MARCUS PARKS
All right, welcome. We are here. It's me and Ed.
ED LARSON
Hello!
MARCUS PARKS
Ed Larson. I'm Marcus Parks. Welcome to the Last Podcast on the Left. We are here sitting with James Tynion IV.
JAMES TYNION IV
Hey guys.
MARCUS PARKS
One of the most absolutely incredibly talented comic book writers out there, putting out work right now. And by far the best horror writer out there in comic books right now. Thank you so much for joining us today, James.
JAMES TYNION IV
Thank you very much and thanks for saying very nice things about me.
MARCUS PARKS
Of course! Thank you for coming back.
ED LARSON
The fourth! That's very impressive.
JAMES TYNION IV
Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
ED LARSON
My father changed his last name. He didn't even, I'm the first of nothing.
JAMES TYNION IV
I was just at a family wedding and I keep getting, it's one of those things, everyone's very proud of me and all that shit. But then I get these little like all of a sudden my cousin comes up to me and it's just like no, they can't google me. Nobody can google me. Like my last name, just everything points to your stuff. And I'm like I'm sorry.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
I don't know. So there are a lot of Tynions out there but it's a made up spelling of the last name. It's like a totally made up spelling. So everyone with the spelling that I have is related to me. So you can bug all those people you know. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
For the longest time I was beaten in Google by a Marcus Parks from Baltimore who had no arms but could shoot guns with his feet.
ED LARSON
I mean he should still be number one.
JAMES TYNION IV
I mean that feels like it deserves the top spot.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
I actually felt bad when I toppled him. I'm like man, that guy really deserves it.
ED LARSON
We should have James read a book about this guy.
JAMES TYNION IV
There you go. Marcus, you're going down. We're bringing this guy back.
MARCUS PARKS
I'll gladly give it up. So Ed here, he is new to comic books.
ED LARSON
Yes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
I mean I had them when I was a kid but I took a lot of time off. I mean the last graphic novel I read was like '30 Days of Night'. So it's been a while and I can't even... The whole time I'm reading 'Department of Truth', Marcus made me borrow his copy of it, I'm not destroying it I hope.
MARCUS PARKS
That's fine, be as rough as you want. Comics are meant to be read.
ED LARSON
Fuck yeah! I love that because I kind of think I broke the spine. But yeah, no, literally I stopped down yesterday just to take a break and absorb everything I just read because it's like top to bottom information. The pictures are information, everything's beautiful. And I was just like I need to change the way I live my life and start getting into graphic novels more. You have like changed me completely as a human.
JAMES TYNION IV
Well I apologize for that. It's a weird little rabbit hole to fall down. But I guess the whole podcast is kind of about literally every kind of weird rabbit hole that you could fall down.
ED LARSON
Yeah, man.
MARCUS PARKS
Ed's entire life has changed in the last few months. He's fucked.
ED LARSON
Yeah, man. Yeah. I still don't believe in anything but it's nice to learn about everyone's fears.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah, yeah. And this is the thing where it's just like those beliefs start being like well I don't believe it but I have a lot of thoughts about it constantly and it just lives in my head.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
And that starts to leave an effect.
ED LARSON
Well since we are talking about my new knowledge and just reading this, 'The Department of Truth', I know you guys talked about it a lot in your last interview but like I couldn't help it, I really wanna ask this. Which conspiracy theory, cryptid, which one do you believe in the most? Like which one of these in 'Department of Truth' like holds the most water to you?
JAMES TYNION IV
Oh boy. That's always so hard because it's just like one of the big things that I wanted to hit at with 'Department of Truth' that I find the most interesting is I kind of see a lot of conspiracy theories like folklore. Like it's the stories that we keep going back to and telling over and over and over through time. And I find it so fascinating that you see the same ones come back like cycles in the way that you can see QAnon to Satanic panic, like going all the way back to the medieval times. It's just like every century it just pops back up, sometimes every few decades it pops back up. And I love that. I mean I don't love the effects of that.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
But it's fascinating that when people are put under the same kind of pressures that they come to the same beliefs over and over and over again. It sort of says something about how we think and how we interact with the world. And that's the real... Like I say in the first issue, the character Cole Turner, he kind of talks about how people go towards conspiracy theories because it helps give structure to the world. And it's just like the awful truth of the world is there's not a lot of structure to it. A lot of things do just happen kind of chaotically for random reasons and all of that stuff. But it's about kind of taking control of the world and rewriting the narrative so that you're on the side of good.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
They are doing something bad and that's the reason your life is not going the way you want it to. And you are good because you are standing against it. It's the most appealing fantasy that we all go to over and over and over. And a lot of dangerous beliefs can go there. I mean and the real answer is it's UFO shit. UFO shit is like where I am now. But I don't think it's necessarily like little gray men and all that. But there is some kind of manifestation that we hit over and over and over again, like going all the way back through folklore. There are moments that humanity comes in contact with something that our little meat brains can't process and then they sort of try to make sense of it. And like what that actually is, what it means, I'm open to a million different opportunities. But I do think we bump into something else sometimes.
