Jamal Igle talks The Wrong Earth Night and Day from Ahoy Comics

Jamal Igle – Interview

[00:00:00] Casey: All right, everybody. Welcome again, to another episode of spoiler country today on the show we have artists, Jamal.

How you doing, man?

Jamal Igle: I’m good. How are you?

Casey: I’m good. I’m good. Should I edit the seam

Jamal Igle: now? It’s fine. I just do that to be

Casey: fancy. That’s why and my middle name sometimes too, just because I like my little name and but also I, I worry as I sound like, like I’m trying to. Kinda act like I didn’t grow up in that.

Jamal Igle: Yeah, no, I, I completely understand. I used to really try to make a point of it at least like having my middle name in print. And then after a while I was just like, eh, screw it.

It used to confuse the guys from a comic book database because I came up as Jamal idle and Jamal . So it made it seem like it was two separate people. So

Casey: I talked [00:01:00] to you, one of the co-creators on your book. And first I was like, Oh my gosh, you worked with Jamal. He blows my mind. His artwork is fantastic.

And he had nothing but a few surprise for you talking about your you’re a co-creator on another earth. Oh, my gosh, super good guy. And yeah, he, he w we, we talked probably a good 15 minutes out of the show. We talked about you.

Jamal Igle: Oh, I appreciate it. And I do see now I’m just like, Oh God, somebody said something nice about,

Casey: so when I first saw your artwork, it made me think of I think the artist was Christopher Golden, who was a massive fan of when I, when I first I got into comics, it was because I was invading my dad’s a [00:02:00] big box of comic books that he had stashed away.

He was really into the nom and Christopher chicken book. It was, it was in the coverage to that book were fan freaking tastic, absolutely gorgeous stuff. And I see. Like not in a derivative sense at all, but I see like, Oh, like he’s he studied the best this guy. Like he he’s. He’s putting some, some amazing stuff out there.

So yeah. I, I totally appreciate what you do. It is. Thank you, man.

Jamal Igle: Fantastic work. Thank you. Yeah, no, that, I mean, I’m, I’m how, how do I describe this? So I got into comics, really got into comics when I was probably like, I would say like 10 or 11. So, like I was reading comments before and I was watching cartoons and, you know, Oh, [00:03:00] the, the stuff you did, but like actually buying comics with my own money and like starting to see style.

So you’re talking, you know, 1980, 1982, 1983. So from that, so from that point, you’re talking about like, I, I formative high school years, whereas looking at stuff like. No Ronin and killing joke, cherry Ordway on fantastic four and you know, infinity incorporated and John Bird, obviously North Adams and my golden and like all of these guys, all these legendary creators.

And I, I absorbed those guys early on. And then when I got into high school that’s when I got I that’s when I discovered Dave Stevens and Steve rude and Bolland and [00:04:00] just, and, you know, Garcia Lopez, and just all of these guys and then like, Stepping backwards to like Al Williamson and Mac Raboy and Alex Raman and Norman Rockwell and yeah, just really just absorbing all of that stuff constantly.

So yeah, that’s, that’s where the foundation of what I do really started from,

Casey: well, what was the thing that made you go, I can do this.

Jamal Igle: Well, it was always kind of there, you know, I, I, I was lucky because my mom was really very, very encouraging in that regard. So I was always surrounded by like superheros and comic book stuff.

And, you know, my mom She never drew professionally, but she is, she’s got an artist’s eye. And one of the things she did when I was a kid was she took [00:05:00] the the old Spiderman header from the newspaper strip and she painted it on my bedroom wall.

Casey: That is, that is great. A like super mom stuff. Oh

Jamal Igle: yeah, no, absolutely.

Absolutely. Then she painted like little orphan Annie on my sister’s wall on the cause my sister and I shared a bedroom. It was like a huge bedroom, but I would say

Casey: the same

Jamal Igle: thing. So, I mean, that was, that was. Yeah. Like I said, that was like my, my formative years was being kind of immersed in all this stuff and always having it around.

And then right around the time, you know, being from New York, you know, we have all these specialized art, high schools and junior high school and gifted and talented programs and everything. And. I think probably like, I, I really started like really was getting interested in drawing [00:06:00] comics, probably in like the sixth grade.

So from like sixth and seventh grade, that’s when I started like doing like little mini comics with friends and school and everything. And then I went to the high school of art and design in Manhattan and my buddies and I used to sneak out. Before the, before last period and go and try to do the Marvel tour when Marvel was still doing.

Oh, cool. I think we did it like. Three or four times. And the statute of limitations is over on this. So we, we knew where the mail room, we knew where the nail room was. And we knew what day they, they were putting everything in like the bin to take out, to take out to the garbage. So we would like sneak into the building and like go rifling through Marvel’s garbage for like coasters.

