basically I was like, what if superheroes really had to think about that question? Right? Like what if they genuinely had to think, okay, Well, we can’t kick people’s asses anymore. So what do we do about that? [00:24:00] You know, how do we change people for the batter and help them and protect, you know, survivors instead of actually just spending all of our energy on blowing stuff up, you know?

No. Yeah. Every

Sally Cantirino: two weeks, like on Twitter, there’s discourse about like, Me, I should be using his money to help people. What kind of car you can drive to beat people up. It’s like this again, this

Cara Ellison: is like the same thing every time. And you’re just like, yeah. And like, and it’s also kind of a little bit about, you know, Ever wondered, you know, how does Clark cats keep his dog at the daily planet?

Right? Like I just, you forward his fricking rad to on a journalist salary. Like all of that kind of very basic stuff. It’s just like, well, I’ve built that into the comics so that, you know, all of the superheroes. Invoice the UN for helping during an earthquake and stuff like that, because how can they survive if they’re not invoicing for their best [00:25:00] labor?

So, you know, there’s a bunch of that kind of stuff that you still like really pissed me off about comics that they just didn’t address that. Sorry. Well, the one

Jeff: kind of, one of the concepts that were in that in the series is kind of how. The government in the story, it kind of utilizes the heroes as weapons as almost like resources for the government.

Yeah. And I found it kind of interesting that, and kind of course it popped in my mind, is the government viewing the weapons as the powers as being the resource or does it feel citizens in general are just part of the peasantry that serves the larger let’s say Lord, as it were cause it kind of can almost discuss almost like in a feudal sense where the.

The poor exists to serve those in charge.

Cara Ellison: Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s interesting because obviously there isn’t too much room in the comic and the five issues to explore the bigger ideas of the world building, but essentially the way that that was working was basically it was a, it was a [00:26:00] labor issue.

So essentially the idea that the superheroes they’re like quite a few. Quite a lot of superheroes and they’re all like, you know, they’re all doing this invoicing situation, but like the, obviously the current situation in America is that freelancers have no health care. They don’t have access to a lot of things that their rent is going up.

The gig economy basically forces people to compete with each other for very small amounts of salary or. A small project and things like that. It’s actually really stressful. And and a lot of people who are involved in that kind of work are also doing it. You know, like EMT is volunt. Like people will become an EMT, but there again, like they, they’re, they’re kind of a disposable in a way.

They’re not, they’re not people who they’re basically our real life superhero type people, and they’re not really respected or compensated in, in any real way or in the way that they should be anyway. So a lot of that was [00:27:00] like commentary essentially on how. Probably being a superhero, wouldn’t actually be very much appreciated.

And Ashley is very like people are, it’s not, you know, it’s a, it’s a task. That’s not very well you know, rewarded essentially. So they, they, they had basically marched on Washington DC to be able to get some compensation and protection and, and all that kind of stuff. And then instead they had bad superheroes.

So the beginning of the comments,

Jeff: so. Well, one thing that’s, as you mentioned earlier, is that this is a huge ensemble comic book. So for both of you as both a writer and an artist, how do you create an ensemble like this and make sure that each aspect is unique, both as a writer and making sure they’re unique and expression, and very expressive, unique in a unique way as an artist?

Cara Ellison: It’s I mean, I think. I think the way that Sally makes this comic look is not something that I originally imagined. It would look like mainly because you know, this, the comics that we [00:28:00] see that come out for things like Marvel or like he’s very glossy, like kind of like they look a little bit too polished, like a little bit too.

Like, I dunno, there’s, there’s a quality to them that is very kind of. I don’t know, it’s, it’s very flat almost. Whereas a lot of, like, I think the reason I like Sally and gap Contraras who is our colorist I like them both is because they actually bring a lot more complexity to the art because they bring all this like extra depth.