MARCUS PARKS
Well I mean I think what's fascinating to me about like modern conspiracy thought is that it feels like for the first time in history, although conspiracy thought has come about over and over and over again, and if we're being honest most of the time it has to do with Jewish people when it does come through. It seems like for the first time in history, conspiracy has been gamified.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Especially with QAnon and the way that people can actually interact with a conspiracy, they create the conspiracy themselves. That's what makes QAnon so fascinating is that it's a conspiracy that is built upon... It's a gigantic game of 'yes, and' that has just gotten completely out of hand. It's like the id building its own conspiracy, the id of the internet building its own horrifying conspiracy that in the end still kind of works out to the same conspiracy that's always been there. It's like these conspiracies are inevitable.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah. No. Because it's always just a dark reflection of us. And this is something like weirdly that touches directly onto like a few of my other comic projects, especially the way that... Something that I've been terrified by my entire life, especially like growing up in the social media age, is just the how quickly dangerous information spreads and how poorly equipped we are for its spread. Because it's just like we don't process whether or not information is good or not like before it passes along. And it's like I did a series very early in my career called 'Memetic', which is just about an image of a sloth posted online that ends the entire world in three days. And that was like the biggest version of that idea. It's still one of my favorite ideas. But more recently I've done a series called 'World Tree' which is very much about like the people who grew up like we did and during an era where the internet was all about possibilities and like the way human connection would lead to like a utopia, like all of these good things that would happen. And then cut to today where it's just like it hasn't, it definitely has not.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
If anything, it's kind of pulled us in the opposite direction because it is the manifestation of all of the kind of darkest impulses we have. And focused in this dark corroded way.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Have you read the interview from one of the original internet utopianists who has looked back on the legacy of the internet? It's one of these guys, I can't remember what his name was exactly. But he was one of the guys that back in the 90s was selling the internet hard as this utopian thing that was gonna bring the whole world together and we absolutely can handle this responsibility. And not only that but you're not gonna believe what the world's gonna look like in 2015, 2020, everyone's gonna be together. And I think around 2018 he gave an interview full mea culpa and was like hey, I was wrong. I was so wrong. I could not have seen. He's like I should have seen what the internet could have done. I should have warned everybody but instead I was looking at it with rose-colored glasses.
ED LARSON
Yeah, man. There was like an information, they call it the information superhighway but no one put up a fucking speed limit sign. And we were just like rocketing towards everything. And now we live in this age of misinformation. So it's like it's become there was so much information that none of it's true anymore.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
It's bizarre. It drives me crazy. And it's like I love the way you did this book. And I'm sure everything I read of yours in the future is gonna make me feel the same way. But when I was reading this, I couldn't help but thinking of, this is my opinion, not yours, that horrible Obama end of the world movie that just came out where like the world ends because of misinformation. I felt like this was what that was trying to do.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
And I feel like you nail it where they fucked up in a weird way.
ED LARSON
Well I'm very glad that you enjoy it.
MARCUS PARKS
Well yeah, tell us about 'World Tree' a little bit because 'World Tree' is one of the books I look forward to the most every month because it's full of such strange ideas and it's scary, it's beautifully drawn. Tell us a little bit about the concept behind it. And perhaps maybe your intention behind writing that story.
JAMES TYNION IV
Absolutely. So I mean it comes from a few different places. So on a road trip once I listened to, I think it was an episode of Sword and Scale about the Luka Magnotta murders.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
Because he posted those murders online. But the thing that caught me was the idea of like it started spreading around online as a kind of like gotcha video, like a gross out video that kids were watching it and recording their reactions to watching it. And I had to stop the listening to the podcast while I was listening to it because it was actually playing like some of them and one of the voices was so young, so, so young reacting to like the video that they were watching of someone being murdered. And it was just one of the most brutally upsetting things that I've ever heard with my own ears. And it's just like that planted like a seed in the back of my mind and it started coming together with a lot of my feelings about the internet and how much I loved it growing up, how I used to be the sort of person that is just like going back to middle school, it's like I would race to come home to talk to my friends online. Those were my real friends, like living through forums and AOL instant messenger. Like that was just like my whole life. And then cut to today where it's just like I'm pulling back more and more from social media entirely. I mostly just post like selfies of me going to the gym. That's it. That's like all I'm putting out there into the world anymore. And I'm trying to refind my connections in the real world with like real human beings and all of that because it's just like it brings so much more to my life. And I wanted to play with that kind of tension and like the past and the present. And so I mean the high concept of it is that a group of friends discovered that there was an evil in internet that existed beneath the internet back around 1999. And that there was something from the other side trying to break through. And this was me trying to capture that feeling from when I was a kid of when you'd click through these like geocity websites, web portals, and you'd just fall down this weird rabbit hole to weird websites that were just numbers, like broken websites of numbers and like glitchy, glitched images that wouldn't load properly.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
And it's just like you would fall into this other side of the internet. So I wanted to make that literal, where it's just like they literally fell into another internet. And something malevolent was trying to come through there. And then it's the story of how they sealed it off back then and they thought it was safe and then they thought they built the good version of the internet over it. And then you see it come hurtling back through in present day and terrorizing all these people. So it's one of the little things that I've written.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Like yeah, an actual entity coming through and terrorizing and possessing and killing, lots of killing.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Like so much killing.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah.
ED LARSON
I'm ready.
MARCUS PARKS
It's very, very bloody, it really is. And I love the idea behind it. It's sort of the idea of the internet actually reaching out and not just influencing people to do bad things but telling people to do bad things, making people do horrible things.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
One of the things I've noticed about some of your books recently is that you've been doing a lot of like apocalyptic stuff, like with 'World Tree', with 'The Nice House on the Lake'. Is your brain starting to sort of move towards the apocalypse lately?
JAMES TYNION IV
I mean it feels more like the world's moving towards the apocalypse slightly. I think it's kind of reflecting that feeling. And especially like I realized very early on I didn't really want to write like post apocalyptic stories, I wanted to write apocalyptic stories.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
I wanted to write the story about the collapse. Because it just feels like even though it's a less literal collapse, like we're living in an era of collapse, of systems kind of falling apart around us. They were built to work, they worked for like three or four decades and then they worked almost, they worked half as well for three or four decades. And now we're in the three or four decades after that and it's not working anymore. And at some point we'll have to build whole new systems. But it's just like right now we're living in this like really dangerous weird moment. And I find it deeply fascinating and horrifying.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
And I think it leads to the... There are the moments that lead to the worst of us and I think as a horror writer it's like I like leaning into the worst of us. But then I also try to lean into what I sort of, I try to bring a humanist perspective where it's just like I want to express what I think is good in humanity as well. It's our little weird messy bits. Like it's not our altruism or anything like that. It's kind of the ways in which we're like goofy and we fuck up, like that's actually what make us special. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. The human moments.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Just little interactions between us like what's gonna happen when everything's collapsing? Like how are you gonna make small talk with your neighbor while the world is collapsing around you?