Casey: That is dude, [00:07:00] that is something that I totally would have done. Had I lived in New York, then

Jamal Igle: it was, it didn’t even really bug us that much. Like it wasn’t even like, didn’t matter if they were bent pick matter. They had like a little terror in them. We were taking.

Casey: So you, you did the art high school thing. I take it.

Jamal Igle: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. W I went to art high, I went to high school of art and design and went to the art students league of New York. I went to the school of visual arts, you know, I, you know, by the time I got to art and design, like I knew I wanted to do comics.

And I knew that was what I knew. That’s where. I want it to be. And so, yeah, so I was super hyper-focused on it actually much to my detriment [00:08:00] sometimes. But

Casey: how was your FA how did your family take that? Cause, I mean, that’s a that’s anytime somebody goes into like The arts, it’s a risk.

Jamal Igle: Well, here’s the deal.

Here’s the weird, here’s the weird part about it is because I was an actor as well. So my family was more encouraging. Like not my mom, my mom was cool with the, whatever I wanted to do, but my other relatives. Who were convinced that I was going to be this big star someday. We’re confused. Why would you want to stop acting and draw comic books?

My grandmother, especially like, she just didn’t get it, like, you know, Around the same time. My cousin Chi was a part of the boys choir of Harlem. So he was part of the tour, the touring groups that he was like going to the [00:09:00] Philippines and Japan and Europe and doing all this stuff. And I had been doing like, Yeah off Broadway shows and, you know, commercials and, you know, little bits of things here and there, here and there, nothing of note at all, but it was always the assumption that I was going to be, at least in some corners of my family, I was going to become an actor and a performer and it wasn’t.

Now I didn’t like, I, I liked it. I didn’t love it

Casey: either. I’m sorry. No, no, go ahead. Well, I was saying, I’ve talked to a few other creative, like common creatives. There are so many common creatives that have started in theater. Oh yeah.

Jamal Igle: Theater and theater and film, which

Casey: is so John Ostrander, but Del close.

Let’s see. Who else? I think Matt [00:10:00] Kent,

Jamal Igle: Matt, Matt King, Greg pock was, is a filmmaker and a screenwriter. Fred van Lente. Was the screenwriter as well. Yeah. But a lot of actors, if you ever get the, have you ever get a chance to talk to Kevin McGuire? He’s got some stories. Oh, for real.

Casey: It, it blew my mind because I mean, Like pick, pick a side, dude.

Come on. Well, I mean, you can only be good at one thing. One thing

Jamal Igle: is, okay, you got a guy like Jeffrey thorn, who’s taking over a green lantern. Right? Super talented, super talented. The male was literally on a TV show. The man was, I mean, he’s written TV shows, but he was literally a CoStar on, in the heat of the night.

Like for many,

Casey: that is why.

[00:11:00] Yeah. Yeah. I love hearing backstories like that and just the twists and turns that. That people take to get to their career and what they, what they love. And it’s quite, it’s quite evident. You love what you do. Like this is, is in your soul.

Jamal Igle: Oh yeah, no, absolutely. This, this is the thing. It was something that I, that I knew when I was five.

But couldn’t verbalize this properly or couldn’t imagine being a real thing. Like I think it really took me going on the Marvel tour to real at 14, to realize, Holy crap, you can actually do this for a living. That’s awesome. You can do this. This is, this is something that people do. This is a real office like this isn’t [00:12:00] some way like the Marvel bullpen is a real thing.

Casey: It’s it’s, it’s nuts. And seeing just. All the different types of people that go into it. It is really lovely. So you, you went to, you went to college, you got to college, started, started work. When did you know that you were. Like I’m doing this for real. This is what I like. I’m not just a guy who works somewhere and also draws comics.

I am a comics artist. Oh,

Jamal Igle: that, that, that, that took a while because that, that there were spurts and there were starts and stops. Okay. So. So I get out of college. I go to Canada, I come back from Canada. I ended up living in a two bedroom apartment with four other guys and on the lower East side of Manhattan, nice apartment.

[00:13:00] But I’m working at a comic shop Jimmy’s universe during the week, and I’m bouncing at a bar on the weekends. And drawing comics in between. And then I, I landed a gig with this company called majestic entertainment and it was my first comics gig. I’ve never drawn a monthly book before in my life. And I get this job to do this book called flashpoint and.

It was it was, it was one of these companies that did these collectible card comments back in the early nineties, or they were trying to do this collectible card comics because what ended up happening was the company, the parent company, which was this trading card company embezzled all the money from the company.

