Mark Waid talks The Hero Initiative, Thrillbent, Humanoids and more!

Mark Waid – Interview

[00:00:00] Mark Waid: All

Casey: right, everybody. Welcome again, to another episode of spoiler country today on the show, we have a Titan in the comics community.

Oh, my gosh. I’m so excited to talk about this guy. I’m so excited to talk to this guy, Mark. Wade, how you

Mark Waid: doing, man? Please sit down please. I’m standing ovation.

Casey: It’s all good. If, if I sit down, the monies will start shaking. Then you’ll hear the vibrations to the desk because I’m incredibly nervous to talk to you.

 I’ve been watching your stuff for a long time, reading your stuff for a long time. And Holy cow, man. And as, as we were talking about for, I started recording, you are from Alabama. How does one go from a small town in Alabama to become, you know, one of the, one of the writers

Mark Waid: in comics? It’s a long journey, man.

I mean, I grew up loving comics. But I didn’t really necessarily want to be a writer. I just wanted to be maybe at the editor or something, [00:01:00] something. So I want to be affiliated with one of the companies, especially DC, cause I love DC growing up. And so I, I worked like the fan press and I, I did interviews and I, you know, with creators, I worked at conventions and I was the guy who drive you to the airport and back if you were a guest.

And so that sort of got me. Connected and, and sort of interconnected with the comics community as it was at the time I’m talking about the mid eighties. And then I went on staff at DC as an assistant editor and an associate editor for a couple of years. And then when I left that and eight and nine, I had made enough friends, I had made enough contacts and I become confident enough in my own abilities as a writer to strike out on my own.

And I’ve been incredibly lucky. It’s, it’s, you know, it’s been a nonstop for a right sense.

Casey: Well, in addition to that, lucky, I mean, you you’d have to back it up with actual work and you’ve done some incredible stuff. You were talking about starting out at DC. Was there anybody there that kind [00:02:00] of put you on, took you under their wing and just kind of help lead you through and show you the ropes?

Mark Waid: Yeah, absolutely. My mentor was a mini picture. Donna. Who was you know, Batman anchor and penciler over the years, but he was also the executive editor at DC in the eighties. Great guy and taught me everything about dealing with freelancers and you know, what is good in, in, in comics and what, what you’re looking for.

And he, he told me one of the things he told me once that has always stuck with me as a writer, is that when I was, I was editing books and I was editing a book there that was objectively bad. I mean, it was just, it was bad. It was a badly, but there was something about it. I, I liked, and I couldn’t figure out what that was.

I went to Dick and I said, what, what is it about this book that it’s objective really bad? And yet I sort of enjoy reading it every month. And he said, it’s because the writer would write it for free. And it shows, and he’s absolutely right. You can’t fake that [00:03:00] enthusiasm. You can’t, you can tell as a reader, when the writer is invested and energetic and when they’re not.

And that stuck with me. So I, you know, whenever I’m writing stuff, if I ever feel bored by it, or if I’m ever not fired up, I just step away for a while and find some other inspiration or something. Cause I just can’t, I don’t wanna just keep shoveling awards onto a page, hoping that they’ll they’ll get better as I go.

I gotta, I gotta be excited with every page. What, what

Casey: do you do to, to when you step back? Is there anything that, like a go-to that you kind of resort to, to kind of get you back into the game?

Mark Waid: The one thing I do, it’s not so much a, you know, go play the flute for an hour or whatever, you know? I mean, it’s not so much that as it is as it is going, looking at the story, if it’s, if it’s tongue up or if I’m not excited about it or something, I go back to the last place in the story that I wasn’t excited.

And I just turned left. They just did it as an experiment. Just what if I did this instead of this? What if I went here and set it there [00:04:00] just to see what happens, but worst case scenario is, you know, I’m not any worse. I’m not any better off than I was, but a lot of times that’ll cause me to come up with new energy.

Cause I’ll suddenly see things from a new perspective or I’ll, I’ll have a new angle on the story that came out of nowhere. Because I, you know, cause I said I was willing to take the leap and go a different place with it. And so that generally helps.

Casey: So we’re we shouldn’t expect any Mark Wade branded writers brought flutes to be

Mark Waid: sold at nine 95 right now.