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah, man. And it's so to me, so much more ballsy to write about the apocalypse as it's happening because a lot of the post apocalyptic stuff that you see, it's like they don't even bother to explain it because it's like how do you explain the end of the world?
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Like 'The Road' is unbelievable but it's all about the post. They don't even bother telling you how it happened. And so to tell us how it's gonna happen, that's a ballsy move, man.
JAMES TYNION IV
Well I mean this is also the downside of me working on all these very long form stories is just like we're in the middle of a lot of them. So it's just like we'll see if I pull it off at the end.
MARCUS PARKS
So yeah, when do you think the world's gonna end?
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah, yeah. I mean hopefully after I finish telling all these stories.
MARCUS PARKS
Cool.
JAMES TYNION IV
I want to get to the end first. Then it's just like I'll make the call and just be like all right, we can do it now. Yeah.
ED LARSON
Isn't it like every society think that the world's ending around them? Isn't that how it is?
MARCUS PARKS
Well I mean the argument could be made that many societies have ended over and over and over again. Like the apocalypse can be a very personal thing to a society.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It doesn't have to be the end of the world, it just has to be the end of that world.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Wow. Okay, all right. I'm gonna fucking shit my pants.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, something's gonna come later. Yeah. Always something gonna come later. So as a horror writer, what was the first horror comic book, like not necessarily the first horror thing, not the first horror movie or the first horror story, what was the first horror comic book that didn't necessarily scare you but the first one that kind of made you say wow, like that was a fucking great horror story.
JAMES TYNION IV
So it's kind of a weird one. But it was 'Johnny the Homicidal Maniac' by Jhonen Vasquez.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
And again it's not necessarily about like it is the best constructed horror story because it's so messy and over the top in so many different directions.
MARCUS PARKS
It's very Hot Topic, yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
But it hits a nerve.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
And especially like I was perfectly poised to receive Invader Zim when it came to me.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
But because I would bring copies of both 'Johnny the Homicidal Maniac' and 'Squee' to like summer camp with me and they would be falling apart. And then I would get in trouble when other people realized what I was reading.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
Like beyond that, it was in late middle school that I started finding Vertigo comics and that was a real turning point for me. And I think the those early volumes of 'The Sandman' like changed the entire essence of who I am as a person. And particularly the second volume, 'A Doll's House'. Which is what recently I've been doing a Sandman series and it's just like I built the entire premise of the series out of that arc.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
And focusing on the Corinthian and particularly I think it's Sandman #14 is 'The Collectors' which is one of my favorite single issues of a comic ever.
MARCUS PARKS
Same here.
JAMES TYNION IV
Which is just about like a serial killer convention in a rundown motel. And it's so brutal and horrifying, like all of these little cutaways. And it's just like when I am trying to get under a reader's skin, I will like sit down and I'll reread that issue just to remember how it's done.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
Because I still think that that is how it's done.
MARCUS PARKS
It's incredible. I mean the art and everything. And it seems like such a ludicrous thing but what's great about that issue is that there's an entire other story happening leading up to the serial killer convention and these characters that you've been following throughout this volume, they just happen upon this. Like they just happen upon this. And of course they may have been pushed towards it as well.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
But it's introduced so naturally into the story of like these people just showing up at a convention for serial killers. And they're all showing up and like hi, my name is the family man.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It's like oh the family man, great, we've been waiting for you. You're the keynote speaker, how wonderful. And they have panels when they talk about like... I love the one panel, the female serial killer, like we're not just killer nurses. Cause it's also, I mean hell, that whole story was very influential for me as well because it's also a very funny issue as well.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It treats it with this kind of levity that informed I guess my own personal view of serial killers.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yep.
ED LARSON
I imagine a serial killer convention would be held at a La Quinta.
JAMES TYNION IV
I think they'd go straight for the sponsorship there.
ED LARSON
Who does the catering?
MARCUS PARKS
But recently you've got to dabble in the Sandman Universe quite a bit recently with 'Nightmare Country' and you kind of got to, you got to actually retell that story a little bit and to dip your fingers. How was it to, I don't know, put your mark on the Sandman universe?
JAMES TYNION IV
I mean terrifying, absolutely terrifying.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
Like the only comparable moments in my comic book writing life was the first time that I wrote like a line of dialogue for Batman. When I was just starting out, one of the first scripts that I was working on was for a Batman annual that I was co-writing with Scott Snyder but I had been brought on to do the... Like I wrote the first draft and all that stuff. But I remember I reached out to Scott to be like okay, I'm gonna write all the Mr. Freeze bits and then you're gonna come in and write Batman because I'm not allowed to write Batman yet. Like I have not earned the right to write Batman. And Scott had to get me on the phone and just be like James, you have been brought on so that I do not have to write this. You do have to write the dialogue for Batman. And that was like wildly intimidating. And then it was writing the turtles, like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, getting those voices right and all that. But then like there's nothing more formative to me than the Sandman. So it's just like honestly, and I cheated a little where it's just like in the first arc that we did, there are only a handful of the classic characters that appear. So it's a lot of new characters, which I'm very comfortable writing my own characters. But once I had to actually write words coming out of Dream's mouth-
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
That was like okay, yeah, no, no, no, I have to step up. Yeah, no, it was a lot of fun.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
I'm really, really proud of what we've been doing there and there's still more to come with that story.