File chapter 11, stole all the artwork and left people out of jobs. And. [00:14:00] At the time it was, you know Paul Jenkins was the editor in chief, the last editor in chief. He got really screwed over on it. I talked to him, he told me that story. So Hester was working there. He was, he was doing a book called stat.

There was a, another guy named Dan Wallace who was working there. I was doing a book called flashpoint, which was about this kid from Staten Island microwave powers, but that. Led me back to DC. Cause I did my internship. I did an internship in DC when I was at our design. I did a six month internship and my senior year and I took the pages that I did for majestic.

And I sent them to an edit, a couple of editors that I knew at DC and that got me eight pages on green lantern, which I thought, Oh, I’m in. They? No, that’s it.  I’m in, I’m going to be getting regular work. This is going to be my thing. I ended up doing a film on [00:15:00] the issue of a book called cobalt from before a milestone.

I remember cobalt. Yes. And then I didn’t get any comics work for a year and a half.

Casey: Oh man. So that, that was a kick in the gut.

Jamal Igle: W it was because the entire time that I wasn’t getting work, I was trying out for stuff and I was nowhere near as good as I thought I was. And nowhere, nowhere as good as I needed to be.

To, to be able to get regular work at that point, but I didn’t see it that way. You know, so, you know, it was humbling. I was like, it was bad. I was in a bad relationship at the time and, you know, things just weren’t going well. And I was, you know, first I was working at radio shack and then I got a job at a [00:16:00] marketing company and, you know, I thought that was going to be.

The day job, like, you know, doing the marketing thing, but I didn’t have a marketing degree by degrees in illustration. So when the company really shuffle things, the person who is in charge of the shipping department had a marketing degree. So they made her the head of marketing.

Casey: What kept you going for that year and a half that you were just, you know, waiting for because

Jamal Igle: you know, a lot of it was

Casey: like, I wasn’t waiting

Jamal Igle: around like, you know, moping about it. I was trying to get work the entire time. It just didn’t seem to, to work out. Like I was, I had this. And RDA 10 at the time.

And you know, that wasn’t going anywhere. I was trying to do commercial work and not didn’t seem to really be going anywhere. And a lot of it was me getting [00:17:00] in my own way to be honest.  Needed to be humbled a little bit because you go from being, you know, hot shit. In school and getting out into the real world and not realizing that you’re competing with people with a better reputation and you have, you know, more credits to their name and everything.

So. Everything just sort of collapsed around the same time. I ended up losing the marketing job. I ended up breaking up with the girl that I was with at the time and moving back in with my mom, which was fine. But that was the time when I decided that if I was going to, to make this comic book thing happen, That was going to be that [00:18:00] time.

So what I did was I went and I got a job at another comic book shop at a forbidden planet with the express goal that I was going to spend all of my free time, just sending out samples, doing portfolio pieces and sending out samples. And going to conventions. So I ended up going to a convention in Philadelphia and I bumped into a friend of mine, Rob stall, and he introduced me to Billy Tucci.

And so I ended up working for Billy Tucci for almost a year. And I worked for Billy. I left Billy. I went and was working with Alex Simmons on his book, black Jack. I did that for a while. I was doing, I was doing everything at that point. I was doing inking, you know, at that, by that point I [00:19:00] had, I was living in a three bedroom apartment with Fred van Lente and Steve Ellis.

We had formed a production company, had gotten a deal to do classics, illustrated books for Scholastic. So we were doing that for a while. And then I moved to Los Angeles after that Andy and Steve got married and Fred got married and I moved to LA and I ended up working at Sony animation.

So while I’m at Sony, this is 2000. So while I’m at Sony, I get a call from my agent at the time, a guy named Dave Ulbrich. He says, I just got a call from Mark vulner, looking for an artist for new warriors, and they want to talk to you. And I didn’t even know that I was on Marvel’s radar. [00:20:00] But what had happened was he’s a friend now, but my buddy Greg Siegel was an assistant editor Marvel at the time he was Bobby Chase’s assistant assistant editor, and he had gotten his hands on some Nightwing samples that I did before I went to Los Angeles.

Oh, nice. So, and he had held on to them. So when they were looking for a new artist for new warriors, he pulled them out and showed them the body. So that’s how I got the new warriors job at the time. But Jay

Casey: Ferber, was he working at DC when he got the Nightwing samples?

Jamal Igle: Oh, no, he was working at Marvel.

I think he got, he said, I think he said he got them at a convention. Okay. So I’m I’m I don’t remember dropping them off at the Marvel booth at convention, but I probably did,

but yeah, but then that was the, so I don’t think, I [00:21:00] really felt like I was making a living doing comics. Really full-time so probably I would say 99 and I started penciling in 94. So this is about a good five years between my first published work and me getting my first regular monthly assignment. So

Casey: that’s, if you could say anything to yourself or somebody else kind of going through the same thing at the time, just like going through the light, just, it sounds like a rough spot to be in for a year and a half.