So Sally’s are, there’s a lot of kind of, there’s like kind of inherent like scratchy, punky, kind of like horror S. Kind of like vibe to Sally’s art. And so it brings a lot more character into the comic, just in terms of like people’s facial expressions, like the way the ashes Ash, blacks powers work, where it’s like, you know, it’s billowing out of her, all this like black shadow stuff.

And then you’ve also got gab Contraras, who is like the most amazing [00:29:00] colorist. And she, she uses like loads of different, almost like neon type colors to to bring lots of depth and like different flavors to each of the pages. So it’s not like when you think about Scotland, you always thinking about, you know, this very dull Brown and green palette.

It’s very drab, but that’s not what gab made it look like. So, I feel like together like Sally and gab, especially made the comic look really, really different from most comics out there. Thank your

Sally Cantirino: hair. I’ve done an amazing job. I mean,

Cara Ellison: I, you know, just every, every

Sally Cantirino: set of pages she was in back, it was just blew me away.

Cause they were just these saturated colors and these neons that I would never have expected, you know? Managed to look perfect.

 

But yeah, I mean, when it came to character design, you know, you just, I had to think about what their powers were. How do they interact with the world? How do they interact with [00:30:00] themselves?

You know, someone like a SUA who doesn’t want to be in the spotlight is going to be much more casual than Ash, who still has to be like an influencer versus co who has, you know, has to put physical barriers between her and the world because of the way her powers work. So she had a lot of layers and leather jackets and,

Jeff: you know, Okay.

So, so we’re down to our, unfortunately, four minutes left. So I’m going to try to squeeze in definitely one question and then maybe we can backtrack to another. So my next question’s gonna be what are you guys both working on now? And we’ll find a girl. See SQL.

Cara Ellison: Oh I am working on several different video game projects at once, which is always the thing that I do.

And none of them have been an Einstein. Fortunately. I would do another final girls if we got a bunch of money, which is also coincidentally exactly what the final girls themselves would say.

Sally Cantirino: I am working on a book [00:31:00] called I walk with monsters from vault comics. Is it my fault Cornell colored by durable Kelly?

The last two issues are coming out this month. I

Cara Ellison: think next

Sally Cantirino: issue five is coming out next week. And then we’ll ask the issue. Issue six is coming out in may. I’m going to be doing more work with vaults in the future. That’s not

Cara Ellison: announced yet. But yeah, if you,

Sally Cantirino: if you liked the horror elements, if you liked the ashes powers in the final girls, like go check out.

Jeff: Well, I’m gonna, I’m gonna try to, excuse me. One more question. I do kiss. We get cut off. I want to thank both of you for talking with me. Final girls was fantastic book. I really enjoyed reading it. I think you had, it definitely felt unique within the genre, which is, I think very needed right now.

Cara Ellison: Well, thank you.

We try to suffer practically every everything that like, like superhero comics, especially. Do. And so, one of the cool things is that people have told us that they were really surprised and like rewarded by getting to the end of the comic and like seeing how it all pans out. So [00:32:00] I’m like really glad that it’s kind of hit home for people.

Jeff: So I’m going to try to squeeze in a question real quick. I got two minutes left. There’s a line in that that really like, it’s it’s it goes to the articulation of no’s a crime and it is what you say when you honor yourself and not others where no will be punished. Can you both, can you expand a bit on what the line means and why would no is as a punishable idea?

Cara Ellison: Okay. Generally, I feel like women when they say no are generally punished. And it’s not just with like the serious stuff, but like the very small time stuff as well. When you set a boundary often people are like, well, you know, I’ll just override that boundary or I won’t accept it. Happens in a lot of movies, you know, where like the guy continues to pursue women when they say no.

So a lot of that is just about the experience. Being seen as a woman, I think.

Jeff: Do you want to add to that as well? Miss

Cara Ellison: Katrina? No, I

Sally Cantirino: think Cara nailed it.

Jeff: Well, I want to thank you so much. It was a fantastic talk to both of you and you guys are [00:33:00] great. Thank you

Cara Ellison: so much. Thank you. Have a very good day. Bye.