MARCUS PARKS
Great.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah because I love the characters you introduced were great. But I mean I could only imagine, like the Corinthian is a character I've always wanted to play around with. Like Corinthian's great. He's a living nightmare who has teeth for eyes.
ED LARSON
Fuck yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Rock and roll.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Just like you boil it down to that, living nightmare, teeth for eyes, that's it. Who eats eyes with his eyes.
ED LARSON
Whoa!
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
ED LARSON
So impressive.
JAMES TYNION IV
And legitimately one of the best horror images ever to exist in comics.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
Like just the best. Yeah.
ED LARSON
Do his eyes have little tongues? Great question.
JAMES TYNION IV
Usually not.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
Like sometimes you see a little tongue in there but it's like they're kind of black voids.
MARCUS PARKS
I kind of had to rack my brain a little bit. Like have I ever seen the Corinthian's eye tongues?
ED LARSON
Oh my god. Imagine being his dentist. He's like open your mouth. He like takes off his sunglasses and shit.
JAMES TYNION IV
Oh yeah. No, and I mean like we actually leaned into that a little bit. There's this figure that's been showing up that's like it's a nightmare but it didn't come from the dreaming that shows up through that whole series that we've been calling the Smiling Man that also has like mouths for eyes but you don't see the teeth there, you just see the like gross tongues sticking out of the eyes and it's real gross. I like it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
I like some gross shit.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Like do you have a line for gross?
JAMES TYNION IV
I used to have much more of one. There are things that will get under my skin if it's done really, really well. And it's just like at a certain point I think gore stops... Like at a certain point I don't enjoy the gore anymore.
MARCUS PARKS
Sure.
JAMES TYNION IV
But I've seen lots of real messed up stuff. I don't gravitate towards the more extreme gore end of things. But it's like I've watched all the new French extremity films, I really enjoy Martyrs. But yeah. But in terms of body horror and stuff, I love stuff that makes me cringe and like curl up.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I'm also a big fan of that.
ED LARSON
Yeah. I like how in your book that I was reading, you let the imagination like really take it. Like everything's cloudy, you're not sure what's going on.
JAMES TYNION IV
Oh yeah.
ED LARSON
You see it and then you're like oh is that what's happening? And then my own mind fucking runs with it. And I think that's so cool.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
And so much of that is beginning to work with really incredible artists which is something that... Like I love the fact that I'm working on so many different comic projects because I get to work with some of my all time favorite comic book artists, like my favorite people working in the industry today. 'Department of Truth' I work on with Martin Simmonds who I think is, you can see the Sienkiewicz and the McKean influences in him but he does this collage work that is actual mixed media. And the original artwork pages are just absolutely stunning. I have a few of them like hanging around my office right now and it is just devastatingly good. And the other projects that I have been talking about, Fernando Blanco just absolutely nails like just every... We do these like 12 panel grids in 'World Tree' and he just nails the emotionality in that, it doesn't lose any of the information. He's just like so fucking good at it. Yeah. And then Lisandro Estherren was the artist on 'Nightmare Country' and he also just absolutely nailed it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
I don't know. Yeah. I'm a comic book art nerd and like the whole secret of my career is just like I have found excuses that my inbox gets to fill up with beautiful comic book art every single day.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
That's awesome.
MARCUS PARKS
Well speaking of Martin Simmonds, the new book that you guys have been working on is a retelling of Dracula. It's 'Universal Monsters: Dracula'. Like it's very much like...
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
So when you were approaching that book, were you wanting to take like, is it like a new take on Dracula or just like a different angle on the existing Dracula story?
ED LARSON
I want to suck your milk.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah. That's the angle. That's the angle we took, like a milk sucker. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've
got a lot of white out on all of the pages. No, I mean it's been a few years since I've been writing like superhero comics. And when I was like in my heyday of superhero comics, like I was a big continuity nerd. I loved how a story, like what is the official story? How can you bring up story from the past into the present? So it's been a while since I've been able to stretch those muscles. So I set a bunch of rules for myself when I started working on 'Universal Monsters: Dracula' because it is the Universal version of Dracula. Which means that it's not Mina Harker, it's Mina Seward. And Dr. Seward isn't one of Lucy's suitors, it's Mina's father. It means Renfield has a much larger role in the whole story. It means they don't go back to Transylvania at the end and John Harker never went to Transylvania. All of those things all come from the original movie. So I leaned into that iteration uh of the of the story and tried to make sure that nothing that happened in the comic contradicts a scene in the movie. So it all happens around the corners of it. But the challenge was then how do you tell a very human story in and around the corners of that? And that was like it was a tremendous challenge. And then the other primary goal of the entire project is how do I just leave room for Martin to draw the coolest images of Dracula ever? And that was my initial focus. And then he drew the first scene with Renfield and I didn't even describe how I wanted Renfield depicted. But he depicted him almost like a ghost, like his face is almost featureless. He's like right out of German expressionism. It's just like dark lined eyes and a mouth like in the darkness but just like this blinding white against the black. And it is just I think one of the best horror images in comics of the last few years. And I take no credit for it. But the second that I saw him draw that, then it was like all right, we're bumping up Renfield's role in this entire series because I want him to draw that as many times as possible.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Because you can expand quite a bit. Because I mean how long is the original Dracula? What is it like 75 minutes or something like that?