What, what would you say to that person?

Jamal Igle: It’s easy for me to look back and say, you know, be patient, which is, is absolutely the truth. [00:22:00] I think. You know, a year and a half is it’s a really long amount of time, especially if you’re, I mean, it’s a long amount of time for anybody. I don’t know what I would do if I went a year and a half now, file comics work. I’d probably going

Casey: insane. I mean, you have a family now.

Jamal Igle: Well, yeah, that’s true. You know, and, and very blessed and, and in very many ways But, you know, you go back to that period and put myself in that mindset.

I was 22 at the time. 21, 22. So, you know, when you’re 22, you’re just super impatient about anything and everything anyway, and you’re, you’re also filled with the hubris of thinking that now that you’re in your twenties, you know, everything too. So but yeah, I think ultimately it’s just, you know, try to impress, you know, being [00:23:00] patient and, you know, just say, look, it’s not about you necessarily.

You know, you’re, you know, it’s yeah. Especially with comics, comics, it’s, you know, much like every other creative endeavor, you know, it’s a combination of preparation and luck or, you know, you have to prepare to be lucky, you know, you have to prepare to be, you have to be, you have to be so good. At what you do that they can’t say no.

And they have to, you know, they really have to find an excuse to say no. And you know, you have to be lucky enough to be in the right place emotionally at the right time. [00:24:00] Not so much physically, you have to be in a, you know, because a lot of what happens in this business is based on your reputation. And if you’re not emotionally present as a creator, people can sense that.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. People can think people can, I can suss out a flake very easily.

Casey: And then you, you get Kind of kind of shadow banned from the rest of the comics industry and you have to make your own hashtag

Jamal Igle: well, no, no, no, no. Okay. No, that, that I was being, I know. I, I know. No, it, it really, honestly it takes a lot. You have to be a real asshole. No, I’m serious. I am. I have been in this business.

I’m 48 now. I’ve been in this business. [00:25:00] Since I was from intern to now, 1830 years. And I have seen people’s no, I I’ve seen people fuck up over and over and over again and fail upwards. So to the, to get banned from the comic book industry. You have to be just the worst

Casey: human

Jamal Igle: being like, you know, and there are a few who made their hay about, you know, being blackballed and you just kind of want to say.

It’s not us, man. It’s you? Yeah, Dick.

Casey: So yeah, there was one creator in pretty, I’m not going to name names at [00:26:00] all, but one of one of the other hosts on the show was talking about people that he’s like, what about this guy had, I haven’t. Heard anything from him in a long time. And I used to love his run on blah, blah, blah, Marvel character.

And I was like, Nope. And I pulled up some tweets. He’s like, no, fuck that guy forever.

But like, because some people just don’t know, like all that, they go to the comic shop, they get their stuff and they go home. They don’t get on the internet and you don’t

Jamal Igle: expect, I don’t expect people to know. Yeah. You know, because I would say a good portion of the fan base were just names, you know, were we’re names where do, do stuff that you enjoy.

You don’t need much more of that. It takes a very, you know, [00:27:00] Tracking somebody down and following somebody on social media. That’s an extra layer, social media, especially nowadays like social media. This is the new convention, except it’s a convention. It happens 24 hours a day. So you’re going to get the good and bad.

Oh, yeah. From, from everybody. And you know, I don’t know about you. I can’t be on 24 hours a day. I get cranky. Sometimes I try not to like explode on people, but I do, I do have my moments.

Casey: Cause, cause that that’s something you just from everything. Cause you can’t always be putting stuff out. And combine that with being, you know, a family man.

You, you also have to. Yeah,

Jamal Igle: no, I, I, I, you know, honestly, it, it, it probably seems like to some people and feels like there’s some people that I am just online all the time, but I’m [00:28:00] really not. No, I, you know, like I disconnect, I, you know, I the, I take really long walks. I take like six mile walks with my dog a couple of days a week.

I work out, I spend time with my family. We watch movies this past weekend. We went down to one of our local beaches. It was cold, but we went down, we took the dog, we walked around for a couple of hours. We went and got some food. You know, we, you know, we spent time to go there as a family. You, you got to, to do that.

You gotta be able to disconnect and reassess things, you know, you gotta, you gotta be able to, and it’s really hard, you know, sometimes because. You you, you want to be accessible, but you can’t be too accessible. You, you want to share your experiences and the things that you think about and you [00:29:00] believe in.

