Show Notes
Tonight John sits down with founder of Wunderman Comics, Nate Wunderman! They talk all about publishing indie comics in the digital world and give you a little peak of each series they have!
Visit Wunderman Comics:
http://wundermancomics.com/
Transcript by Steve, the drunk robot.
[bg_collapse view="button-blue" color="#4a4949" expand_text="Transcript" collapse_text="Show Less" ]
Nate Wunderman Interview
[00:00:00] Kenric: Citizens are the Republicans. Spoilers, or I'll come back to spoil the country. I'm kinda Gregan VAT is mr Horsley and today on the show. Well, it's wonder man comics. Nate wonderment
John: Yeah. I've got just I, this guy right here, sat down, did interview with Nate Wunderman
Kenric: that guy,
John: It got right here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And talked to all about wonder woman comics, what they have to offer. They are a indie publishing company that did publish primarily what? Not probably specifically all online.
It's all digital. They've got several titles out there for you. They've got over 50 issues of books you can read. [email protected]. And, uh, I got to sit down with him. He's a, he's an interesting cat to talk to. We had a, uh, we got some, some into some deep conversations about not only what he creates in how he does his stuff, but, uh, the comics, you know, the comic world for an indie creator in general, and it's, uh, it was a lot of fun into, I think you're going to learn something on this episode.
Kenric: After this episode is done, we're going to create a new series [00:01:00] called deep conversations with John Horsley.
John: I like it.
Kenric: All right guys. Well, let's sit back and listen to Nate and his own words.
John: all right guys. We'll come back. I am here today with Nate, and we were going to talk about him and the stuff he has out there. So, hi, Nate, how you doing today?
Nate: I sound like a villain.
John: Nice. Nice. So for everyone listening out there, why don't you go ahead and, uh, give us a little run down of who you are and what you do.
Nate: Hi, I am Nate Wunderman, chief comics officer of Wunderman comics, which you can go on the web and take a [00:02:00] [email protected]. We're a boat peak digital comics publisher available on a myriad of platforms and exclusively digital. And we have right now a one, two, three, four, five areas in current release.
John: Nice. That's awesome. And it's awesome. So you, uh, you're available that digitally all over the place and you're available digitally all over the place. That's awesome.
Nate: Yes, we're a Google play drive through comics, Amazon, Kobo, comic solids, hoopla, digital, which I really love because you can get that through your public library.
John: that's awesome.
Nate: And what's great about them as well is they do something all too rare for IP [00:03:00] providers. They pay them. Consistently.
John: That's awesome. So get through your library and you still get paid for it. It's great.
Nate: Yes. And it's, and it's essentially, it's for the price of your library card.
John: that's cool. I love hooplah. That's an app is so great. I use it all the time for it with our library here.
Nate: , it's, it's a great service. And what's great is that they're very open to independent comic publishers. Provided you have a catalog,
John: That's so cool. I didn't, I didn't know they did that. I'm going to have to check that out more because I love reading indie comics.
Nate: uh, they have almost. Everyone you can conceivably think of in the comic book business that has more than 20 releases or so, he's on hoopla.
John: Oh, that's good to know. That's really good to know. That is cool. So why don't you tell me about some of the comics you guys have
Nate: All right, let's, uh, let's go with the newest [00:04:00] one first, which is boogeyman, which is eight takes place in a few. And it's about probably Lucia. Libris rest are living on the future. Latin American megalopolis
John: Nice.
Nate: becomes a reluctant hero fighting against gangs and the corporate boss who runs the center,
John: That is cool.
Nate: created by comic book artists on Carlos. Got Acouto. And written by mosque Massimiliano grotty, and I was the editor of the piece. It's a private issue, mental series that's available on the, on all the platforms I mentioned.
John: That is cool. That's cool. I looking at the, uh, the, the, uh, covers for that series right now and the other, the art looks fantastic on that.
Nate: Yes. Uh, [00:05:00] uh, Jean Carlo has worked for the ma for the majors on both sides of the Atlantic. He's done work for Marvel and then also the usual suspects over in Europe as well. And, but he approached Wunderman comics for this project because he liked the way we do things.
John: That's awesome. That's really cool.
Nate: Alright. And. Okay, so now another mini bogeyman is a five issue mini series. Another mini series that we released last year is boundaral. I'm here for, this was to adapt William Hogarth series of pain, and it's called Rake's progress, which was about how a young man comes into money and gin women gambling.
It comes poor and what ends up in [00:06:00] debtor's prison. I adapted. We wonder. My comics adapted this for 1980s, Los Angeles
John: Right.
Nate: the, uh, and the protagonist is Latin American.
John: that's cool.
Nate: And there were the, the artwork, it was re, it was, uh, the, it was created by me, the writer with a Hannibal taboo, the columnist for the bipedal, and the art was done by Doug and Ashton.
John: That sounds really cool.
Nate: Yes. And it had been something I had been wanting to do for a very long time ever since I actually went and saw the series of those payments, the great age, the timeline Grange is of man book that you used [00:07:00] to get when you were a kid. The great ages of men. You could elaborate, you can see it, and they would have his photo and it would talk about the debt, the decline of this young man.
He's 1740s London. Well, some things never change.
John: It's so cool to see how some things can spark inspiration, right? How seeing this as a series of paintings by William Hogarth sparked a comic series, right? Just the inspiration that that leads from one thing to another always, always fascinates me.