Casey: Because yeah, your version of the music may would be pretty amazing. So. Yeah. You, you started out at DC, you got into it, you started writing. At what point did you realize like, Oh, I’ve got this, I know what I’m doing. I feel confident in my work

Mark Waid: or is it, and a half ago. I mean, like, you know, what time is it now?

It’s

I mean, you never really. Feel a hundred percent [00:05:00] that way about your work that you’re so confident in your sailing, because if you do then the next stop is unemployment, because that means you’re just too arrogant to be looking at your own work and it’s, and it said, I, you know, I talked to Tom Pyre a lot.

This is my, one of my best amazing, he’s amazing. Amazing. And when we talk about storyline and I called him up the other night, I’m working on something right now that I’m kind of. Having a tough time with, I wrote him back. I said, well, what, I’m, I’m paralyzed. I’m terrified by this. I’m not, I can’t find my way through the story and it, and, and, and I’m getting all this anxiety.

He says, well, that’s how you know you’re doing it right. True. I mean, if I that’s, because that, you know, that means that I am really paying attention and, and once I find it, once I find the look that gets me through the scene or, or figure out where the story’s supposed to be going, then it’s all gonna flow.

I mean, it’s just going to take like one thing and I don’t know what that thing it is, but I’ll find it. And then I won’t be able to stop writing. [00:06:00] So that’s, you know, that’s kind of my answer. It’s sets. The that’s that’s. I, I, you can’t get, I need to be more serious about your aunt. It’s about your, your question.

I mean, there was a point, I guess, in the nineties, after flash was taking off and doing something and I started to get calls from Marvel to do work over there. Then I used to, and I kind of knew, okay, I’ve got a short-term career here at Louise. You know, I don’t know how long this lasts, but I’m in demand and I’m gonna enjoy that.

And it’s, like I said, I’d just been. Off awfully fortunate, cause I’ve never had to pick up the phone and it’s, that is not a humble brag. That is a, a statement of astounding. Awesome. You know, just all at how lucky and how grateful I am, that, that it’s been this, this long a right. Nobody gets a career like this.

I mean, I’ve been, I’ve not had to look for work in 32 years, 33 years or whatever it’s been. That’s pretty amazing.

Casey: Your, your work on [00:07:00] Legion was, was my introduction to the to the characters and which version? The what was the ninth Legion? 93, like after. Yeah. And I wasn’t familiar with like the backstory or anything and it made all that stuffs that I probably would have thought was like hokey with the old stuff.

It made those characters seem so cool. And there was so much personality and characterization. And so it was a really enjoyable, I think I was, Oh my gosh. I was like 12 when it, when it came out. So,

Mark Waid: That’s my wheelhouse. It’s not, it’s not the big, I mean, I can do big action sequences or I can do giant fight scenes.

I can do that kind of stuff, but that’s not. That’s not the special sauce. I mean, that’s the special sauce for me is the getting into the heads of the characters and like experiencing the story through their eyes. And what would their, what would their lives be like if they had super powers and how would they perceive this moment?

If they had these [00:08:00] abilities, how would they solve this challenge? And how does it make them feel? Like how does that change their perspective on the world, around them thinking about these characters? I mean, I’m thinking about them all my life and I can, you know, I can do 30 minutes on, on broken on any DC character, you know, just give you the lecture.

And the same with the Marvel guy. So it’s, it’s, that’s the fun of it for me.

Casey: So going, going back to you, you said you’ve been thinking about them all your life. What, what was it about comics that, that, that hit you?

Mark Waid: I, I I’ll never know. I, I know that I was. I was hooked at a very young age. I was like three, I guess.

And the Batman TV show would come out and my dad has seen some comics, don’t remember the Batman and when he was a kid and he brought home a couple of comics, and that was just it. I mean, that was that I was, I was. You know, I, I was born one of those, you know, quote unquote child, prodigy kids. I was reading by the time I was four [00:09:00] and I was, you know, always the brain kitten class.