But you know, you also have to go into knowing that not everybody is going to agree with you. And I get the, I get the, the tweets from people like, you know, why do you have to talk about politics? Why you have to talk about this? Why can’t you just point the quota more artwork, but then I’ll also talk to people like even before, you know, even in the, before times when we.

Did go to conventions. I would see people at conventions and they’d be like, thank you for, you know, saying what you did on Facebook or on Twitter or in the podcast. Thank you for talking. You, you talk about the stuff that I can’t talk about online because of my job or my family. And I, I sort of feel like, you know, even that part is me, you know?

Kind of contributing to the bigger experience, because there are people who do want to [00:30:00] know what’s, you know, their favorite creators think about life and think about, you know, the world and how we exist within the world. Because yeah, I know at least for myself, I I’m a big believer that work is informed by the artist.

No, how you approach your work is informed by the things that you experienced that you believe in and that you expose. And I know that the projects that I pick are very much influenced by the things that I believe in. And it’s the things that I write about as, as a writer, even doing comics like. You know, I draw superhero comics because I love drawing superhero comics, but you know, more often than not, when I’m writing, I tend to do things that are more personal that are more about family and more about the things that I’m interested.

Like I’m fascinated [00:31:00] by the idea of celebrity. Yeah. You know, I’m not even really so much celebrity in itself like fame and fortune and that sort of thing, but the, the idea that your autonomy can be taken away from you because you do something that people enjoy. Because you’re an actor or a musician or an artist or writer, people feel like you belong to them.

They know that because they are your patron, that they can control how you think and how you feel and what you get to expound, you know? But I’m also fascinated by. The, the idea that because you no longer have [00:32:00] anonymity, you know, everything that you do is under scrutiny. So, so those are things that fascinate me as, as you know, I love like.

No, for example, have you seen the bikies documentary?

Casey: It’s not what is it on Netflix? HBO. Max. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I saw that in the new tiger woods documentary I’m like and watched that

Jamal Igle: yet. That’s that’s that’s next to my queue, but the BGS documentary, it was so fascinating to me. Because I’ve had realized that their catalog was so deep and that they’d been in the public eye for as long as they

Casey: yeah.

They started off as like kid performers, right?

Jamal Igle: Yeah. They were kid performers originally in Australia and then they moved to England and, you know, rebuilt themselves as a [00:33:00] sixties band and then went into the seventies and eighties and went through all the stages of, of fame. Like. They, they were, you know, rich and then they weren’t rich and they were on drugs and then they weren’t on drugs and then they broke up and they got back together, but there’s, you know, three brothers and they, you know, you know, so, you know, stuff like that fascinates the hell out of me really does.

Casey: Yeah. I I’ve heard so many good things about that. And the tire was documentary. Tiger. Tiger. Fascinates me just because, I mean, you talking about somebody who started out famous

Jamal Igle: young. Yeah. Like from like Lizzie, like three years old when he was on the Mike Douglas show or something like that.

Casey: Yeah.

And it’s almost like a sideshow act for this poor kids. I look at this weirdo, he’s playing golf, but he’s living.

Jamal Igle: Yeah, exactly. And then you have all those, those expectations that are shoved onto you because you’re, you’ve been [00:34:00] in the public eye. It’s like, sort of like being a child accurate, like somebody like drew Barrymore for, you know, or Carrie Russell’s or even, you know, Kurt Russell for, you know, if we’re naming people who have been.

Famous their entire on some way in some way, shape or form their entire lives from childhood all the way. Macaulay Culkin is another great example. Macaulay Culkin in some people’s eyes is always going to be Kevin from home alone. He’s never going to be able to shake that, but he sort of leaned into the idea of being Macaulay, Culkin, and that’s how he seems to deal with it.

And not everybody deals with it that well.

Casey: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s it’s so like that’s no way to raise a kid. I couldn’t imagine putting my kids in, in that in that space. There’s a really great podcast called you must remember [00:35:00] this. I don’t know if you’ve heard it. It’s like tales from old Hollywood up to like, present and is so good.

And they’re like, I’m not telling everybody to go out and stop, listen to spoil the country and listen to, you must remember this forever. You know, if you have an extra hour or so, check out an episode of, you must remember this cause they have a bunch of really like just, you know, each story. Each episode is a different story for the most part.

And Old Hollywood was messed up, man. They were crazy.

Jamal Igle: Yeah. The, the studio system of old Hollywood was just absolutely insane. And you know, they, again, you know, talking about losing that, that sense of autonomy. And they controlled everything. They controlled who you were friends with, what you could do, where you could go.

You know, if you were a studio kid, you not only had your school class, but then you had to [00:36:00] like take music, lessons and dance lessons. You had to be able to do absolutely everything in, anything needed you to do.

Casey: Yeah. That stuff is wild. So. What do you do to what, what has been inspiring you lately? Has there been anybody that’s blowing you away?