Nate: Uh, I mean I that is true. It is. Cause I gotta tell you, I looked at it and I, as a kid, I said, Oh, this would be, do this right. This would be awesome.
John: That sounds awesome. I want to read that one.
Nate: Okay. It's available on hoopla.
John: I see that. I'm going to check that out on my hopeless. I have hooplah so.
Nate: Done. Who bites on drive through comics and on Amazon? It's on, it's on. It's on comics. Algae, Comixology [00:08:00] unlimited, so Bitlis so it can give you one Comixology unlimited, all of our series, except for boogeyman, he's on comic solids unlimited.
John: Oh, that's cool. I have that too. So I have two ways to read this comic now.
Nate: So I would suggest read boogeyman on hoopla and comics. Ology unlimited for the other step, and you're good to go.
John: yeah, there we go. I got it.
Nate: Alright. Alright. Another, um, another limited series we did was, is called irrational numbers, which was the combination of. Time that with the early part of it takes place in the ancient world, and it's about mathematics and vampires.
John: Is it vampires to do by Clavix or.
Nate: Well, the one w w it involves a historical figure pit in the beginning, the fag. [00:09:00] And it's just how the people around him sort of formed the basis of a vampire war. And that was met the pre-qual, which was actually done in the style of those old prints. Those old, how, I forget the name, there's old Prince Valiant.
John: Oh, right. Okay. Yeah. Don't strips.
Nate: Exactly. And that size and that size. Exactly.
John: Oh, nice.
Nate: that sort of page layout, and that was the prequal. And then there's a five issue mini series that's done as a contemporary comic where the war between the two factions from this, this vampire love triangle essentially plays out.
John: That's interesting.
Nate: Yes. And it's, so the series was created by me. The writer was Hannibal taboo. The artist was Jean Carlos, a cuzzo. And [00:10:00] yes, it's in vampire. And it was actually the first property of wonderment comics that wound up on comma, solidly on unlimited.
John: That's really cool. I mean, it's cool that you're crossing over, you know, one math. I'm a big math nerd, right? So when you cross from math to anything, it makes me excited. But the vampire, I told him, I also love you, the vampire Lord. I thought that sounds really interesting.
Nate: And yes, it's a unique take on the vampire lore that's first starts off in the Greek world and then winds up in Romania.
John: Oh, interesting. That's cool. That's cool.
Nate: Now we have getting into our continuing series a second one. The second continuous series I created is called time course. You are P. S it's about this group. Uh, people who are in charge, who are soldiers of the timeline, continuity department of the celestial [00:11:00] bureaucracy.
John: That's a mouthful, but okay.
Nate: And the idea is if you're not good enough for having a bad enough, a hell, where do you go? Well, one of the places you do go is the time core. And depending upon how you serve there, they decide your final disposition.
What happens is there then becomes an antagonist who wants to redo history. His girlfriend dies of a disease and he decides this isn't going to happen. I'm going to save her and he's going to go back into time to do it.
John: That always gets messy.
Nate: very much so. Very, very much so. And. Would you and the steering's focuses in on the, the crew of the Venice substations
John: Okay.
Nate: where [00:12:00] they are, and, and, and they, and they are, um, just people out of time. Not in that, that I'm just sort of hanging out in Venice. And we have the station chief, who's the Roman calorie Centurion guys equities.
We have dance hall, Gigolos, Garibaldi dealer, Borno, Russian Countess. From who? From the time of the French invasion of Russia. Pauline, Pauline Popova, and we have a mind ballplayers who played that. That mind version of basketball is called pits. Okay, Jaguar
John: I love those names.
Nate: And they, and they, and they crew the station here and they have a direct supervisor who Nella Jones, who is a very, very ambitious bureaucrat who wants to expand [00:13:00] into the bureaucracy.
And, and, and there's also a bot, Alexandra Kronos was overly fond of sitting in his hot tub.
John: I mean, hot tub sitting is pretty fun, so I get that.
Nate: Oh, he, he, he very much uses it. And there's a lot of bureaucratic wrangling and sort of interesting how much you would almost call bureaucratic slash corporate warfare going on. And at the meantime, there's the first extensional enemy, and then our current run, which. He's being ripped. My Hannibal taboo, where I, I wrote the initial first 11 issues. I, new player comes into the game who wants to mess things up even more? That's it. It was even more of a mischief maker than the other one. And so everything gets very crazy [00:14:00] and the piece is drawn by a needle. Yamamoto. Who, if any of your listeners are in Los Angeles, teaches cartooning and comic book production over at Santa Monica college for their extension courses.
John: Oh, that's awesome. That's awesome.
Nate: So he's, he does a great job. Very pro. It's great line. Really great. And that's the one thing I should notice in see if you have any firing artists out there where the classic is that artists have a hard time with eyes and hands. That is so true.
John: right, right.
Nate: Getting the facial acting and the eyes right is really, really the difference between the pros and the water piece.
John: it truly is. It truly is. Because getting in the face, I [00:15:00] actually expressed an emote what you're, what the scene needs is, is there the difference between an amateur and a pro for, for, you know, big time there.
Nate: Oh yes. I mean, and then also a bit where some of the amateurs aren't too great a managing space and a lot of their stuff looks a little too flat even though it hurt and they're not trying to be 10 10
John: Right, right,
Nate: I'm trying to be here. J what that was deliberately rendered flat.
John: right, right.