And I skipped a couple of years in school. So I was reading at a really early age. And comics clearly helped me learn to read. And so I just got bonded with them when I was kid. Also, we moved around a lot. When I was a boy, I went to something like 10 different schools in eight years. And I think that the characters being who they were, and there was a sense of stability with those characters.

They didn’t have long-term friends because we moved so much, but the characters were stable. Like I could always count on Superman to be where I needed them to be. I can always count on Batman to be in a Batman comic. And I think I found my, I think I found my tribe there.

Casey: I hear you. I hear you. So you recently returned to DC comics after, after being away for quite awhile.

I’m really excited to see what you’re doing and how does it feel to be back to those characters? It seems to me like, that’s, that’s your light? [00:10:00] That, that’s your, that’s your

Mark Waid: heart? That is my wheelhouse. Yeah. That’s my, I. Yeah. I mean, I love the Marvel characters. I really do, but I didn’t, I didn’t imprint on them when I was four or five, six years old.

I mean, it took me, it was a little while before I learned that the guy got to round with the Marvel characters, but the DC characters, I just, I love them so much. You know? I mean, if you could look around my apartment right now and it’s like a goddamn museum

Casey: behind you,

Mark Waid: so it’s yeah, exactly. It’s like the it’s like the kingdom come a restaurant here.

So So that’s, that’s the thing. I, I just, that’s where my heart is. So I have, we haven’t announced anything. We haven’t formally. Food for it, but I’m working on some stuff now. I’ve got some DC stuff cooking and I’m sure we’ll be making some announcements soon.

Casey: Nice, nice. I’m not going to press you any further, cause I don’t want you to spill any beans that shouldn’t be spilled.

I’m a terrible reporter or whatever, but yeah, yeah. Was super [00:11:00] excited about your you’re working with DC again. Are does this mean that you’re, you’re done with Marvel for the time

Mark Waid: being? Oh, no, no, no. I mean, the nice thing about. About not signing exclusive contracts, which I don’t. I have an aversion to is that nobody cares whether, I mean, Marvel, they don’t care if you work at DC, as long as you’re doing your Marvel work and vice versa.

So I just, I’ve got some, I got, I turned out a marble gig the other day just because I didn’t have the time for it, but it was a really interesting and exciting opportunity. So I think that, I mean, really a big part of my energy right now is going towards humanoids where I’m the publisher. Of of that publishing company and that most common experience don’t know them well, but they’re very well known in Europe.

And they’re very well known for graphic novels. And can we talk about that? Yeah, sure.

Casey: Yeah. So, so let us know about humanoids because I’ve been reading up on it and it’s it’s really cool. So let, how did you get involved with

Mark Waid: humanoids? I just, I was friends with her sales manager. This is [00:12:00] a couple, three years ago, I guess, almost.

Like it’s two and a half years ago. She’s good friends with their sales manager. And they were looking for somebody to come on board as a, as a writer on a new line of books they were doing. And I got in there and I started talking to Fabrice Geiger, who is the owner and the CEO and the, like the, just the head honcho guy and, and.

They had just begun. They’ve been very popular in Europe. They’ve been very prestigious in Europe for decades, and they wanted to open up an American branch and see what they could do to penetrate the American market with comics and graphic novels. I sat down with Fabrice and I knew my stuff, and I’ve done been doing this for a long time.

There was literally no position in comics that I haven’t held, whether it’s owned a store or even a publisher or an editor or a writer or an artist, or I’ve done. So much that I was able to sit down with them and say, okay, if I, you know, if you were going to expand, here’s what I would do X, Y, and Z. And that just led to a conversation that, that brought me in as a consultant [00:13:00] for a while year, year and a half, whatever.

And then that led to publishing that led to the publisher gig in February, right before the pandemic. Sorry. Oh, wow. Yeah. So it’s been, it’s been a challenge. It’s been a huge challenge, but yeah, we’re, it’s, we’re making headway. We’re we’re we got some other stuff to announce later this year, but know if anybody here is watching knows what the inkwell is by Moebius and Oh yes.

Oh my God. I hold them. It’s amazing. The Medicare ends all that and that’s that’s humanoid stuff. And so they’ve also been doing a lot of quieter, like sort of. More down to earth graphic novels. It’s called the life prawn imprint, where we do biographies and autobiographies is it’s a wide range of things that we’re doing.