That’s been blowing you away

Jamal Igle: with her work? Oh God, the list is way too long. No, it, it, it really is. And in terms of just like creators, like. But writers like Philip Johnson is doing really well.

Casey: He’s a great dude, too.

Jamal Igle: VI Allah. Also,

Casey: I talked to her a few weeks ago. Or I, I talked to them a few weeks ago.

Super nice. I couldn’t have asked for like a better experience.

Jamal Igle: Yeah. With just, just a great, just a great personal around. Yes. But, and then there’s like, [00:37:00] Oh, I mean, here’s the thing is we, there’s an embarrassment of riches in this business in terms of just creative talent, like, you know, Jorge Farnaz on Worshack as to integrate work.

And Carrie Frank is doing probably the best work of his career right now. You know, Olivia coy, pal, you know, Glenn Melnikov, you know, Greg Capullo, you know, I mean who did I picked up the turtles, number one. How was that stuff is beautiful. Like it’s just absolutely beautiful, you know? Just, there’s just, there’s too many people there really it’s like, you know, I get jazzed looking at other people’s comic books and I get jealous because.

You know, I spent probably spend more time trying to figure out how [00:38:00] did he do that? How did he get that color? How did he keep, you know, Oh, that’s a, that’s a, I would never have thought of X, Y, or Z because, you know, I don’t do that. Like, you know, you look at somebody like John boy Myers or pop man who do like much more cartoony work than I do, you know, or, you know, you look at, you know, clay man Batman cat woman.

Oh yeah. You know, like just book is built for him.

Casey: Are you still able to be in S like inspired and not only inspired, but influenced by new stuff that you see where you go? Like, I might want to put that tool in my tool belt or something like that.

Jamal Igle: As, as far as penciling dosed, not as much. But I can’t say that’s not [00:39:00] completely true because for example, like for the Ragnor earth,

Casey: Which I did not miss titled earlier enough. That’s fine.

Jamal Igle: Correct. That that’s that’s okay. But for like, you know, for the wrong earth, you know, the way that I draw a dragon fly. I try to bring in influences like Capullo and Jemele and you know, that sort of influence in like the feathering and a hatchet to differentiate him from dragon fly, man, w even more.

Yeah. But in terms of like, you know, color work, like. You know, I I’m looking at like Laura Martin and Alex and Claire and Andrew dollhouse. And, you know, we’re,  like aching. Like I just, you know, I started using Japanese quills again for inking. [00:40:00] Cause it was. Primarily a brushed guy before, and I’ve been, you know, I just did a seven page story for infinite frontier Superman story with Phillip Johnson.

So Ketty Johnson, he, yeah. Yeah. And so I’ve penciled in ink that, and I was mixing brush with Quill and. Yeah, China marker. Oh, wow. So off the rails. Yeah, just kind of a little bit, a little bit of everything and yeah. So, yeah. So, you know, in terms of like the, the, the. Technique, like I’m looking at other people’s technique.

Like, I, I, you know, I find myself, you know, especially with like pen, like I’m looking at Jonathan gliadin or I’m looking at Scott Williams or I’m looking at Sanford [00:41:00] hope or, you know, or I’m looking, going back. And one of my favorite anchors. Over Carlos Pacheco was hazers Marino who now pencils and inks his own stuff.

Oh. You know? Yeah. But he has had such a pretty brush line and you know, sometimes you want to try and emulate that depending on what you’re doing. So I just kinda, I, I do. You know, at, you know, and at the same time, like I’m still always still considering myself, a student of, I didn’t, I don’t get that many opportunities to do any life drawing anymore, but it is still something that I, that I play around with at least, you know, like do sketches from like photos and stuff, just to kind of keep those skills up to date.

[00:42:00] Casey: Hey. Yeah. Yeah. So, so w when you’re in creative mode, do you do you do music or anything in the background? Do you have to have it completely silent? Is there anything that you do to get you into what you’re, where you need to be in your head?

Jamal Igle: It depends 90% of the time I’m listening to podcasts or Or, or talk radio for the most part, but then, you know, last week I just got into this Jaguar.

All I wanted to do all week was listen to disco.

All I listened to for an entire week was disco. That’s just how I was feeling. And then some weeks I will listen to nothing but musicals. Or film scores, but most of the time, I’m just, I’m listening to talk radio, [00:43:00] which annoys my wife.

Casey: Yeah. My wife hates when we go on car trips and I’m either putting a podcast on or NPR

Jamal Igle: or, you know, No, she isn’t she’ll know.