Nate: So there's been, so there's that. But yeah, so Concourse, again, it's also available at all the prior digital outlets I previously mentioned as well.
John: nice. Nice. How many issues is that one now? Does it, does it, you said you were the
Nate: Right now, time core, we have 14 issues in current release.
John: Nice. That's a good run.
Nate: Pretty easy, but that's nothing compared to the first comic book that I created and wrote that currently has 34 [00:16:00] issues in current release,
John: Oh, dang.
Nate: but first invasion, and this is a series where a criminal gang from outer space is here to commercially plunder the planet. And they happen to come from a civilization that are hyper advanced bio engineered insects that consider mammals to be an inferior species. And so mankind is in really bad shape for a while. But then I'm a defector from the aliens comes down and helps. The human and the first thing this defector does, and humans and higher order mammals, the ability to talk to each other with humans and talking animals versus the Spacebook.
[00:17:00] John: That sounds fucking cool. Sorry.
Nate: Yeah. It's a little over the top.
John: it. I like things to just go for it. You just just go for it. It's more fun that way. I think.
Nate: Yeah. And, and so it's, it's a large ensemble. It's an ensemble cast piece where both the humans and the animals they work with are fully realized. Characters that talk and all that sort of thing, and they're up against these very nasty bugs that do all kinds of really nasty things. And this was the first comic.
That I came up with that I had thought about it and I thought I thought it up back in the nineties and I thought, Oh, we've done these alien invasion things. It's HD world. All this sort of thing's been done before. It's like, [00:18:00] how? What would it be like to say maybe. Well, not just humans, but it's humans.
And they had some help with some other higher order mammals that are capable of language, but we just simply don't understand them. And that was the idea. And it just sort of mushrooms from there. And that has been incurrent digital release since 2011
John: Oh, geez. That's a long one. That nine years now. That's awesome.
Nate: yes. And. So, right. And right now we're just putting the finishing touches up on Eastern number 35 and we've sort of spit balling plot hits for 36
John: That is really cool, man. Editor.
Nate: and I wrote that up until issue 31,
John: Oh, so the who's right. Who's writing it now?
Nate: uh, this guy named Paul Benson.
[00:19:00] John: Hmm. Cool.
Nate: If I remember, he wrote in issue X-Men sometime way back.
John: That's cool.
Nate: It is, you can get good people to work for you in comics, provided your tracks. Don't bounce.
John: that does help. I mean, if, if your, if your projects are good, you get good talent, that's for sure.
Nate: Yes. You know, just exactly. They would say what you feel straight and hopefully everything works out okay.
John: Right. Right. That's awesome. So is that all this, is that, is that all the different sources you have currently?
Nate: That's the stuff we have. We have, um, we have currently, I have another project and development that I really can't go into too much, cause literally we are just at the phase of. We've outlined the whole thing [00:20:00] and we are putting together, we've done the character workups. W we like these characters' questionnaires.
And then after that you, you then go and move on to the character studies. And that's where I think, because I am, I'm very much a believer of extensive character background. Cause that helps you right. The whole thing, especially with their voice and how they speak and that sort of thing.
John: Right? Cause if you knew, if you knew who the character is, you can get their voice better. For
Nate: Exactly. You capture their voice and sort of, when they're confronted with something, you sort of say, Oh, this is how they're going to react.
John: Right. Cause you know who they
Nate: it up too much as you're going along, which some plot holes.
John: Well, exactly. If you don't know who the character is and how they talk, then you know you're going to mess that up for sure.
Nate: Oh. And it's like, it's not a matter of if, but this [00:21:00] way.
John: Right? Yep, exactly. So I have a question for you. , what inspired you to start doing wonderment comics? Like, what's right to, you know, spark dangerous to say how I'm gonna make my own my own comic line.
Nate: I just. Really wanting to get into. I was a comic book fan. I was originally born in Brussels, Belgium. I immigrated here when I was a kid, and comics have a very large tradition over there just beyond asterix Tintin or lucky Luke. There's a whole other world of really great comics and I liked the comics from all the world as well as the ones from Japan as well. And I just had wanted to go and make and do my own comics. I wasn't saying that I wanted to make, and I was sort of influenced by the idea, the punk rock, DIY, [00:22:00] and I went ahead and did it. Yes, there was most certainly some fairly painful and. Expensive learning experiences, but that's kind of sort of how it goes
John: right, right.
Nate: and it just went for it and it's been, that is fine in the sense of, instead of saying going thing, what if I had done this?
It's more like this is what I've done and this is how it turned out, which is a much more satisfying way to me.
John: Yeah. Because no matter what you've done it and it's there, and then you can say, Hey, I would accomplish this. And I mean, yeah. How long have you been doing this for?
Nate: I did the first print edition of earth invasion in 2007 by that point in time, the whole notion of an ND printed comic book was very much coming to [00:23:00] an end. So I moved it online and have been doing digital, so you could. You can say I've been alright. But then I started some of the, um, uh, character studies for AI back like 99 98,
John: Right, right.
Nate: but that was, but I didn't incorporate the company until 2009.
John: so I mean, a good 10 to 15 years we've been working on this and it's, you know, it's grown from one series to several and have now have several people who are working for you doing this or working with you doing this. And that's fantastic, man. That's awesome. That's really awesome.
Nate: Thank you.
John: So do you have any big plans in the future for this?