And so that’s, like I said, it’s challenge in COVID, but we’re, we’re doing well. And, but that’s and that’s a huge part of [00:14:00] my day. Oh, yeah.

Casey: Yeah. So, given, given that you do have that position with humanoids, I mean, how do you divide your day up? Because you, you have, how do you work life balance, but also you you’re bouncing the creative work with you with your

Mark Waid: first off.

There is no work-life balance. There’s just that I, I, you know, Work-life balance because I take Saturdays off, but but work balanced. I, I basically, I spend a lot of my mornings working on the administrative stuff because that doesn’t take a whole lot of creative brain power because I found over the years that I don’t really sort of kick into gear until, you know, one, two, three in the afternoon.

And then I just, once I get that energy and I get it. Roll on something as a writer, then I just keep going. So that’s, you know, warnings and early afternoons is the humanoid stuff. And then sort of segue into the freelance stuff in the afternoons and [00:15:00] evenings. There’s still not enough hours in the day.

I’m still having a difficult time juggling. Some of that stuff I’ve taken on. One too many assignments right now. I’ll tell you that right now. Don’t tell my editors. Don’t tell my editors. I’m like one, one too many assignments right now, but I’m making easy. Yeah, it’s a great look. I can’t make that. What’s the alternative.

I could be digging ditches. This is a great job. Oh yeah.

Casey: Yeah. And so, well, while you’re doing your writing, do you listen to music? Do you have TV on or anything like that or is it just. Mark Wade is staring at a computer and he is at it.

Mark Waid: Yeah, that’s pretty much it. I can have soundtrack music on, but I can’t have anything with words.

It just, it just messes me up. And same with TV, same with movies at any, any, I just need to focus. I I’m, I have the attention span of a toaster as it is. And so it’s helpful if I don’t have that many distractions. I hear you.

Casey: I hear you. Can you tell us about your book ignited?

Mark Waid: Yeah, it [00:16:00] was, I it’s over now.

It, we gave it a Valiant try and it, frankly, just the market wasn’t, you know, this wasn’t the place for it or whatever, but it was it was interesting. I did, they came, it was humanoids. They came to me. And they said, we want to do this book about teenage teenage survivors of a school shooting who then get super powers and are able to be socially active.

And so social activist  and politically active. And that was my wheelhouse. I mean, that’s, that’s complete, I’ve used the word wheelhouse a lot tonight. That’s my, that’s my jam. That’s my, you know, that kids, you know, fighting back against, you know, gun violence. That means a lot to me. It’s, it’s some, it’s something I feel very strongly about.

And so being able to write these characters who weren’t, they’re not all Robin, you know, I mean, they’re not all kid flash. They’re not all squeaky clean kids. They’re they’re teenagers with super powers and. A real hate on for the [00:17:00] circumstances and the tools and the things in society that lead to school shootings.

And so they went out and they kicked ass and took names. And some of the stuff they did was not necessarily you know, Superman approved, but that’s the way these kids would be. And so that ran, I did that with Kwanza Fe out as a, as a co-writer for about 10 issues. 10th issue I think, is coming out in a couple of weeks.

Month, something like that. And it was a good ride. It just, as I say, through. No one specific thing, it just getting take off, you know, but nobody bats a thousand. So

Casey: yeah, it struck a chord with me because my wife is a kindergarten teacher who has had to explain to a five-year-old why she is putting them all in the storage closet and why they should hold the door at all costs while they have these drills.

And it is heartbreaking.

Mark Waid: It’s hard to see during the Capitol assault. I mean, the, you know, the, it was the young [00:18:00] pages and, and stuff in the, in the senator’s offices to had everything down, Pat, they knew what to do, you know, in terms of shit. And they were asked, how did you know? And they said, we’ve learned it in school.

That’s just ridiculous. Heartbreaking. So, yeah.

Casey: Another thing, speaking of things I like about you I like that you’re you do not shy away from from your opinion as it pertains to politics. Has, has that ever been an issue in regards to like the companies that you work for? Have they ever been like, Hey man, no,

Mark Waid: they really, they never have been, I mean, it’s, it’s, I think.