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah, maybe even, I think it's just about 70 minutes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
It is a very short film.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. So I guess watching it, you were able to expand quite a bit on what happened off camera.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah, exactly. And then on top of that there were a lot of things that you couldn't do in a movie in that moment, like you can't really lean into the blood obviously.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
You can talk about like hey, we're watching, Dracula was just in the room and now there's a wolf running across the field. But you can't show a man transform into a wolf.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
And it's in little elements like that. And then the other decision we made is through the entire mini series, Dracula, there's only one line of dialogue that Dracula speaks in the entire book. Because I wanted to make him like a full monster, a presence.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
Like not someone who's... I didn't want to lean into like the charm of Dracula. But characters talk about interacting with him. So it's just like those scenes still happen but it's not those moments. It is the more monstrous power of him. And then the big thing that I was leaning into strongly that Martin and I both sinked in on is that the movie does this amazing thing where it just cuts into like the eyes of Bela Lugosi over and over and over and they're all like lit up. And so I just wanted to like, that's like the hypnotic power of Dracula. And it's just like you see the color of life kind of coming out of him and the rest of the world around him is like really black and white. But then this phantasmagoria of color and gore coming out of Dracula. And that was like the center of the idea.
MARCUS PARKS
It's incredible. Do you like the old Dracula? Are you into the old Universal horrors, Eddie?
ED LARSON
I rewatched one of the really old ones, I think it was Dracula actually, like a couple of years ago. And the thing that I realized is a lot of those old movies, they don't have scores.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Because you forget how much work a score does. So they're not as scary as like a current movie is because it's all imagery and no score. But yeah, no, I mean they're all wonderful. And right now I know for a fact that Universal is doubling down on all their monsters.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
And it's a perfect time for you to be involved, man. Congrats.
JAMES TYNION IV
Oh yeah.
ED LARSON
Especially with the land, they're opening a full theme park land.
MARCUS PARKS
That's crazy.
ED LARSON
It's like the first horror land in a theme park is about to open.
MARCUS PARKS
That's great.
ED LARSON
And I think that's so cool. And you're a part of it now apparently.
JAMES TYNION IV
It's exciting, it's very exciting. And I think there's a lot of really cool things coming out of that space and honestly working with Alex Antone and the team at Skybound, like what they have planned for all of the Universal Monster books. And I neither confirm nor deny which other monster I may be working on. But it's fun. I'm not working on a lot of licensed projects anymore, pretty much everything I'm doing is now fully in the creator owned space. But getting to tap into like one of the big icons, there's just power in it. And it's hard to say no to a project like that. So I didn't.
MARCUS PARKS
Hell yeah. Well speaking of icons, powerful characters and all that, when you wrote Batman you spent a ton of time with the Joker. Joker War, fucking incredible, loved it. Do you see Joker as a horror character?
JAMES TYNION IV
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
But I am open to other takes. I do not think that there is a pure singular version of the Joker. Because the Joker is just the perfect opposite of Batman. So whatever Batman is, you make the perfect opposite of him and that's whatever the Joker is. So in a more like... The Joker in Batman '66 is still a perfect like inversion of the Adam West Batman. Actually I'd say Riddler is probably more in Batman '66. But the Joker, he's a fascinating character and it's just like I know people get burned out on him. There are so many Joker stories. But there's a reason you go back to it.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
And there's something that's just cool about like sometimes superheroes are so baked into pop culture that we kind of don't look at it at face value that often. But it's just like you're in a world where it's just like this classic pulp hero in Batman, like this man dressed up in a cape with like a pointy cowl and he's fighting a murderous clown. And it comes out of that, like the pulp stories of that era. And it is like a primal part of our culture and that dichotomy is interesting. And it's like I'm always gonna find it interesting. I'm always gonna be a Batman nerd. But I also like the different elements of him. And I've written him a few different ways. And it's just like he does have to be a little funny. When he's not funny at all, it doesn't work.
MARCUS PARKS
No.
JAMES TYNION IV
But there are other characters that I'm a bit firmer on, like I think that there's a right way to do the Riddler and the wrong way to do the Riddler. But it's just like with the Joker, you can do the joker so many different ways.
ED LARSON
Yeah. To me the Joker is like a mob boss who doesn't care about money, just chaos.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. I guess if you didn't have the restrictions of writing for DC, like how far would you go with the Joker? Was that sort of like a line that DC wouldn't let you cross?
JAMES TYNION IV
I mean I started during the new 52, when I started writing the Joker he literally had like his face had been taken off and was like pinned to his face. That is the version of the Joker I started writing.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
And then on top of that, when I did my Joker series with Guillem March, I pit the Joker up against... It's basically the core concept was what if the family from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, at the end of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre when he's throwing the chainsaw around, he like accidentally throws it into the ground and then you hit the beginning of the Beverly Hillbillies where oil spouts. And it's the Texas Chainsaw Massacre family becoming like billionaires. And so you see this entire, it's a serial killing family of like billionaires that then they are convinced that they decide that they were gonna hunt and kill the Joker because they are cannibals and they want to eat... The head guy of the family wants to bring Joker to Texas to kill him and cook him and eat him. And so I went pretty far.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
But also that's funny, like it does still have to be a little ridiculous. It has to be fun.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
Like if it's just... I don't know. There have been really good stories that have been done where he's just like brutally horrifying. But at a certain point it's just like then why is that the Joker? Like what's the clown angle? Like what's the fun? Where's the joke?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, exactly. There's always got to be a joke with the Joker.
ED LARSON
That's what's so beautiful about comic books over movies. It's like you don't have to limit your imagination at all.
JAMES TYNION IV
Oh yeah.
ED LARSON
You can do whatever the hell you want and then you're like yeah, draw it. It sounds great. You don't have to worry about like blowing up a boat.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Just blow up the boat.