Nate: Um, well, I'm all, I am always open to, um. Licensing it to other media because let's get real, given the economics of [00:24:00] comic books today, that's where you make your money back.
John: Yeah. Licensing it out. Yeah, exactly. And that's what's really cool. There was a lot of people are looking to comics for new properties to adapt, which is, which is really cool. Finally, you know, finally the media realizes, Oh, Hey, there's great stories being told in comics. Let's look there.
Nate: Well, it's exactly, it's IP and then also nothing that's going on. That you have this multiplication of media channels where before I'm old enough to remember when he had said the three networks and that was it.
John: Yeah. Yeah. Growing up I had, we had, you know, I think seven network on TV's we, and we didn't have cables. We had like NBC, CBS, Fox, and universal, I think. And then like some local channels. That's it.
Nate: Right. Well, man, I'm old enough when it was still over the, over the hair, TV with rabbit ears in your house. But, but now it's, especially now that Disney's come in and are taking back all their [00:25:00] properties in which, which includes marbles,
John: Yup,
Nate: there's going to be a pretty good opportunity for everybody else from all the other, uh, media channels coming out there that are in dire need of properties.
John: It's so true. It's so true. Cause it's funny cause there's so many shows that come out these days that most people don't even realize they're based on comics. And then they look at him like, Oh then people find out they're based on the comic book and then they read the comic book. But it's so great because I mean look at Netflix or Hulu or any of the streaming platforms or even Amazon and stuff.
There's, you know. Probably, you know, at least what, 10 times a year, some new series comes out that's based on a comic series and everyone says, Oh, this is great. And it was, yeah, there's a comic for it. You should read that. Like, my wife just watched lock and key on a Netflix and she loved it. And I'm like, yeah, that's based on a client book.
She's like, it's based on a comic book. Really? I'm like, yeah, this is totally based on a comic book.
Nate: Yes. [00:26:00] And yes. And what's great about it is that comics are almost readymade in terms of here's the visual style. Um, if the comics done a good job, there's a, there's almost a builtin, loyal audience that's ready to take a look at it. It's just one of the things that really hindered the progress is that comics in the United States were very much looked down upon upon the intellectual intelligent needs to have the writing intelligence needs to, let's call it, of this country where, Oh, that kid stuff, that sort of thing,
John: Yeah,
Nate: which I was never a fan of.
John: Neither. No. I grew up reading comics. I learned to read, but we didn't kind of expect, like when I was a kid, my I, my dad got me to read by giving me Batman comics and Wolverine comics, you know? And, um, that's how I learned. So I've always thought of comics as being a great meme. And then, and then you read things like Watchmen or the dark Knight, or you read, you know, some of these other [00:27:00] pieces out there like earth one years, no, this is not kid's stuff.
This is, a lot of this stuff is, you know, real world. It's real stuff. It's, it's great.
Nate: And I have to mention. Is that you go across the Atlantic to the whole year. OBD comics are considered serious art, serious literature. It's called the ninth art for a reason.
John: and it should be that way here in America, but
Nate: Oh yeah. Oh no. Absolutely not. I mean, I actually once had the conversation with no less than David Simon, the creator of premiere and the wire and whatever, where he thought Batman would just kids literature.
John: No, no. That man can be kids that are, sure, for sure. If it's a kids, if it's a kid's version of Batman, like Batman strikes, but Batman has just main, Batman has a lot of deep thought into it. A lot of deep stuff built into it. It's not kids stuff.
Nate: Oh, Batman is one of the master works of American literature.
John: Yeah, for sure. [00:28:00] I mean, you can't read a year one and told me that's a kid that's kid, that that's kid, you know, kid stories or, or dark night or killing joke. And to me that that's a story for kids.
Nate: No, absolutely. Yeah, it's it is it, like I said, it is serious. It is serious stuff, and I, as I said, it's an instant, a legitimate art, and it's one of the new ones along with movies and in addition to the seven ancient ones.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's, yeah, it's, it's, I am happy to see it finally that comic books are being taken more seriously in America. Right. Cause in overseas, like you mentioned in Europe, it's, it's, it's been different for a long time. Even in Japan, comics, comics are treated differently, but in America it's always been for kids, for kids, for kids.
But really comics are for everyone. And comics can be. You know, just like any other form of literature or media out there. It can be for kids. It can be for teens, it can be serious. It could be, it could tell a story. Like we just had somebody on [00:29:00] our show. Uh, actually the episode is released yesterday, um, as a recording this, which would have been March 13th.
I was with the, uh, Sophia Ansell, who is a, she wrote a book called Burmese moons, all about the tragedies in Myanmar and Bert and Burma. And it's, it's, it's a heartbreaking book, but it's all based on true stuff. And it's. Like it's a book that tells that it pushes the story of what's happening over in that part of the world.
That this isn't happening now and this is reality for some people.
Nate: Well. How about mouse.
John: that's a great, a huge, I mean, yes, malice is a, is a fantastic example of how a comic book can tell you a serious story and portray it to you in a way that's accessible, accessible, but it's not. It's not like this is kids like, you know, Mickey mouse, this is, this is.
Nate: like I joke, Huber.
John: Yeah, exactly. Oh, Kubrick stuff is, I love keyword stuff so, so great. But yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's interesting that it's been taken that way so long. Anybody who actually read comic books knew the truth of, no, this is, this is a serious meeting and there's a lot of, you can, you can tell a lot of three
[00:30:00] Nate: you know, the old thing about a picture's worth a thousand words.