Part of that is just because they know I’m not going to shut up anyway. I guess I don’t. I mean, I’m, I’m, I make the conscious choice. If I, if I, you know, go all super heavy liberal, you know, on social media that I know that there’s going to be a certain amount of readers who will be turned off by that.

And that’s unfortunate, but that’s the price you pay. I think that [00:19:00] my, I have for, for better or worse. Circumstances and years of experience, whatever have given me a platform with a pretty loud voice. And I think that that is a responsibility. And I think that that to not use that voice, to help talk about social industrious, to help not to talk about these things I think is a waste.

And I think that it, I think that I have an obligation to do that. If I feel that strongly and my obligation. Socially to this world and to, and to society, as we all have an obligation to society and to each other outweighs sales figures to me. And I figure that, you know, clearly I want to keep selling comics.

But at the end of the day, if push comes to shove you, can’t the moment you tell me not to do something. I just get all, you know, hard on it. So yeah,

Casey: I can respect it. [00:20:00] One thing that I noticed about you, when you talk about comics is you still seem like you get excited. Yeah. The medium. Is there anything that’s blowing your hair back right now?

Mark Waid: There was something Let me ha, I’m gonna send the name now. If somebody asked you the hard questions. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I I’m trying to remember the name of the book. It just came out and I, it escapes me. It’s done by the, by the writer artists, you get a graphic novel called King city. And it’s Brandon, Montclair, maybe.

If it’s not random on clear, I’m really sorry, but that stuff blows my mind. He’s using the form. He’s using anybody who uses the tools of storytelling in a different way. Like when David aha and Matt Frasch were doing Andy Graham. Yeah. Yes, he’s fantastic. I mean problem with, you know, six or seven panels, a page that looked like a standard comment, but if you want to break the medium, if you want to try different ways of storytelling, that gets me excited.

That gets me ramped up.

Casey: I hear you. Is there anybody else that, that you think [00:21:00] is just really bringing it right now?

Mark Waid: Right. The second, man, I always, I, I never come to the table prepared for this question. I do. I think the Josh Williamson’s bringing it. I think that. Daniel Kennedy Johnson as a writer is really bringing it.

There’s some,

Casey: he is amazing. Yes. He’s really good. Yeah. Philip Kennedy Johnson. Yeah.

Mark Waid: Justin, sorry. He’s on Superman now I think, right? Yeah. So, yeah, Philippine and I,

Casey: we did a cap

Mark Waid: too. Yeah. And if they’re listening, forgive me. I’ve been. This is when you’re being, when you’re a publisher, you deal with 85 freelancers a day and names just start to run together.

If I haven’t met you face to face, it’s harder for me to lock on your name. If it’s not much of an excuse, because I can name every single member of the Legion of superheroes, all of your own planets. So it’s not, it’s not really, I can’t really say, well, my memory sucks, but.

Casey: Anyway, you just enjoy the Legion of superheroes more than actual people.

And [00:22:00] that’s

Mark Waid: pretty much white. This is white. COVID lockdown has not been an issue. I’m this is I sit alone in my head and my house all day long. Anyway, so yeah.

Casey: Speaking of COVID has, has it really affected your productivity as, as a writer?

Mark Waid: It most everybody, every everybody I’ve talked to and it’s, you would think it would be the opposite because now we don’t have distractions.

Now we finally have the opportunity to sit down and write that big, you know, the great American novel that we’ve been putting off because we didn’t have time, but it just doesn’t work that way. There’s we are. As my therapist puts it. Like we’re not in this post-traumatic stress. We’re feeling we’re still in the trauma phase.

This, this whole year has been that with COVID and with, you know, what’s going on with the elections and so forth. It’s every writer I know is having the same problem with focusing is having the same problem, you know, finding the energy. And it’s, [00:23:00] it’s a, it’s a real thing. It’s a real neurological thing that I, that doctors are looking at right now with creatives and, and people whose jobs depend on that sort of intense.

Intense focus that neurologically the, the conditions of the lockdown, the conditions of the world or the place we live in right now, where, you know, we’re in a mask everywhere, and you’re afraid to talk to anybody and free to touch anybody. That’s affecting people. And it’s, I wish it wasn’t affecting me.