JAMES TYNION IV
You have to worry about the artist sometimes.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
I remember one time, it was one of the first times I was writing the Joker. I was doing the backup stories of a Joker story in Batman. And I was working with the artist Jock. And I made him draw, like the Joker was like building this whole beautiful scene inside of Arkham Asylum to like torment Batman with. And he was doing it in his usual Joker way, so he was making the guards of Arkham literally carry a horse in down the hallway because he didn't want the horse to walk on the ground because then it would be ruined. And so you saw it was like four men trying to carry an upside down horse down a hallway. And Jock like almost killed me. It's like having to draw a horse is like one of the worst things to make an artist do. Trying to draw an upside down horse is a nightmare. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. We ran across the same thing on like an issue of 'Soul Plumber' where we asked our artist to show the Vatican exploding or like being dismantled. And he was like I don't have time for that. He's like these are tight deadlines, man.
ED LARSON
I'mma go ahead-
MARCUS PARKS
Like you're working for DC, they're not gonna...
ED LARSON
I'm gonna pull my weight and say rewrite.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah.
ED LARSON
For the Joker, I know you're not doing the DC stuff right now. One thing about the Joker is like my problem with IT is like as a comedian, I wanna see his act.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Like I wanna see what he's got.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
I wanna know his material, I wanna see his jokes.
MARCUS PARKS
I'll lend you 'The Killing Joke'.
ED LARSON
Yeah?
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, it's the Joker origin story. Yeah, he did start as a failed standup comedian. He was bad.
ED LARSON
Yeah, of course.
MARCUS PARKS
He was real bad.
ED LARSON
Like the movie.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
ED LARSON
All right.
MARCUS PARKS
But in a completely different way. Yeah, it's one of the best comic book stories ever written.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah.
ED LARSON
He's gotta have a couple good ones.
MARCUS PARKS
Well that's the tragedy of it is that he can make his wife laugh but can't make anyone else laugh. And then she dies.
ED LARSON
Poor bastard.
MARCUS PARKS
By accident.
JAMES TYNION IV
One bad day.
MARCUS PARKS
One bad day. Yep. So last time you were on the show we talked about 'Blue Book', Betty and Barney Hill. This month you've got a new 'Blue Book' coming out, '1947'. Tell us about '1947'.
JAMES TYNION IV
So it brings me back together with Michael Avon Oeming-
MARCUS PARKS
Right.
JAMES TYNION IV
Who is absolutely incredible, if you haven't read 'Powers' by him and Brian Michael Bendis, go read 'Powers'. It is like one of the best blends of superhero and noir that's ever been done.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. It's a couple of cops in a town of superheroes.
ED LARSON
Cool.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah, it's great. But 'Blue Book' came together because Mike and I are big UFO nerds and he was a big fan of 'Department of Truth'. Reached out to me and was just like hey, like he was excited about how I was talking about UFOs in there and then we start, the conversation kind of picked up from there. And then ultimately we decided that something that I've been missing since I was a kid was just there used to be lots of comics that were telling the strange but true stories. It was the stories of the paranormal. And it was just like based on the actual accounts of the paranormal. So right now I'm kind of calling that, it's like the cousin of true crime and I'm calling that like true weird. And I'm like trying to build through the partnership between Tiny Onion and Dark Horse right now. Like we're trying to put out more of these true weird stories. And the ones that I'm directly involved in are these 'Blue Book' stories which are stories that are based on the real accounts of UFO encounters. And it's not like overly fictionalizing them, it's not trying to take one little kernel and build a totally different narrative. I wanna lean into the moments as they are purported to have happened by the witnesses. And so that's the kind of the core principles of the thing. But the subject matter for '1947' came together when I was just laying together research actually for the 'Department of Truth'. Something that no one had like ever said out loud to me before but just laying the dates down next to each other, I realized that the Kenneth Arnold UFO sightings that led to the coining of the term 'flying saucer' happened about three weeks before the crash at Roswell, New Mexico.
MARCUS PARKS
Oh yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
So the entire basis of American culture's obsession with UFOs happened in one summer in 1947. And it's just like everything comes from that summer. And then beyond that it's just like the way that the media interacts with UFO stories. Like all of those. Like the fact local newspapers suddenly realize that it's like oh yeah, we can start running some of these stories and people are interested in hearing them. It all comes from right then. And then the other thing that happened is like this is also the summer that the US government started building programs that would be like there's a little too many of these stories going around and we should look into it. And so we're able to, over the course of five issues, kind of piece together each of the angles of that summer. Like we talk about everything with Kenneth Arnold, the entire flap of UFO encounters that was happening over those few weeks. And there's a lot of really iconic ones that happened really close together.
MARCUS PARKS
I appreciate you using the word flap by the way.
JAMES TYNION IV
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
That's when you know someone knows what they're talking about when they use the word flap correctly.
JAMES TYNION IV
Oh yeah. No, and I mean like Oeming, he'd be like bringing in UAP a little, like interchanging. I like UFO. UFO.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. As do I.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah. But the idea of flying saucers, the idea of the public image and then what I found really, really fascinating was just the way that you see the first people who, they have one what seems like a real encounter with the strange and then they start becoming a little bit famous for it and then they just lean in and suddenly they see a lot more UFOs and all that. And it's just like it's the seeing the way that fame spreads and like a story spreads around the country is also deeply fascinating to me.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
So it's just like it's a story that we lean into what people purport to have seen and purport to have encountered. But we also take a critical lens where it's just like you can see the people who may have been, the moments that they were a little more glory hounding than necessarily encountering something otherworldly. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And I mean that was really before the days when we all learned that UFOs ruin lives.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
That being an actual, being a witness to a UFO or being an abductee. Like these people do not... Travis Walton doesn't live a happy life. Whitley Strieber does not live a happy life.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Like these people are damaged by this stuff and people that come out and talk about their alien experiences, usually their entire lives fall apart pretty quickly. Why do you think UFOs ruin lives so thoroughly?