John: Yeah. Exactly. Cause like with comics, as you mentioned before, about the medium of being perfect for adapting a kind of book is basically a storyboard for a movie or a TV show. I mean you have the visuals, you have the, you have the written that you have the possible narration of the writer puts narration in there.
To feed you through it. So you have, you basically have, you know, two different ways. You can read a comment, but you can read it by just looking at the visuals or you can read it with the words or however you want and get and pull out of that, whatever you pull out that your own feelings from it and, and different people can read a comic and get different outtakes from it, which is one of the things I love about it because.
I could go read mouse and you could read mouse and we can talk about it. And we can come to different conclusions based upon how we feel about that. And overall, the story is just telling us one story, but we can pull out of that different things, which is amazing.
Nate: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, and I, and I have to say, I mean mouse was a great thing to integrate things for comics in America without a doubt. And I [00:31:00] especially want to say, want to fuel it, sir?
John: Yeah,
Nate: Was it appeal to them?
John: the one. They want a bunch of stuff. I don't know. I can't, I can't think of what at one, but I want a bunch of stuff for sure. It's one of the, it's one of the master works of comic books for sure.
Nate: Most certainly, which I mean I can, I can re, which I find very relatable cause my father's family were, they were all Holocaust survivors.
John: Oh, really?
Nate: Yeah. Oh yeah.
John: That must've made that story a whole lot different for you than it would have been for someone like me who, I didn't have that in my family. You know?
Nate: Oh, no, I mean, not the exact same event and not in the same part of occupied Europe. Yeah.
John: Yeah. Yeah. It's so crazy. Yeah. My family came up, so my, my grandparents were fought in world war two from the American side, and, uh, um, but on the, on the, on the, uh, um, Pacific front, you know, and that was, that's my history with that, with that, that, that's my family history with that part of time. But, you know, I know people who have their grandparents were, or you [00:32:00] know.
In the, in the camps or there were their great uncles were in the camps, whatever. They lost people in those camps and stuff. It was just like, it's, it's heartbreaking.
Nate: Very much so. I mean, just just to say, I mean, both my father and my aunt were lucky enough to be taken in by a network. Run by a Jesuit priest in Brussels who wound up saving 350 apostles. Jewish children now has a place of honor over as a chef.
John: Oh, that's so cool. It's, it's crazy cause you think about, you think about it from like the perspective of, of a kid these days. Right? I have kids, I have five kids or my oldest is 17 and they think about it from like his perspective. I talked to him about it and in, in some ways what we're too, that whole atrocity is so long ago.
But in other way, it's not because there are still people around that are worth, that were affected by that. You know,
Nate: most certainly.
John: and it's, it's crazy. Cause my, my son, like I said, he's 17 [00:33:00] he's so distant from right here. We talk about it and sometimes he's just like, Oh, that was so long ago. It doesn't matter. And I'm like, no, it's still very much matters now.
It's
Nate: Oh, completely matters. Especially if you look in terms of sociopolitical orders, all sorts of things, and most importantly. Is if the crimes that were committed are allowed to be gotten away with, they're done again.
John: exactly. And people are trying to do them again. I mean, look at certain parts of the world, look at me and look at parts of the, this is what's happening in America in the last couple of years. Right. This is crazy resurgence of, of Neo Nazi shit. It's, it's, it's, it's insane. Or like people getting upset because, um, there was a, I can't, I can't, I can't remember specifically.
I read about it the other day. In a paper, but there was a somebody who was getting upset because there was a movie coming out that put Nazis in a bad light. And we were like, why are you upset about this? This, this was, this was a horrible atrocities of our last, of our last a hundred [00:34:00] years. And yes, it th th that should be in a bad way.
There shouldn't be a movie about it. It shouldn't be about to be in good cause they weren't good, you know?
Nate: Why is historical rewash in whatever you want to call it? No,
John: yeah. No,
Nate: but I will say that some of the better comics out there address that sort of thing and help keep that going to heal, I mean, help people. No, not exactly.
John: Oh man. For sure. For sure. It's, it's been, it's been a, it's been a trouble in time doing with some of the stuff recently,
Nate: you know that old Chinese curse, right?
John: yeah.
Nate: May you live in interesting times.
John: Right, Ellen, right now we do, cause I'm in, I'm in Seattle, which is the epicenter of the whole coronavirus thing here in America and you know, in America and it's, it's nuts.
Everything's on lockdown. Like my kids are out of school for six weeks, you know, I
Nate: Oh aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. I'm in LA LA USD that said, [00:35:00] Hey everybody, you're on vacation.
John: Yeah, exactly. My, my work, my daytime job is like, Nope, every, everybody's working from home. So I'm working from home. My wife's working from home, so we're all just kind of holed up in her house, which is fine. I mean, but it's like after a couple of weeks have been here with the five kids and the wife and the two cats, it's going to get a little, uh, a little sore.
Crazy for sure.
Nate: With, uh, most, most certainly hand. And I will say one thing I'm glad is I actually have a garden where I grow fresh vegetables.
John: Oh, that's awesome. See, we were planning to start a garden here coming up. Um, when it gets a little warmer, we're like, Oh, we're going to put a garden in our backyard. We just hadn't, haven't done it yet. I'm like, ah, crap, but it'll be
Nate: telling you, you should, you should. You should give it, you should give it a ghost. There are some fresh grown vegetables that are just so much tastier when you grow them yourself, especially say like nappies and tomatoes and Tara, when you grow them yourself, there's so much better.