I, I, but I can tell. I can tell that I’m not as productive as I want to be. And I’m hoping that, you know, we’ll all get an isolated and I’m hoping we will all see this go away by the end of 2021 at the, at the latest. And maybe we’ll be back to normal.

Casey: Yeah. Yeah. I found out today that my wife who has 20 kids in her classroom they just took her off of one of the they moved her back on the inoculation list.

Yeah on the vaccine list. So she has to wait with [00:24:00] everybody else, even though she’s going to be,

Mark Waid: they didn’t even put her back on hold. They moved her. Literally. They, they made, they shoved us further down the line. Yes. Oh, that’s infuriating.

Casey: Yes. So what, what do you do when you get down? Like when you’re just in a pit.

Wow.

Mark Waid: That’s a

Casey: great question. I mean, the past, the past four years have made for me have been kind of just like, yeah, insane doom scrolling and just, Ugh,

Mark Waid: it’s hard because I mean, especially, I mean, I spend all my time thinking about and writing about captain American, Superman and characters like that. And it’s hard not, it’s hard to write those characters without believing.

That people are basically good and that America is basically a great place to be. And it is been very difficult in the last four years because they’re the, you [00:25:00] know, the unmasking of the fact that there’s just so many people out there who are racist. So many people out there who are just flat out, you know, white supremacists and flat out, you know, just, just horrible people.

Yeah, sheer number of them has been, you know, I mean, I, I know that’s naive. I know that every black friend of mine is like, dude, where you been, you know, but I, you know, from my privileged position, I want to believe that we have made progress in racism. We’ve made progress in my lifetime toward the end and to find out my last few years that really, we really haven’t.

It has been very debilitating. I, I don’t know. If you asked me to write captain America right now, I don’t know that I could do it. I don’t know what I would do. I don’t know how you could write that character in this America right now. And I think God, that Ta-Nehisi Coates is doing a great job with it because I couldn’t,

Casey: Speaking of, of characters that, that you’ve, [00:26:00] you know, put your Mark on.

And is there anybody that you would really want to get another swing at? Cause, I mean, you’ve done everyone

Mark Waid: pretty much. Yeah. I mean, this is a conversation that Tom rewarded more blind. I have all the time, which is every couple of years, it’s like, okay, well, you don’t want to talk to a stranger. What else is there to do?

Well, I’ve done everything else. I, you know, who, and I don’t wanna go back. I don’t wanna go back and like, do another run on fantastic four because then all people are going to do is look at that and compare it to the last run, a fantastic four. And they’re gonna remember it better than it was. And so that, that trick never works.

So I’m like never going back to Wall-E, you know, I’m never going back to the FF, never going back to the area that well, because again, I love that you’re doing your way. Thank you. But I mean, all you’re doing competing with people’s memory of how good it was. Not even necessarily how good it was, but how much they remembered being maybe better than it was.

So I’ve never taken a swing at iron man, and I’ve never written a Batman book. I’ve written a Batman story here or there. And I’ve written it [00:27:00] in the justice league, but I never really written that, man. You know, there’s an itch there. Maybe we can find a way to scratch that in 2021.

Casey: That’s awesome.

That’s awesome. So I know you gotta wrap up soon but I’m really looking forward to what you’re going to be doing at DC. And I’m grinning like an idiot thinking about it.

Mark Waid: I don’t, I don’t think I, I knowing what you are responding to. I don’t think that you’ll be disappointed. That’s all I can say.

Casey: Awesome. Awesome. So is there anything else you want to talk about before we before we shut this bad boy down?

Mark Waid: I think Sony let’s, let’s go back to the bucking myself up in a bad place, you know, question, because I realized, I feel like I left the interview on a real down note and it’s. I, I recharge again.

I recharged through comics. I, I, you know, I’ll like uncle Scrooge and his money Ben, and, you know, swimming through them, like, you know, diving through my old comics, like  yeah, there’s a, there’s a sequence in flash number zero, which is arguably the best thing he ever wrote. Does the sequence in flash number zero where he while he goes [00:28:00] back in time and my accent and stumbles across himself as like a 10 year old kid.