JAMES TYNION IV
I mean I think that-
MARCUS PARKS
Because you play with this in 'Department of Truth' as well.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
One of my, well we talked about it last time, one of my favorite stories in the entire book, the Bigfoot storyline.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah.
ED LARSON
Ugh. Now I'm gonna start weeping.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah. No. I mean honestly that Bigfoot story is one of my favorite things I've ever written. And I think it speaks to exactly this. There is just like when you bump into something fantastic, like how can it not change your life? Like how can it not... That just defies everything that has come before and all of that, like suddenly it's just like you want to make sense of the world, you want to make sense of what you saw. And then especially if there's a moment where suddenly you get a lot of attention for it and then it's just like it builds up to the importance of all of it and it's just like it's hard to shake. And I think that there's something very human in that that I think is sad and beautiful and I think it's something that exists outside of the realm of like paranormal encounters. It's something that's just like you see people who it's just one moment in their life that did not fit among everything else. It just becomes like one of the driving forces of the rest of your life.
ED LARSON
Yeah, man. That's what makes Close Encounters such an interesting alien movie.
JAMES TYNION IV
Oh yeah.
ED LARSON
Because it's not scary.
JAMES TYNION IV
No.
ED LARSON
It's not a scary movie. It's just like no, it breaks your brain.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
And then there is no other choice but to join them. It's crazy.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. There was a story that I wrote for a Last Comic Book on the Left, the second part's gonna be coming out in the next issue. It's a story I've been wanting to tell for years now and I finally got a chance to do it. The story of Betty Andreasson, who had this insane encounter with a group of aliens in which her alien experience manifested itself through Christian iconography. She was a hardcore Christian and yet her alien experience, the things that she saw during her abduction all harkened back to these archaic Christian symbols that she would have had no clue were attached to the early days of Christianity. A lot of like phoenixes and worms and ashes and all sorts of stuff. And yet that's what she saw. She was a housewife in the 60s with five kids, like she didn't have fucking Google. Like she didn't know any of this stuff. But after her experience, she could not go back to her normal life. She ended up divorcing her husband. But she's one of the very few people whose life was actually made better. She got out of an unhappy marriage, found a guy who had an almost identical abduction experience, they got married and lived the rest of their lives together doing UFO conferences.
JAMES TYNION IV
There we go.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
That's actually sweet.
JAMES TYNION IV
Those are the moments of beauty and the connecting in these like little...
ED LARSON
I'd be so annoyed if I got abducted. I just feel like I do not have time for this. I have deadlines. I got jokes to write. Like what time are we getting back?
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they'd be like time's not real. What do you mean?
ED LARSON
All right, you call Marcus and tell him I can't fucking make it.
MARCUS PARKS
Please! So when is the first issue coming out?
JAMES TYNION IV
So I think it's out the second to the last... I should have this date like right in front of me. Because I know originally it was coming out on Valentine's Day and now I think it's one week after Valentine's Day.
MARCUS PARKS
All right.
JAMES TYNION IV
So I think by the time this comes out, I think it'll be out in stores. So you should just go to your local comic shop, say that you want to read about the UFOs and they'll point you in the direction of 'Blue Book'.
MARCUS PARKS
Great. And so you said earlier this is a joint venture between Dark Horse and Tiny Onion, your company.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
Which has become like it's now your own business.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah. No. So it's really exciting. We're kind of entering a whole new era that's built off of the last few years of my success and creator owned comics. And basically we're building up a production company around Tiny Onion, around my books. And in the publishing space what we're gonna be doing is similar to what I've been doing for the last few years where I have some books over at Dark Horse, I have some books over at Image, I have some books over at Distillery, the new publisher. So we've got our fingers in all these different places but we're an independent production company, we build the books and then we take them to the publisher that we think will do the best job with them. And we have a great partnership right now with Dark Horse Comics doing this true weird line and then the series 'Oddly Pedestrian Life of Christopher Chaos'. We're having a lot of fun and these are books that I'm really, really excited about people reading. But beyond that, I'm really excited for everyone to see what we've got cooking with Tiny Onion. Like I think when the announcement dropped in like mid February and now people are starting to ask the question of like what are you up to? What are you up to, James? And soon people are going to find out what I'm up to and I'm very excited to tell them.
MARCUS PARKS
That's great.
JAMES TYNION IV
And the real thing is like we're starting in publishing but we're gonna make inroads in a lot of the other media spaces and it's nice being able to kind of drive that myself, rather than having to work through a bunch of middle men to get there. We just wanna make stuff, we wanna make really cool things.
MARCUS PARKS
Fuck yeah, man. It's the only way to do it.
JAMES TYNION IV
Absolutely.
MARCUS PARKS
Fuck it, you just do it yourself. Always. That's the way we've been doing it here at the fucking network for years. It's like just take the reins and do it yourself. That's always the best way to do it.
JAMES TYNION IV
Hell yeah.
ED LARSON
It's so impressive, everything you do. I know you probably can't talk about this but it seems like your graphic novels, your comic books, they're made to be films. Are any of these, you don't have to say which or whatever, but are you working on any of that stuff?
JAMES TYNION IV
There are two that I can talk about.
ED LARSON
Okay.
JAMES TYNION IV
And I can't talk much about them. But I mean my series from Boom Studios, 'Something is Killing the Children' is in development at Netflix right now as a TV show. We have the creative team behind like 1899 and Dark, Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese.
MARCUS PARKS
I love Dark.
JAMES TYNION IV
And they're doing an amazing job. And it's Hollywood, I won't believe it's happening until I'm on set and I see a camera filming Erica Slaughter with the mask on. That's when I'll believe it, then.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Even then you don't believe it, by the way.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah. Don't believe it until you're at home on your couch.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And the fucking thing comes up on Netflix. Because I've heard, there's been a couple of horror stories from people lately.