She doesn’t mind podcasts so much, but like if she’s, but the thing is, is like when my wife, because my wife and I, you know, we’re, we’re here, we live in a two bedroom apartment. We’re sharing a space. She works at home. So she, if she is going to listen to something, she’ll put her headphones on. I’ll put my headphones on.

So it’s usually, or if she doesn’t have her headphones on, it’s super quiet in here. So, and then my daughter’s, you know, has her head’s headphones on. So everybody’s listening to different stuff.

Casey: When, when you’re with your kids or you just have one kid, I guess. Yeah. When, when do you ever, the one thing I’ve been doing lately, I have a ten-year-old and A six year old.

And I like dropping, like [00:44:00] just filling out things that like music that I listened to and just seeing if they catch onto it, CNF like, do you like this? . I dunno, it’s, it’s weird. It’s dumb, but it’s kind of fun to do as a dad just to see like what they latch onto.

Jamal Igle: Right. Well, you know, here’s the thing is my daughter is going to be 13 soon and she is, she’s trying to she’s at that point where she’s trying to find her things.

No, that are separate from what? Where do you, what, you know, you know what we’re doing? So a lot of her thing right now is, you know, she’s, she’s dry, but she wants to get into animation. And she, but she’s also like she’s playing roadblocks [00:45:00] in Minecraft. And, and then, you know, we, we went to the mall the other day and all she wanted to do is like buy t-shirts from like five below and hot and hot topic.

Like animate t-shirts.

Casey: That’s yeah, my kids are at that spot. Now my, my six year old is really into a cartoon called Chaon, which is like a girl rock band.

Jamal Igle: And that seems to be the, seems to be a thing.

Casey: Yeah. It’s so weird. Like, we didn’t grow up with slice of life cartoons or stuff like that. Like we had.

You know, GI Joe and transformers and, you know, He-Man, He-Man was not slice of life. And they, they have this, you know, an embarrassment of riches in regards to you know, children’s [00:46:00] entertainment. So it’s crazy. But can we talk a little bit about the wrong earth? Sure. So, how did you get onto that project?

Jamal Igle: Well, actually, what, how it happened was because of Stuart Moore. And Stewart Stewart. And I, you know, we know each other for years, we worked together for a couple of years on firestorm, over DC. And we always like, you know, we, we stayed in touch. We lived pretty close to each other and there’s a, a pie shop near my house called four 20 blackbirds.

And I was. I either I was walking past it and Stewart was, was about to walk in and we exchange, you know, hellos and he goes, Hey, you know, Tom Pryor has this project that he won’t know that he’s doing. And your name came up and he wanted to talk to you about it. Would you be interested? I was like, Yeah, sure.

Of course. I’d love to talk to Tom about it. And [00:47:00] Tom called me up and he pitched me the idea and I was just like, wow. Okay. No, I’m absolutely. And you know, it sounds like a great concept and you just basically pitched it, you know, you know, two versions of the same hero, steel SWAT earths, and you know, we hadn’t really figured it out, like who.

Do you know who they would ultimately end up being like, you know, we just had the rough idea of who the character of, you know, dragon fly dragon fly man was, but you know, they didn’t have a motif set yet. And Well, you know, we, we actually ended up like hashing out the main beats of it while I was on vacation in Japan.

Oh, cool.

Casey: So you’re, you’re, it’s very, it seems like the creativity kind of goes both ways. Like you, you’re [00:48:00] both very into the, the making of this

Jamal Igle: book. Oh yeah, absolutely. I, you know, it really is one of the most fun projects that I’ve ever been involved in. It’s just it’s. It’s great talking to Tom and you know, the scripts that he turned in are just so much fun.

Casey: He’s such a nice dude to talk into that, man. He seems like he’s not, not just passionate about his work, but totally Jack, just like you totally jazzed about what other people are putting out. Oh,

yeah,

Jamal Igle: no, you know, the thing about Tom also is that one of the things that I discovered very early about Tom is Tom and I have very similar senses of humor.

And, you know, the stuff that made that makes us laugh is usually the stuff that makes it in. So.

[00:49:00] Casey: That’s that’s gotta be you you’re both on the same wave, so I’m sure that that’s super

Jamal Igle: helpful. Yeah. So I like to think so

Casey: what are we going to see this book with Filipina Katie Johnson? Or is it Oh yeah, it is. No, it comes out in March. Nice. Nice. Is, is that part of the It’s not part of the next,

Jamal Igle: Yeah, it’s a infinite frontier issues.

Zero. Cool, cool. So, yeah, so

Casey: yeah, it’ll, it’ll be after the thing that DC is doing now, right? Yeah. That’s after

Jamal Igle: future

Casey: state. So that’s what I was trying to come up with it. It’s changed names so many times I’ve lost track, but, so, and how is this going to be an ongoing thing? Or is this just like a, a one,

Jamal Igle: Oh, no, it was, it was just, it was just a one and done.