John: Fresh carrots are [00:36:00] the best. My grandpa growing up, he had a huge garden. I'd go over there and help them tend to it and I would always go there and get, get fresh carrots and they are sweeter. They are crispy or they, there's no, no comparison to a fresh carrot to a one in Nevada. They're just so different.
Nate: Yeah. And if you have chickens,
John: Yep.
Nate: the carrot tops, the chickens go buzzard for it.
John: Yup. Exactly. And fresh eggs are amazing.
Nate: Yes, they are. Yes, they most certainly are.
John: My, uh, my cohost Kenrick, he's, he's lives down the street from me. Um, they're getting him and his family. They're getting, uh, chickens. So we'll have fresh eggs. And I'm so excited for fresh eggs cause it make the best.
Nate: careful of the roosters neck. Roosters like to Crow at sunrise.
John: Oh, I know they're there. Well, they're, they're far enough away from me where I won't hear it, so it's not, I don't care.
Nate: Oh yeah. That, that big car early in, just as the sun cracking through is not right.
John: No, it's, it's, it's loud and it'll definitely wake you up. So [00:37:00] no need for an alarm clock there.
Nate: Okie dokie. So, um, okay, so, and. Alright. Sorry folks there. Major diversion. It's okay.
John: Hey. Hey, we have, we have a sub show on our show called the tangent of tangents where we just start a topic and just go on tangents for her because we ended up talking about one thing which leads into something else. It's, I mean, if you think about it, that whole conversation we just had is, was actually relevant to, we talked about because we got there naturally through our conversation about your comics and about what and about the conversation of comics itself.
It naturally went there, yet it's off topic to. To, what am I karmic, which is fine, but the conversation when new naturally Rose, you know, from comics to art form to Nazis, to carrots, to chickens, which is a weird segue to go through that, but if you listen to it, it'll be a natural progression too, which is cool.
Which is one of the great things about conversation is that you don't know where things are going to go sometimes. And that's one of my favorite things about doing interviews and podcasts is seeing where conversations go.
[00:38:00] Nate: Alright, cool. Cool. So then you, the questions for me.
John: So Nate, is there anything else that you're working on or that you have coming up or that we haven't
talked
Nate: I w I will say that we, besides the senior product, I have that coming, which really don't want to, um. I would say also wonderment comics. We do accept unsolicited stuff, but it has to be a professional quality, a completed full color project.
John: As I was actually, I was going to ask you that. So if you do accept submissions, did you expect that you want them to be a finished product or do you want to do stuff like scripts and stuff?
Nate: we don't do strips. We released whole entire comics to the digital platforms. definitely we want full color and, and definitely professional, presentation in terms of the R the, the dialogue. No good too. It [00:39:00] is sex, violence, but that's, I mean, yes, our comic tab that, but nothing where it's just no porn.
John: right, right.
Nate: That that's not, Nope. Nothing racist or no unnecessarily massages or any of that sort of thing.
John: right.
Nate: We just want stuff that is of a professional level.
John: Yeah. Do you guys, um, what'd you guys do? Humor. Comics.
Nate: Yes, we would. It's just a matter of finding that right property.
John: Now, do you ever have, do you have ever have any plans on offering? , I know you're a digital publisher, which is awesome cause it makes things a lot easier. But do you have plans of offering print copies for people or, or an ability of people that do live on demand printing of comics. They could have if they wanted to have a copy of it, they could.
Nate: You know what I've had? I've offered our comments from time to time [00:40:00] too. On demand printing, but oftentimes those places just get overwhelmed and fall through
John: Right.
Nate: and then the customer's left holding the bag. So I'm really cautious about that. And so perhaps in the future, say something. There's a special event where like last year we went and printed up a limited edition run of all the issues of scoundrel and did an in store signing or something like that.
We'll, we'll do something like that. Or if they may be, the possibility comes where I'm doing a physical print is not a complete and utter loss, which at this point it is. I mean, come on. Can you tell me one current comic from the majors that actually averages six figures in one month,
John: Averages. Now, the only thing that hits [00:41:00] that hits that is going to be where they do like a billion special coverage or some special event issue.
Nate: but no, but no comic. It's six to eight 10 the thing is the economics of printed where it's especially these days. You have to get into decent five biggest before you even start to make back dime one
John: Right, right. Oh for sure. Cause it's, it's been, it's expensive to print stuff for sure.
Nate: and not just the print stuff to the one. The one thing that is really the killer is the shipping
John: Yo. Yeah. Shipping is a killer cause it like doubles the cost of the book.
Nate: easily,
John: Yeah.
Nate: easily. Yeah. Especially since only the big boys seem to have access to media mail, but if you're tiny, you're not going to get access to medium Hill.
John: well, you never understood it because it, by definition, media mail, our comics don't fit to media mail, but yet if you go talk to, like I've talked to, I used to sell comics, right? I used to, I used to own a client bookstore online, and I [00:42:00] did that for like almost 10 years. And we would go talk to the postmaster at the post office and we'd ask them, Hey, do these qualify for media mail?
One time they would say yes, one time. They would say no, and then they'd say yes for most of the time within some other postmaster would say no when they got up in the mail and it's like, can you just make up your damn mind?