JAMES TYNION IV
Oh yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
It's been pretty fucking awful.
ED LARSON
But if you don't mind-
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah.
ED LARSON
What is that process of selling your comic book and getting it moved into a film? Could you go into that a little bit?
JAMES TYNION IV
I mean it's a long, weird road. So the other project like that, I've seen more of the steps of the process around 'Department of Truth'. so right now 'Department of Truth' was picked up by a production company called Sister, we've gone through a few drafts of the pilot. We have a really, really good draft right now, we're going around to directors. Once we have that packaged together, we'll go around to find the network to pick it up and do that. But it's just like this is something that is a multi year process.
ED LARSON
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
We've gone through multiple iterations, we've talked through a lot of different ways to handle it. It's a lot of Zoom meetings, I've done a few trips out to LA to like throw ideas up on the white board. But it's just like the benefit of that is just it is a refining process. But then also I have watched closely and from afar the opposite of the positive refining process that thankfully I haven't sort of been wrapped up in as much. But it is that you can see the long road, you can see the version where sometimes it's like you sell your idea and then you kind of realize that the person that you sold it to is just like they were trying to sell your idea to an even bigger company and then they're gonna try to sell their idea to a bigger company. And it's all about moving a pool of money around in a circle.
ED LARSON
Yeah. It turns into The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen situation.
JAMES TYNION IV
And the real thing is is that this is part of why I wanted to have my own company and have a bit more of a hand in controlling it because I wanna find the partners that actually wanna make things. And where possible, I would just wanna make it myself. And that requires a lot of relationships, it's all people, like everything is people. But I mean comics is all people too and it's just like I mean everything is all people.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
That's one of the secrets of the world is you just have to be good at having a conversation is sort of how you get things done. And thankfully I've had a lot of practice now. And hopefully I can put my money where my mouth is and it's just like and actually bring one of these projects to life in another medium. But it's an exciting, fun, like it's a fun game. But when I make something as a comic, it's just like the comic itself, it's the full entity of what I'm intending to create. And then it's like when I talk to people who are adapting my work, it's just like I always want to be like take the beating heart of this and then build something new around the beating heart. I don't want a direct adaptation. I want you to take the best ideas of this and then make something really, really good. Because I think that the core concept can be approached from so many different angles. And on top of that, we've seen so many kind of lackluster direct adaptation of a thing and it's just like I'm not interested in it.
ED LARSON
That's very cool of you, man, to like let people have fun with your work.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah.
ED LARSON
It takes a lot of like, I don't know, courage.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
ED LARSON
And faith in yourself.
JAMES TYNION IV
Ask me again in like 15 years after I see a few people do it wrong and then I'll be like no, direct adaptation, I want every line of dialogue from the comic directly on the screen.
ED LARSON
Yeah. Well the storyboard is done! Like you just fire that guy, you're saving money.
JAMES TYNION IV
There we go.
MARCUS PARKS
Well James, thank you so much for joining us today, man. It's always a pleasure to talk.
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah, it's great to be here. I'm super honored to be able to talk about all of these projects with you guys and I'm excited about everything to come.
MARCUS PARKS
Hell yeah.
ED LARSON
Hell yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
And I hear 'Department of Truth', coming back soon?
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah. No. I couldn't skip an election year with 'Department of Truth'.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
Like this is the exact moment the country is gonna be messed up in the exact way that I'm talking about in this book. So Martin and I have finished the interior art on 'Dracula' and Martin has dived directly into the next issue of 'Department of Truth'. We are going back strong, the next three issues, I've called that mini arc 'Dallas 1963'.
ED LARSON
Fuck yeah!
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah!
JAMES TYNION IV
So we're going right back to the core of it. We're leaning right into Lee Harvey Oswald. And yeah, the birth of what American conspiracy really is all about, it all starts in that in that 11/22/63.
ED LARSON
Man, the end of that first issue of 'Department of Truth', man, when you fucking make that reveal, I was like... When you thought of that, did you just like start masturbating immediately?
JAMES TYNION IV
No comment, no comment.
MARCUS PARKS
No it was at that moment, like hi, I'm Lee Harvey. Like that was one of the very few moments I was reading a comic book and I out loud went oh fuck! Fuck yeah! Yeah, all right! I'm fucking in. All right. But yeah, 'Department of Truth', the trades are out in the stores. If you're a Last Podcast on the Left fan, I've been saying it for years now, if you're a fan of the show, you're gonna be a fan of 'Department of Truth'. It is gonna blow your fucking mind. And of course 'Blue Book', you can read the Betty and Barney Hill series. Is there a trade out yet?
JAMES TYNION IV
Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
There's a trade out for Betty and Barney Hill, that series is great as well. And go pick up 'Blue Book: 1947' and go to your local comic book store and buy these fucking books, find your local comic bookstore and go buy all of this shit. Every time you buy a comic book, buy it from a comic book store. And if they don't have it, ask them to order it and if they give you shit, go to a different comic book store.
ED LARSON
Yeah, man. They're very friendly, the one by me. Whenever I went in there looking for 'Operation Sunshine', they didn't have it. They went and called a bunch of other comic book stores. Went and got it for me. I was so impressed.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
That's great.
MARCUS PARKS
Which store is that?
ED LARSON
Collector's Paradise.
MARCUS PARKS
Yeah, Collector's Paradise is great. My local store, my store is Earth-2. There's some great stores out here in Los Angeles.
ED LARSON
Hell yeah.
JAMES TYNION IV
Absolutely. Yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
All right.
ED LARSON
It was very nice to meet you, buddy.
JAMES TYNION IV
Nice to meet you too, man.
ED LARSON
Hell yeah.
MARCUS PARKS
All right. Goodbye, everybody.
JAMES TYNION IV
Bye.