It was, you know, something that could fit in between issues of the rocker. So

Casey: how has it been fun playing in that sandbox? They didn’t

Jamal Igle: mean it is, you know, it’s, it’s been it, [00:50:00] you know, The last, I would say like, probably since about last summer, I’d been doing little bits of things, again for DC, like a couple of pages here and there.

Whenever I can, wherever I can fit time in just because my schedule was just so constantly busy. So it’s nice to, I mean, I never, I don’t think at this point in my career, I don’t know if I ever expected to be back at DC after so long, like at there, you know, being away for so long. So, you know, it’s, it’s nice to be able to, to play with the toys, especially the new toys.

Are,

Casey: do you have any plans on doing any more self publishing last year? You did the well, I think it was last year, right? Molly danger.

Jamal Igle: No, Molly danger is a few years ago, but I am planning on, there is a second book in the works it’s it’s coming. The first book has been [00:51:00] out for, for a few years, but the know the second book of a book is coming.

Casey: Nice. Nice. And did doing the Kickstarter thing is okay. It’s nerve wracking and it’s scary. What do you think you’ll do, do you think you’ll do the same thing or you think you’ll you’ll go and like do it through like a, like a standard like publisher,

Jamal Igle: I don’t ever want to have to run another Kickstarter.

Those

Casey: were we’re about to go on our first Kickstarter and my were already

Jamal Igle: shot. Kickstarters are very, very difficult. I allow me to, to give you a bit of veteran advice. Running a Kickstarter campaign is like running a, a, an ad campaign for 30 days straight. You have to devote a lot of time to your campaign every single day, you that, you know, you have to be super accessible.

You [00:52:00] have to be. Oh on top of it the entire time. So

Casey: luckily it’s like almost everything, but the lettering is the lettering and the printing is all we need to pay for and shipping. So let’s go ahead. Yeah. So it’s keeping the costs down. My, my friend, Pete, Pete, he’s an English artist. His name is P L woods.

Because his name is Pete, but there’s only one Pete woods, but yeah, he, he, he’s still in the yard and the, the colors and stuff. And I wrote the thing and it’s just, it’s been fun, but, Oh my gosh. I’m nervous. So

Jamal Igle: I wish you all the luck in the world. I

Casey: appreciate it, man. I appreciate it. If nothing else.

 I’m proud of what I did and I’ll, I’ll do it again.

Do you have anything else coming up that you want to talk about?

Jamal Igle: That I can talk about

Casey: that yeah. That you, [00:53:00] that you can legally talk about without getting in trouble.

Jamal Igle: I, well, let’s see so white, which is the SQL to black, which is nice. So that will be coming out in the spring finally. So that’s that whole thing I spent the past year working on that.

So that is coming out in the spring. So the, the, the Kickstarter dishes already went out to to all the backers and this’ll be like this be the, the official black mask studios version, both the, the trade and the single issues. So that’ll be coming they’ll I guess, are going to be making an announcement about that probably like the next week or so.

That’s awesome.

Casey: That’s awesome.

Jamal Igle: So, yeah, so that’ll, that’ll be in the spring, so, so yeah, that’s all I can really talk about.  stuff that’s been announced already, so

Casey: well, are you going to be glued to the TV tomorrow?

[00:54:00] Jamal Igle: I don’t know if I’m going to be glued to the T. I mean, I probably watch the first bit of it, but because, you know, I spent a lot of time listening to political radio.

They’ll probably be carrying the whole thing all day.

Casey: I’m just, I’m just here for Springsteen, man. That’s it. I don’t even know. Well, Jamali will do thank you so much for coming on and talking to

Jamal Igle: us. Thank you for having me, man. It’s been a pleasure.

Casey: God forbid, you ever have anything else you want to talk about?

Come on.

Jamal Igle: Oh, I would love

Casey: to. I was so stoked when, when we found out that cause they, they asked, Hey, is there anybody you want on it? I was like, Oh Jamal, I go I won’t top pair. I want to ask for, I asked for ask for a lot of people at a Hawaii just because Hawaii has been putting out. Some crazy stuff.

Oh yeah.

Jamal Igle: And it all good stuff

Casey: and yes, and unique. [00:55:00] I think y’all are doing some good stuff and it’s really

I just wanted to know what good is. So, man, it’s been a pleasure talking to you and I I’ll give you a heads up when, when this goes live. But do thank you so much.

Jamal Igle: Thank you. Thank you

Casey: for having me take it easy. Stay safe. Wash your hands. Absolutely. Absolutely. See, well

Jamal Igle: man, you too have a good night.

Same to you.

Okay.