And is able to tell the 10 year old version of himself, everything’s going to be cool. You know what I know you’re stressed. I know you’re, you’re feel anxious about your family. I know that you’ve moved around a lot. You don’t have a lot of friends, but everything’s going to work out. And that came from a personal experience.

They came from me visiting my home in Oxford. Okay. And just in driving by just looking at that house and just wishing this is years and years ago and wishing that I could just see young Mark wait in the backyard so I could walk up to him and tell him everything’s going to be cool. So there’s that sequence and flash and I, through some incredible stroke of luck, someone had those pages, the original art pages at a convention in Florida a few years ago, and I bought them off the guy.

And those three pages that sequence is framed, hangs above my desk. So whenever I’m feeling disconnected or whenever I’m, I’m starting to doom, scroll or start to feel, you know, [00:29:00] bad about things. That’s a good, that’s a good place to look is look up at those three pages. And remember that, that is why I love comics.

Casey: That’s that’s an awesome, that’s an awesome awesome way to end it and a great story. I love hearing that. I think as far as, you know, comics being a sanctuary for you and like something that you go back to time and time again, you’re not alone in that. And in a way it kind of helped to get you through some tough times.

Yeah. And

Mark Waid: it’s, it still does, you know, it’s nothing wrong with that. As long as you’re not, as long as that’s not the only thing you use to get you through tough times, because then you’re just living in the past, living in the past and you want to do that, but it’s fine too. It’s fine to go back into the past every once in a while, especially now, especially in these last few months where it’s just been one thing after another.

Casey: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I have two kids and yeah, [00:30:00] we had a tornado the other day.

Mark Waid: Was it close?

Casey: I, no, it was like two miles away from my house. It was rough, dude.

Mark Waid: I,

Casey: yeah, luckily nothing got destroyed at, you know, my house or any of my family.  Two miles down the road just homes were just. Straight up, like nothing was there.

It was like an angry finger just went and just scratched into the earth. It was awful. But

Mark Waid: one came within a block of my house once I was living in Delaware. And it was the scariest thing in the world. Oh yeah. I mean, there’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing you can do. And it was just the luck of God house, a block away we’re matched, you know, match sticks and we were fine.

So there’s a reason. Right. I’m glad that you I’m glad that it worked out for you. I thought about that the other day when I saw the, you know, the new, whenever I see the words, Alabama and tornado and a headline, I go looking at that story. Oh [00:31:00] yeah.

Casey: Yeah. It’s so what we were down in the basement and that’s where I keep all my comics in my, my six year old was like, Hmm, what are these?

And I was just kind of. Kind of watching from the side and not being like, you know, Hey, hold don’t bend that spine or anything. I wanted her to get into it and just see what she reacted to it. It was so

Mark Waid: fast that school, what did you

Casey: react to? She was really into, what was she reading? She found an old copy of super boy that I had, and it was from like the nineties.

But I think she liked the colors and

Mark Waid: whatever it look, whatever

Casey: works, you know? Oh yeah. Yeah. She’s, she’s already reading like on a fourth grade level. And I think it’s because she’s been at home with her mom who was a teacher.

Mark Waid: I get that. I totally get that. I was lucky. I was, I was the only kid too. And my, I was with my mom, you know, 24 seven when I was a kid.

And that [00:32:00] was, you know, she taught me how to read. I mean, she taught me from a very early age. Because I had that, I had that time and experience. So I’m glad that your daughter,

Casey: Oh, I’m, I’m loving it. So, Mark, thank you so much for for talking to us. My pleasure. Absolutely. Anytime you want to come back on the show by all means, let us know.

Cause I want to talk about what’s coming up.

Mark Waid: Yeah, ping me in about six months when we, you know, we made some announcements, but drop me a line and we’ll see what we can do. Awesome. I’d love to stay longer tonight if I could, but I, as you, as we’ve already gone over, I’m already way late on everything.

So I kind of

Casey: dinner time over there. So

Mark Waid: there’s that so good talking to you. And we’ll talk again

Casey: soon. Mark. Wade. Thank you so much. Have a good one. You bet.

Mark Waid: Take care. Bye.