Nate: It was, it was very much hit or miss cause there wasn't time. I had some pretty common and it was that. And the thing is, the difference between first class and media mail was literally the margin
John: yeah, exactly.
Nate: on that entire book.
John: Exactly. And like, I don't understand why they, they say they don't want me to email because they don't want you to ship things with advertisements and then through media, mail, whatever. But if you're shipping, like the big guys will always have ads to them, but the little guys usually don't have ads in them.
But then that's where it gets into this mix of, of them trying to figure out what's what, and it's, I say, just allow them, I mean, why not?
Nate: Well that and the post office could certainly use the business.
John: Yeah, they could absolutely. And imagine how much more if they just said yes, comics, media, mail full [00:43:00] time and didn't just try to gouge people on it. They'd have tons of people. Should be more things meaning email because it's, it works and it's fine
Nate: Yeah,
John: and it's cost effective.
Nate: precisely. Precisely. Yeah. And nothing about cop. Also, nothing about comics is you print a bunch and then boom, we've got 3000 year garage.
John: Exactly. Exactly. I've mentioned the book, the book that I just did is getting printed right now, or it will be going to a printer here pretty soon. It's going to be, it's a thousand copies. What's it going to be in my garage and I'll ship out all the ones that sold, but then I'll probably still have a couple of hundred left, but I'll sit there until I can figure out, you know, go to go to a con or get them up online and get them sold, you know, which is, which is fine.
It's just, it's going to be, you know, boxes and boxes in my garage. I have to put a final place for.
Nate: I hope you don't get a link in your garage.
John: Oh God, don't, don't, no, I don't want, I don't want to deal with wet place would be terrible. Oh, man.
Nate: So yeah. And that's the thing, which is, I don't think a [00:44:00] lot of fandom realized sort of what the financial risks are involved in, that sort of thing,
John: yeah, it's, there's a lot of risk behind behind doing any of this stuff you're doing.
Nate: you know? Yeah. And the thing is money doesn't grow on trees. And yeah, everybody, it's like, I'm sorry, I am not Jeff Bezos. I do not. Or Michael Bloomberg, I do not have. Oodles and oodles of money because I have been approached by creators who sort of, especially the European ones who sorta want to do that traditional thing where they get an advance and then they're paid and whatever, and then we know that's, that's another thing which I might add to those.
We'll want to send something in that old traditional model of where I can get like say, paid in advance, whatever. That's not going to be.
John: No, that's not, that's not reality. Cause people can't, one you can't do, it's too much of a risk. It puts you as the publisher at, at the risk. [00:45:00] And you know. It's, it's not. I can imagine that that actually people are still doing that these days cause just as not with how thin spread comics are, which is good and bad.
Right? It's good to have a lot of options, but also that means there's a lot of options to spend money on. ,
Nate: Oh, absolutely. Cause I mean today's day and age, what's great about comics, especially with the computer revolution, because I still remember comics when it was still that physical production. We shot blue line film and run it on offset printer. And computers revolutionized that process to where now it's just, you put everything together in InDesign and you need it.
If you can do a physical print, you do CYMK RGB and you just drop a file, and if you've been to a physical planet, drop a file in 15 minutes later, boom, I'll come to comics. You got it. There you are.
John: Yeah. Yeah. Which is amazing.
Nate: Which is great, [00:46:00] but, but it's sort of, it's the blessing and the curse, which is anybody can do it
John: exactly. Anybody can do it, which is great, but also anyone can do it, which means it's just going to be a ton of options.
Nate: well or just a ton of stuff out there. And the great challenge these days is getting seen,
John: Yep. Getting seen and getting people to see what
Nate: getting seen and heard above the digital noise.
John: Which is precisely why I do podcasts with creators, to talk about what they do and, and, you know, share out everybody's stuff. You know, it's, it's one of my favorite things to do is talk to people that have, have indie books out there or work or are passionate about what they do and, and, and, you know, spend their time making comics.
I love comic books.
Nate: Well, thank you very much. Thank you. And like I said, I love doing this and if somebody wants to go read it, great.
John: Yeah. And speaking to that, that if you want to read it, I'll have links in the show notes below for everyone to click
Nate: Awesome. Yes. Awesome. We love [00:47:00] that.
John: Yeah. Yeah. Well, Nate, I've had a great time talking to this morning. It's been a
Nate: Thank you very much too.
John: I've learned a lot. It's been great. I will have this out for you and we'll put links to everybody listening, check out one-on-one comics. They got some cool stuff there. Um, I'm going to be checking out some of these on Comixology and hooplah here.
Uh, this weekend. I suggest you all do
Nate: And don't forget who's led digital.
John: Hooplah it. Go check it out. Support comedies and support your libraries.
Nate: Absolutely.
John: All.
Nate: Thank you very much.
. Kenric: Hey, we're back.
John: back. And how
Kenric: man comics man all online. That's, that's a crazy way
John: It is, but it's also, as he says, it cuts down on cost. Right. Cause he can, he can then pay his craters right. And not happen to have to rep pain for printer cost cause he can pay the craters and then put out a comic solid year and other, other digital
Kenric: is that, is that a, the wave of the future?
John: I think in
Kenric: Digital first,
John: think in some ways, but I think people still want physical books too, right?
Kenric: Yeah.
John: But I think for any publishers who want to, you [00:48:00] know, be able to pay their people, right and not have to be able to give more of the money back to the creators doing it digital first, or at least digital until it has a following and then maybe doing a Kickstarter, that's a really good way for an indie publishing house to do it right.
Cause then you can pay your craters the rates, and then you have, have more of those funds of your digital sales. Go back into recouping your costs as the publisher. And then push it to a Kickstarter or push it to a PO, a printed book for people who want to pick up the printed book and kind of work, kind of work in both directions, but not have the upfront cost of printing.
I think it's a good, I think it's a, it's a good idea and, or a good concept at least.
Kenric: do you think that this and web comics, is there a difference
John: um, so no, this, yes, actually, yes. So web comics are specifically comic books that publish on the web for free and they
Kenric: they have to be free?
John: what's that.
Kenric: Do they have to be free? Is that, is that a criteria?
John: No, that is not a criteria, but the criteria for a web
Kenric: primarily they're free.
John: primary. They're free, but the criteria would be a web comic or something that doesn't publish a whole story at once. It [00:49:00] publishes like a page, a page or two, like once a week. Once a day.
Kenric: Similar to what the newspapers used to do in the comic strips.
John: Exactly. That's a web comic. This is a digital comic where you, that you purchase a full issue and you have a, you know, the 20 pages of 24 pages of a full issue.
Well, they're both digital. They're different concept. A little bit.
Kenric: Yeah. It's all about the delivery is different.
John: Exactly. Exactly.
Kenric: Interesting. Well, the guys go, you learned a lot on today's show.
John: it did. And if you want to check them out, go to Wunderman comics.com it's wonderment with the U. So w w. Really. All right. I, I'm
Kenric: Why is that so funny to be right there? That's hilarious. W
John: clearly, I've been teaching my sixth year how to read too much and I'm trying to sound out the word for you. W you in D E R M a N comics.com
Kenric: there you guys go. All right. If you enjoyed that, you want some more interviews. Uh, we got a lot of artists, [00:50:00] writers, TV producers, TV directors, movie producers, movie directors, actors of all genres. There you guys go, you go to spoiler verse.com. Check out the spoiler country podcast, check out our back catalog and there is a ton of all that and more, uh, not behind a paywall, over 300 episodes and soon to be 400.
John: Soon to be 500
Kenric: He has seemed to be fine tuned to beat 1000
John: Well, we're, we're a bit off from 1000 but we'll be there eventually.
Kenric: yeah, we will be there eventually. Go check it out. There's a lot there for you.
John: Yeah. Not just from our show, but we have so many other shows like bridging the gate terms, their Taka lips, shooting the Sith narrative. Gunslingers funny, funny book, forensics nerds from the crypt. So many more. That artist, none of them behind a paywall. Mizzou point radio is another great one out there.
Just go check him out, subscribe to all of them, listen to all of them. Leave them all [00:51:00] reviews on all your pod catchers. Download all the episodes, and I compel you to click on that store link. Go to T public and buy a tee shirt or something to sell your support for the greatest
Kenric: the link, click the link.
John: That's right. Click the link
Kenric: All right guys, the last thing that we're going to tell you to do, cause I feel like at the end of these episodes, we're always telling people what to do. Don't do this.
John: yeah. Well, I mean,
Kenric: We're asking, we're not telling, we're asking,
John: yeah.
Kenric: if you do like us. Yeah. If you do like what you're hearing and you want to support us beyond the link on this for the store, or you just, you know, maybe you just can't afford that and that's totally okay.
Solely fine. Go onto your podcast on your smartphone, search for spore. The country has subscribed and then maybe go to iTunes or Google play wherever you tend to to read, because as your pod catcher probably aggregates those from either Google player or iTunes. That's just the [00:52:00] way it goes. Most of them anyways.
There's a few that don't. Spotify, Stitcher, you know those, those bigger ones. I heart radio, go to the iTunes or Google play, like I was saying, and leave us a review. It helps tremendously and I hope that you, you know, you do
John: Yeah. Because it helps us in two ways. One, it tells us what you think of us. So one, we know if you like this show or there's something you want us to, you don't care for it. We can improve and make it our show better. And two, it helps other people find the show and find us and listen to us and helps us get our voices out there.
More people to hear. Because if nothing else, we like to hear ourselves talk. So you should hear us talk to.
Kenric: We like to hear each other's talk. All right guys, that's a show. I think we're out of here. Don't forget. Then an ocean's a podcast
John: we are definitely Lou
Kenric: and it's good. Still a little compels you to do. Open the mind.
John: and read more.
Kenric: I feel like we're just trying to do our best [00:53:00] Hulk imitation.
John: Right. Or macho man. Oh yeah. It was macho, man. I know. I fucked it up right.
[/bg_collapse]
"Drinks and Comics with Spoiler Country!"
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC25ZJLg6vL4jjRgC1ebshCA
Did you know we have a YouTube channel?
https://youtube.com/channel/UCstl1UHQVUC85DrCagF-wuQ
Follow us on Social Media:
http://facebook.com/spoilercountry/
http://twitter.com/spoiler_country
http://instagram.com/spoilercountry/
Kenric:
http://twitter.com/XKenricX
John:
http://twitter.com/y2cl
http://instagram.com/y2cl/
http://y2cl.net
http://eynesanthology.com
Casey:
https://twitter.com/robotseatguitar
https://thecomicjam.com/
Buy John’s Comics!
http://y2cl.net/the-store/
Support us on Patreon:
http://patreon.com/spoilercountry
